Nicole the 432 Valver :) (Otherwise known as The YOJ)

[Craigie-B]

​Soo I havent updated this for a while, been working in London and inc commute it works out as roughly 14 hour days.

Anywho


So as you guys know my rear arches arnt really there so I bought some pov spec panels for my magician of a father to make fit the valver, this will be done around september:

I wanted to put some 15mm rear spacers on the back so that the track difference between the front and back was the same as williams widetrack thus improving the handling. I also needed longer wheel bolts obv I didnt want to trust the dirty cheap bolts that come with the cheap spacers and so chip talked me into pure motorsports stud and nut kit as from his experiance cheap stud kits stretch alot, these purchases set me back about £230/£240 as I bought the decent alloy eibach spacers after seeing them at pvs was really impressed. Whilst I was in a spending mood I bought an RSTuner for the 98ron map and error code abilities:

Before:

Quite a big difference:

Doesnt look like a huge difference but it makes it handle so much better its crazy

Then I set about wiring in the OBD port I lobbed out the 172 loom, put it under the ashtray like in a 172:

Mapped the 98 ron map with the rstuner:

Noticed my spring was making spring noises on turning and so bought new top mounts, the h brake was crap as i was sold drum brake cables and my throttle cable frayed so a phonecall to adam at renault later and it was christmas for the second time this month:

New top mounts fitted:

And I finally got this working so thanks to peter on c16v for giving me some bulbs:

MOT tomorrow so have bodged the arches to make do till new ones go in!


Really looking forward to llandow now


Cheers for reading!!

 

[Craigie-B]

​Passed MOT llandow here I come!!!!

 

[lesley]

​Passed MOT llandow here I come!!!!

Yay!

.must've done a good job on the arches!

 

[Chip-mk1]

Lol at huge handling difference you noticed on the road with some 15mm spacers.

Placebo. Lol.

Good news about mot, see you next week

 

[Adamowsky]

Great car and write up man! Was a nice read. I just wanted to ask you, where did you get hold of the sills? I was looking for some because mine are in a state where I don't think its worth repairing them. They are bashed up and rusted from pushing the jack under etc.

 

[JP83]

Clean your room.

 

[Craigie-B]

Found the reason the exhaust was blowing - the flange on te manifold had a big low spot so using a belt sander took the whole flange down to the smar level put it all back together no more blowing woohoo!

re-bled the brakes and chopped out the tabs in the arches as they were catching the wheels.

Topped up all fluids and im happy the car is ready for llandow on sat :-D

Yay!

.must've done a good job on the arches!

Errrm kinda lol i know that guy that did it, he hsd a astra van with a redtop :-D

Lol at huge handling difference you noticed on the road with some 15mm spacers.


Placebo. Lol.


Good news about mot, see you next week

It genuinly feels like it goes round corners much easier lol will see at llandow I guess :-D

Great car and write up man! Was a nice read. I just wanted to ask you, where did you get hold of the sills? I was looking for some because mine are in a state where I don't think its worth repairing them. They are bashed up and rusted from pushing the jack under etc.

I got them from a site called carz2, they are lower spec panels not valver ones but my dad is a magician with metal work so when they get replaced next month itll look like it was never done with any luck

Clean your room.

​Loollll yeah we were just starting ti redecorate so thats why its a s**t tip lol

 

[DTM Cars Ltd]

What a good project.

Took ages to rear it. Well done!!

Your dad certainly did sort the front end!!!

Happy days

 

[Craigie-B]

What a good project.

Took ages to rear it. Well done!!

Your dad certainly did sort the front end!!!

Happy days

​Thanks mate hes going to be changing the sills and arches next month - cant wait

 

[Craigie-B]

Sooo went to the burpspeed Llandow trackday as I thought it would be a great place to start, car was fantastic all day never missed a beat and I got home in it as well! However after a quick look yesterday this seems to be the aftermath:

This is probably the best tyre:

CV Boot is still intact but there's grease EVERYWHERE:

And after discovering my aux belt had jumped 2 teeth, I finally found out what the knocking under the bonnet was:

AMAZED how I managed to drive home for an hour and a half and around Swindon with a smashed bracket without the belt slipping (enless I was on full lock).

So I need a third Auxillery belt and altenator bracket since this engine swap - obviously a weak point in the car but will be creating something stronger.


Videos from my car, some arnt great because it was using an iphone windscreen sucker which moved a few times lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxB0nrizyxM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3GHaIa-Bno
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoSXv4XalcE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEPsVrQRAu0


So its not going on holiday today as its in bits on the drive again LOL but its all fun and games right??

 

[Chip-mk1]

Good seeing it used in anger after all the hard work.

And thanks for the drive, was good fun

 

[Craigie-B]

Yeah was great fun no problem at all! Was good to get an idea of your lines across the track

 

[Craigie-B]

So I haven't updated this in a while and as I have the time right now I thought I would bring this up to date with the car

I'm starting to think this car really hates its alternator LOL so since it broke at llandow I got my dad to make me a new steel piece to replace the standard ally part.

So before i set about ripping the car apart to fix the damage after llandow I treated myself to a new jack:

My niece wanted to play with it haha

Got the clio in the air and started ripping it apart:

It was recommended that I use a jubilee clip on the shaft to keep the boot on as it kept popping off, took the shaft out and after a quick look there was absolutely no cv clip on it at all! Refilled it with CV Grease and put a jubilee on it:

Its been fine since

It was then time to fix the alternator again, soo I got my old man to build me a new piece to replace the broken:

after about a days work we came up with this:

and it bolts onto the bracket like so:

Got the car all back together and:

Whilst I had the car in bits removing the drive shaft Luke turned up with my new interior:

I put the burpspeed sticker on:

Anndddd we used some araldite to keep the gear knob on as it ir forever coming off on track days:

Cool beans!

Started comparing the seat mountings on the 172 seats to those on the valver seats:

They arn't a million miles apart but enough to make it a bit awkward. With the rail that bolts to the exhaust tunnel we seperated the top and the bottom pieces, used the part that mounts to the 172 seat and the part that mounts to the valver floor and put it all back together. With the outer rails we modified them to remove the studs and elongated the holes to fit the valver plastic floor mounts and it all went in the car like it was supposed to

Stripped all valver seats out:

Hoover:

1 Seat in:

Both seats in:

as a result I gained a gaming chair:

about 500/600 miles later the car was making a funny sound and sure enough the alternator was at fault again. Turns out the threaded hole the alternator bolt screws into on the bottom had elongated and the thread wasnt really there so once again the car looked like this:

Took the alternator back out drilled the threaded hole out, went and bought a nylock nut and then used a mk1 alternator mounting bolt and it all went together perfectly and I haven't had anymore issues in the last 600 miles *goes to touch wood*

Last week the car started running on 3 cylinders, limped it home and plugged in my rstuner sure enough, "injector 4 fault" went and got one from ECP for £45 and it ran perfect again. I'm also getting 40 odd MPG, this is from a full tank of Sainsburies 97RON super unleaded:

Thanks for reading!!!

 

[unofficialPete]

Found this thread looking for info on the burspeed trackdays... I remember YOJ from 2006!! what a journey and great build, especially after that first bump!

 

[Craigie-B]

Small update really:


Couple of days ago I was doing something with my wheels, I cant remember what, and I thought that I would try the 15mm spacer that I have on the back wheel on the front just to gauge clearance - as I will need about 15 - 20mm spacer if I want to fit the 197 4 pots. It actually seemed to fit and didn't make any difference to the width tbh:

172 track plus spacers could be on the cards! Didn't rub anywhere either so may be possibly to get the 197 brakes after all!




Anyhow I was driving home yesterday and as I came off the motorway I had this loud bang with clatter clatter clatter clatter, I was like "f**k I think I dropped a valve" pulled over and rang my dad for a tow - I was only about 2 miles from home so wasn't too bad. Anyway got it home and my dad told me I had blown a plug from listening to it. Got up early on Saturday and took the plenum off to confirm this:

Soo went to machine mart and bought this:

Ideally I would change the cyl head, but I REALLY don't have the money right now for that and so I just need this to last me about 6 months and I can get it all sorted properly and maybe even splash out for some cams


Anyway, stripped it all down:

And replaced it in situ, Turned the engine over so the inlet was open and used the compressor to blow air through the inlet and had an old hoover right next to it to suck the fillings up, worked really well and then re-gapped the plug and taped up the lead and put it all back together:

I get a slight misfire under 2k rpm but nothing to make the car undriveable, I have given it some beans to 7k and it seems to be fine for now we will see how long it lasts for, pretty sure the reason these threads were fucked is because whoever installed the plugs prior to my ownership put them in stupidly tight, I changed to the genuine plugs over a year ago now and I guess it must have just taken this long to vibrate loose.


Anyway its all fixed and ready to go again

 

[Craigie-B]

I still use the car for a daily and fancied something a little bit comfier, sooo I got a williams interior off of Mat Brown which has the added bonus of a working lumbar support.


So got up early and off we go to Mat Browns:

Stopped halfway for a maccies brekkie, got back home 200 mile round trip later and started fitting the interior ready for next week at work, took the driver rear door card off to find this nice little spot of rust:

Didn't take any in progress pics because you all know what a clio looks like with no seats, and here it is with the new interior in:

Sag free door cards

Took it for a drive already and it jsut feels so much nicer to drive with these in, really cant rate them enough - definitely a key part of the driving experience! Oh and I also bought an FCS ticket yesterday so see you all next week!

 

[Djw John]

Best seats ever.

 

[Craigie-B]

Definitely!!

 

[Coops Mk1]

agreed, comfy as hell, miss my Williams'

 

[Rob]

So glad you went for proper seats. Love mk1's. Keep the updates coming.

 

[Chip-mk1]

I'll be the odd one out here and say I prefer the look of the mk2 seats TBH

anyway, should have trendlines so its irrelevant, lol

 

[Cupman29]

I'll be the odd one out here and say I prefer the look of the mk2 seats TBH

anyway, should have trendlines so its irrelevant, lol

I'm with you on the seats.

 

[Craigie-B]

Okay so while I had a couple weeks off over Christmas, I had f0xys wiring guide and my set of 172 clocks from the donor car and set about wiring them in.

Standard clocks:

Back when I had the 1.2 I made myself a set of white gauges for the oil dials, I still had the scans so I set about making a set of faces that matched the 172 clocks:

They aren't perfect but I think they match well enough

So I set about the wiring, all in all there was about 40 wires to join. The guide says that you can use the valver ph2 wiper stalk to scroll through the trip computer, only it didn't say which pins to use. I worked out that it is the last two nearest the stalk itself.

The white and black in this pic:

Spent a couple days figuring things out and got the majority of it done, went away for the weekend and thought I would finish it off this very cold morning, here's how it started:

A few hours later I had them all wired in and just put in place to test:

And here's the result:

Oil dials don't exactly work (haven't really since the 172 conversion), need to play with the wiring on them a bit and try to get them working again. Everything works perfectly apart from the rheostat (dimmer) switch. If I leave it unplugged then the dash will light up with the sidelights turned on, if I plug it in it all goes really dark and dim and the dimmer wont turn the brightness up (but it will for the oil dials). Got to have a play with that tomorrow and see if I can get it to work nicely. But I just need to get the clocks to physically fit in the dash as they are too wide lengthwise, nothing a bit of fettling won't fix.

 

[GavC]

This is pure dedication to owning a valver through and through! Cracking thread :up: Williams interior was a fantastic choice! Why the desire to switch over to the 172 clocks?

 

[Craigie-B]

This is pure dedication to owning a valver through and through! Cracking thread :up: Williams interior was a fantastic choice! Why the desire to switch over to the 172 clocks?

Thanks buddy! You wait till I have to start chopping it up soon! Needs new sills, rear arches (both inner and outer), front inner-wing (to correct the bonnet gap from the crash).

I wanted to switch to the 172 clocks for a few reasons. Although I had the correct mileage on the valver clocks for the engine - these clocks came from the donor car and so are also correct. Plus I liked them and gained the trip computer too! In all honesty I was pretty bored, had the bits and just needed a bit of time to put it together.

 

[Leachg1]

I owned the donor car - was wondering what had happened to it and googled the reg. sad as she was really cared for when I had her, but no idea what the bloke who you bought her off did to her to write her off. Wish I’d held on to her and garaged her. Oh well, she lives on in part I guess! Great work, by the way

 

[Nafoff]

WOW, I have only just seen this thread.
This car has changed significantly since I last saw it... but that was a long long time ago and it was a showroom condition completely standard valver...