Ok time for an update on this project, as it has been so long. The reason it’s been so long is due to me and my partner finally buying our first house together after 3 years of renting. So major savings were happening and no spare $$’s for the Clio.
A long time before buying the house I did purchase some Eibach lowering springs, and got them fitted. I must say a massive thank you to Luke. In Bristol who pretty much fitted them for me.
Below is a pic after they were fitted, I hear it will take a while for them to set properly:
So we moved in September, and as the weather wasn’t to bad, I decided first project will be the garage. I wanted a nice home for my Clio and some space for some gym kit. I won’t bore you with too many pics of the garage project, but below are a fair few
Here is what the garage looked like when I moved in:
Now it was time to start. The first job was to get rid of all my crap from moving in, as the garage was a great dumping ground.
You get the idea, now it was time to start rendering with sand and cement. Now I am no handy man builder, I just wanted to learn and do as much as I could. My partners brother is a junior builder and my best mate is a jack of all trades. Ashley started off rendering one Sunday afternoon and I was busy doing the mixing.
Then I got home early on the Monday and thought, I’m gonna crack on with the next wall myself, and got to work. Here is my first attempt (I thought I’d start on a very small part of the wall). LOL!
Oh boy I sucked at rendering, it was so hard. The gf came home and was in horror, so she got changed and we both spent the whole evening till midnight trying to smooth the wall off. But I thought we did a good repair:
Told the others about my attempt and they weren’t happy, they said I had to do the whole wall in one sitting. I thought p*ss off, that took me 8 hours to do that one small part! Anyways I got home on the Wednesday and found them in there rendering the rest.
The day after they did the other side:
I was over the bloody moon!
A few days later:
Then started to paint the walls:
Then I bought 72 of these:
First one down:
All down:
The garage isn’t 100% finished, still have some electrics to do and a few bits n bobs, nothing I can’t work around at a later date in time. Also want a new garage door come the summer, the one in place atm is very old.
Anyways at the end of October, my best mate asked if I wanted to buy their Megane. I was traveling 75 miles a day in the Clio, and have been for 1.5 years, and as everyone says, driving a stripped car with buckets on the motorway every single day, does get to you in the end. Also my dream was to take the car off the road and use it to race in some kind of series, and a track toy. So when my mate said do I want to buy it for £2k I snapped his arm off. 04 plate, dynamic, 41k on the clock, 1.9tdi 5 door. Reason it was so cheap was they had troubles selling it due to no service history (bar a few stamps at the start of its life) so i thought well, they’ve had the car for just over 3 years, so I’ll buy it and just get a cam belt and a full major service done, then it’s all sorted. So I did just that and I’m doubling my miles to a tank compared to the Clio so happy days there!!
In she goes:
Clio has been off the road since, and it moved into its new home a few weeks ago. So the current plan is to strip even more out the car, somehow get the air con out of it with the air con delete kit (already been de-gassed) and just concentrate on weight savings. Also to apply for a trailer/tow license and look into the cost of buying/renting a trailer.
The weekend just gone, my mate put his gym in the garage for us to use as it was just in his shed getting rusty and old.
But I really really miss driving the car, so much so I’m tempted to tax and insure the thing for 6 months over the summer, but I’ll see how things pan out till then.
As always comments and suggestions welcome.