1991 Renault Clio 16V - Now with 100% more Accord!

Oh, hello there mr.box. Would you like to be paired with a new car? Yes, yes you would.

So, found a box thanks to my friend (LS) and his family. Taken from a late 90s Laguna or Mégane (can’t remember lol). It’s slightly reinforced, too. 200€, not bad.

Anyways, this one should fit, as all Lagunas/Méganes with an aluminium oil pan have similar attachments. I’ve started working on it already, but it’s going to take a while nevertheless. With luck, I’ll be able to drive it a bit over a week from now.

Nothing else to report, really.

Except uhh subscribe to BaE

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Hello, am alive.

Also slight ramble warning, sleepy brain rn

Haven’t got the old box out yet, but it’s close. There’s a lot of stuff to take out before I could even touch it. Hoses, wires, metal… stuff. Lots of stuff. Even the subframe needs to be taken off at least partially.

Anyhow, here’s a few (bad) pics

I haven’t shown you guys the engine, so here you go. It’s missing a few bits from the right of the pic and there’s a bit of a mess overall :stuck_out_tongue:

Bonnet left the server, since it opens the wrong way round. Got a lot more space to work with by taking it off.

And here’s my old air filter. It looks homemade… and it probably is. There’s a hole, so it’ll be replaced too.

Some other stuff will be made as well, maybe an oil change and fixing a coolant leak. It’s leaking from a sensor of some kind on the side of the radiator, maybe the water temp sensor.

Why is it taking a long time? Well, I’m inexperienced. I’ve never done anything of this scale except in MSC :grin: But hey, there’s only one way to get better: doing the thing.

Oh and the old gearbox oil. It was interesting to say the least. Best way to experience it yourself would be:
-Go to automation
-Paint car
-Black paint
-RAM THAT DAMN FLAKE SETTING TO THE ATMOSPHERE
Yeah, lots of metallic flake in that oil. Haven’t got a pic currently.

With that, signing off for today I guess.

Haha I lied here’s some more text

Okay now I’ll be going bye

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Alright, the old box is out and the new one is in. Turns out that they weren’t identical after all.

No worries though. There are only two differences that make the operation harder. First one is the bolt placement as seen on the picture. A friend (not LS this time, I have other ones too :stuck_out_tongue:) made a metal plate thingy to make the new one fit.

The second one is harder. The donor car read its speed from the ABS-sensor. My car reads the speed from a spinny boi that’s in the gearbox. It’s probably easy to guess that the new box doesn’t have the spinny boi. This means that the speedo won’t work and no mileao won’t be added. This also means that it won’t pass the inspection which is in… 2 months.

Crap.

I have a plan though. I’ll bolt a shitty aftermarket speedo on to the dashboard that reads the speed with GPS. It’ll look awful and I’ll hate it but it’ll work. Probably.

Now I just have to remember which bolts go where, curse and shout and I’ll have a mostly working car on my hands!

Oh, and I partly disassembled the old box.

I witnessed some horrors.

(No pic because I’m a jackass)

Cough. It’s like someone shoved some metal wires through the oil filler plug and the gears crushed them to long, slender bits and the bits curled up into a ball.

Surprisingly, most of the gears were fine. Sure, they were worn, but not bad for a box that has been driven 350kkm… Assuming that it is the original box. A few gears however… They were dead. Just dead. Ok, maybe not that dead but pretty dead nevertheless. It’s still repairable though. Not by me, but some expert.

I guess that’s all for now.

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GUESS WHO’S BACK?

Wroom.

Yes, it works! Feels so good to be driving my own car after such a long time.

Some notes:

  • Couldn’t find a big enough air filter, so the old one is staying on for the time being.
  • My phone and a some kind of app is now being used as the speedo
  • The trunk is filthy lol
    • Actually, the whole interior is riddled with beer cans and other fluid containers necessary in the job
  • Some bolts got left over and I don’t know where to put them (jk, I generally know where they’d go, but they’re useless atm because of the differences in the gearboxes)
  • Something else that I probably forgot

You may notice that I’ve got a bit of a high from all of this… I’m rambling lol

Next up: the inspection.

Shit.

Two months until that though, so no too much worries.

Here’s a pic of the moving boi too I guess

Wow, low light conditions really screw up phone camera quality. The video was blocky too, dammit :stuck_out_tongue:

But yeah, I’m pleased with these developments. Bye!

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Oh la la! Le baguette sportif is back!

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Hey.

The clutch’s slipping again.

Oil in the bell housing.

Probably engine oil.

Problem was not apparent with the old box.

I do not know for sure where the oil is coming from.

100% drivable. During hard acceleration on higher gears it may slip.

Need to locate oil leak. Then spray 5 liters of brake cleaner to the housing.

With luck, it’ll work.

I’m mentally prepared to change the clutch again.

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Chech the crank retainer

Hello again boyos

The Clio is still going strong, nothing too bad to report. I got it inspected about an hour ago and it failed.

Were you surprised? I wasn’t.

What’s wrong then? Well, the main problem is the decatted exhaust. The emissions are too high. I just have to jam a cat in there and it should be good, I can probably borrow one from a certain Previa, which still doesn’t have a thread here @LS-Vehicles, dammit

The hand brake needs to be tensioned… Again, I’ve already done it twice. The high beam switch isn’t up to standards either and a light bulb was out.

That’s it, not too bad. They didn’t care about a lot of stuff that’s wrong including:

  • phone as a speedo
  • shitty, badly worn m+s tires
  • knocking driveshaft
  • shattered, taped over fog light
  • oil leaks, which are both an environmental and a safety hazard
  • exhaust noise (probably not enough decibels to be considered criminal)
  • badly made rust repair on the bottom
  • possibility to spontaneously combust (hot unshielded exhaust runs below the gas tank)

And of course most importantly

  • bad taste

I’d say I got off easily.

I’ve got a month to repair the things, won’t be too bad as long as I get the parts in time.

Here’s a pic too:

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Got the bad boy re-inspected and you know what?

Pass with flying colours comrade!

Checklist:

  • bought a cat for 100€ and shoved it between the pipe sections
  • changed the light/blinker switch
  • tensioned the handbrake

Ez pez. Now I shall park it in the garage and not drive it for a year.

No, really. This is no joke. Conscription fam :stuck_out_tongue:

Also the exhaust tip is even longer than before because the cat was slightly longer than the pipe section it replaced.

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Alright, we have some catching up to do.

So I mustered out of service exactly two weeks ago triumphantly, letting my center-mounted exhaust do the talking when I accelerated out of that gate for the last time. Damn, it felt good.

Anyways, that isn’t important. What happened to the car is. Let’s dial back to last summer.

I parked the car out of sight in my yard, I had no garage or shed where it’d fit so it stood there under the open sky. Not ideal, but I had to work with it. I started the engine always when I could.

In August I took the car for a drive and it worked like charm. I got this sweet picture with a friend’s RSi:


The RSi is kinda my “fault” because my friend thought my Clio was cool so he had to have one too.

In October I bought spare bumpers from a stripped-out 16V. I wanted some other spares too but they had been already sold. Apparently the car had been rallied before, the engine had been extensively modified but the guy had already sold it. The bumpers show some wear but are easier to fix than my current ones. My front bumper has a nasty crack and it’s bent due to a slight wipe-out in the winter of 2019 and the rear bumper has that annoying notch where the exhaust comes out.


The bumpers need a bit of fiberglass and paint and they’re good. Also, fog lights.

During the next months, I noted that some aspects of the car were deteriorating. One time when I started the engine, the aux belt started immediately screaming. I quickly analyzed the situation: the alternator was not turning.

I took it out and couldn’t turn it even with the help of tools, so I got a new one with a new aux belt as well.

Turns out, the fitting was much harder than taking it out. This was mainly due to the crappy belt tensioning system, which always let the belt loose every time the engine was started. However, with brute force I got it to keep the belt nice and snug.


The start of the alternator job in December. The old one’s still in place and can be seen on the left of the radiator and my now very much broken soapbox racer is on the right.

The interior was getting… moldy. I fixed it, however, with my hand. Wiped those annoying spots to oblivion. It doesn’t smell weird either, so I think it’s good.

I think we’re getting close to the present. I’m now dailying this and here’s a list of very cool flaws that came during the 9 month period:

  • Rear fog light doesn’t work
  • The interior fan doesn’t work
  • The radiator fan doesn’t work
  • The fuel pump hates life and doesn’t let the car start if the fuel level is under 1/4. Runs well even when under that, though.
  • Oil level gauge now only works 33% of the time
  • Oil pressure gauge drops to zero and after a few minutes jumps back to normal
  • One tire drops 1 bar of pressure overnight (before it dropped that much in 2 weeks)

Other things that need to be replaced/fixed:

  • Throttle cable
  • Cracked driver’s seat frame
  • Side window seals
  • The damn exhaust
  • Clutch still slipping (hasn’t fixed itself)
  • Windscreen washers (doesn’t spray liquid, noise can be heard)

Things I want to do but aren’t necessarily urgent/obligatory

  • Wheel restoration
  • New paint (original color)
  • A complete strip of the engine (checking of wear/replacing gaskets)
  • Group N exhaust + headers :slight_smile:
  • Side skirts (OEM RSi)
  • Rear window heater
  • New wheels + tires (wheels are like shoes)

Dammit, what a list. Well, at least it runs and drives. But hey, that’s what a car’s supposed to do, everything else is just extra :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ll try to be a bit more active on this thread. And on the forums and discord. Probably. Hopefully.

I think that’s all. I’ll see you guys around.


The latest picture of my Clio. Also seen is the RSi owner’s dad’s 306 GTi in the garage. Yes, that one’s kinda my fault too.

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The quarantine period might last for several months, so you should have much more time to restore the Clio to its former glory. The fact that your friend also owns a Clio RSi and a 306 GTI is icing on a very sweet cake.

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Christ I never realised this had a centre exhaust before, outstanding.

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I’m a whole month late but fuck it, worth leaving a comment because honestly, what an outstanding beast. Please never let this die

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Is this the only thread I’m active in anymore?

Anyways, I did this:

Can’t remember how it looked before? Let me help ya.

Now that is an upgrade in if nothing else, the looks department.

I had a reason to do this though. A couple of weeks ago I decided to be productive ad change my spark plugs. However, after fiddling various tools in the spark plug holes, I noticed some oil on them. panik

Checking from google, people said that the valve cover gasket was kaput. Easy, right? kalm

Could cause a misfire if not treated? panik

So I ordered a gasket kit that included almost all gaskets for the top end, including the head gasket for a bit over 50€. Not that I need it now, but if I ever need it, I have it.

I got to work when the parts arrived and decided to paint the valve cover when I was at it and as you can see, it turned out pretty well!

I also half-accidentally took the camshaft bearing caps off when I saw that more oil was seeping from under them. When I took them off, I didn’t actually know that they were the bearing caps because they were two big lumps of metal for each side of the engine. I put some silicone-gasket-pudding-thing there and it was all good.

I had new ignition wires laying around as well so I shoved them on top of the engine and started it up. And it ran like a dream. (after a few minutes of fucking around with the starter, the solenoid’s going. A couple of hits with a hammer did the trick.)

Before this job, it ran very rough when cold and a touch of the accelerator lowered the rpm to about 700 before sputtering to over idle range. Now I am seeing no such behavior. I guess I’m a mechanic after all.

Getting new tires soon btw

I guess that’s it for today. Have two more pictures of the engine when it was in bits.

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This car has something that I’ll call French magic from now on.


(Crap pic ikno but you can clearly see the problem)

Yep, the middle part of the exhaust fell off the clamps and of course it smashed into the asphalt and made a massive hole in it and of course the MOT test is due next Monday! Sheesh. I already ordered a completely new exhaust system but it’s coming all the way from France so I doubt that it’ll be here this week.

Nothing else to report, really. It’s a happy little car chugging along and the engine’s running absolutely perfectly atm. (Let’s not talk about the electrics though)

Also got the new tires wehey

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rip exhaust

Pipe installed and damn it looks good. This is a Redspec competition exhaust for group N and it adheres to all FIA regulations. I guess there’s the reason for it’s 400€ price tag.

Remember the old one? It’s dead.

Scraping the asphalt is fun.

Got this done just before the MOT, that’s tomorrow. Fingers crossed, but I have a good feeling about it.

It looks less chavvy too. The only mark left by the old pipe is that hole on the bumper and the muffler, which is in the trunk, which may or may not be installed on a Previa some day.

I’ll post about the test results tomorrow if I remember :stuck_out_tongue:

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I might be ever so slightly late.

Sitrep: inspection failed (were you surprised?).
Faults:
FL strut upper bearing dead
FR anti-roll bar bushing dead
Horn doesn’t work (it never did)
Phone as a speedo (last time this didn’t matter at all but this time the phone jumped on the guy’s lap when he drove the car on a lifter)
Emissions

One of these have been fixed already: the emissions are fine, the cat had just cooled down too much while I was waiting at the inspection office. The other things are still a problem, though. I immediately ordered the parts but the shop hasn’t even sent them yet. If they don’t send them during next week, I’ll have to buy them from an another store.

Something more alarming came up too. A lot of transmission oil is leaking from between the tranny and the left driveshaft. I noticed this when the tranny started to whine again. Luckily there’s no permanent damage this time, as I extremely quickly got it filled up again. However, I can’t drive the car right now. The oil leaks at a rate of about 1L/50km and that stuff is damn expensive. It’d be cheaper to buy gas for a muscle car… It’s very slow to fill up, too. Took me 20mins to put a litre in due to my ghetto filling method.

So I needed an another car, as I need to get to work. So I borrowed one!

And it’s beautiful.

So uh, might be a week or two until I get the Renault back on the road but at least I have a method of transport. I’m seriously thinking of buying a daily driver now. I just don’t know where to put the clio, as I’m moving to an apartment soon and it has no garages or whatnot. No, selling or scrapping it not an option. I shall protect this vehicle with my life!

See y’all soon(ish)

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A-ha! The Clio got through its re-inspection with only one fault: the non-functioning horn. Yeah, I was too lazy to do anything about it. The new speedo is an eBay special, but it works. Everything else was fixed properly. Now there’s only one outstanding fault: the leaky gearbox. the driveshaft is currently at a shop, because afaik I need to remove the inner protective rubber (or whatever it is, idk am a bit drunk) and I’d probably break the driveshaft while doing it.

I hope the Clio is back on the road next week. Meanwhile, I thought I could give y’all a tour of the Previa!

First of all, the side profile is sexy. Note the well repaired rear door handle.

It has a big ol’ subwoofer in the trunk for a lot of bassline, a spare tire for obvious reasons and an Ukrainian flag for not very obvious reasons. (Honestly, I’m not sure why it’s there) Note the wooden flooring and the deleted rear seat.

If you didn’t know, this bad boy is MR. The driver basically sits on top of the engine. What this means is epic snow drifts and very expensive maintenance. But it’s cool. I forgive the costs.

Oh, and this lad has all of the optional extras: two sunroofs, captain’s seats, an a/c-powered cool box. Too bad the a/c doesn’t work…

That’s it, I guess. A quick tour of the Previa. Hope you liked this weird-ass ramble about a damn minivan. Clio back on the road soon. Hopefully. I think I said that the last time.

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Since I’m a fan of large minivans I say that’s a cool temporary ride :slight_smile:

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