First post on the forum.
I found my way here to read Neal’s R19 F4R-t build for some info and inspiration before starting mine.
I bought a MK1 Mégane Cab ('98 1.6e) last year for £300.00. A car I’ve always wanted for some strange reason, ever since they came out when I was a kid.
I grew up in Cyprus and they were a super popular / common car out there when they were new. I guess it stems from that.
Always been a Renault fan. Having owned a range of them from my '85 R5 GTX, Couple of Clio valvers, a dozen sh*t box MK2 clios, and my work van / daily which is an 06 Trafic.
I bought the Mégane with the intention of fitting a 172 engine into it from a Ph1, to avoid all of the management and Fly-by wire gubbins.
Struggled to find any parts for sensible money. Struggled to get any solid info from anyone. And obviously never managed to buy a donor car as they are rare / expensive now.
Could pick up Ph2 172s all day long. But if I was going to the effort of fitting a Ph2 172, I may as well have just gone turbo. Just as much wiring and messing around with compatibility issues.
I picked up an absolute GEM of a Laguna for £300.00 on eBay. Haha!
I drove the 500 mile round trip with a buddy to collect it from Wales.
It drove the 250 miles home faultlessly. Although massively under-powered.
Once back in Kent, I began to strip it down, and started to realize why.
The dump valve T-piece had been fitted between the throttle body and the original plastic boost pipe. Where the T-piece had been sleeved over the plastic boost pipe, and clamped, it had crushed the boost pipe down causing a massive boost leak.
The boost gauge inside was also leaking badly, so the dump valve was not working at all correctly.
Needless to say, it’s all been removed from the engine and wont be going back on. Standard is the way forward for me.
Got home Sunday eve with the car. Monday morning I got to work removing the engine.
On my trip to Wales, I stopped off in Red Hill to collect a JB3 gearbox from a 16v Clio.
This wont be the final box I use. But for install and testing purposes, it’s much cheaper than experimenting with a JC5.
From the research I’ve done, the JB/JC box will/should fit onto the F4A (F4R-t) engine using a F4R (172) oil sump, flywheel/clutch, and drilling a couple of fitment holes for the bellhousing. Which is no problem.
Suits me much better than trying to fit the PK6 box, as my Megane is fully subframe mounted like an R19. I’d prefer to keep it that way.
it also means I can avoid making custom drive shafts, fitting a cable gear linkage, and having to get around the lack of speedo-drive.
I also removed the Loom, ECU, UCH, Key card reader, throttle pedal, and as much other bits I think I may need from the Laguna before it got collected for scrap.
