As it has been some time (15 months) since my first Megane was bought, I finally decided to open the project thread on it.
Hot hatch renaults have been in my life since I started gaining interest in cars. The young impressionable (and tasteless) 14 year old in me was impressed even by my brother's first ever motor, a 'B' reg 1.1 4-speed Fiesta "popular plus". Nearly put that through the garden fence trying to drive it once when he was out at work before he got it insured....
Then what seemed like immediately after sorting that into a minimum state of legal road worthiness, it was dropped for a big step up of a 1.3 golf. Not going to drag on about all these, but to make a point about how fascinated we were at the difference in looks, quality and power of a 1.3 5-speed Mk2 golf compared to the fiesta...then he got a Jet (or "midnight"?) black 16v Clio. I was hooked right away. Bucket seats, Momo steering wheel, Turbine wheels, and lightly tinted windows. He'd got a loan he could never afford of £4k on a 90,000mile clio from some editor or something of the "fast car" or typical chav mag he was into at the time.
Then we went for a drive....and for a kid used to being tugged about in his dad's 1800 passat or 2.0l 8v Cav, to have your overly enthusiastic brother tonk the hell out of a nice sporty clio was beyond impressive. A couple of cars later he even had a 1.6e Coupé and that was a superb little motor albeit a different approach.
So I was hooked from there, and knew I would come back at some point in my life as soon as a suitable price bracket approached.
So then came along the opportunity of ditching my Tip of an escort GTi. Sold for a bargain, glad to be gone. Time to save. "Get a megane coupe mate, ours is fantastic" a good friend kept telling me. "Get one with an F7R engine in it"...."What, engine conversions are rare surely?". So that was my knowledge at the time haha. Thankfully to report it has grown by much, even before i invested last year in the car in question. That picture's as tidy as it's ever seen in my possession.
So, on with the details of the car in particular...
It was spotted again by the same good friend on ebay, a text was received to the tune of "there's one on the bay mate, due to end soon and no bids yet, only at 250, get an eye on it!". So it was of course viewed, watched, questions were asked and answered on it. A day or two later and i had almost forgot before it was due to end, not without Danny making that call and another mate whilst we were out doing the bid by his phone, and the deal was done. Not much info on the advert but with the knowledge at my disposal in the good Danny and what I had ammassed over years of cheap second hand cars (owning all of a measely 4 in total...), it was worth the risk. A 150bhp, Naples Red, 94k mile Megane Coupe. The bumper was the wrong red altogether, some prang in the snow therefore it was clearly changed. Little did i know that would show up worse as closer inspections were carried out.
So the deal was done, except it was quite far to reach. From Brentwood in essex over to Stonehouse in Gloucestershire. Hmm. A very helpful young cousin was able to meet me at Swindon train station near his "yard" and run us over in his Skoda Favorit (dear o dear...what a state. for some reason in terms of purchase price that was worth more....) for a few quid and some lunch. Good lad, he knew it made sense!
In the rush to get over the previous owner reported two of the metal centre caps "must have been nicked" so he would "knock a 10er off, or let it go its up to you". I already knew from hearing elsewhere these are worth more (this was discussed before I left to pick it up as i was running late, although I know what he was trying :evil
. Agreed that £330 total for the car would do, so I carried on. £36 single to swindon through London, or £37 return. Sorted - that gave me the better confidence of knowing I could still walk away and not lose out much should things be far too understated in the auction.
Apparently nothing wrong with the bodywork, no rust, etc. Oh well! More will be shown on the truth later.
So that night on the 3hr return drive it was a pleasure. On the way to the shell station and running through gloucestershire before splitting from my cousin, it was a right pleasure. I sampled the flexibility of the engine rather well let's say. Awesome drive in 3rd gear, and it cruised non stop on the motorway at 11pm returning 46mpg. I knew already by this time the engine was going to do me well.
Next page starts the actual Project report....
[BREAK=1 - The real beginning]
After a quick wash back in Brentwood, here's the poorest view of the car at the time. 50p and a packet of Benson's crisps to spotters of which part of the car hit the tree when the other chap had his prang in the snow...
Loving the faded red bumper effect aren't you all.... Later removal of that would spot how much time and effort was put into rebuilding after the damage was done.
She needed a few things doing, as you'd expect. The MOT ran out the day after she landed in Brentwood and the tax a couple of days later, so I was in fair luck that the development my flat was on had a private road to SORN her for a while when I sorted her out.
List as of eBay description :-
1. Different colour bumper
2. Boot mechanism not working
3. Rear wing paintwork cracked
4. Worn driver's seat bolster
5. Droning noise from rear
6. NS Wing mirror cracked
7. Slow puncture on tyre(s)
Driving it right away i could tell the rear discs hadn't been treated to a good squeeze, they were making a grinding noise as she drove along!
After getting her home and having a good look round I added things to my own list:-
8. As above, rear discs rusted to pot.
9. Few bulbs missing from dash assembly - Fan dial, couple of instrument panel backlights, clock and temp display
10. Rear View mirror falling off
11. Indicator NSF a "bit loose"
12. Leaky windscreen washer bottle
13. Exhaust showing rust and signs of wear.
On to page two with actions on the above...
[BREAK=2 - The money starts to get spent]
First small expense was the fleabay for £12 for a heated wing mirror for the Nearside. Strike off Item 6.
With the knowledge of items 5 and 8 from the previous slide, it was time to get some new rear discs ordered.
These were of the disc, hub & bearing complete assembly type. Not too bad at £110 delivered the lot. Would save a lot of faffing around removing bearings and worrying about refitting.
All would go as planned before it got MOT'd, but on the way to a mate's place for the repairs to drive it the first time since I got home, a rather loud banging sound was emanating from the rear. Every time the car was in re-bound (like off a speedbump, down into a pothole before hitting the floor of it). This stopped getting any brakes fixed and worried my to say the least.
So - change of plan - she was booked in for the MOT ASAP, and sent down the garage for a quick assessment. When you are sitting in the waiting room and the chap comes in holding a damper in his hand...it kinda tells you the issue. The OSR damper broke completely away from its upper bolt fixing and pulled the rod-end lug away from the damper unit. Wish i had pics of this! So that was done there and then, £70 inc labour. Not a great start, but I was determined to get it MOT'd and make all the further repairs/upgrades myself.
The MOT was carried out. Great fun hearing on the phone "well surprisingly it's not failed on too much to be honest with you..."
You would normally be quite phased by that, but I kept convincing myself of the price and all was ok. Failure points were:-
001 Nearside front direction indicator missing (this fell off on the way there)
002 Nearside side repeater not in good working order
003 NSR brake pipe inadequately clipped
004 OSR shock absorber missing (the broken one from above)
005 NSF windscreen washer provides insufficient washer liquid
Believe it or not, the horrific rear discs (rusted and grinding as mentioned earlier in this thread) actually passed, not without a comment from the very "essex" chappie..."well they look like something that's come out the bottom o' the f**king sea..". Already onto that one. They passed at least.
001 was a simple fix, no need to go into detail there.
002 was a strange one. It looks when the wing was re-fitted that they caught the indicator bulb in the wing near the A-pillar lower section and couldn't be arsed to put it into the holder properly. So that was simple enough and done for free by the garage which was nice.
003 another trivial one, in which it had just popped off the clip. Clipped back in for free.
004 was part of the re-test when the pair of new dampers were fitted.
005 was just a blockage.
Advisories ?
Vehicle underside corroded "maybe the geeza parked it in a pond or summink!"
Battery insecure (no battery tray)
All discs "slightly" pitted.
Come to those later. At least now with me out of pocket for the tax, she was on the road and ready to take me to work!
No detail on it, but I went back round the friend's house to get the rear discs sorted ASAP to get rid of that droning noise from the rear, so that got 5 & 8 sorted out and ticked off.
The boot mech was playing up and the button just kept popping in. Luckily it was failsafed to lock out when it did go. Worn plastic striking mech was the culprit. Unfortunately it didn't always lock with the car though. A lot of money off to renault and the garage to sort that later (didn't have time honestly) and I have a fugly boot key now that i'll never need to use, and £139 worse off. But at least nothign can be nicked from the boot, and I had been looking around the scrappies for ages and none had the right setup to nick. Anyway, that was Item 2 sorted out.
[BREAK=3 - Niggles / appearance items]
The list with all the work done stated in the previous pages:-
1. Different colour bumper
3. Rear wing paintwork cracked
4. Worn driver's seat bolster
7. Slow puncture on tyre(s)
9. Few bulbs missing from dash assembly - Fan dial, couple of instrument panel backlights, clock and temp display
10. Rear View mirror falling off
12. Leaky windscreen washer bottle
13. Exhaust showing rust and signs of wear.
And an addition to the ebay list i forgot:-
14. Rear windows not opening (common faults on Coupes to do with overload washers I hear)
Item 9 was mostly fixed after a visit to Halfrauds (45p a T5 bulb though), except the fan control dial, which still plays up. Loose connection of some sort as it's intermittent. Not too much of a niggle really.
Item 10 Needed a new sticky pad, which was done. A 70p one was bought first which just didn't do the job. Since it's been stuck with a more up-market sticker pad and does the job. Except now it's noticeable that the mirror assembly ball-and-socket joint isn't stiff enough so it shakes a bit. I'm not too bothered by it right now as I can still see what's there.
Item 7 was fixed when 2 Kumhos were fitted to the front and the seals were sorted. £130 including fitting for two of those at 195x50xR16 which is an expensive size, not too bad. They also sealed up the spare and one of the rears to stop the slow punctures. Some Nankang tyres or something random. Have heard of them more since though.
I looked around for a while for a full leather interior at a good price but didn't find anything good for a while. Then I got in for a set of half-leather seats at £75 + road trip petrol money. They were in Haverfordwest, so luckily I managed to tie it in with a visit I was already making to family in Swindon. Picked up the same cousin who helped me get the car and we were off. I'd already driven 3hrs getting there that friday morning, whipped the back seats out in the rain, and soon enough we were off along the M4 for another 3. Took a break in the middle, and had some good laughs on the motorway waving at nice girlies and booing over hideous chav-tastic motors on the way.
Funds were exchanged and I had a chat with the fella who was selling them while I was fitting the squab and backrests into the rear, and squeezing the new seats into the boot (good fit in the coupe actually if you do it right ). He had plans for a 172'd Ph2 megane and went with another interior option at the time. Mint condition as well which is nice compared to the worn and smelly cloth ones (pics are from months later):-
I did a couple of boo-boos with the seat hinge release cables that connect to the slider release arm underneath, in all my haste fitting them in Swindon before going home that same weekend. Will re-visit that with the work done since moving here to grays months later and getting a decent camera for my birthday. Also I'm not too keen on the look and fit of that rear glovebox. It works fine but sits a bit too proud and is quite a light gray next to the black leather.
Hot hatch renaults have been in my life since I started gaining interest in cars. The young impressionable (and tasteless) 14 year old in me was impressed even by my brother's first ever motor, a 'B' reg 1.1 4-speed Fiesta "popular plus". Nearly put that through the garden fence trying to drive it once when he was out at work before he got it insured....
Then what seemed like immediately after sorting that into a minimum state of legal road worthiness, it was dropped for a big step up of a 1.3 golf. Not going to drag on about all these, but to make a point about how fascinated we were at the difference in looks, quality and power of a 1.3 5-speed Mk2 golf compared to the fiesta...then he got a Jet (or "midnight"?) black 16v Clio. I was hooked right away. Bucket seats, Momo steering wheel, Turbine wheels, and lightly tinted windows. He'd got a loan he could never afford of £4k on a 90,000mile clio from some editor or something of the "fast car" or typical chav mag he was into at the time.
Then we went for a drive....and for a kid used to being tugged about in his dad's 1800 passat or 2.0l 8v Cav, to have your overly enthusiastic brother tonk the hell out of a nice sporty clio was beyond impressive. A couple of cars later he even had a 1.6e Coupé and that was a superb little motor albeit a different approach.
So I was hooked from there, and knew I would come back at some point in my life as soon as a suitable price bracket approached.
So then came along the opportunity of ditching my Tip of an escort GTi. Sold for a bargain, glad to be gone. Time to save. "Get a megane coupe mate, ours is fantastic" a good friend kept telling me. "Get one with an F7R engine in it"...."What, engine conversions are rare surely?". So that was my knowledge at the time haha. Thankfully to report it has grown by much, even before i invested last year in the car in question. That picture's as tidy as it's ever seen in my possession.
So, on with the details of the car in particular...
It was spotted again by the same good friend on ebay, a text was received to the tune of "there's one on the bay mate, due to end soon and no bids yet, only at 250, get an eye on it!". So it was of course viewed, watched, questions were asked and answered on it. A day or two later and i had almost forgot before it was due to end, not without Danny making that call and another mate whilst we were out doing the bid by his phone, and the deal was done. Not much info on the advert but with the knowledge at my disposal in the good Danny and what I had ammassed over years of cheap second hand cars (owning all of a measely 4 in total...), it was worth the risk. A 150bhp, Naples Red, 94k mile Megane Coupe. The bumper was the wrong red altogether, some prang in the snow therefore it was clearly changed. Little did i know that would show up worse as closer inspections were carried out.
So the deal was done, except it was quite far to reach. From Brentwood in essex over to Stonehouse in Gloucestershire. Hmm. A very helpful young cousin was able to meet me at Swindon train station near his "yard" and run us over in his Skoda Favorit (dear o dear...what a state. for some reason in terms of purchase price that was worth more....) for a few quid and some lunch. Good lad, he knew it made sense!
In the rush to get over the previous owner reported two of the metal centre caps "must have been nicked" so he would "knock a 10er off, or let it go its up to you". I already knew from hearing elsewhere these are worth more (this was discussed before I left to pick it up as i was running late, although I know what he was trying :evil
. Agreed that £330 total for the car would do, so I carried on. £36 single to swindon through London, or £37 return. Sorted - that gave me the better confidence of knowing I could still walk away and not lose out much should things be far too understated in the auction.Apparently nothing wrong with the bodywork, no rust, etc. Oh well! More will be shown on the truth later.
So that night on the 3hr return drive it was a pleasure. On the way to the shell station and running through gloucestershire before splitting from my cousin, it was a right pleasure. I sampled the flexibility of the engine rather well let's say. Awesome drive in 3rd gear, and it cruised non stop on the motorway at 11pm returning 46mpg. I knew already by this time the engine was going to do me well.
Next page starts the actual Project report....
[BREAK=1 - The real beginning]
After a quick wash back in Brentwood, here's the poorest view of the car at the time. 50p and a packet of Benson's crisps to spotters of which part of the car hit the tree when the other chap had his prang in the snow...
Loving the faded red bumper effect aren't you all.... Later removal of that would spot how much time and effort was put into rebuilding after the damage was done.
She needed a few things doing, as you'd expect. The MOT ran out the day after she landed in Brentwood and the tax a couple of days later, so I was in fair luck that the development my flat was on had a private road to SORN her for a while when I sorted her out.
List as of eBay description :-
1. Different colour bumper
2. Boot mechanism not working
3. Rear wing paintwork cracked
4. Worn driver's seat bolster
5. Droning noise from rear
6. NS Wing mirror cracked
7. Slow puncture on tyre(s)
Driving it right away i could tell the rear discs hadn't been treated to a good squeeze, they were making a grinding noise as she drove along!
After getting her home and having a good look round I added things to my own list:-
8. As above, rear discs rusted to pot.
9. Few bulbs missing from dash assembly - Fan dial, couple of instrument panel backlights, clock and temp display
10. Rear View mirror falling off
11. Indicator NSF a "bit loose"
12. Leaky windscreen washer bottle
13. Exhaust showing rust and signs of wear.
On to page two with actions on the above...
[BREAK=2 - The money starts to get spent]
First small expense was the fleabay for £12 for a heated wing mirror for the Nearside. Strike off Item 6.
With the knowledge of items 5 and 8 from the previous slide, it was time to get some new rear discs ordered.
These were of the disc, hub & bearing complete assembly type. Not too bad at £110 delivered the lot. Would save a lot of faffing around removing bearings and worrying about refitting.
All would go as planned before it got MOT'd, but on the way to a mate's place for the repairs to drive it the first time since I got home, a rather loud banging sound was emanating from the rear. Every time the car was in re-bound (like off a speedbump, down into a pothole before hitting the floor of it). This stopped getting any brakes fixed and worried my to say the least.
So - change of plan - she was booked in for the MOT ASAP, and sent down the garage for a quick assessment. When you are sitting in the waiting room and the chap comes in holding a damper in his hand...it kinda tells you the issue. The OSR damper broke completely away from its upper bolt fixing and pulled the rod-end lug away from the damper unit. Wish i had pics of this! So that was done there and then, £70 inc labour. Not a great start, but I was determined to get it MOT'd and make all the further repairs/upgrades myself.
The MOT was carried out. Great fun hearing on the phone "well surprisingly it's not failed on too much to be honest with you..."
You would normally be quite phased by that, but I kept convincing myself of the price and all was ok. Failure points were:-
001 Nearside front direction indicator missing (this fell off on the way there)
002 Nearside side repeater not in good working order
003 NSR brake pipe inadequately clipped
004 OSR shock absorber missing (the broken one from above)
005 NSF windscreen washer provides insufficient washer liquid
Believe it or not, the horrific rear discs (rusted and grinding as mentioned earlier in this thread) actually passed, not without a comment from the very "essex" chappie..."well they look like something that's come out the bottom o' the f**king sea..". Already onto that one. They passed at least.
001 was a simple fix, no need to go into detail there.
002 was a strange one. It looks when the wing was re-fitted that they caught the indicator bulb in the wing near the A-pillar lower section and couldn't be arsed to put it into the holder properly. So that was simple enough and done for free by the garage which was nice.
003 another trivial one, in which it had just popped off the clip. Clipped back in for free.
004 was part of the re-test when the pair of new dampers were fitted.
005 was just a blockage.
Advisories ?
Vehicle underside corroded "maybe the geeza parked it in a pond or summink!"
Battery insecure (no battery tray)
All discs "slightly" pitted.
Come to those later. At least now with me out of pocket for the tax, she was on the road and ready to take me to work!
No detail on it, but I went back round the friend's house to get the rear discs sorted ASAP to get rid of that droning noise from the rear, so that got 5 & 8 sorted out and ticked off.
The boot mech was playing up and the button just kept popping in. Luckily it was failsafed to lock out when it did go. Worn plastic striking mech was the culprit. Unfortunately it didn't always lock with the car though. A lot of money off to renault and the garage to sort that later (didn't have time honestly) and I have a fugly boot key now that i'll never need to use, and £139 worse off. But at least nothign can be nicked from the boot, and I had been looking around the scrappies for ages and none had the right setup to nick. Anyway, that was Item 2 sorted out.
[BREAK=3 - Niggles / appearance items]
The list with all the work done stated in the previous pages:-
1. Different colour bumper
3. Rear wing paintwork cracked
4. Worn driver's seat bolster
7. Slow puncture on tyre(s)
9. Few bulbs missing from dash assembly - Fan dial, couple of instrument panel backlights, clock and temp display
10. Rear View mirror falling off
12. Leaky windscreen washer bottle
13. Exhaust showing rust and signs of wear.
And an addition to the ebay list i forgot:-
14. Rear windows not opening (common faults on Coupes to do with overload washers I hear)
Item 9 was mostly fixed after a visit to Halfrauds (45p a T5 bulb though), except the fan control dial, which still plays up. Loose connection of some sort as it's intermittent. Not too much of a niggle really.
Item 10 Needed a new sticky pad, which was done. A 70p one was bought first which just didn't do the job. Since it's been stuck with a more up-market sticker pad and does the job. Except now it's noticeable that the mirror assembly ball-and-socket joint isn't stiff enough so it shakes a bit. I'm not too bothered by it right now as I can still see what's there.
Item 7 was fixed when 2 Kumhos were fitted to the front and the seals were sorted. £130 including fitting for two of those at 195x50xR16 which is an expensive size, not too bad. They also sealed up the spare and one of the rears to stop the slow punctures. Some Nankang tyres or something random. Have heard of them more since though.
I looked around for a while for a full leather interior at a good price but didn't find anything good for a while. Then I got in for a set of half-leather seats at £75 + road trip petrol money. They were in Haverfordwest, so luckily I managed to tie it in with a visit I was already making to family in Swindon. Picked up the same cousin who helped me get the car and we were off. I'd already driven 3hrs getting there that friday morning, whipped the back seats out in the rain, and soon enough we were off along the M4 for another 3. Took a break in the middle, and had some good laughs on the motorway waving at nice girlies and booing over hideous chav-tastic motors on the way.
Funds were exchanged and I had a chat with the fella who was selling them while I was fitting the squab and backrests into the rear, and squeezing the new seats into the boot (good fit in the coupe actually if you do it right ). He had plans for a 172'd Ph2 megane and went with another interior option at the time. Mint condition as well which is nice compared to the worn and smelly cloth ones (pics are from months later):-
I did a couple of boo-boos with the seat hinge release cables that connect to the slider release arm underneath, in all my haste fitting them in Swindon before going home that same weekend. Will re-visit that with the work done since moving here to grays months later and getting a decent camera for my birthday. Also I'm not too keen on the look and fit of that rear glovebox. It works fine but sits a bit too proud and is quite a light gray next to the black leather.
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