Megane My not a project, now a project 225 (Long post with pics)

[ripzay]

Hi All, some of you may have seen this on forums, I've lurked here for a while so thought i'd share a thread about my car (this is about 2 months worth of posts from the other forum, so it might say things that sound chronologically wrong, but you're all up to date now!)

I got the car in December last year, i knew it had issues, and knew *some* of the recent history of the car, but figured it would be a fun addition, and i'd be able to sort anything out that came up - i knew what i was getting myself into, the car had 117k on the clock, and 10 previous owners. A rescue mission began.



It began with me fixing pretty much every 'common' fault that these cars have, you know - window regulators, panoramic roof runners, airbag lights (turned out to be the clockspring), ESP/ABS lights. As well as replacing the rear discs and calipers, this was all sorted by January, and i got her taxed, mot'd and insured.. and she was running well.. so i started with some visual mods...

The standard 225 wheels that came with the car were an absolute mess, only 3 of them were the same colour, and they'd been bent and welded on the back side during one of the '10 previous owner' abuse sessions. Replaced them with some Team Dynamics Monza R's with the wrong offset (didnt want to use spacers)



I was happy with what i had and put a couple of thousand miles of the clock, then started getting the itch and decided to start doing some other modding.

I got myself a 3" decat pipe and fitted it myself, on jacks on the drive - something I never want to do again. I was expecting this to 'turn up the volume' a bit on the exhaust, but it didn't quite have the effect I was going for, so went to my local friendly custom exhaust place and had a mid box chop done, one hour and £30 later; and I was happy.



This was the last of my performance mods for a couple of months while i did a few more aesthetic changes / fixes. The car was lowered with Cooksport springs, and i replaced the aging dampers with a set of Renault Cup spec dampers. I installed a Rhino Lip on the front; and painted some stuff black (Mirrors, Door Handles and badges); and my front calipers Inferno Orange. I also repaired some damage on the roof above the rear quarter window and both bumpers and removed the aftermarket F1 team stickers (again, '10 previous owner' sins).





Then the turbo died in spectacular fashion; i'm not just talking excessive play here, i'm talking blew the entire contents of the CHRA out through the exhaust, followed by a large amount of the engine oil. I guess i'll have to deal with those decat pipe bolts again after all.





All sorted, back on the road; and a couple of months and anouther thousand or so miles pass trouble free, met some awesome people, had some fun!







Then i put a private plate on her...



... and decided it was time to see what she could do; and booked onto the RS Tuning Group buy!





I was pleased with the results, 271.3hp at the fly, the map was good, my unknown age clutch survived and she pulled stronger; I went out and some more fun.. for 3 days, when the engine decided it was time for retirement and the crank seized up (i've not yet done the open heart surgery to find out exactly what went wrong).

Then she had a heart transplant...

 

[ripzay]

Time to take the old engine out; since i did my decat we've got a scissor lift at home, which would have been a massive help back then!





She's looking very sorry for herself at the moment!



I picked up a complete engine, turbo and gearbox the day after the old one gave up the ghost, a chap on ebay met me half way, and brought the engine in the back of a vauxhall vectra (don't ask me how he got it in there, i still don't know!), transferred it into our van using an engine crane in the car park at Cheshire Services, got it home and decided it's not good enough for me to just put the engine straight in as is - though that would have been easier.. instead i've been doing this......











It's not all been 'making it pretty', i've also done a timing belt / water pump change, replaced the thermostat just because, and generally checked it all over as much as i can without splitting the block / head / sump. And I've also took the opportunity to put the R26 LSD that i've had sat in my garage into the replacement gearbox...



Lets just say.. i've made a bit of a mess in the garage...



I'm not done yet, neither of the engines had a good DMF, and i broke the gear linkage cables by accident when i pulled the engine from the car, so i'm currently waiting on parts.

SMF, R26.R clutch, Gear Linkage Cables, Bearings and seals for the diff / gearbox, etc. etc. all in the post and hopefully arriving early next week.

The plan is to finish the gearbox on Monday / Tuesday, then pair it with the engine on Wednesday night and get it all back in the car. Fingers crossed, i didn't buy a lemon of an engine!

Engine is now all complete and painted, AC / Alternator, loom and coolant hoses all cleaned and installed and i've got everything on the way to get it all back into the car.. fingers crossed it'll all be done on Thursday night at the latest..

On the way i have:

SMF
R26.R Clutch
CSC
Flywheel Bolts
Replacement Gear Linkage Cables which i broke when i pulled the engine

I feel an extra special thanks is needed to Paul & Lyndsey at RS Tuning for getting me the SMF, Clutch and CSC so quickly and at such short notice!

Got the bearings pulled for the diff last night and new ones installed, the gearbox will be rebuilt tonight.

I've missed driving the meg so much, I've been relegated to driving a 1.6 Mazda MX5 for the last 2 weeks but all going well i'll have another update on this thread before the week is out, and more importantly, a working car ready for the weekend i had planned before all this happened!

Bit of a big update, i got the car all back together before the weekend i had planned, but not without its struggles. Got the engine back in on Thursday night with some assistance from my little brother; it went in without hitch tbh, but took a little longer than expected; didnt take many pictures of the process because I got sidetracked spannering (and hitting the occasional thing with a persuader).

Brother in this pic..






My brother left me to it at about 11pm, we'd also got the drive shafts in, the radiator on and connected up all the loom; I carried on working..

by 00:00, i had all the fluids in, i took 10 minutes to just reflect, make sure i'd done everything i needed to, then decided i'd stick the battery in and press the button. She turned over for about 4 seconds without firing while the fuel lines primed, then burst into life, no scary noises, she sounded fine! woohoo! ...

... but i had no clutch. damn.

I spent the next 30 minutes trying to get the clutch to bleed with little success, i was fed up, and called it a night. I had to get up early the following morning to get the car off the ramp because it was needed for other things; so up, headlights on, bumper on, arch liners on, wheels on, engine trim plastics on. all finished in about 50 minutes, we pushed her off the ramp and i went to work.

That evening was spent again trying to get the clutch to bleed; it took me about 3 hours in total, i tried the 'proper method', which failed; i pressure bled it, which failed; i reverse bled it, which worked a bit; in the end i just tapped the clutch line while someone else pumped the pedal, it worked!.



Saturday; the weekend had begun, and off to the event / meet i went..







Two weeks on, it hasn't all been plain sailing..

I have a slight coolant leak from the back of the turbo somewhere i can't see, but it's dribbling down the exhaust.

I've had to replace the engine mounts because the new diff made me painfully aware of their age and wear (went with renault OEM for the main mounts with powerflex inserts), renault OEM for the top stabiliser, and vibra-technics for the bottom stabiliser.

And just this morning it chewed up a diff seal and threw a litre of gearbox oil all down the side of the car while on the way back from picking up some coolant from renault in Manchester.. (bumped into fellow forum member ant33t just before this happened) luckily i still had my old gearbox so could get back on the road pretty quick by stealing the seal from that; took me about 2 hours to fix this afternoon; and then i started work on some new parts that had arrived:

LED number plate lights - i'd ordered ones for a phase 2, (couldnt find any that listed fitment for the phase 1), and apparently the connectors on the wiring loom are different so i had to make some adapters by hacking up my original number plate lights, soldering some wires on and making a pigtail that soldered onto the new ones; good result though, pretty bright they are too!



Also an arrival from the postman was an engine cover, which i set straight to painting.. it's not finished yet; i'm waiting on some eBay special decals to use as a mask, and need to go and get some of the pearlescent black paint mixed; but here's a pic i took while watching the paint dry...



Things are looking up; I'm booked back in at RS Tuning on friday to have 630cc injectors mapped in and i'm going to ask Paul to give the engine and box his blessing.

Mini update this time!

Went to RS Tuning on friday to have the 630cc injectors put in and Paul "twisted my arm" (that's what i've decided to tell people anyway) so i ended up spending some of my hard earned on a Pro Alloy FMIC to go alongside the injectors!

2 and a half hours later and i was presented with this graph:



The car is making this power with only 14psi of boost (which i'm told is pretty good for a 225 with a stock turbo), it made 300 but turned it down a bit to keep the torque down and not risk banana shaped con rods. I guess i need to start planning my forged build

Happy with my afternoon i jumped straight into a massive traffic jam on the M62 and came home to finish off my engine cover:





It's got a bit of dust in the clear but that'll wet sand out.

 

[DaveL485]

I do love garish contrasts so that engine cover is right up my street hahaha!

Good thread mate, stick at it!

 

[andybond]

Enjoyed the read of that !

 

[ripzay]

Cheers guys

Boring update with no pics this time but i'm putting it up anyway, this thread is practically my service history now

Had some horrible squeaking, creaking and knocking from the front suspension so i decided to replace my top mounts and my passenger side track rod end which was in dire need of replacement due to me taking the passenger side suspension to bits so many times over the last couple of months.

All sorted, front end feels tight again and no noises!

For a pair of Michelin Pilot Sport 3's on their way to go on the front in preparation for TunerFest / Time Attack at Oulton Park - I might jump on one of the public sessions if there's any space available, not decided yet! - I can guarantee some pics will follow on Sunday but possibly in another thread.

 

[andybond]

Always good to refresh the suspension. My old steed drove like a new car ( well it practically was when I had finished ! ) with the new bits.