19 Project Turbo Shed - sponsored by Bosch PWS850-125

[Neal R19]

Converting from cable clutch to hydraulic clutch

Getting to a workable solution for this took a lot more time and effort than it had any right to.

Three options:

A - Fit all the pedals from the Megane - including the brake transfer bar, relocating the servo and master cylinder to the passenger side. Lots of advantages to this - primarily that the space where those bits sit in the 19 is a bit of a problem for downpipe clearance and the megane has a much bigger servo which might be beneficial. Potential downsides - Lots of work. Also the 19’s bulkhead is quite flimsy and I think it would need reinforcement to make it stiff enough for this to work satisfactorily.

B - spend time doing lots of bodging to use some of the megane 225 bits with some R19 bits.

C - spend a bit of money and get something from another car that already has a hydraulic clutch integrated to the brake pedal box/servo assembly and hopefully have to only do some minor mods to fit.

Oh, one more option - spend loads of time pissing around on option B, before finally accepting defeat and going with option C.

The cable clutch pedal on the 19 is integrated into the pedal box, with a single pivot bar running through both the brake and clutch pedals.


19 pedal box removed on the right, megane hydraulic clutch pedal on left


The idea was to get the megane hydraulic clutch pedal and the 19 pedal box to work together by chopping off the side of the 19’s pedal box that carries the clutch pedal, to sit the megane clutch pedal in a suitable position next to it. A lot of cutting and grinding - the megane clutch pedal in particular suffered badly. This was in preference to trimming anything much off the brake side of the pedal box. Reason being that I’m not keen on any modifications that depend on the quality of my welding to be strong enough to ensure safety. So cutting and re-welding of critical brake bits is out.

I spent quite a bit of time on this and got to something that looked like it had potential, if I cut and re welded the clutch pedal arm itself to reposition the foot pad




The problem is that the aperture in the 19’s bulkhead for the pedal box backplate is really quite small (I think it’s the same as the R9 /11?) and it fits from the engine bay side so all the bracketry and pedals have to pass through. So 2 problems:

1 - The assembly would be too big to go through the hole and even if it did

2 - The megane clutch pedal gubbins wouldn’t clear the steering column.

No go.

So… plan B. What else uses a hydraulic clutch that I could potentially pinch bits or an entire pedal box off?

Turns out if I want to stick to the Renault parts bin it’s either the mk2 clio dCi 100, the mk1 megane scenic RX4 (the 4x4 one - all other mk1 scenics have a cable operated clutch) or various Lagunas. All mk2 meganes and mk2 scenics use the same bits as the 225 and the Laguna bits look massively different and unlikely to fit. Looking at photos of the clio and RX4 pedal boxes on ebay, it looked to me like the RX4 one would be most likely to be successfully modified but there was only one on ebay and it was just the bare pedal box without all the other little bits and bobs that might be useful. So another scrappy scavenger trip was required.
Had to find an RX4 which already had the engine removed, to give me space to get all the bits I wanted from the engine bay side. Took a while to find one but got to this one just before its turn to be crushed.

Side note - these cars use drive by wire throttle, but this is done by a mechanical cable from the pedal to a throttle pot mounted in the engine bay which can be seen in the photo below. Is that not the daftest setup you've ever seen?




Lot of contortion in the footwell getting this bloody thing out



That was fun.

And here’s the lovely bounty from that trip.



Got the complete pedal box, master cylinder, servo, fluid reservoir and some remote reservoir pipework that might come in handy, all for a few quid. Clearly the pedal box back plate on the RX4 is slightly larger than the 19’s one.



Thought about cutting off the RX4 pedal box backplate and waterjet cutting a new 3mm backplate to the shape of the 19's one.



Didn't bother with that in the end as I decided I'm not turning back now anyway so just butcher the 19’s pedal box to remove the original backplate and use that, which should allow the assembly to bolt straight into the car. So I chopped away most of the bracketry off the 19 pedal box to allow me to get in with a spot weld drill and remove the rest of it cleanly.




Did the same from the other side on the RX4 pedal box (so that the backplate has the spot weld removal holes and not the pedal bracket) then a bit of trimming on the feet and bingo, all fits together.




Little bit of trimming at the base of the bracketry to allow it to pass through the bulkhead aperture and clear the folded return and we’re in business.

Next problem - The scenic servo is bigger than the 19’s one and won’t fit the 19 <sigh>.



So now I needed to make the 19’s servo work with my hybrid 19/RX4 pedal box . Main issue is that the clevis/fork thing on the end that the pedal pushes on has a much shallower slot on the 19’s servo. So I had to cut some little chunks out of the RX4 pedal to clear it.





Also the pivot hole is further out. Luckily the end on the 19’s servo is threaded so I just wound it down as far as it could go which luckily was just far enough. Trimmed the extra length off the end of the rod to clear the pedal again.









Playing nice with the steering column. Good to go.

 

[Neal R19]

Hydraulic lines

OK so I've got a hydraulic clutch pedal. Next problem - the clutch master cylinder itself. The fluid port of the RX4 one clashes with one of the mounting studs on the backplate.
RX4:


I’d rather use the Megane 225 one and the fluid port exits at a different angle so it would clear the stud,


however the linkage arm is a different length so installing it on this pedal box means that with the pedal all the way up, the m/c is at 10-20mm travel. Not sure if this would be OK or if the reservoir transfer port would never get opened.

I thought I spotted a potential easy win and pulled both master cylinders apart with the intention of swapping the link arm from the RX4 part to the Megane part but things are never that easy. Completely different design.

In the end I decided to give the RX4 one a try and just cut the mounting stud down. I can come back to this and have a rethink if it turns out that the RX4 m/c doesn’t push enough fluid for the Megane slave cylinder or something like that. Easy enough to get to.

Now to run the hydraulic line to the gearbox I used the bits that came off the megane. On the megane the servo, master cylinder and reservoir are mounted on the left side of the engine bay and the RHD brakes operate from the pedals by a transfer bar mounted to the bulkhead. The clutch master cylinder mounted directly on the pedal just has a hydraulic pressure line to the gearbox and a feed line from the reservoir that both run along the bulkhead inside the cabin and pass through with a plastic fitting that twist fits to a funny squareish hole.

For relative simplicity and because I don’t want to have to run all the clutch pipework along the engine bay side of the bulkhead, I’ll be reusing this bulkhead breach unit in the 19 so needed to make a suitable mounting hole for it. If I don’t want to get a custom pipe made up (I don’t) then the position on the bulkhead where this thing will sit is basically dictated by the length of the metal pressure pipe from the Megane. Being a twat I’ve already cut a massive hole in the bulkhead for the wiring loom where the breach unit needs to fit



so I need to move that and reproduce the little square hole thing instead. Easiest way to do that accurately enough for the thing to fit properly was to CAD it up and waterjet cut a plate from 2mm steel.






I chose to bolt this in rather than weld it so that it is easily removable if I wanted to swap everything to another R19 later on



The pressure port on both the RX4 and megane master cylinders are the same fitting so the metal pressure pipe plugged straight in no bother. The feed pipe has a different fitting so I cut the end off the RX4 one and shoved it on the end of the cut megane pipe. No pressure in this line so should be fine.






That all gets me a nice pressure line port on engine bay side of the bulkhead to just plug the clutch line straight into and a hose tail to connect to the reservoir when I decide where to put it (maybe in the scuttle).




Nice.

 

[Duncan Grier]

Great update

DG

 

[andybond]

Some mad skills here ! Love reading about it


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[DaveL485]

You are certifiable.

This is brilliant.

Carry on!

 

[Neal R19]

Slow progress at the moment. I'm mostly working outside and whenever I don't have any other obligations it's raining.

Still, managed to get the gearshift sorted which turned out to be a relatively simple job.

The JB3 (Or might be a JB1 actually... same difference) gearbox in the 19 has a rigid bar operated gearshift to underside of the gearbox whereas the Megane ND0 uses a cable shift to the top. Usefully, both shifter units drop easily straight out of the car in one piece.



The 19’s shifter unit mounts from under the car, onto studs welded to the shell:




The Megane version does it the opposite way and mounts by bolts through the shell from inside the cabin.



The bolt/stud pattern is very similar though, so a bit of grinding and drilling to change the studs on the 19 floorpan to holes, a bit of filing to adjust the pattern slightly, and it went in, sort of.



Can see in the photo that the front of the shifter box doesn't sit fully up into place at the front.
Also, yeah, in fairness I could have made a neater job of that... not proud of this really. But whatever...

It didn't sit in place properly because the area around the gearshift on the 19 floor has a funny shape to it so the megane shifter box can’t sit right up in place.




Lopping chunks off the casing fixed that.






Filled up those holes with my finest gaffer tape.



Will come back to that later and tidy up a bit. That's what I'll tell myself anyway.

All bolted up in place and operating the gearbox nicely.





Will need to be careful how I route those cables.

In the background of that last photo is a sneak peak of the task I'm currently working on...

 

[Neal R19]

Said goodbye to the Megane carcass recently too.



-50% pikeyfication factor to the household.

 

[andybond]

You don't mess around ! Cannot wait for the updates


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[DaveL485]

Cable shift gear mod duly noted for future shenanigans.

 

[Larry]

This is something I constantly want to see more of, great work Neal

 

[DaveL485]

**impatient tapping of fingers**

 

[Neal R19]

OK so progress is still slow as I’ve been up to other stuff

My wife has a somewhat different idea than me of what represents a worthwhile use of my ‘free’ time. She’s quite emphatic in fact. “No more twatting around with that piece of shit car until you’ve finished my kitchen ceiling” I think was the phrase or words to that effect. To be fair, she’s probably right.

That said, she can’t watch me all the time and when the cat’s away...

… the mouse cracks on with sorting out his front brakes/suspension setup

The original brakes on the car are 238mm solid discs with 48mm piston calipers, upgrading to R19 16V bits would take them to 259mm vented with a similar 48mm caliper. But bigger is always better, right? So I want to use clio 172/182 brakes which are 280mm vented with 54mm piston calipers. To do that I need to use the clio's front uprights. Much beefier too.

compare:



R19 struts won’t fit to the clio uprights as the part that clamps into the damper is narrower on the 19 than the clio. Additionally, the the bolts are M14 on the clio and M12 on the 19. All of this could be made to fit by machining and so on but I don’t want to do that.

Also, the non-16v R19 uses a completely different strut and top mount design to the 16V 19s which are more like the clio. The non-16v has a tapered spring mounted parallel to the damper with the bearing down the bottom so the spring stays static and the damper turns inside it. On the right in this photo, clio 172 on the left:



The R19 16v arrangement is much more similar to the clio 172 strut - parallel spring, offset mount (coincident to the steering axis), bearing up top, entire spring and damper turns.



In addition, the 16V top mounts place the top of the damper rod further out in the turret, so lower steering axis inclination.

non-16V



16V



There are also 2 sets of top mount bolt holes to allow the caster to be varied. I think dependent on whether the car has PAS or not. So all 16Vs use the rear set of holes, this non-PAS car uses the front set.

Clio top mounts are totally different to both.



So one obvious option is to build clio 172 dampers up with R19 16V springs and top mounts. The issue here is that the 16V top mounts are a shit design and they always crack. The top mounts are getting hard to find and are quite expensive.

So I’d rather just use clio 172 complete struts, all the parts of which (including lowering springs etc) are cheap and freely available.

Clearly if I don’t want to cut anything (I don’t) then i’m not going to be able to fit the clio damper axis in the same position as the R19 16v damper axis as it's offset to the oval hole. However the upper part of the clio top mount looked like it would sit in the oval hole at the top of the 19’s turret where the non-16v damper shaft sits so if I can replicate the clio-turret top inside the 19’s turret, central to the oval hole, then clio struts should go on with the clio hubs. Simple eh?

I thought I had a cunning plan here but to see if it really was cunning or a dead end I needed to work out the suspension geometry and compare between clio and non-16v 19 to see what the camber angle will end up as and whether I can take it out with camber adjustment bolts.

I’ve got a clio 172 on my drive, as well as the Scenic subframe on my 19 and some 2.0 16v megane coupe lower arms. So I did some boring measuring and sums and stuff (my mummy helped me with this) and it turns out by fitting clio struts to the non-16v position on the 19 I’ll only have to deal with a degree or so of extra camber, easily dealt with by camber bolts.

So, just need to do some modding, yay.

Chopped some clio turret tops out of a 172 cup.




The lad whose car this was also gave me the complete struts. They’re basically shagged, but fine for mocking up.

Trimmed and tidied the cut out turret tops up:



Trial fit. This is roughly where they need to go.




Hopped on CATIA again and waterjet a couple of plates from 3mm steel. I love waterjet.





You can probably see where I’m going with this.




These are labelled left and right despite both being and identical shape because bizarrely although the outside shape is completely symmetrical, the hole positions are not, so they need to be the right way up and the right way round to fit to the turrets. If anyone has any bright ideas why they designed it this way I’m all ears.

Welded on a couple of nuts to each



Mocked up on the car and clio suspension fitted to orientate the clio turret piece square with the strut, then tacked in place to the plates






Fully welded.




Yeah, OK, so I’m not going to wait on a call from NASA to weld bits for the ISS, but it’ll do. Hopefully.

Tidied em both up a bit





Fitted to the car with the clio hubs and bolted up into place…

 

[Turbell]

Threads like this are the reason I spend so much time on the t'internet, there's no mention of ' buying billet blah blahs from blah blah racing' just a crazy fool with a welder and lots of cutting and scratting in yards, absolutely love it !
And all written up with a little wit and lots of pics, keep it up.

 

[DaveL485]

That said, she can’t watch me all the time and when the cat’s away...

Hahaha perfect, I like your style!

If anyone has any bright ideas why they designed it this way I’m all ears.

So you dont fit the struts to the wrong sides.
The 21 uses lugs to do the same.

 

[Neal R19]

Hahaha perfect, I like your style!


So you dont fit the struts to the wrong sides.
The 21 uses lugs to do the same.

But the top mounts and struts are identical

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[DaveL485]

But the top mounts and struts are identical

The 19 ones? They can't be or the holes would be the same?

 

[Neal R19]

The 19 ones? They can't be or the holes would be the same?

Yeah, There's only one part number for each of the strut components, not handed. The actual shape of the top mount has 2 axes of symmetry. It's just the position of the bolt holes that stop it from fitting 180 degrees rotated.

 

[jamesc]

Like it!

Seats be like
:rainbowvomit:

 

[DaveL485]

Yeah, There's only one part number for each of the strut components, not handed. The actual shape of the top mount has 2 axes of symmetry. It's just the position of the bolt holes that stop it from fitting 180 degrees rotated.

Similar to the 21 then, the topmount bits with the rubber are the same, but the bit that bolts to the turret isn't. Or something. I always assumed it was to make sure everything was oriented correctly anyway

 

[Neal R19]

More kitchen-ceiling-work dodging.

Since the megane 225 runs electric PAS it has no hydraulic PAS pump so only has alternator and aircon pump run off the aux belt.



Since my 19 has no aircon I don’t need/want the aircon pump down there at the bottom right. Without the AC pump in place the standard routing doesn’t work even with a shorter belt due to the relative positions of the pullies. In theory it could be left in place and just act as an idler as the pulley just free wheels until aircon demand engages the clutch to drive the pump. However this is the aircon pump:



Do you reckon this will fit down there?




No, me neither. So I need another way to run the aux belt. Preferably keeping the stock sprung tensioner rather than doing the usual thing of using some turnbuckle arrangement to move the alternator around.

EPC trawling again I found the aux bracketry from a 1.9 dci (same later style F-type engine block as the 2.0 petrol) trafic van (with PAS but without AC) has the alternator and tensioner in almost exactly the same place as the 225, but with mounts for a PAS pump where the 225’s AC compressor would be. Thought about going scrappy diving again but happened to find one of these on ebay for the cost of a few pints and decided that as much as I like rummaging around in a scrappy, I couldn’t be bothered.




So that exchanges the AC pump for a PAS pump, which doesn’t help me much. But… instead of actually using a PAS pump on this thing, you can fit the dummy PAS pump from a 1.5 dci engined clio or megane. This thing:




That still doesn’t help much in the car though as pulley itself is still too big to clear the subframe.




Arse.

So, smaller pulley then? I couldn’t find any Renault part that was small enough and cheap enough. Plenty of plain pullies, but no ribbed ones. There is actually a pulley on the EPC that is alternative fitment to this bracket:



but I couldn’t actually find one except for silly money (literally tens of pounds). Anyway eventually I found this fella from a Saab 9-3/9-5 that ticked the right boxes and best of all it was very cheap. It’s about 65mm diameter. M8 bolt fitment (with a reducer bush pressed in).



Needed to bolt it to the clio dummy PAS pump base, which has an M10 thread, and move it over to line up with the other pullies.

Drifted the reducer bush out of the saab bearing to take it back up to a 12mm hole and turned up a spacer/centring bush to position the pulley out in line with the alt pulley.



Bolted on.



Placed my small-pulley-dummy-PAS-pump down the the bottom there, measured up and fitted a shorter belt (6pk1075, used on some Peugeots and Seats I think) and jobs a good ‘un.






Only slight drawback is that the saab pulley has 6 ribs rather than the 7 of the standard megane belt setup but no bother, it will be fine with a 6pk, it’s only running the alternator now anyway. Will just leave the innermost groove spare on the crank and alternator pullies.

Since I’ve only used the bracket part of this dummy PAS pump, I have the new pulley and bearing spare. Could have just fabricated the actual bracket with exactly the right pulley offset and saved myself a few quid but nevermind. If anyone has a 1.5dci or a 1.6 16v megane or clio and they need a new one of that pulley/bearing, hit me up.