Renault 11 Turbo Phase 2 Restoration

[Neal R19]

Started looking at the R19 16V Rear Beam I got to fit to the R11T at the weekend. It appears that someone has had a go at a home-made restoration of it sometime before as it seems to be covered in a black Hammarite type paint whilst there is rust happily bubbling away underneath it...
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I started to pick away at it gingerly and made a start by stripping down the discs and backing plates first, which came off very easily after a few dugga dugga's of my Impact Driver:
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The nearside ones came apart easily enough.. but the offside disc backing plate had a broken bolt stuck in the hub, so I had to drill that out (You can see the broken bolt on the right hand side of the pic) :
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Once I stripped those parts off, I thought I would have a look at the nemesis of all these fecking Renaults... the Torsion bars:
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HOLY SH1T!!! That's me FUC*ED then...

Of course I didn't start to panic immediately... first I gave things a bit of a clean up to try & get a bolt into the end of the Torsion Bar.. View attachment 21872
that was a bit of a struggle but thanks to a nice set of Cheapy Chinese Taps I've got, I managed to get a bolt in:View attachment 21873
Then I had a go at winding the Torsion Bar out.. and as you can Imagine... NOTHING MOVED :cf: So I think it's going to take a combination of a Gas axe and Brute Force to get this axle apart.... or a:bb:
If that doesn't work I may have to be on the look out for another R19 rear axle... any suggestions ??

So after that job beat me... I thought I would pack a load of the parts into the back of the car nice & neatly like... :ah:
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Thanks for reading

Steve, As discussed briefly as you were leaving RRG, don't use heat to get the bars out - if you heat the bars up (to the kind of temperatures it would take to potentially help) then you'll take the temper out of the metal and they'll stop being springs.

As I mentioned, I made up a big old slide hammer which I've yet to use on mine but it made short work of a Pug beam with similar reluctance to come apart. It's much longer than the ones you can buy, so you can get a really good sling of the weight. Brutal but effective

You're welcome to borrow this but I'm not posting it

 

[Brigsy]

Slide hammer might pull the threads out if the thread is iffy. Just get map gas on the bushes set them on fire to melt them, knock arms off then you can flog the bars out easy with the arm on the deck. Bushes are only a tenner a side well worth doing

 

[Big Steve - Raider]

Oh no no no no no no no... that just won't do..


Much better! :ah:

 

[andybond]

Naive me here wants to know - are they manufactured belts , or dyed belts ?

 

[Big Steve - Raider]

Naive me here wants to know - are they manufactured belts , or dyed belts ?

Took the OE belts to this place:

www.safetybeltservices.co.uk

And Trevor there took the Renault Fittings off the OE belts and fitted them to brand new actuators and webbing (in whatever choice of colour I wanted) so I have a bolt in set of Red seat belts now

Depending on the condition of your OE actuators he could re-web in a different colour?

Price for all this £57.50 per belt

 

[|sAs|]

Renault 11 Turbo RBE!

 

[Big Steve - Raider]

Renault 11 Turbo RBE!

RBE?

 

[|sAs|]

Red Bull Edition!

Renault Megane RS Red Bull Racing RB8 limited edition revealed | CarAdvice

 

[Big Steve - Raider]

Red Bull Edition!

Renault Megane RS Red Bull Racing RB8 limited edition revealed | CarAdvice

:thumbsup:
You know I was sorely tempted to change the colour of this car from the Silver after visitng a car show recently where every silver car there just looked so boring?? The Blue of the RBE would have been a great alternative..? Trouble is I'm a stickler for the OE (at times) so decided to stick with the silver.

I see my next mod currently in process is also featured on that car...

 

[Chris Smith]

:thumbsup:
You know I was sorely tempted to change the colour of this car from the Silver after visitng a car show recently where every silver car there just looked so boring?? The Blue of the RBE would have been a great alternative..? Trouble is I'm a stickler for the OE (at times) so decided to stick with the silver.

I see my next mod currently in process is also featured on that car...

Please tell me it's the colour

 

[Chris Smith]

I must have skimmed that post!!! Would be epic in that colour

 

[Big Steve - Raider]

Would be epic in that colour

Your not the only one to think that @Chris Smith... @jas_racing spotted this on Facebook and tagged me in...

 

[Big Steve - Raider]

Amazing what pop's up when you look on Google?!

 

[|sAs|]

Except for the grill, that car looks amazing!

 

[Big Steve - Raider]

Continued working on some small bits over the last weeks with the 11T and thanks to @Brigsy for his excellent write-up on fitting the new bushes to his Kangoo 172 rear axle I thought I'd have a go at removing the bushes from my 19 16v Rear Axle myself:

Tried every trick in the book to get the torsion bars out.. Liberal Application of blow-torch on the housing and slide-hammer > NOPE :dy:
Next try was a leave overnight with Plus-Gas, and again, NOPE. :dx:


So the last option open to me was to burn out the rubber bushes and then remove the housings and Torsion bars separately:

I found the best way to remove the arm and tear the rubber housing was to get a good old fashioned crowbar in there and give it some serious leverage!! That then pulls the bush housing bracket and torsion bar out of the axle; but they are still all rusted together:

To separate them, you need to get yourself all @Brigsy'd up :du::br: and then armed with a decent lump hammer (You need the weight to swing) you need to smash the sh*t out of the back of the bar to free it out of the housing:



3 Pictures there sum up no end of sweating and effort to remove them.

Once you remove the bar, you then need to remove one half of the rubber bushing still stuck in the housing:

My method here was to start off with a dremel cutting wheel to cut a path in the bush:

Then you are left with more swinging of hammer and chisel to break up the bush. It's just SOOOO satisfying when you finally cut the bush so you can remove it:



Now you have to repeat all this ^^^ to remove the bushing from the other arm.

Finally, you have to remove the bushing that's still stuck in the axle. Again a LOT more hammering with Chisels:

Will result in it finally being removed:

So after doing everything shown here twice (both sides of the axle) I had also injured myself and pulled a muscle in my neck, so couldnt turn my head for a few days after... :cg: I defy anyone to do this work without getting a strain somehow!!
When I got the axle all stripped, I took them over to a guy who is going to blast them and re-fit the bushes in.

Next I brought over the seats to my garage and started to review the status of them and wonder what I can do about getting the fabric to fit the seats again... they're Baggy as hell...



Thanks for reading

 

[Neal R19]

Fair play... that looks like seriously infuriating work!

What's the other end of the bar look like after you've finished flogging it out with a big hammer?

 

[Big Steve - Raider]

Fair play... that looks like seriously infuriating work!

What's the other end of the bar look like after you've finished flogging it out with a big hammer?

A little bit bruised, but after a few minutes with a set of files, you can bring it back to shape.

 

[TNT Andy]

Respect earned as always Steve.

 

[Jimmy 5]

Steve, are you having the rear beam powder coated? If so do not fit the bushes till after it's all been painted.

 

[Big Steve - Raider]

Steve, are you having the rear beam powder coated? If so do not fit the bushes till after it's all been painted.

Hi @Jimmy 5, no mate, this time in getting the beam blasted and then painted by the guys here:
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