v6Max Clio Build Stuff

[v6Max]

First some pictures to show the results of the work I wrote about last week...

This is one of the fitted boot pins
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Fitted duck tale
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Window reveals in primer...
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Saturday was almost the day I gave up and torched the car! It was the engine bay that did it, you see it was suffering from the accumlation of 6 years of grime, oil and soot from the fire and I needed to get it cleaned. This may sound like a finishing job but I needed to get a whole load of pipe work out and the associated clips, brackets etc which are no longer required so it had to be done.

It took 5.5 hours using a steam cleaner, loads of "shop cloth" and so much WD40 I forgot my own name and started talking to the dog. The real problem was how awkward the job was - leaning in through the rear of the car steam billowing around me and almost everytime I moved making contact with the roll cage (I'm beginning to hate the cage). The other problem is that like so many jobs I've spent hours over I shouldn't have been doing it - if the "professionals" had done their job properly I wouldn't have needed to...

Anyway, a picture is worth at least one whinging paragraph...
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After that I moved on to finishing off the primer on the window reveals - this needed to be flatted off ready for colour so 1200grit wet and dry and lots of patience gave a decent enough finish. At the end of the day the finish is not hyper critical because it'll be hidden by the windows anyway but it's just one of those attention to detail things.

I knew it was too windy to actually put the colour on so I decided I'd do the masking up because it's a labourious, awkward job but needed to be done. This is what finally put the end to my day - the wind picked exactly the right moment to blow to cause maximum incovenience, the cage caught me out too many times to mention and I don't mind admitting it resulted in a somewhat unseemly loss of temper featuring much muttering, swearing, throwing around of things and ultimately the tearing up of much masking paper.

Sunday, fortunately, was a little different. It was still too windy to do any paint work so I decided to start the door prep. The new doors are somewhat lighter than the OEM ones (8kg versus 25kg) so they represent a significant weight saving.

The challenge with the door was quite simple (to write); there were no marks to show where the holes should be drilled for the catch and only a faint impression of where the cutout should be for the catch. Much patience with the Dremel was required in order to create the cutouts and then the three holes required a combination of; measuring, voodoo and of course good luck.

After fitting the catch it was time to move on and fit the lock, of which there's not a lot to say other than it took a bit of time but wasn't actually that bad a job.

I now need to come up with a plan for how to fit the hinges to the door; the OEM door has the hinges welded on which of course can't be done with the GRP ones so I have bolt on hinges. Similar to the lock there are no markings - this needs some thinking about

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And that was it but things should be much more interesting next weekend because with any luck the bulkhead, dashtop and windows will be going in...

 

[v6Max]

Here is this weeks update;

The weather forecast was a shocker especially as I had those window reveals to finish painting, anyway it turned out that despite the computing might of the Met Office the weather turned out the complete opposite of their predictions (If I got it that badly wrong with the stuff I write I'd of been sacked or possibly imprisoned for manslaughter by now ) So seeing an opportunity to get the painting done I was outside by 70 on Saturday and applied the first of 6 coats of satin black to the window reveals.

I needed to get this done because come hell or high water I was going to get those rear windows in the car at the weekend - it was important from a motivation point of view to see at least one job actually finished and as I'll explain later I reckon the 95% I ended up with was good enough.

The bulkhead parts came back from the flocking company - just as with the centre console they did a great job as you can, hopefully, see

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I also had the dashtop flocked at the same time and was pleasantly surprised (for once) when the bill came through: £110 for all 3 peices including p&p back to me.

I only had the front side of the bulkhead flocked because I was concerned about it getting dirty, looking rubbish and not putting up with the heat if used on the engine side of the bulkhead so the first job on Saturday was to sort out the rear of the bulkhead.

I knew the job was going to be fiddly because my previous attempt at trimming had quickly illustrated what a black art trimming is! The basic idea was this; firstly tape all the edges up with aluminium tape, next cut out heatmat to fit but with around a 20mm reveal, finally glue heatmat in place and then tape the edges down...

Easy to write (probably took around 1 minute if that) but took around 4 hours to do - anyway here's a quick picture:

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The rough edges that you can see on some areas are where the flocking has come round from the front but I made it clear that I'd rather this happened than any of the rebates on the front side got missed - once the bulkhead is in the car you won't be able to see them anyway.

The next plan was to actually get the thing in the car but before doing that it made sense to cut the clear perspex and this is where things went a little wrong and why I'm about to order some proper Lexan. I spent some time marking up the perspex sheeting I'd got from a well know DIY chain and then set about cutting it with the trusted Jigsaw. Within about 40mm I realised there was a problem - as fast as I was cutting it, it was welding itself back together and it was at this point that I bothered to read the information on the front of the sheeting which contained the key word "polystyrene" and phrase "keep away from heat" - oh well never mind we all make mistakes.

I finished Saturday by removing the large amounts of masking tape around the window reveals and the brown masking paper from the majority of the rear of the car - I was pleased/relieved to see that proper masking tape for cars is very good stuff and had allowed no bleed whatsoever leaving nice tight lines.

So Sunday once again decided to ignore the Met Office and dawned bright and sunny and the plan was to install the rear windows.

I expect this sounds like one of those really easy jobs - you just stick the plastic windows on or drill a few holes and bolt them in place but in reality it's a little trickier than that.

The first thing you quickly find out is that the OEM glass windows sit some distance away from the actually reveals - held off by a pre-applied seal and thick adhesive. This meant that I couldn't simply bolt the windows in place, I was also concerned about weather sealing so over the last few weeks I'd been hunting down a supplied for a leaf type seal and some nylon nuts and bolts...

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I did get let down by one supplier who was to supply the rubber washers that were to sit under the nylon bolt heads but hopefully they'll arrive next week.

Anyway for those of a curious mind here is how I chose to fit the windows...

Firstly I used masking tape to cover the reveals - this would provide a surface which I could mark...

Next each of the four corners was marked using a pencil - I held the leaf seal in place to ensure I got the spacing right

The space between each corner was (fairly) evenly divided up to allow 5 bolts top and bottom with 1 bolt on the lowest side of the window and 2 on the highest

Each hole was drilled with a little 3mm drill bit and then drilled again with a 5mm drill bit

Next masking tape was removed, the reveals were wiped down with a paint prep pad to degrease them

The leaf seal was installed - the seal had a "foot" with a self adhesive tape on it which was very sticky so I had, really, only 1 chance to get it right...

With the seal in place the inside edge of the plastic window was covered in masking tape (again so I could mark it)

The window was then positioned and temporarily held in place with yet more masking tape

I used the 5mm drill bit through the holes in the reveal to mark the masking tape and then took the window back off the car

With the window back in the garage each marking was drilled with the 3mm drill bit and then again with a 6mm drill bit

Back to the car and the window was put in place, held with a couple of the nylon bolts whilst I went around putting all the other bolts in place

Last job was to finish peeling the protective film off before repeating the entire process for the other side...

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If you're curious as to why I didn't drill the window first well the reason was that although doing it the way I descibed above was time consuming the need for accuracy and to avoid spot welds meant that doing it the "easy" way was not an option...

With both windows done I needed to fulfill a family comittment and so ended another weekend with the car...

 

[k1ano]

Another great insight into the work that goes into a project like this :approve:

I also appreciate the small details such as aligning up all the slots in the screw heads [smilie=bowdown.gif]

Martin

 

[v6Max]

Thanks gentlemen

 

[v6Max]

Noticed the paucity of updates on this thread by any chance?

Well I seem to have hit that stage that exists in all projects; a low, a point where things just don't go right, where, if one believes in such things, fate decides that you've had entirely too much fun and it's now time to test your mettle by throwing some significant spanners in the work (pardon the pun):

My erstwhile ex-partner decided to "dog-nap" my Basset Hound Susie - strange how attached one can become to a dribbling, highly dependent and expensive beast (not the ex-partner - the dog)

The completion of the bulkhead has eluded me for some 4 weeks now - each week materials turn up and each week a minor error results in the loss of another week, throwing around of tools and the wasting of money and time.

Attempts to move to other jobs are met with more intervention from the gods of "making your project difficult". I say to my friends that the car has reached the stage where it's fighting me and at the moment it's definitely winning on points.

I've been here before with the 205 and with many of the IT projects I've worked on and know that persistence is the key. I'll stick with it but when the latest "challenge" or is that "opportunity" was presented to me I nearly reached for that can of petrol.

In an attempt to maintain a degree of optimism, although somewhat aware I may put the curse on this weekends work, I'll make the bold statement that this will be the weekend that the corner will be turned. The bulkhead will be finished and the tailgate will finally be finished and "glazed" so hopefully there'll be some photographic evidence next week...

Oh and if anyone has a couple of v6 doors going spare (please don't ask if you want to be spared a tirade of swearing) or a vee that's being broken let me know

 

[v6Max]

Ok this week 2 jobs needed to get done otherwise I'd have started killing things!

First up was to finish the tailgate: Like the side windows the painters has installed the original glass back into it (which they shouldn't have done) and then damaged it removing the glass so there was some work to do before I could fit the plastic glazing...

First up was to get rid of the left over adhesive - this is just a boring combination of solvent, rubbing and then a final sand - a much easier job than the side windows though because it was much easier to get to everything. With the old adhesive off I mixed up some uPol and then skim coated the tailgate following that up with sanding prior to masking and priming.

Masking the tailgate was a pain and you have to do it twice; once for primer and then again for colour. I sprayed 5 coats of colour coat on Saturday and then left it to bake in the hot sun, intending to finish the job on Sunday morning so next it was time to move on to the dreaded bulkhead.

All the delay with the bulkhead had been caused by the need to cut the glazing panel for the top section which has a difficult shape and rounded corners - by this weekend I'd already made my way through 2 panels so it had to be right this time! I finally did the sensible thing and made a template from card which, ok, took some time (lets say 3 hours) but saved a fortune and the delicate ears of my neighbours.

With the panel cut the next stage was to think of a way in which the panel could be fitted from the front of the bulkhead with no access to the rear; the original plan had been to use rubber rivnuts but the rebate I cut was too narrow and also too thin (apart from that it was 100% perfect ). In the end the solution I used was to fit strips of alluminium to the rear of bulkhead at the top and bottom. Holes were then drilled through the glazing panel and through the alluminium; the holes in the alluminium were then opened up to 3mm prior to threading with a 4mm tap.

With that done I had to fit the bulkhead to make sure it would all work so I finished off on Saturday by doing just that; The strips of alluminium worked fine and I'll now pull the bulkhead back out and fit them properly as well as add ones to the sides of the top panel.

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If you look really closely you can see the ally strips - they're only held in place with tape at the moment which is why it's coming back out...
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Sunday morning then was for the fitting of the tailgate plastic window. The first thing to do was to install a seal - I'm happy to accept many compromises on the car but needing to wear a lifejacket in the rain is not one of them so I'm paying attention to making sure things like the windows are properly sealed.

The seal is a hollow D-shaped neoprene strip that has very sticky 3m tape on the back of it - you get one chance to get it right so this is not a job to rush! Also it was not possible to mark it out so it had to be done by eye which was "interesting".

Once the seal was on I put the plastic panel on the tailgate and then taped it in position before marking out the holes and drilling them - some care was needed here because there was not much room for error and the uncompressed seal meant that the plastic panel sat 10mm or say away from the tailgate.

The other slight challenge was that the tailgate came from the same people the doors did and lets just say our views on "bolt on replacement" and "high quality" are not the same which meant that I had to use a larger number of fittings than I was expecting but at the end of the day I was happy with the result and the plastic panel compresses the seal evenly top and bottom.

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I then refitted the spoiler and at this point it became obvious there was a problem - the spoiler was fouling the plastic panel causing it to bend in the middle and lift off the seal - not too much of a problem just lots and lots of time spent with the Dremel to get it all fitted correctly:

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And that was it for the weekend - thank god for non-stop Glastonbury coverage on 6 Music - really kept me motivated

 

[TRW1]

Nice work Max. That bukhead certainly looked challenging.....

 

[v6Max]

Thanks guys...

On another note let me tell you all about those lightweight doors which you will have, no doubt, seen on eBay. I'd advise caution if you're considering them. I've got a pair and they really are a track specific product and even with that proviso I'd add that it would need to be a dry track.

They don't really fit properly; I can get my hand in between the door frame and the door with the passenger side in position and the drivers side door has a similar problem compounded with the fact that it is too large at the back so sits about 20mm proud and the lower moulding is at totally the wrong angle - in 2 words; caveat empor.

Anyway this rather left me with a problem - I'd sold the original driver's side door to a certain well known turbo nutter and the passenger door had been raided for parts and was unuseable so as you will have seen I posted in the wanted section after finding out the following from Renault...

Drivers door £171.61 ex vat (not too bad)
Passenger door £162.31 ex vat (I don't know why they're different)

Ok so not too bad but then the parts man says but wait you also need 2 skins...

Drivers side £915.39 ex vat (are you joking)
Passenger side £818.17 ex vat (the sound of one man crying and laughing)

So in total £2377.60 inc vat to replace both doors [smilie=icon_eek.gif]

Hmm, some lateral thinking has, I hope, reduced this cost to £330 inc vat - without wishing to put the curse on this "plan" I'll wait until the various bits turn up and if they work as I hope they will this may be helpful to any of you who need doors or a door and don't want to fund the pension fund of your local Renaul dealer principal

 

[Duncan]

that is unbelievable!! excuse my ignorance, but what is the "skin"?

is that the interior part of the door? could that be taken from a ph1 172?

 

[v6Max]

The skin is the bit on the outside of the door - the bit with the bottom sill and top moulding. The doors are standard 3 door Clio doors - the skin is then bonded onto the door.

 

[TRW1]

Maybe the doors are fine Max and your car got a little warped in the heat of the fire......! :wink:

 

[Duncan]

blimey. and i thought the bumper was expensive!!!

hope the plan works out for you. :thumb

 

[Jamesv6]

Those have come down in price a fair bit too!

Keep going strong.

 

[Kett]

Hmm, some lateral thinking has, I hope, reduced this cost to £330 inc vat

Home-made skin?

 

[Jamesv6]

Pattern parts?

 

[v6Max]

Pattern parts?

Sort of - I found a company that sells v6 bodykits and it turns out they sell the parts separately as well including the entire door skins. Now I don't mind if they're not 100% because my primary concern is that the doors fit/seal properly if I need to spend a few hours with uPol and a sander I'll happily do that. The difference in price by the way is that each skin is £89.99. Doors are coming from a breakers up in Scottland @ £45.00 each. The plan is:

1) Trial fit doors then remove
2) Cut inner skin out of doors leaving a reveal to fit door cards to
3) Remove door bars, window mechanism etc
4) Use a large hole saw to perforate the outer skin
5) Bond on skins
6) Fit doors

They'll end up heavier than the GRP doors but all the butchery described above should see them sit well below the weight of a standard OEM door.

 

[v6Max]

Limited time this weekend due to some other things needing my attention and I felt like a change of pace and a "quick win" - the arrival of my "new" scrap doors presented the ideal solution; this weekend I'd fit the drivers side door.

Just to remind people of why I find myself with 2 scrap doors; my original plan was to use some lightweight GRP doors that I brought from a company currently selling them on eBay - nice guys but the doors don't fit, at least not good enough to be viable on a road going as well as track going vehicle. Before I'd found this out I'd manage to sell one of my original doors and disposed of the other and it turned out that Renault want a not insignificant 2.3k inc VAT to supply replacements!

A spot of thinking led to a new plan which is why I've got 2 different coloured doors from a couple of scrapped Clios supplied by a breakers in Galsgow. The production doors on a v6 are nothing more special that a bog standard Clio door with a fancy, and as it turns out very expensive, GRP door skin.

I didn't want to lose the advantage of the reduced weight in the doors so before fitting they were going on a diet. I was only going to fit a single door this weekend because I guessed it was going to take longer than I estimated and the first one is always time consuming as you need to develop a method. So on Friday I stripped the OS door of glass, trim, lock bits etc etc and did a test cut with the Dremel. The test cut revealed 2 vital things; firstly that the basic idea was sound and secondly that a Dremel would make the job take forever so a quick trip to B&Q and I was equipped with an angle grinder and some cutting discs ready for the work to start in earnest on Saturday.

In case no one noticed, Saturday was hot, very hot - what's the significance of this? Well I didn't want to annoy the neighbours and I knew I was going to be making some noise so I thought it best to work with the garage door down - a single garage with the door closed, a bunch of power tools and lots of cutting generates a lot of heat - I swear I lost weight...

The first thing to do was to cut out the inner door skin; I needed to leave a reveal because that's what the door card will attach to so I used masking tape to mark out the rough outline and then used the angle grinder to cut the straight sections and the Dremel for the rounded sections. The inner door skin is actually spot welded in some areas to the internal door structure so it's not like opening a can by cutting the lid off. Also, the inner skin is comparatively thing but other structures are quite substantial and in some areas multi-layered to although it sounds like a simple job it's actually quite involved.

With the inner skin off I could then remove the door bars which was easy enough with the Dremel, then a bit more work clearing up some areas before a test fit. I could actually see an opportunity to remove more material so I returned to the garage and about an hour later I had a decent pile of bits that I'd stripped from the door. I reckon it was, all in, about 6 -> 7 hours of work but the NS door will be much quicker because now I've developed the method I can see where some economies can be made so I'd estimate around 3 hours for the next one.

With only a short time on Sunday I simply fitted a new lock, connected up the lock mechanism and then hung the door....

Ok, here's the stuff I cut out of the door - the little bag contains odds and ends of metal that I've kept just because I want to weigh it all to get an idea of the total weight saving
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Door hung on the car - the colour is not an issue - honest I've a plan!
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This is the inside of the door after its diet
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Next week I'll probably sort out the door cards and work on my design for the internal handle and mechanism for pulling the latch cable.

 

[Kett]

Is that door Deep Bronze? :badgrin:

Shame you've hung it - will we get a "before and after" weight analysis?

 

[v6Max]

Is that door Deep Bronze? :badgrin:

Shame you've hung it - will we get a "before and after" weight analysis?

Deep Bronze indeed

Yes you will get a before and after - I've still got the NS door to do

 

[v6Max]

Another can of worms there Max :badgrin:

I think you could be onto a nice two tone effect for the car there..!!!!!!!!!

One advantage has to be that you have a blank canvas to work off and can really tailor it to your needs which is always easier in many ways.....

Good luck with the door card installs and thanks for my Monday morning read!! :wink:

R....T

Cheers Tim,

colour isn't an issue because I've a plan in mind for the car overall anyway :wink: