I was at the Renault Sport & Alpine meeting in France last week. The days before the departure were quite unnerving mildly put. My Clio was booked in for the 12 year inspection a week before the departure. It got the whole belt package with all pulleys, new dephaser and so on. Basically everything except new spark plugs. It was planned to have the car at my local private Renault dealership for a full week before the one of the journey but I only got it back on tuesday the week after. To my surprise the dealership had changed the wishbones and tie rods without contacting me before.
This was not pre-decided and agreed on from my side. They also didn't communicated the delay to me so I went there on friday and was already mildly pissed at them after I got the message. I asked them to show me the old wishbones and rods to find out if it really was necessary to change them. I had done a extended tour with one of my Clio brothers here just two weeks before on which he also was behind the wheel. Both of us hadn't noticed anything that would have made a change necessary in our opinions. The owner of the dealership then stuck the ball-joints of the wishbones and rods into a vice and wanted to try to convince me that they were shot by jerking them around which actually wasn't convincing at all. I got a free loaner E-Twingo for the weekend and left the premise shaking my head.
When I called them on Tuesday to pick-up the car the owner told me the wishbones and rods would cost me an other 800,- € additionally to the already hefty price for the inspection. When I arrived he told me that he had miscalculated the price and it actually were 1.400,- € but he would kindly subtract 200,- €. I exploded and told him he must be nuts. I told him that it legally isn't allowed to go 20% over the before agreed quote and calculation and that I'm not willing to pay that much for the work. I finally gave him 500,- € (which is about what the cost of the parts) and told him that we're going to part ways because of the whole situation and the lost trust into his company.
Unfortunately the story doesn't ends here. On Wednesday I somehow had the feeling that something wrong. It wasn't something concrete but my 6th sense was tingeling so I called the father of an other Clio brother who has a garage for British classic cars like Rolly Royces, Jaguars and MGs. He was so kind to make room on a ramp and took a closer look. What he found was shocking. The car was massively leaking oil from the timing belt cover. It was so bad that oil was already dripping down on the right side of the traverse member. He suspected it came from a seal somewhere behind the cover.
I drove the car back to the dealership which had just done the inspection and told the owner to get this issue in order ASAP as I plan to drive to France on Thursday. He obviously wasn't happy to see me again but assured me that they would take care and work as fast as possible, To my relieve he told me the car will be ready in the early afternoon when I called him on Thursday. Turns out they hadn't changed the shaft seal from the dephaser and that's were the oil was leaking from. Fortunately this only delayed my departure by a couple of hours and I arrived at the home of an other Clio brother in the Black Forest where I was having a stopover late at night.
During the inspection by the father of my friend we had also discovered two other things that I still need to sort out with the garage. When I got the car back the first time I noticed that the sticker for the belt change was wrapped around the metal sheet where the upper torque arm is mounted to the chassis. I told the owner of the garage on Thursday that I want this removed and want a new one put on the inside of the hood instead. We already were suspicious of how the first sticker was placed. It turned out the garage had scratched the paint with a wrench or so and the sticker got put there to cover this up. Additionally I discovered that a hose for the A/C had bitemarks from a marten which weren't there before. It's not leaking but you can see the marks from the teeth on the rubber part near to the radiator. I just told the owner that we'll have to chat about this when I'm back.
So, that's the story from before the journey.
Here's a photo from the Autobahn car park where we met up with the Clios of the other participants. There also was a Twingo RS owner but he was late.
We actually got lucky with the weather as it wasn't as worse as forecasted. We only had some rain at the admission on saturday morning, during the night from saturday to sunday and a massive storm with some hail on sunday evening when the meeting was already done. For the main part it was really good weather and I even got a slight sunburn. The rain on saturday transported a lot of sand with it so I had half of the Sahara on my car.
Here's a shot with the whole German delegation.
Here's the link to my album from the meeting with over 100 photos.
12e Rassemblement Renault Sport & Alpine 2024