Not a great end to the day but I dare say anyone that has been driving on track and trying to push themselves will have had a incident like this!

Like others have said damage is only superficial on appearance... just means you can do a 197 front end swap now :wink:

I said this but Gav has other ideas! He wants to stick with the 200 front end.

Personally think the 197 is a better looking car but what do I know? :wink:

We may have sourced a white 200 bumper already, I might be able to rest easy knowing people are less likely to confuse it with a 1.5 dci clio :relieved:
 
I said this but Gav has other ideas! He wants to stick with the 200 front end.

Personally think the 197 is a better looking car but what do I know? :wink:
I’d agree with that but some might say that we’re slightly biased…

We may have sourced a white 200 bumper already, I might be able to rest easy knowing people are less likely to confuse it with a 1.5 dci clio :relieved:
My mate daily’s a dci clio and sends me photos of it saying it’s mine ironically hahah.
 
Here are the damage photos. The impact was on the driver side. The front edge of the chassis leg will need a bit of fettling to make it straight but the structural part of the leg is all good. The wings are sitting on the car straight and the bonnet is in the correct position.

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We are going to get another crash bar and that should give us a fairly good idea of how much the front of the chassis leg needs to be moved.

A small bracket at the top part of the drivers side arch liner needs bending back.

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We have hopefully found Clio 200 front end in white and will try to collect that this weekend.
 
@EthanMenace took a 9 hour round trip from Essex to Wrexham today to collect a Clio 200 front end in glacier white.

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This was a lucky FaceBook find where someone was breaking their Clio 200 was was selling a front bumper, core support and set of head lights as a package.

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We now have another set of silver headlights but will see if we can acquire some black insert headlights. At the moment I have got a drivers side black insert headlight with a cold air feed in it, a drivers side black insert headlight, a drivers side silver headlight, and a pair of silver headlights.

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The bumper has a few marks and scrapes on it but as Clio 200 front ends are hard to find I am just happy we have managed to get one in glacier white so quickly. The bumper has got a TRC splitter attached to it. If the splitter can come off without causing any damage then it is either going in the bin or to a new home. The tow eye cover has got a flat cut section in it for a tow eye so I would like to find another one. Unfortunately we have some trendy holes cut in the bumper that I can't do much about other than keep covered up with a number plate.

I have a chat with Alex from AW Motorsports on Friday night and we compared stories how we had both smashed our cars at opposite ends of the Bentley Straight at Snetterton last week. He suggested finding or buying a porta power kit to sort out the tweaked chassis leg. After searching the internet for a porta power kit I managed to buy one like this:


Hopefully this kind of unit will push the end of the tweaked chassis leg back in to position so that the crash bar will align and bolt up perfectly across the front of the car instead of us just making do with the chassis leg being 5mm out of position now.

@EthanMenace has produced a new set of brake ducts in yellow to go back on the car when it is all reassembled.

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The porta power kit arrived in the week.

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It is a Chineseum knock off of a proper Porta Power kit - this is a 10 ton kit. It is a pump and kit with various extensions and accessories for "bending" cars. Perfect for sorting out the tweaked chassis leg.

@EthanMenace spent the weekend removing parts from the car to use the porta power kit to push the tweaked chassis leg back to where it needed to be. The face of the chassis leg had been bent inwards and the front part of the chassis leg that connects with the radiator mount had moved about 5mm in towards the engine bay.

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We have acquired a few more parts to put right the damage I caused including a new crash bar. We have used this as a basic guide to work out how far the chassis leg needed to move. After some fettling with the port power kit the chassis leg was sitting exactly where it should be.

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The crash bar now bolts up as it should do.

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There are no wrinkles or ripples in the chassis leg. There is just a bit of flakey paint on the lower face of the chassis leg face that was painted with some white Hammerite paint to protect it from the elements.

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The drivers side of the radiator support bar is bit bent but that is not really a problem as these support bars are "consumable" these days due to rust. I might even see if we can get a Weeder Motorsport radiator support bar at some point.

Ethan inspected the brake pads from the front drivers side calliper as we knew the DS1.11 pads were getting low but did not know how low. One side was looking very low.

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The other side was pretty much finished with no pad material left. This might have contributed to my incident at Snetterton as the brakes were making some odd noises before I came to sudden stop at Brundle. I have checked the GoPro footage during that crash session and I definitely say to Ethan that the front brakes sound odd. The pads might have had small contributory factor in the whole brake and spin incident but I doubt it would have made much difference in the grand scheme of things.

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We have a set of part used DS Uno's that will go back on to the car when it is moving again although I suspect we will get another set of DS1.11s before we go to the Ring in July.

The car is slowly coming back together thanks to @EthanMenace's efforts. We have bought a new radiator as the old one had a puncture hole in the side after Snetterton. Coolant and anti-freeze have been ordered. Ethan decided that he did not want any green Renault type E coolant so we have gone with some Febi type D yellow coolant. I went to Romford today and picked up a few parts of the plastics that sit behind the bumper and in front of the engine bay.

Over the next few weeks @EthanMenace will start removing parts and installing the Cup Racer front end. He decided to put on an EE bracket to the front strut this weekend just for fun.

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I have ordered a 22mm Cup Racer anti-roll bar from R-Sport which should turn up over the next few weeks. Once we have that Ethan will take off the old sub frame and install the new bits. I was going to order some PowerFlex black 21mm bushes for the new ARM but Ethan has different ideas and wants to 3D print some 22mm bushes after getting some inspiration from Instagram.

We were due to go to Donington Park on Wednesday this week. We decided to postpone that date and get a credit from Track Obsession to use once the car is all back together.
 
You’re putting new discs on too right? :nomouth:
When we get new pads yes - but for the time being we will just be cheapskates and run the DS Unos on old discs. I can't see us doing more than a few hundred road miles and 2 track days on the shagged discs and DS Uno's. The Uno's will probably ruin the old discs anyway.