LY Clio 200, light mods and my other weekend toy

Dm93

Paid Member
Hi all,

Thought I'd put a post up and have somewhere to document my progress on the car. I'm a Honda man but having owned an EP3 many years ago I thought I'd give something French a go, my first car was a Saxo Furio and it was great for making me laugh at all it's strange quirks. Before this Clio my daily driver history was:

Citroen Saxo Furio, first car and loved it.

Honda Civic Type R EP3, got me into modifying cars.

Honda S2000 (still own).

£300 Saab 9-3 2.0 Diesel with moon miles, purchased as a run around when I stated a business. Made a point never to wash it and put as many dents and dings into it as possible, was great run.

Alfa Romeo Guiletta 2.0 Diesel, as you can imagine this had catastrophic failure and went for spares and repairs

2015 Golf R, very capable car and a perfect daily driver, got pretty good MPG, shame mine had so many issues the dealer ended up buying it back after about 6 months. In this 6 months the car was in working order for 45 days.

The Clio is a daily driver, I purchased it around a month ago now. It's on about 123k miles, purchased for £5500. It was advertised as a cat d due to light damage which I have photos of, but running a carvertical check on the reg and vin it's come back as no record of damage, so I've potentially had a win there.

61 reg, LY, yellow dot Recaros, cruise control etc etc. When I got it, the H&R springs and 20mm spacers, Ktec spoiler and front lip were on the car, along with red front and rear RS badges. It's also had a very nice ceramic coating at some point in recent years.

In the last month I've done the following:

New pedals with grip tape, found the OEM pedals VERY slippy

Map sensor cable tied and new o-ring

Upper torque arm polybushed

Toyosport manifold

Middle silencer delete (will be putting a resonated full system on when I find one for sale locally 2nd hand)

Recaro bolster tear patched with an iron on tap, looks OK until I have it properly fixed

4x 225/45/17 Yokohama Advan AD07 LTS (4x rear Lotus Elise OEM tyres, uses the same compound as the old AD08R, bargain at £250 a set for 2018 last production run)

Tie rod boot replaced (thanks eurocarparts for sending me the wrong one initially)

Headlights replaced with black insert units and LED bulb upgrade

Brakes repainted and new decals

Bosch aerotwin wipers

A can of BG44K run though the fuel system (it's like Redex but actually works magic, fully recommend this on any older car, have a look at
some youtube videos of this stuff)

I've got an ITG Maxogen on the way but it's not arrived yet

Future plans:

Sprint booster or pedal box, I think the accelerator pedal feel on these is pretty crap to be honest. Had a pedal box on my 2015 Golf R and it made a huge improvement.

Full cat back

Retrim the steering wheel with red accents, have the seatbelts rewebbed to red too

Front bumper respray


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I did say I'm a Honda man, here's my other car that I've owned and rebuild over the last 7/8 years. Full respray, subframe rebuild, fully polybushed, you name it it's been modified in some way. This is my forever car and will never be sold:

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IMG-9949.jpg
 
I love a Honda too. I have a DC2 tucked away in the garage.

I've always wanted a JDM spec DC2, beautiful cars. Have you had much rust issues with yours? I watch DannyDC2 on youtube and his was quite bad!

A quick update to the Clio though, the ITG Maxogen intake is on, car feels good but tempted to revert back to the OEM airbox and sell it. Sounds good, but a little bit too much for what I was after.

I've also installed a Gravity catback, my god was the fitment crap. Had to trim quite a bit of it off and sleeve it as it was far too long, but it's on now. Being a resonated I wasn't expecting it to be quite so loud on cold start. It's a little louder than I'd have liked, but once it's warmed up it's not too bad. I doubt there's much I can do to make the cold starts any better though. The 2nd cat is still in place so I'll just have to live with it for now.

I've got an upper gearbox powerflex bush to fit, but have been putting it off as it looks like a ballache of a job if the gearbox doesn't want to drop. I'll probably do it at the same time I refit the OEM intake.

Once the ITG sells I'll probably use the money to get a V3 sprint booster as I still hate the pedal response!
 
If you have changed the air box and exhaust you should consider a remap before buying a Spring Booster. Clios often end up with flat spots when exhausts have been changed and a remap can often make the throttle pedal more responsive.
 
If you have changed the air box and exhaust you should consider a remap before buying a Spring Booster. Clios often end up with flat spots when exhausts have been changed and a remap can often make the throttle pedal more responsive.

I'm quite fortunate that I've got no flat spot, car drives very well throughout the rev range!

The pedal feel isn't just the responsiveness, it's the dead travel and delay I hate. Feels totally disconnected from the car
 
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