Car splutters after exhaust change

[Bro]

Hello my fellow Clio owners

I'm new to this forum but it has been very useful to me these past few month of owning my Clio 197.

Ever since owning the car Its always had the hesitation when you put your foot down, I've read this is a common problem. I decided to cut the middle silencer out and replace it with a stainless straight pipe. It sounds nice and makes a nice pop every now and again but the hesitation has become a big problem.

When I put my foot down at low revs it violently jerks and splutters like it wants to go but it can't. If I take the revs up slowly or do 3500 revs then put my foot down a little it's fine. It also seems I have to change down gears more when going up a hill.

I've heard a remap can get rid of the problem but the issue is with my insurance, I don't think they'll insure me.

If anyone's got any suggestions it would be much appreciated.

Don't say cutting the silencer out was a bad idea because it's a bit late for that

Thanks

 

[lewishunter98]

Completely normal after changing the exhaust on these, feels like its a misfire almost, really hesitant etc. remap would help massively with this. Probably worth asking your insurance to see what they say to a remap.

 

[Sparky197]

Cutting out the silencer was a bad idea

Joking aside mate
I had same issue when I bought it
Bought a direnza cat back and it massively improved it

 

[NickD]

Remap aside, this sort of question comes up a lot on car forums about "modification." While I am not your insurer, since you are not attempting to re-map to improve the overall performance, and by that I mean you are trying take it beyond the original performance envelope of Renault, then I personally would regard this more as maintenance in the same way as tuning or balancing carburettors would be. If you were involved in a really serious incident I would hope that any legal team would be able to argue this successfully. There are sectors of the insurance market and particularly those that that are on Gocomparethe Merekat.com that only want "standard" and their business model will not allow anything outside of that and so saying your car is modified will mean they will not insure you. Others will want to charge you even if they perceive no increase in policy risk because someone has to answer the phone to make those policy notes and their wages need paying.
All that said, I am not saying do not tell your insurance company, insurance is based on trust. Do you consider a remap and modification or maintenance. I would however, if you are worried about not being insured because of modifications, be more concerned that you have, as far as a insurance assessor is concerned, very obviously modified the exhaust and those modifications are most frequently made to improve the performance of your car.

 

[Johnny 99]

From memory insurers (Green light) weren't concerned about the remap if power increase was less than 10%. RS Tuning did the remap after work fitted my Cobra exhaust & it showed 188bhp, which is a pretty typical output on their rolling road. More importantly than headline figures the driveability was much better. A much smoother power delivery and no flat spot. I recommend RS Tuning.

 

[Bro]

Remap aside, this sort of question comes up a lot on car forums about "modification." While I am not your insurer, since you are not attempting to re-map to improve the overall performance, and by that I mean you are trying take it beyond the original performance envelope of Renault, then I personally would regard this more as maintenance in the same way as tuning or balancing carburettors would be. If you were involved in a really serious incident I would hope that any legal team would be able to argue this successfully. There are sectors of the insurance market and particularly those that that are on Gocomparethe Merekat.com that only want "standard" and their business model will not allow anything outside of that and so saying your car is modified will mean they will not insure you. Others will want to charge you even if they perceive no increase in policy risk because someone has to answer the phone to make those policy notes and their wages need paying.
All that said, I am not saying do not tell your insurance company, insurance is based on trust. Do you consider a remap and modification or maintenance. I would however, if you are worried about not being insured because of modifications, be more concerned that you have, as far as a insurance assessor is concerned, very obviously modified the exhaust and those modifications are most frequently made to improve the performance of your car.

Thanks for your reply

I was thinking the same thing as you. Im not trying to get more bhp Im just trying to tune it so wouldn't think it would be a problem. Ill have to give them a call and see what they say about it. I would also say that the exhaust modification is not for performance and more of a cosmetic modification as the insurance companies call it. If Im not wrong the original silencer is straight through anyway? and the new stainless one is obviously straight through. This could be classed as maintenance because if the old silencer was rusted/broken this is a cheaper solution just to put a small bit of pipe in

 

[petercronin]

As mentioned above a good custom remap will help massively, RS Tuning, EFI or Engine Dynamics are the go to guys. They’ll all make the car much more drivable, you’ll probably not end up with much (if any) more power and definitely won’t be over what the car should have.

Unfortunately as for insurance it’s a tricky one, depending on who you’re with they might point blank refuse to cover you - even if you point out that the car will almost certainly have less power than it officially should have. I’m assuming you haven’t told them about the centre section removal? If that’s the case, a remap on top of that isn’t going to change much at the moment. If the worst happened and they needed to look at your car they’re going to see the exhaust mod quite easily and potentially cancel the insurance, I can’t imagine them digging through the ECU to see what the code is after finding that. If something happened where the police were involved though they might. They’ll want as much ammo for court as they can get.

Id suggest speak to your insurance company and ask what they would charge (if anything) to have these put on. Make sure you explain that the remap is not a power increasing thing just a drivability change. If they refuse or want to charge silly money there’s plenty of specialists insurers around who are more than happy to cover mods. Look into one of them and you can add as many as you want on and don’t need to worry about not being insured. Mine for example I can chop and change mods every day and it doesn’t cost a penny more unless I go over a certain power increase.

 

[DAN@ADRIAN FLUX]

Hi,
If you need any help with insurance for a re-map then please feel free to drop me a line. I'd be only too pleased to try and help out.
Regards,
Dan.