F1 #241 - Spiteful Meglio

S24nrc

Paid Member
Backstory:

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Long time lurker finally doing something worth posting about. Bought this car on New Years day 2021, fell in love instantly despite a slight crunch on 3rd and 4th, which I factored into the cost of purchasing the car in the first place. Slave had gone, clutch was low and 3rd and 4th were pretty much toast, quick rebuild job done.

All goes well for a year, until the eve of our 2022 Nurburgring trip where 3rd/4th started catching a bit. Changed everything I could think of short of dropping the box out, had some awful engine mounts, new master, bled the slave up no joy.

I decided I'd save through the winter and get a gangsta spec TL4 built up with an LSD with a lightened flywheel etc for more roundabout carnage.

Roll around Friday gone and after a winter of getting no worse and no better, my clutch pedal sticks to the floor half a mile into my commute home through Liverpool City center... Not ideal.

Limped back to the unit with lots of pumping the pedal up to get off the line, made it 5 meters from the door before the final seal holding any brake fluid in the clutch circuit failed. Queue a few of the lads paid with beers and pizza and the front end was dropped out in about 6 hours. It was actually one of the easier engines I've had to take out, big fan of how Renault bolts don't tend to rust and snap like jap stuff I've worked on in the past.

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Queue various stages of grief and reasoning. Eventually decided that for the money it would cost to do the box properly (if you could even get parts) coupled with the 120k mile engine needing belts and various leaks fixing, that a Megane conversion made the most sense. Man maths at its finest

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The stars then aligned and a lowish mileage R26 setup previously converted by Custom Productions popped up for sale. Queue some frantic asking for a favour from a mate with a van and a deposit was placed. I should have my hands on it by Saturday.
 
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Slow progress on the Clio...

Mates Evo had some fuel pump issues so we escalated and decided that stripping the entire back end out and restoring the underbody metal was a logical step to take

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And 3 hours later

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In the meantime I've finished stripping the Clio, engine looms out, subframes stripped down and some snapped bolts have been sorted. Got plenty of brackets to tidy up and a few bushings I'd like to do whilst everything is in bits. In an ideal world I'd be getting an engine in this weekend but I'm still on the hunt for a decent setup that isn't on 1**,*** miles.

I also inherited this absolute beast to cut about in from my nan whilst the Clio is off the road:

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If I don't have an engine by this weekend I'm supercharging the Verso...
 
Just supercharge the Verso. Please.

I've lowered it using some old Tein springs I had lying around off my Yaris T-Sport and it actually goes half well for a high sided boat with budget 175/65's. I have a Whiteline rear anti roll bar and a set of 15's with PS3's on knocking round that would turn it into a properly quick wheelchair transporter :sunglasses:

Always wanted to supercharge my T Sport when I was younger but I went through 3 engines NA doing trackdays, let alone piling boost into it :tearsofjoy:
 
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I've lowered it using some old Tein springs I had lying around off my Yaris T-Sport and it actually goes half well for a high sided boat with budget 175/65's. I have a Whiteline rear anti roll bar and a set of 15's with PS3's on knocking round that would turn it into a properly quick wheelchair transporter :sunglasses:

Always wanted to supercharge my T Sport when I was younger but I went through 3 engines NA doing trackdays, let alone piling boost into it :tearsofjoy:
I bet it would be a right laugh with some sticky tyres!
Maybe it would be 4th time lucky, who knows
 
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Gave the nan bus a good mop and put my old wheels on.

Megane setup is getting picked up tomorrow evening. I was going to rent a van but for the near 200 quid I'm getting charged as I'm under 25 I've decided I'll put the factory springs back in the Verso tonight.

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Still want a supercharger...
 
Yet more factual proof that Yaris Verso's are gods own motor.

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Back to the HQ/shed by 1:30am after setting out after work on Wednesday, the nan bus took the extra weight in its stride. I didn't even need to take the lowering springs off

Thursday night involved stripping the engine and box apart ready for a SMF conversion and fresh belts etc. Turbo seems a bit tired with a decent bit of axial play, but I need to do some reading on that. Not massively bothered if it's wrote off as I do fancy a 250 turbo with 630 injectors.

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Will likely crack on with the rest of the tear down tonight. Hoping that a local specialist can do the Belts, rear main and cam cover seal for me at some point in next couple of weeks. Need to get the ECUs over to EFI for immobiliser cloning too. Payday on Monday will be a welcome sight
 
Been flat out with the car over the past week, so here's a few updates from the bank holiday.

Whilst waiting six decades for the large amount of cash I had parted with to be converted into parcels thrown onto my roof by the local Evri man, I rolled out the nan bus another cringe inducing ride with a severely overloaded rear end :sunglasses:

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This time was a trip to BTT Motorsport in Wigan for the cam belt, water pump and rear main seal to be replaced.

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24 hours later and I was back to another horrendous bit of motorway driving with the boat anchor in the boot. Thanks George and Archie @ BTT for sorting me out! I'd have made a right mess of this job if I'd attempted this myself.

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Next job was build up the engine with all the fresh gaskets, better organisation would've been a good shout as the "pick it up from where I dropped it 2 weeks ago" wasn't working too well...

Still, after having to mess around cleaning up threads and releasing nuts frozen to exhaust manifold studs etc, we managed to get most of an engine assembled. I purposely left off the alternator and the aircon compressor because I didn't fancy any more weight than necessary on an engine crane so old you'd wonder what a T-Rex would've used it for.

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Going to leave this creative bit of engineering involving an NB MX-5 brake disk, an M10 nut and bolt and the crank spigot bearing here...

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Fancy TTV flywheel with a nice fresh spigot bearing. Shame that this is in the gearbox never to be seen again because its a gorgeous bit of engineering, unlike our slide hammer.

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Box on! surprisingly easy to slide on, we didn't have a clutch alignment tool to hand so I expected this to be a horrid job. ND0 is a noticeably beefier box compared to a TL4. Fresh shaft seals and new slave with an R26R clutch should hopefully make it a nice fit and forget option, instead of fit and panic every time you drive it and it doesn't take a gear smoothly.

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Lumped the engine in on Sunday afternoon. Coolant and wiring next, the bit I've been dreading...

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Took one look at the wiring after releasing the loom tape and decided that was a problem for another time, instead I decided swivel hubs would be a nice relaxing bit of spannering to round out the bank holiday - as per usual with any Mk3 suspension work, I got 5 minutes in and considered setting fire to it, then financing an A180d and taking up collecting War Hammer. Or stamps. Or literally anything else.

Next update will be me trying not to cry as I diagnose various wiring issues over the past few days...
 
Fancy TTV flywheel with a nice fresh spigot bearing. Shame that this is in the gearbox never to be seen again because its a gorgeous bit of engineering, unlike our slide hammer.

Guess what started blowing oil out the dipstick, turbo unions, filler cap and breathers. 2 detted pistons and a massive blow by issue later and we're seeing that nice shiny TTV flywheel again this weekend.
 
Need to start running through and updating this, been some cracking turns in the road so far.

Saturday May 20th - Car on the ROAD very good yes. All seems to work, thing feels absolutely ballistic. Few teething issues around cooling and ducting, but properly secured under trays and a good bleed of the coolant set up helped massively. Car booked in for fresh PS5 all around and an Alignment and it should be good to go for Germany in August.

Within about 2 weeks once I started using the car properly I noticed some weird behaviour. Putting your foot down from 50 to 70 in 6th gear would result in some pretty impressive James Bond esque smoke clouds billowing out the back on overrun. Weird. No smoke when revved, after being sat or anything similar to that. In my head, this points at Turbo seals, which is a pretty common thing with TD04's. The seals on them are pretty crap and require a decent amount of back pressure on them to help keep the oil where it should be, a 3 inch decat doesn't provide this.

20th June - Full of hope I knock the lambda sensor off and stick the inspection camera in.

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Doesn't look like much oil is getting past that...

Moving onto the worst case scenario, lets have a look at the pistons!

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lots of swearing

Now, at this point we'd just finished booking our ferry, accommodation and everything else required for the Nürburgring trip on the 26th July. Like F*** was I missing that.

So, 24th June, car back up on stands and front end stripped off and ready for the engine to come out. Next day I got the engine out, split the box and disassembled the Ancillaries. Danny from Custom Production sorted me out a new engine in VERY good condition with my old one as part ex. This new engine compression tested higher cold than my last one did hot lol.

Loaded the dead lump up in the mighty Verso for the third time and Drove down to Doncaster July 1st, which leaves me at a nice round 25 days to rebuild the car, and get it mapped with various upgrades to prevent murdering another F4R... Easy.
 
In typical #241 fashion, its spat another engine out. Could you be arsed?

But that's a tale for a future post! Back to July...

So after getting the engine back home I threw it in the stand and started disassembling it. I found all sorts of "interesting" fixes from the previous owner of this engine, however as promised, internally it was absolutely immaculate.

Some of the s**t I dealt with included:
  • The most hideous ali-express spec coilpacks I've ever come across.
  • The lambda sensor loom securing clamp was being used to hold in cylinder 3's coil pack. This was placed under one of the bolts for the cam caps and bent in a fashion where the coil pack roughly stayed in the bore.
  • Every other coilpack was equally threadless.
  • Cheap nasty oil filter
  • Cheap nasty spark plugs
  • A new cambelt! shame it was a cheap nasty one...
Not to worry, another expensive order in at Engine Dynamics consisting of a full gasket kit, belt kit, new Deka 630cc injectors and a few other parts that made sense to change whilst the engine was out and easy to get to. I rented genuine timing tools from Wheeler Motorsport and got to it.

12th July

Engines cleaned, bodges fixed. Timing belt fitted alongside the turbo set up with a heat wrapped downpipe this time - in hindsight I should have done this last time but I frankly couldn't be arsed with the itchy arms for 2 weeks afterwards. Weirdly I was missing a bolt from the turbo drain that went straight into the main CHRA housing, something I'd never touched during my ownership of said turbo. Easy fix, fitted from the old knackered one with some loctite. Assuming it does anything at glowing turbo temperatures.

The (mostly) finished product:

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I then took a couple days off work for a long weekend to get the thing built, and this is where the arse fell out of the schedule.

This is a rough timeline of my descent into insanity.

Saturday 15th: Build up engine and box combo, fit all the heat shielding into the bay and tidy up all the bits that are a pain to get to. Hang the engine in the bay, Shafts and suspension all back in and fluids filled.

Sunday 16th: Bleed the clutch up. S**t job so get it out the way first. Except it doesn't start to bleed up and sounds like snapped plastic. Great. Try various pressure bleeders, syringes, reverse bleeding etc but no joy. Back out it all comes to split the box and inspect. Now at this point I was having a bit of a head loss, and wasn't rushing, but also wasn't deploying all 5 brain cells to maximum effect. I took the weight of the engine with the crane, popped the mounts off and started to drop the engine out. I thought I'd taken the slack out of the straps I was using to lift, but apparently not and the full force of the engine/box combo slipped 3 inches suddenly onto the subframe. This is great if you want to split the in car steering column in half and pull the universal join out the bottom of the car. It will also crack your downpipe, and cause untold other carnage via butterfly effects.

At this point I was very much struggling to see how I was going to be on that ferry in 9 days time...
 

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