We got a few jobs done on the Clio over the weekend.
First job was to replace the old sun strip that had bubbled and perished. It had been on the Clio for a few years so I had done well as a cheap bit of vinyl from eBay. It was a horrible job removing the old sun strip as the black plastic peeled off and left about 50% of the adhesive stuck to the windscreen. After using a lot of glue and tar remover the glue was off of the windscreen. The new sun strip was from a chap on Instagram called @taylormadedecals. I told him what I wanted and sent over some image files and he then printed it out on air release vinyl.
The air release vinyl was a lot easier to use when the sun strip went on to the car. I think that the new sun strip looks good. We will soon find out if the windscreen wipers are going to ruin the sun strip and either tear it off, or scratch off the design.
The next task was to replace the door kick plates. I had seen a French chap selling kick plates on Instagram and got in touch with him about 2 months ago. He sent me some yellow and black kick plates but the first set he sent me did not have enough lacquer on them and were peeling when they arrived. He was really good about the issue and sent me out another set free of charge.
@EthanMenace removed the old silver kick plates with some fishing line and then left me the task of trying to get the old foam backed adhesive off of the side skirts. Another horrible job which required a lot of scraping with a trim removal tool and more glue and tar remover.
When all of the glue remnants had been removed the new kick plates were stuck down.
The combination of the yellow and black compliments the existing colour scheme in the car.
The third job was to replace the exhaust clamp at the rear of the car where the centre section and back box connect. Every 6 months or so our exhaust clamp decides it has had enough and then the elbow of the exhaust twists and ends up dipping on the rear axle. Hopefully the new exhaust clamp will last longer than 6 months this time.
We are off to Snetterton tomorrow, 2nd June 2026, for a MSV track day to test out the new geo settings on the Clio and see if the rear toe is okay, or too much. I gave the Clio a quake clean to make sure it was presentable for the track day.
Provided that noting goes terribly wrong at Snetterton the next task will be to put in a new clutch.
The gear changes still are not quite right and it was cheaper to buy a new clutch than rebuild the gearbox so we thought why not? When the old clutch comes out we will see if it is damaged at all, if it is not we will still put in the new clutch, make sure the slave is fully primed and hope for the best. We would ideally like to have the gear change issue sorted before we head off to the Nurburgring at the end of June 2026. The only other task, at the moment, that we need to sort out before we go to Germany is to take off the rear dampers and drop them in to Gazmatic to get them serviced. One of the rear dampers is weeping.