Lewis's RB Clio 197

Yeah the manifold is effectively brand new!

And full decat, as Chris said there's no EML on or anything, as I mentioned there's surprisingly no flatspot. Revs out really well infact!

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Gotta be mapped surely?
I've never had it mapped mate, it had the stock exhaust on when I bought it, the only mods were H&R springs, spacers and a K&N panel filter. Though saying that the guy didn't even know it was lowered.

The oreca never really gave a flatspot anyway, I think it's due to it being a 60mm system I think? Whatever the OEM size is as most aftermarket ones are 63.5 iirc. Plus being single exit and having 3 silencers I think it flows nicely. And the manifold being a well designed one helps too

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Little update. Just tinkering mostly.

Changed exhaust clamp up front as the old one that came with the oreca was terrible and it sounded a little blowy. Had these sitting around for ages but never changed them but it gave me an excuse to try out my new toy I bought at autosport

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Also put in a missing manifold stud that I somehow managed to lose when changing the manifold over (Chris @ beaniesport gave me one he had for free which was nice of him!) though putting it in was a nightmare and now my arm is super itchy thanks to the heat wrap.

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Also, picture of the new toy. Even ordered it in RB (or close enough). No more driving on wood to get the car in the air!

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Since installing the manifold I've needed to quieten the car down a fair bit because it is way too loud and with Bedford coming up on the 24th it had to be asap!

Went and picked up a couple cats to try and stick on from @TB Rich ! And while the weather was decent today I took full advantage of that and installed one of them.

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Had to cut it down slightly but it went on perfect. Plenty of silicone gasket maker stuff to seal it properly and jobs a good'un!

It's definitely quieter. Still loud. But it is an oreca so it's to be expected, I think I should be okay with track noise now. Absolute worst case I'll chuck the bung in!

Old silenced decat that comes with the oreca:
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"New" cat:

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I actually quite like the way this sounds now though. Makes cool noises still! Plus it still revs out really smoothly

Couple aesthetic changes in the works too

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Peeled the tints off as I never liked them, also took the black badges off and I actually much prefer it! Considering how recent the covers were they had seen better days.

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Going to make my door bullets silver again and maybe black bumpstrips with black door handles. (Matte black though not gloss).
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Also booked my first track day just now! Bedford autodrome on the 24th. Probably no updates until then, I'll just be bolt checking everything and making sure it's all sweet!

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How easy was removing the black diamond covers? Mine are looking similar so need removed.
Pain in the arse mate. If I'd have used a hairdryer or something it would have been much better but I was stupid and didn't.

The back one ended up pulling the whole badge out of the boot, but I just cleaned it all up and put a blob of tigerseal on each tab and put it back in

The black cover came off in about 10 pieces too [emoji23]

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Update: (Quite possibly the most exciting) Bedford Autodrome 24/02!

(Finally!) did my first track day in the clio and it was absolutely mega! Extremely wet in the morning, loads of standing water everywhere, very drizzly and overall just really greasy conditions, didn't feel like it was going to clear up anytime soon either. Not exactly ideal for NS2R's, so i was a bit apprehensive at first but I wasn't put off as i knew it was going to be a lot of fun, and that was my goal, to just have a good time.

Initial noise testing was hilarious, they tested the wrong side of the car and i got 85.6db static (Don't know how they didn't question that!) so i had a good laugh about that in the morning. But it was never static that i was worried about. It was the 87.5db driveby, i'd even gone as far as remoiving the induction kit and putting a new ramair filter in the stock airbox to help with this.

Literally went out for sighting laps and immeadiately realised just how slippy the track was! Came back in and said to my mate who was in a 275 cup-s also running NS2R's about how slippy i found it. So i thought to just drop the tyre pressures to around 28psi ish, go do some laps and see how i got on. Very understeery in the first session haha! Struggling to put any power down coming out of corners and I forgot to turn traction off so it was cutting in left right and centre. Had a lot of fun and just came back into the pits & had a good laugh about it though!

Went out again about shortly after to try get some more laps in and again, just super slippy, one of the chicanes there was absolutely soaked it was like driving through a bath and then the hairpin on to the main straight was the slippiest corner all day. Saying that the right hander on to the pit straight was very slippy, couple times it got a bit floaty going through there and if anything i just didn't want to bin it infront of everyone!

Soon realised at about 11.30 that i had 0 fuel however, 40 miles left in the tank so i called it at about 11.45 before i ran out of fuel and waited until lunch to go to the Shell down the road and refuel.

After lunch it had dried up a fair amount! Though it was difficult because a lot of the track was dry and lots of it was still very greasy, i went out for a proper session immediately after lunch to find barely anyone on track and i finally managed to get some actual heat in to the tyres and it was far better! Came in and they had go to about 30/31 psi ish so i kept them at the pressure they were for the rest of the day and it was getting better and better as the day went on!

Got to about 3pm and i had built up a lot of confidence, really started to push on and got some hard laps in trying to catch the big boys, got about 5/6 laps in and was behind my mate in his meg on the hairpin before the back straight and i saw a black flag! Thought 'ah ffs', lost focus of what i was doing and the back end kicked out on me! haha, caught it anyway and drove casually back to the pits to allow everything to cool down properly. And no-one to greet me at the pits to tell me off!? Anyway, figured i'd be going quite hard so allowed the car some cool down time before going back out.

My last session of the day i felt like i was flying! Really pushing through in the corners and i could feel just how much grip the car had to offer when the tyres were warm with the quaife and some actual dry track! Corner speed was getting on 15mph faster on some bends.

Anyway, to summarise. I am absolutely over the moon with how the car performed. The way it takes corners is just absolutely mega, the oreca makes all the right noises on upshifts and downshifts when it gets really hot & somehow didn't get black flagged all day! The clio didn't skip a beat all weekend in driving 130 miles there, 120 odd hard miles on track & then 130 miles home! (Which weren't exactly easy either). The quaife LSD is also unreal, it really does just pull you into the apex and is so confidence inspiring.

And finally, photos.

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I've only done Bedford once and that was for the clubs How Fast event in 2013. I absolutely loved that track. So much open space you really could go for it without fear of hitting anything.

I need to do it again.
 
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I've only done Bedford once and that was for the clubs How Fast event in 2013. I absolutely loved that track. So much open space you really could go for it without fear of hitting anything.

I need to do it again.
Yeah I thought it was really good! Seen a few people say it's boring and I can't see how!? Yes it's flat but it has so many different types of turns etc. Plus like you say, so much run off its not that scary to push on

I'll be going back for sure. Hopefully on a dry day
 
During the trackday I noticed a couple times mid session it would be difficult to find a gear, mostly second when downshifting.

After a bit of research it turned out a couple others had found this with 75w80 redline MTL and they'd found Castrol syntrans 75w90 to be a lot better. I also thought it might be that the slave needed bleeding potentially?

Went about ordering Everything I needed:

- 2L Castrol Syntrans 75w90
- Gearbox sump plug and washer
- Gearbox filler plug and washer

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So this morning I drained the old gearbox oil which had only covered about 1k since the gearbox swap and it was actually quite dirty, think this might be due to the gasket stuff when sealing the box up? Either way I was shocked at how dirty it was. And weirdly after managing to get both bottles of Castrol In (albeit with a little overspill) the old redline stuff only filled up about 1.5 of the Castrol bottles, so not enough for what these boxes take? Which I found weird.

While the box oil was draining I decided to bleed the clutch slave, with RBF660.

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Can honestly say the gearbox feels so much better, and if felt good beforehand! Changes are so smooth even from cold.

Oh and I ditched the blue (definitely RB colour matched [emoji23]) sunstrip and put a matte black one on, looks loads better!

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Looking at thruxton on the 30th of this month too.




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I had the same issue with the Redline oil on spirited drives but it's good to know there's a better oil out there.
 
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I thought the redline stuff was supposed to be tip top. Good to hear your box is better. And kudos for draining and filling it yourself. Fiddly job
 
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