Hi all, I thought I'd chuck my car on here for a bit of reading. I already have a project thread on CS.net So about 2 years ago I bought an Ultra Red 5 door LUX and Cup packed Megane 175. Pretty rare as there weren't many 5 doors that saw the cup pack (18" wheels, rear arb, no sunroof, 30mph+ ESP disengagement) and LUX pack (keyless entry, keyless start, full leather seats and door cards, cabasse radio, xenons) I was originally told it had been mapped to 201bhp and 330ftlb, but there was a catch, there was no proof of this! I didn't take this as gospel and assumed it was a dodgy flash map, in my head even before I'd bought the car I had plans to get it on a dyno. Sadly, even after 2 years and countless pennies I've still not had it near a dyno so can't really comment on figures. Throw into the mix that the turbo was never in great condition and the clutch wasn't either. A few pics from when I first got the car The mods when I first bought it H&R springs, Ramair panel filter, supposed Remap, R26.R spoiler, drug dealer tints, real carbon door bullets, R26 stickers, wind deflectors My plans were to clean it up and go through everything as I usually do with my car. Luckily the car had already had the swivel bearings done as well as brand new cup shocks and H&R springs a couple of months before I bought it, along with the wheels powdercoating. I did a bit of digging too and found that it was the car used in the Auto Express feature for diesel hot hatches Then I faced my first issue... The heater blower wouldn't work at all, turns out the guy before me had a dash cam and halfords just installed it into the blower fuse and tapped off of it. Nice one, so I dismantled the whole dashboard to try and solve it and all I needed was a bloody 30A fuse! Then the second issue, the guy had the wheels powdercoated at a cost of £450 but decided against new tyres, what a cheap arsewipe!! Which resulted in this Luckily I had a spare set of R26 wheels in the garage so just lobbed one on before buying new tyres. On this pic the car is just crying out for some rear spacers! I then swapped out the scabby front brakes for some Brembo Plain discs, some Mr Pink Pins and Mintex M1144 pads. I managed to get the pads, pins and discs all for under £140!! Someone on the Facebook group was selling a RS dCi sticker so I couldn't say no, my UR engine cover looked so bare with nothing on there I then replaced the radiator and AC condenser along with a new drier. What a pain in the arse job it was! Mainly because I'd never worked on a 175 before and was learning my way around the car Whilst I was there I added some silicone tape to the drivers side boost pipe. I'd previously owned a Clio dCi 100 so knew that these plastic pipes have a tendency to leak and rub away on the aluminium coolers Added some 19mm spacers to the rear so it actually has an arse Before pics After pics At this stage I had wanky tinted 4D plates. I'm no longer a fan of these and don't worry I have swapped them for some normal 4D ones (which I plan on getting rid of too) Ill post these in parts just to give a bit of room after each post
Forgot to mention, whilst the new condenser and rad were being ditted I painted my intercooler, something different and not to everyone's taste it would seem I then fitted a straight through exhaust to get rid of the backbox, I had hoped for a slight amount more noise but because of the cat and DPF it was still silent! Obviously I couldn't fit it all scabby looking At this point I'd had the car for 7 months and I'd already burnt through a fresh set of tyres. I found a set of 4 x 225/40/18 PS3's for £120 POSTED!! So I got my spare R26 wheels powdercoated black and had those fitted Each tyre had literally only rolled a car on the dockside, onto a car transporter and to a dealership where they were removed! They were all still that new they even had the little rubber spikes on the tread Wheels were powdercoated at Castle coatings in Bradford for a grand total of £1 per inch. So £72 for the megane wheels and £60 for the Clio wheels. Absolute bargain! Next job was the scabby torque mount, I'd heard it banging around when I was booting it so got a new mount and a powerflex insert I found cheap Old vs New But then I was still getting a slight knock. Turns out that the top mounts that the previous owner has fitted just before selling me the car had failed! Both of them completely torn... because they used the standard Megane white spiked ones instead of the 175 ones with the orange spike♂️ And this is apparently a "Renault Specialist" So off came everything Then I made luce easier using the genuine brake piston push back tool I also put a Ramair cone on too, sounded a lot better on boost. Before it just sounded a bit naff with the standard airbox and the Ramair panel filter
Great write up the Kyle These cars do seem to need our attention a lot, i have this engine in my Espace and it's great done nearly 180k miles now and still as sweat as it has always been, i must admit it doesn't get treated very well, but it does get serviced regularly. I do have a soft spot for the Dci Megane, i did have one 5 door in black, would have kept it if it was a 3 door, i did track it once, it was all standard except for better pads and Federal 595 tyres, it did very well even seeing off an Audi rs4 estate
Aye they're absolutely spot on cars. I've got a lot more posts to write up when I have some time Luckily this one has been looked after and I'll continue to look after it too I found that changing the oil every 8k for proper Elf Fulltech FE stuff and a genuine filter will stop that nasty chain wear. God knows why Renault decided 12k oil changes were a good idea
Hi and welcome, Nice project of yours, Yes indeed to the 2.0dci are so much fun, I only have 150bhp but a full rs lowered chassis setup and goodness me she handle like a train around a twisty. I have 210k miles on mine original engine/chain but serviced from almost new every 6kmiles, and never a trouble. good reliable and fun to drive. it still rev at 4.5-5krpm, pass its MOT every year, even emission, Are you from up north where in Yorkshire? i used to live in Darlo for 7 years, my wife is from there
Yeah its been a great car. You'll have to wait for more updates when I show what other bits have been done but it drives better than my track car Yeah, originally from Doncaster, now living in Bradford. Mines only on 132k and never failed an MOT and only ever had 1 advisory which was more of a note for tyre depths
More updates Tidying up bits My splitter was in the boot in the car ever since I bought it. I popped a couple of holes in it to add to the clips as they kept popping off and it started dropping Has been fine for over 18 months, win! The rear plastic lower bumper trim had peeled, I found a freshly painted one for £20. I picked up a pair of wings for my mate at the same time and he paid me a bit for diesel money so it essentially cost me nothing Clio 200 steering wheel, transforms the car completely! The standard R26 wheel felt so crap in comparison Exterior door handles painted gloss black. They were shoddily painted before so this was a step up. I couldn't be bothered to take them off the car though Seat belt cleanup Took my wheels off to give them a proper good going over Painted the rear grilles and the B pillar trims Whilst they were off I polished out the black mark near the right hand tip After B pillar trims
Must of taken you twice as long to mask the whole car off than it would’ve to take the handles off, they come off really easily
Good job, looks really nice with black handles: might do mines the same, chrome is peeling off, it looks horrible
Mechanicals Got everything ready in terms of swapping the gearbox. So I picked up a pair of lower arms that needed balljoints for £20... which had powerflex bushes in them! Winner winner Pressed the old bushes out, painted em and then pressed in some nice new TRW balljoints I'd wanted to put a diff in it too, manged to pick up a 250 LSD box with less than 27k on it for £200. Had my mate rebuild the box with new seals, bearings and put the diff in there and tolerance it Gearbox being fitted, the use of a ramp here saved my back so much! New wishbones, twist links and droplinks New OS driveshaft bearing Quite easy to do once the shaft is out. I also fitted a set of rebuilt hubs too, I put new wheel bearings, upper and lower swivel bearings and cleaned the inserts and hubs too Couldn't be bothered painting the hubs though, its only a daily Coated the wishbone mounting plates in ceramic to stop future corrosion Then the EGR started acting up so I bought a replacement for £30 posted, took it all off and gave it a good clean A few before and after snaps Thermostat changed, the car wasn't getting up to full temp unless I drove like a massive penis Fairly simple, just 3x10mm bolts after you've removed the battery, ECU and tray New OS engine mount 'Febi' branded but all they do is grind off the Renault markings. Exact same as a genuine part but 1/3 of the price Oh and this one annoyed me, Michelin PS3, got a slow puncture and then the sidewall just gave way one day on the A1 Oh and I put some bonnet struts on to save my head when working on it :joy:
More random pics, more random updates Added a sunstrip and got new 235/40/18 PS3's after the last ones... well... Had an annoying issue where my drivers side window would work for 1 second and then just stop and the window would go back down again. Turns out it was a dodgy window switch. I managed to bag 2 genuine switches on eBay for £10 posted!! Windows now work just fine again, it was annoying getting out at the gates at work to swipe my fob too I whipped my proper camera out for a couple of better pics but the headlights were really letting the front end down! Time to sort the headlights... Before After Much better and the light output was lots better too! Speaking of light output, I had a dodgy bulb which was annoyingly flickering. The previous owner paid Halfords £202 to replace both headlight bulbs, what a plum! These new ones cost me £32 and they're 10x better than the crapy Osram ones It just means you have to do this Pic of the light output, there is no streetlamp directly outside my house, the bulbs are just that bloody bright. Xenons will always be top of my list for greatest features ever, so much better than those candles Renault decided to put into their cars previously Replaced the naff Ramair filter with a proper AEM dryflow to protect the MAF and the turbo! Next update will be a big-ish one again lol
Now it's time to show you how much of a pain in the tits it is to do a waterpump on these I have copied most of this from my other thread So jack the car up, get the drivers wheel off, take the arch liner off and you can pretty much see nothing of the belt or any of the parts you need to get at Even removing the metal subframe support bracket gives you little to f**k all room! Renault love to give you loads of room to play with! So I started to take things off the car, first was to take the plastics off, then the engine mount, then the upper torque mount, the lower dogbone to free up the bottom, then the mount on the side of the engine what the engine mount bolts to. The 13mm bolts on this are stupid to get to and there is a tiny access hole to get a socket onto the 2 middle ones. The 2 front ones need the engine jacking up into certain positions so that you can get a swan neck spanner onto, the rear one is even more fun because no matter the engine position you have to have double-jointed inbred, bendy around corners backwards fingers, something I do not possess. You can see the size of the bolt that needs to be removed and the access around it in the 2nd pic, the 2nd pic is after UI've managed to get it half threaded in there too! So after removing all this s**t you still have about a flies c**k worth of space to fandangle about in to get at all the 10mm bolts holding everything on. I started with the waterpump first, removed the 3 10mm's holding the pulley on so I could get in behind it and undo the 3 10mm's holding the waterpump to the block. I lowered the engine and pushed it back so I could undo the 13mm holding the roller to the block and that came out easy enough. Jacked the engine back up and started trying to get the waterpump unsealed from the block, a bit of hammering and 2 tabs snapped on the waterpump itself it finally came free! It's sealed with an o-ring and they get rather tight in there. I pulled that and that's when all my issues began... Renault in their infinite wisdom put the chassis leg and waterpump in the same spot, the waterpump will not come out unless you jack the engine into a certain position and proper pry it forwards using your head to push on a piece of 2x4 shoved between the bulkhead and the turbo, then using your left hand to pull on the lifting eye and then your right hand to try and retrieve the waterpump. In the process of removing mine it came out in several pieces! Quite glad I replaced it as it was quite brittle So after getting the waterpump out of the block it didn't want to come out of the top so I just took the headlight support out as well as the screenwash bottle. This is the first time in history a screenwash bottle has been removed to do a waterpump ffs! I finally freed it from the car and threw it across the drive and tried to stop myself from screaming C*NNTTTT at the top of my lungs. I moved to the tensioner after having a breather, you can finally get to the upper 10mm holding it in with a swan neck spanner and long fingers. I got it out and it was still in good shape bar the noisy bearing. Cleaned everything down and then took the old expansion tank out, there's no point in going through all this effort and not putting a new expansion tank in there for the sake of £20 you might as well. Expansion tank back in, tensioner back in, now the waterpump... The last one came out in 3 pieces (4 if you include the pulley), putting the new one back in without breaking anything was a real f**king struggle, I was really and honestly ready to throw the towel in because no matter how hard I pushed and pulled the engine forwards it just didn't want to go in there! I had serious thoughts of sacking it off and was really demoralised (at this point it was about 2pm and I'd not drank or eaten since the night before so I was getting hangry too). A quick message into the group chat so the lads could share my frustration and probably laugh at me because I was being defeated by a big sack of red s**t. I laid on the engine and pulled with all my strength and locked the engine into place with my left arm, I was hoping the weight of it wouldn't snap my arm in 2 pieces tbh but at this point, any rational thinking was long gone, I got the waterpump back in the hole with the pulley attached!! THANK THE F*CKING LORD! I did a little James May dance after that and had a mini-mental party in my head. Just look at the state of the 'access' Renault give you. Honestly, it's easier to remove the engine! You can tell how brittle the old waterpump was from this picture Everything else went back together really easy, I took my time getting everything cleaned properly and even installed the little cap that covers the roller bearing to stop it failing prematurely. I went through a full can of 600ml brake clean too. Engine mount gave me a bit of s**t coming out but going back in it basically fell into place ffs, so did the torque mount. Took me a good hour and a half to put things back together as I'd removed the full front end of the car as you can see here Car all back together and went to bleed the cooling system... The car beeped and it lit up with 'Oil pressure fault', I immediately turned the car off and shat myself, left it a few mins and then started it again, but yet again it popped up after about 20 seconds of running. I turned it off packed up and then left it until the next day. I was pretty sure I'd bent up my already bent sump with jacking up the engine So a fresh head and new day I set out to get the sump pan done and dusted, luckily I had planned on replacing my rusty battered sump anyway so had all the gear in the garage at the ready! Old one off, old oil filter out, cleaned the mating surface with some brake cleaner and a razor. The new sump has dimple dies on it, presumably, the old-style sumps were s**t and dinted very easily so that's a little bonus. I cleaned the pickup, all the lower part of the engine inside the baffles and the oil galleries where oil flows back to the sump. I applied a nice thick layer of dirko to the new sump pan and offered it up making sure not to drop the thing! Nipped all the 8mm bolts finger tight and let it sit for 5 mins whilst it tacked off, after that, I went round and nipped them all up with the impact driver and then gave them a little oik with a 1/4 ratchet making sure to go around twice to make sure they're all tight. I'm not sure on torque settings but if it feels good enough then it will likely be sound, I mean who the f**k actually torques bolts on a sump pan ffs. Here's some pics before and after pics of the pan It was well a truly buggered!! Next job was the brakes. I knew the rears were getting low as the calipers were sticky, I didn't realise they were this bad Caught just in time, there was about 0.5mm left!! New R26 rear discs I paid £60 posted for, they just needed ABS rings. Bargain I bought some new genuine rear calipers as I couldnt be arsed refurbishing old naff ones when these are 70 euros each! You can tell the differences in the red's here though lol I fully refurbished a spare set of front Brembos though, thought I'd try something different with the sticker but I'm annoyed because it looks crap! Before After I'll re-do the sticker and paint when I get time/can be bothered haha. Brand new set of Brembo HC up front with new DS2500 pads and a set of HEL braided brake hoses. Mr Pink pins are a godsend with jobs like these too, easily the best £40 I have ever spent Old fluid New ATE Typ200, the colour difference is astounding! Bled everything 3 times and got every last bit of air and crud out of the lines. Went for a drive and bedded them in So I'm now basically caught up on the past 2 and a bit years of ownership. I've done a lot to the car and I've left a few things out to keep it easy to read and to the point. But there's still a lot more to do to the car which includes - New clutch, DMF & slave as the old one slips now, wish I'd have thrown one in when I did the gearbox but oh well. It did look fine and I have a £1500 receipt from the previous owner for a DMF and clutch. Ouch - Bigger turbo. I bought a 50 mile old Nissan branded X-Trail turbo. It looks the same as a GTA1752LV, either way it will do the job and is in far, far better condition than mine - New track rods & track rod ends which I might put onto a spare R26 rack I have in the garage - New Powerflex purple arb and rear beam bushes (Just ordered these from @George@RTR Parts ) - Stud and nut kid, I hate wheel bolts with a passion! - Decat and remove DPF, I'll probably do all of these together along with the turbo so then I can go for mapping and hopefully achieve around 220-230bhp. That would be lovely! There are smaller jobs I'd like to do in the meantime like sorting the wiring for the number plate lights as it's a bit shitty and someone used mastic to seal the connector into the bulb holder which now doesn't work. I thank everyone for reading these super long updates and appreciate your kind words Have one last picture to see this year out I'll more than likely update in the new year when I can sort out getting my clutch done and have a look at the bank balance to get the turbo swapped too Thanks again for reading
It drove like a completely different car mate. The diff made it come alive! So much so that I roasted the clutch
Got a new LUK clutch, DMF and CSC ready to put on. Just don't have any time It only slips when you try and press on
Hi man, nothing productive to add apart from Unreal looking car! Time and effort you've put in clearly is paying off. I'd love to do the diff from a 250, that would be mega.. Will definitely will be keeping up with this thread!!
I put a 250 cup diff in my DCi and to be honest its not really helping, just got back from a trip to the Ring and Spa, even in the wet i struggled to get it to spin up to get it to engage, only the last corner before the start finish straight i could get it to work, had to be quite brutal though, i was running Goodyear asymmetric 6's and the grip was amazing. In the dry on R888's nothing. Done 7 trackdays now and this car feels so planted, don't know if it the extra weight or the power/torque delivery.
