You'll have to forgive the pictures, I haven't really been taking any great ones since I bought this car a few months ago. I'll make more of an effort from now on. I previously had a convertible E46 M3 which I absolutely loved but the running costs and maintenance were starting to become a LOT. I also didn't really use it for track days, I had an MX5 for that, but I needed just one car. The megane's seemed to fit the bill as a good daily driver and something I can use on track too with low maintenance costs. I started searching ebay and found a white 250 cup locally for a decent price, had a good service history and only 62k miles. After a test drive I fell in love with it so brought it home. It was on winter snow tyres - the previous owner did a lot of travelling abroad and it pretty much hadn't moved since last year. So I went out and bought a set of Michelin Pilot Sport 4's The next thing I noticed was the utterly shit stereo and after reading through some threads on here I found the lack of tweeters a bit of a dick move from Renault so did some hunting on ebay and managed to find some genuine bose tweeters from Latvia!!
I took the car to FCS, on the RickyP stand and did a bit of a test session or two on track Unfortunately the brakes overheated massively and even after a friend told me to remove the little air deflectors under the front bumper I still had a lot of problems with juddering and overheating So I replaced the front discs - managed to get some Brembo HC discs from eurocarparts during a weekend sale for somewhere around £120 for the pair Changed from the grooved to the later solid discs I then spent a few weeks collecting parts... H&R Springs (that bizarrely I got £30 cheaper from Amazon!!) New plain rear discs from roadtrackraceparts (complete with abs ring and bearing) Brembo rear pads also from RTR And an Axston subwoofer to fit in the spare wheel well, something I had seen on a progress blog on here and it looked really good so I ordered it from Germany After a lot of swearing and cut knuckles I managed to get the subwoofer fitted by routing a power cable through the firewall gromet (after removing the glovebox), and taking the rear panels off to patch into the spare tweeter cable from the rear speakers. Had to order new clips for the rear panels as a ton of them broke ( typical French car ) Massively impressed with the subwoofer, it doesn't kick in much unless the volume is high on the stereo, even though the gain is set to maximum but when it does kick in it's fantastic. Really deep bass, easily equivalent to seperate amps and sub boxes I've had in the past. I think it would all work better with that little amplifier a lot of people fit behind the glovebox just to bring the high level inputs up a bit, that's on my list to do soon. I fitted new front discs myself, but decided the rears and the springs could go to a garage as fitting the springs sounded a handful I had last week off work so took a trip to Midland Renault Specialist to see Mark I usually do all the work on my cars myself but Mark quoted me a fantastic price and mucking about with removing the front hubs on my driveway to fit the springs seemed too much mucking about ( I'm getting old... ) And a crap photo that I took on a drive out to the coast with friends later in the week to show it sitting a bit lower
The exhaust trim was flaking and had gone all green and corroded I took it off to paint it, but after sanding it down and starting to paint I lost interest ( I hate painting and bodywork stuff ) So I ordered a new one from Renault Not cheap at £132 but makes a big difference to tidying up the back end The paintwork is in ok condition, few stone chips I want to get sorted, a bit of weird bubbling on the rear bumper you can see at the top of the last pic, and kind of a crappy dent repair on the passenger rear arch... but for an 8 year old car not bad. One thing was really pissing me off though - swirl marks EVERYWHERE. When the sun hit it looked really bad. So this weekend I spent 8 hours doing some basic paint correction with an orbital polisher, hand polishing, hand waxing. Pretty pleased with the results for a DIY job. I used to be a valeter many many years ago but now I sit behind a desk so I'm a bit rusty. Either way she came out looking a lot cleaner Just..... DESPERATELY needs wheel spacers since lowering lol I've just ordered the 20mm kit from K-Tec so when that turns up I'll get the wheels properly cleaned and waxed and take her out for some nicer photos. Done a few other bits and pieces but they've just been maintenance stuff really. Bulb had blown behind the heater controls so swapped that out. Rear number plate lights had fallen apart and rusted so fitted two new ones and sorted out the cabling where the rusted pin had snapped off in the connector. Chopped the center section out the exhaust too. Much nicer with a few pops and burbles and only cost £50 for the pipe, cut it off myself using a pipe cutter and bolted on in 20 minutes flat. The car had a really crappy K&N bolt-on filter fitted, looked like it should have been on a citroen AX, so I binned that and fitted an ITG for now Also found a water leak coming from the front bumper which turned out to be a hole worn in one of the headlight washer hoses, so pulled the bumper off and replaced with some halfords hose, cable tied neatly out the way to stop the rubbing happening again
Few more random pics from having the air con regassed, maintenance, a few from FCS Sorry the pictures are all kinda out of order - bit of a dump of the last few months of ownership. I'll keep the thread up to date as I do more.. spacers next!! I have a flickr account where some of my other photos go - car shows, air shows, motorsport stuff.... https://www.flickr.com/photos/phil_barker/ And instagram https://www.instagram.com/phil_barker/ The spec of the car when I bought it was pretty standard RS Tuning remap to somewhere around 300bhp. RSMonitor Wheels had just been freshly refurbished.. that's pretty much it Spacers should be on this week, then ordering a CAE shifter from K-Tec
Nice updates. Got a few routine bits of maintenance to do on mine soon when I get a chance. Really tempted to get a small subwoofer with built in amp for the boot. Take it from what you have said above that you would recommend it. I intend to get a spare wheel so will probably get a small external one.
Yes I'd 100% recommend the sub, I was going to go with one of the underseat ones and just screw it to the back seats but as I'm not carrying a spare this seemed a good stealthy option It's soooo much nicer to actually have some bass to the sound.
Are these the tweeters you bought? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-TWEETE...-SCENIC-3-LAGUNA-3-ORIGINAL-OEM-/322897333750
Cool. It is definately the bass which distorts on the standard set-up once you turn the sound up. My local car audio place have recommended the same set up, so think I will go for it.
I bought mine from Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0086WQCEC/?tag=rsmeg-21 It took a few days and came from germany Also the hole in the middle isn't big enough to sit over the spare wheel anchor point - so I used some wooden slats below the sub to lift it up - with velcro to hold it in place Then I screwed some more wooden slats into the carpet boot floor to rest on the sub top and make it a bit more rigid as I sometimes have my bike in the boot.
After a successful group buy on the CAE - mine arrived very quickly from K-Tec along with a friends. Fitted both of them this weekend Easy enough to do - takes about an hour to fit the shifter. Did the reinforcing bracket in the engine bay on mine and that was a pig of a job as you have to remove ECU/Battery etc.. etc.. to get to it and then no room at all to drill the holes you need to make. But it's all done and I'm super happy A much better driving experience now with crisp, short, sharp gear changes. Absolutely love it!!
