Hi all, Most people will already recognise or know the car from the other site, but i will try to summarise my 3 year journey of megane sport ownership please bare with me as im only allowed to upload 4 images at a time. Early spring of 2010 i decided that i wanted a newer car that would be more reliable and sensible as a everyday car, so after looking at a few options i decided i wanted a megane R26. I had gone to look at a few different meganes around Scotland and finally decided on this one: purchased the car with 16,000 miles on the clock and one 52 year old previous owner when i purchased the car i had promised myself i wasnt going to modify it in any way shape or form....but that didnt last long! After owning the car for just 2 weeks i felt the car needed a bit more power, so after parting with some money this arrived soon after having the car remapped i purchased a itg panel filter and some forge silicone hoses and forge motorsport dump valve kit Everything fitted
soon after fitting all of the above i put the car on a rolling road and found the car seriously under powered at 243bhp!! quick phone call to Paul at rstuning and it was apparent i had fitted the wrong spark plugs when i serviced the car (bosch super spark 4's)so changed the plugs back to standard and the increase in performance was very noticeable After a couple of months i started to want even more power and found the stage 1 remap a bit flat, so managed to pick up forge intercooler at a reasonable price.
Soon after this my miltek decat pipe and 3" k-tec exhaust system arrived. Also after a group buy i set up i managed to get a forge actuator with yellow spring at a good price so it would have been rude not to buy one. so after a 8 hour round trip to rstuning in leeds to let paul work his magic the car now had 276bhp and 325lbft. This made the car alot more fun to drive and the extra torque throughout the rev range made for interesting overtaking.
After a clean and the above parts fitted the car look like this: Apart from wanting to upgrade the brakes as i felt the standard setup was no longer adequate and struggling to stop the vehicle i was happy with the car no intention to modify the car any further.
So a couple of months had passed and the car was running well, but then one night i was bringing my car into my workplace as i was on call, the car stuttered which i accelerated through and to my horror i heard a loud bang! and a huge cloud of white smoke. At this point my heart sank as i knew it was terminal! after removing the front end i found a huge hole in the block on cylinder 1! At this point i had to decide whether to return the car back to standard or push on and fit a fully forged engine....obviously because i had decided to keep this car sensible and standard i opted for the forged engine build, so a few calls to rstuning and paul was on the case.
After finally deciding on engine spec i received the call to say my engine was ready for collection. So early friday morning i got a loan of a van from my work and embarked on the 500 mile round trip to collect my engine. engine spec was CP low compression pistons cat cam rods cat cam camshafts fully balanced bottom end acl race bearings new oil pump new water pump timing belt ngk iridium spark plugs helix smf and organic cluch renault gaskets and seals. at this point i had also purchased another forge motorsport front mount intercooler (brand new), new standard injectors and enough mineral oil and oil filters to run the engine in.
New standard injectors to go with the new engine old engine removed and time to swap all the parts over. swapped all the parts from the old block to the new one and fitted my standard turbo actuator ready for the standard map to be put back on to run the engine in. New engine in place
So come the monday afternoon the car was up and running, washed and back on the road, ready to be run in. so now that the car was back together i decided i would fully strip the old engine to see what let go! With the sump off and head removed this is what i found:
After changing the oil and filter at 50, 100, 200, 500 and 1000 miles, i finally changed the oil to millers cro 10w60 fully synthetic and once again carried out the 500 mile round trip to get 630cc injectors and the engine remapped to suit both injectors and high lift cams. car made 278.7bhp and 320lbft also when i was down collecting my engine i picked up my new PF330mm disc kit. after speaking to Ed (liquidF1) i decided that pagid rs5 front pads and pagid rs4-4 carbon rear pads would be the best choice for my needs, so i contacted pagid and ordered them. (Sorry no pics) New brakes fitted and i can say their still my favourite mod on the car. Seems no matter how hard or often you use them they just refuse to fade and stop the car very quickly! i then decided i was going to use the engines potential, so after talking to Lee at owen developments i purchased a gtx3071r turbocharger with tial vband turbine housing, race bearings, but once the turbo arrived it was clear the compressor cover inlet was too large at 4 inch (asked for 3 inch cover) and wouldnt fit, so had to send the unit back. At this point owen developments couldnt provide me with the correct turbo so refunded my money. I finally got fed up chasing power figures and decided to concentrate on changing the look of the car and cleaning it up, so ordered r26r alloy wheels from ads and also a .R rear spoiler. r26r spoiler painted Also got the mirror covers and bullets painted black to go with the new wheels
New wheels, bullets, mirror covers fitted and new number plates fitted The next job was to fit the r26.R spoiler and with the help of the 15ft 7" Jamiecrookston the spoiler was eventually fitted, but what a nightmare it was trying to remove the glue! Big thanks to Jamie and Stevo for helping out. Next job was to find centre caps to which i decided carbon fibre ones would look better with the .R wheels and also compliment future mods... Pic of the new centre caps fitted Shortly after deciding to go with carbon centre caps i managed to secure the purchase of a genuine r26.R carbon bonnet from liquidf1. Big thanks to Ed, top bloke I wasnt happy with how the carbon bonnet would look on my red car so i decided the only way it would be fitted to the car was if the top was painted to match the colour of the car, so the bonnet was sent to the painters.
In preparation for fcs2012 i set about cleaning, polishing and generally tidying up the engine bay and after buying some parts for cayman the engine bay was starting to look a bit more presentable. so fitted the painted engine parts and polished up various pipes and brackets, also fitted the new samco breather hose kit. Found myself a little ebay bargain and got a set of genuine .R headlights for around £170 delivered, so snapped them up and got them fitted to the car. eventually got the bonnet back from the painters 1 day before fcs2012 and with the help of jamie we frantically got the bonnet fitted aligned and the car washed for me leaving the next morning. Carbon bonnet painted and fitted
Picked up some carbon wrapped door handles which complimented the other carbon parts and went with the black parts now fitted to the car. managed to pick up a turbosmart kompact dump valve from a focus RS for free. [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif] [/FONT] brackets arrived from cayman forge boost pipes arrived next and definately look better than the standard ones, but caused alot of issues with vibrations and knocking.
Decided that i want more power from the car so picked up a forge blue actuator spring and a 3" decat pipe. At this point it seemed it was time to change my intake system and with the itg induction proving its worth and showing good gains i decided to build my own kit from samco silicone hoses, using billet joiners to help strenghten the construction and also use a larger itg filter. Finally after alot of cutting and modifying i finally managed to get the itg/samco induction kit to fit. With all the issues iv had with the forge boost pipes and eventually with the top bracket breaking off, forge motorsport sent me a new set of pipes which are a slightly different shape. managed to pick up another bargain in the shape of a standard turbo with 0 miles on it courtesy of fleebay, so will be sending this to AET to be converted into a hybrid.
Picked up a standard manifold and engine breather box from jamie230, so a quick clean and then off to the powder coater to be colour matched with the other engine parts. so i stripped the engine bay recently, masked off or removed any parts i didnt want to get paint on and sprayed the rocker cover silver, which i think has helped freshen up the engine bay. new powdercoated engine parts fitted and everything back together and i think it looks pretty good now next up will be to fit a hybrid turbo in the next couple of weeks and back down to see paul for another remap. thanks for looking.
Thanks for the comments guys The cars starting to take shape and has certainly changed alot from when i first bought it.
Don't think so mate. It does say you live in the same area as me, so maybe you've seen it parked at the trolley bay at the supermarket or something??? Lol
cheers mate. hopefully in the next month ill be at pauls to have the car mapped for a hybrid turbo, then next purchase will probably be nitron or ast coilovers...
cheers mate. im normally at my mates garage at the weekends so if your free give us a text and pop down (unless im working) not done much to my cars, but his 600bhp sierra cosworth is all up and running and is nearly ready for the road
Turbo nearly ready mate ? Dont go AST imo, the time you wait to get them is an absolute joke and the after sales is nearly non existent. Really takes away from such an amazing piece of kit though.
cheers lads cant wait either gray. its being fitted with a slightly larger 20T cartridge, billet compressor wheel and a slightly more aggressive cut back on the turbine blades, so all depends on what the turbine housing can flow.
