Black Phase II Dynamique

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Not the most exciting project thread you will have ever read guys and not much to show you just yet but here we go.

Having recently turned 20 I thought it was about time I learned how to drive. Didn't really have a clue what car I wanted and tried imagining what it would be like owning a few different ones. Long storey short I fell for the Clio and a friend recommended to check out this place so here I am.

Not had the car that long, bought it in September and passed first time on the 30th. Of course I don't want it to look like every other Dynamique on the road but I don't want to go over the top with it.

The car had 60k on it, has had 2 lady owners and was standard apart from worn red paint on the calipers :S

So far got round to doing, or more like had the money to do:

- Replaced the original battery with a calcium battery
- Bosch retrofit aeroblades
- Phillips Silvervisions
- Replaced the original head unit

Eventually decided to throw a bucket of water over it and get some pictures.

Apologies they aren't the best, they were quickly taken on my iPhone, I do intend to get a semi decent point and shoot at some stage.

Anyway the plan will be like most others on here (remember trying to keep it simple):

- Colour coding the exterior plastics (didn't look so bad when the car was dirty but this is a must)
- Sport grill
- Save up for some coilovers hopefully (looking for around 60mm or anything less monster truck, would appreciate any suggestions)
- Possibly get the alloys refurbed (would seem the previous owners weren't too great at reverse parking)

Don't really think it needs much more, though i'm thinking of a shorter aerial but don't want it to look chavy, any thoughts?

Thats all for now. I'll try remember to post some shots of any progress

Chris.

 

[Sam]

Some good ideas there mate.

Whats the service history like ? Has it had all its belts done and that ?

Sam!

 

[cliojack]

defnitly do what you said id also take the mud flaps off and maybe 172 allyoys

 

[Sam]

172 alloys are a good shout.

Sent from Bonxys BlackBerry using Tapatalk.

 

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Forgot to say a thank you to Topgeartom for his help so far and his future assistance (he knows it's coming).

The car hasn't had its belts done no, I've been shouted at for this already but I have budgeted in for this and will be getting them done very shortly.

Hmm I've never been too fond of the 172 but they might grow on me.

Chris.

 

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Ok a few little updates to report for the Clio, she is still running great. Clocking up the miles and has been fitted with new front and rear speakers (not amped but they sound good after some messing with the head unit settings) and a Edge 10" active sub in the boot, the sub is perfect size as I didn't want the chav appeal, just good sounding music.

Found a few little issues with a have now been sorted, had a very slow puncture in the front offside tyre which wasn't a major issue but I thought for £12 it was worth getting fixed. I also noticed in the first few weeks of my ownership that the coolant was going down fairly quick, some Radweld seems to have cleared this problem up.

Most importantly the car has been fitted with new belts, cambelt kit and tensioners.

So after they were out of the way I thought I would try tackle some of the common Clio problems, first up was the gear gaiter.

Sure most of you have seen this before:

Was like that when I bought the car, wasn't a major issue for me. I thought it would be a common case of the locators had snapped. So I ordered a second hand gaiter from ClioSpares, I thought getting a second hand one wouldn't look out of place and ClioSpares gave excellent service.

After removing the original I was surprised to see it was smashed into 4 pieces:

New one was easy to fit, here it is in place, looks much better:

Would have got a more overall picture but the inside of the car was due a clean.

Next up a bit more of a serious problem, the leaking sun roof. I decided to remove the glass and the seal it sits on to see if there were any obvious problems there.

Typically though the British weather kicked in and it started raining, meaning I had to fit this sexy rain cap:

There wasn't much I could so I called it a day, upon re-fitting I found the rubber seal the glass sits on didn't actually fit back in place properly, so some silicone acted as a temporary fix for this.

Later I then came across a guide on here on how to fix the damp head lining under the sun visor due to the sun roof leaking, this was my exact problem but rather than use silicon I decided to order some replacement seals.

I ordered both seals, the one for the glass and also the foam seal to seat between the roof and the sun roof frame. On arrival I didn't want to chance the weather so asked the boss at work if I could kindly have some shelter for the afternoon (for those that recognise the place please don't be hatin).

During removing the frame:

Cleaning the roof:

Fitted the new foam seal:

The seal was a genuine Renault part, yes whilst expensive, it's good quality and is quite thick. And most importantly it worked!

And not a moment too soon as a week later the harsh weather and ice has started to set in:

The observers amongst you will have noticed the sport grill appear in the picture above. I've wanted a sport grill since I got the car and decided to treat myself to an early christmas present. This was £56 from Renault*Parts on eBay. Postage was free and quoted to arrive in 4-6 days, which was fine as I was in no rush. To my surprise though the item was sent with a courier on a 24 hour service so was with me in no time at all.

Which brings us on to today, the weather has been terrible all night and morning (the inside of the car is nice and dry though) but a small break in the weather meant I could dust of the SLR and grab a couple of shots.

I have to apologise first of all, due to the weather the car hasn't had a wash for a week or two, it was 2 degrees outside and bloody windy. Plus it's been a long time since i've used my DSLR and I usually photoshop aircraft not cars but here we go anyway:

So whats next? Well the colour coding still needs doing, I have most of the materials to do the side strips, I mixed the paint myself so if its wrong I only have myself to blame. Just waiting for some decent weather to do that now and depending how it goes the front and back will be done soon after. Then it will just be a case of saving up for the coilovers, these two mods should seriously improve the look of the car. After that, sometime next year (time is flying) I will be looking into some new wheels So stay tuned.

Comments appreciated.

Regards, Chris.

 

[-Danman-]

Hey mate I've got the same car but in silver, been looking for a sports grill for mine, was yours brand new for £56 or second hand? All of them I've seen so far are quite pricey :s

http://www.cliosport.net/forum/showthread.php?613699-MY-CLIO-1.6-PROJECT

 

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Hey, my grill was a new genuine Renault part. Here is the new current up to date listing on eBay for it.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=400263476626#ht_885wt_689

Posted the link from my iPhone so I hope it worked mate.

Chris

 

[-Danman-]

Ah cheers the link worked fine. It looks so much better than standard grill

 

[Will.]

Sports grill makes sooo much difference.

 

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Right where were we? Ah heres an update for you and some changes to the Clio.

Whats changed?

New supercharger (now removed), fitted 172 bumper, fitted colour coded spoiler, lowered!!

I thought the car could do with a performance boost so I managed to find a reasonably priced supercharger from a company called KFC.

Fitting was pretty easy as well:

Ok enough messing around here we go:

Well my original plans were to colour code the plastic spoiler but decided I couldn't be bothered and just to buy one from a later or sport model that was already sprayed out of the factory. The now RenParts had some listed on eBay, so made a phone call on they're re-opening day after the new year to arrange to see one. Whilst on the phone I randomly decided to ask the question: Do you have any black 172 rear bumpers in? To my surprise they had just the one in stock.

So I battled the heavy wind and rain that day to see the parts. The bumper wasn't in the best of conditions but by no means bad, just needs a couple of goes with some T-Cut and is missing a small bit of paint which doesn't even show up on camera but it was all in one piece, apart from one of the foam pieces which has lost its fixings but I knew I could bodge that.

As for the spoiler, that was in good condition, just needed a clean. I paid £110 for the two items which I was happy with and headed home. However it wasn't until I got home that I realised that the spoiler must have come off a chavs car has it had a god awful 'Clio' blackout sticker on the brake light. (Disgracefully I didn't take the sticker off when I fitted it and drove around with it on for a short time).

Some pics at last!

Before fitting the bumper I had to re-fit the foam block to the inside of it. Some small fuel line hose clips have done the job in this instance. Probably should have put a washer under it but forgot.

Giving it a quick wipe down.

The before shot. Weather setting in again for me.

During.

Fitted, looking much better already.

Plastic spoiler removed.

New one fitted.

As the rain had stopped I decided to give her a speed wash, so much so I somehow missed half of the drivers door.

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Throughout most of the december I thinking about getting the car lowered but without spending a million pounds. I was thinking of the cheaper option and getting springs but after looking at loads of 1.2's on here I just didn't like the way they sat on springs and knew it would annoy me. Coilovers were the only way to get the car sitting where I wanted it but searching only produced results of £300 upwards for a 1.2 which I really didn't want to spend.

So the answer was to look overseas and on the same morning I went to collect the body parts I ordered some TA Technix coilovers from ebay.de. Including a reasonable shipping price they cost me around £210 which wasn't too bad in the end. However I must commend the delivery and the service from the company (X-Parts DE). I ordered them on the morning of January 3rd, I wasn't in a massive rush for them as I was working for a store in Halifax but got a call from my own store on the morning of January 6th to say they had arrived, wow!

A good friend, Topgeartom agreed to help me fit them, this didn't happen until yesterday as I had to wait for my weekend off.

So here we go with some more pics.

Not exactly the best day for it, -2 degrees infact at Tom's house but at least it was dry.

A game of musical cars shortly followed with the Z3 M Coupe even making a small appearance.

Exciting times?

The old.

Shiny.

Fitted.

The front back the deck after fitting. We dropped this about another 15mm afterwards.

Everything fitted and back on the street, not the best pic as I plonked it on the kerb.

So today it suddenly dawned on me that I didn't have any decent photos of the drop, didn't have the opportunity to clean the car, just grabbed the SLR and drove up to the airport. So please excuse the dirt.

You will notice in the next photo the wheel cover is missing off the rear wheel, the bolt holding the cover on had well rusted itself in place and the platic key wasn't strong enough to get it off so we had drill the bolt out.

I took a few more photos of the car so might pop these in the media section if I think they come out ok.

On the look out for some spacers now.

Whats still on the list:
- Colour coding to finish
- Wheel refurb of possibly new alloys
- Replacement aerial
- Renault HIDs if money permits
- Would also love a sport interior but we are talking in the distant future here.

Would really appreciate your comments.

Regards, Chris.

 

[shmunn]

how much have you droped it by? looks nice though

 

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I would guesstimate around 60mm if not a touch more. The ride is slightly back breaking as expected but the steering is so much more responsive.

 

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Another small update to report but one that makes a big change to the car.

iPhone pics, so yeh not the best.

Managed to get some Team Dynamics Pro Race 1.2s through a colleague at work, near perfect condition, I have decided to nickname these 'Wanli's' due to the tyres.

Over the past couple of weeks I have bought a few items from Harribo66 which have come in handy for these wheels.

Including some rear arch liners for the 172 bumper I have fitted

Decent enough condition, for arch liners anyway.

Also got a set of spacers from him and some sport interior door handles (perfect condition and look great, thanks Josh)

Anyway all I have at the moment is an iPhone pic of the wheels on, I need to raise the rear adjuster on the coilovers to stop the scraping then I will get some decent photos once a happy medium has been found.

But anyway you get the general idea of how it looks from this:

Spaced 25mm all round.

Whats left to do:

Spray the rest of the exterior plastics, i've already sanded down the rear left bump strip as you can probably can tell in the above pic but never got round to the rest.
Skoda splitter
Shorter aerial

and im sure i'll find other stuff.

Regards, Chris.

 

[seltking]

looking like good progress mate

 

[Jakey92]

Any updates on this? Looks quite nice!

 

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Sorry Jakey, only just spotted this.

Not really much to report on, left the rear adjusters on the suspension where they were to keep its stance and just ended up getting the arches rolled.

Got the arches done by a guy called Kris from bandedsteels.com based in Halifax, nice guy and cost me £60 in the end and was a decent enough job. And on the plus side it has largely fixed the scraping and banging.

Anyway, having had this weekend off work and the weather been spot on I thought I'd give the car a good wash and polish. Plus 342 has just started again at Halfords so may invest in a clay bar and some other goodies.

This photo is straight from the camera, no editing apart from re-sizing. Nice and shiny

Sorry about the glare, best angle I could get on the drive.

Cheers, Chris.

 

[Sleepy.]

Hi mate, lovin' this car!! What coilovers are they and where did you get them? cheers

 

[Expired]

Hi, heres the link to the coilovers I bought.

http://www.ebay.de/itm/TA-Technix-G...ps=63&clkid=7002646986558577052#ht_5023wt_929

Looks like they have gone up in price since I bought them. I paid 239€ for them. Shipping to UK is 17€.

They are ok, cheapest I could find for a non-sport at the time.

Chris.

 

[Alex5]

looks really nice, its similar to how i want my black 1.2 ( which i will buy after i sell my 182) to look. although im thinking silver wheels , probably turinis. i like black and anthracite wheels but i think silver looks really nice with on a black car

 

[tef_92]

Looks really nice mate, 100x better than original obviously i'd think of doing the same kinds of stuff to my little 1.2, but a few dints in it so al be selling within the next year

 

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At last! An update on my Pearl!

High up on my priority list were the tyres (this particular update was carried out about 2 months ago, the rest are very recent).

The rear Wanli's that I got with the PR1.2's were pretty worn and the side wall had been battered from the rubbing on the wheel arch.

The performance from these tyres was pretty terrible on not wanting to attract unwanted attention from the police with the condition of the rear tyres I got a chunk of money together to treat the wheels.

The last clean for the tyres:

They did have a bit of tread left but you can see the state of the side wall.

I had a look at some tyres online and thought about ordering them but in the end I went with the easy option and popped into my local tyre centre and settled with some Dunlop Sport 9000's. I compared the price with Black Circles and there were practically the same price so was happy to go ahead and get them done locally.

A little side note here. After having the arches rolled to stop the scraping there was still some scraping over large bumps so I opted for 195 width tyres over 205, this reduced the cost slightly but has completely eliminated any scraping and banging but still retains a good look on the car.

Pics of the tyres fitted:

Verdict? Well obviously I don't have any other performance tyre to compare them to but the are 100x better than the Wanli's, they have a huge amount of grip, even in the wet and give a lot more confidence in the corners. Although these tyres are quite noisy.

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Next up a big update in my eyes which changes the identity of the car.

My 21st birthday was fast approaching (4 days ago) so my parents treated me to a private registration: 'C5 CDN'. CDN are my initials, the C5 parts originally just a random prefix that I thought would look good, but you can read C5 as CS and well... I don't need to explain what CS stands for.

The V750 was very quick to arrive and I headed for the 2 hour gauntlet at the DVLA office to assign it to the Clio. Afterwards heading straight to work to make up my own plates - a very satisfying task (considering we hand make plates).

I will be ordering a smaller front plate in the near future but for the time been the private reg and the fresh plates makes a big difference to the car:

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Now it was time to tackle a few 'issues' shall we say.

I had received a few comments on how low my back box was:

Before:

I will eventually get round to replacing the hanger mount but for a now a socket will suffice:

After:

Some further was however required on the exhaust. With the MOT due in about 2 months there was some very apparent blowing, whilst it did make the car sound somewhat of a beast, it had to be sorted. A look under the car and there was a nice line of soot on the mid pipe.

A quick phone call at work and was able to get a mid pipe and clamps delivered within the hour for just a shade over £7 (albeit a nasty pipe). Not really attempted anything like this before but for £7 it was definitely worth a try. The previous clamps looked in really poor condition so a good squirt of WD-40 was required before attempting to remove them. I managed to undo one nut on each clamp but the others were well and truely f****d but a few careful hits with a lump hammer soon had them off.

The old clamps and mid pipe:

This has reduced most of the noise but there is still a slight blow on the join between the mid pipe and the back box, I have caked this with Firegum so hopefully this should get the car through the MOT.

For a while now (months) the car has also had an extremely annoying knocking noise. It first started when going round left hand bends but had become a whole lot more apparent, to the point where most movements of the car would cause the knocking. This has no effect on the performance or handling of the car but did cause some concern with passengers, my fix was just to turn up the music.

However before I swapped over the mid pipe on the exhaust I noticed that the cat had shifted to one side and was resting against the heat shield and a mount.

This is the only photo I took:

You can see a small mark where knocking had occurred. I managed to re-seat the cat whilst connected the mid pipe back up and successfully cured the annoying knocking

That's all for now guys.

Still have the colour coding to do (promise I will get there, will really finish off the car) and need to do some work on the headlights as they are looking a bit shabby.

I welcome any comments or questions

Chris.

 

[Sleepy.]

love this!

 

[BlakeTillz]

What inch are your alloys bro? Loving the car

 

[Expired]

love this!

Thanks Sleepy.

What inch are your alloys bro? Loving the car

16" bruv! Haha

 

[BlakeTillz]

Do they rub or anything?

 

[Expired]

They originally came with 205 width tyres and having an ET45 offset I have them on 25mm spacers which did cause rubbing with the car been on coilovers.

I could have got some 20mm spacers and that would have fixed the problems but I like the stance the car has so seen as I need some new tyres I decided to get slightly narrower tyres, no rubbing whatsoever now.

 

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So I had 2 days off last week and decided to do a touch of painting. Now I've never sprayed anything in my life before so I didn't really know what the outcome would be.

The standard side strips: (They stand out more when the car is actually clean)

Primer:

Black:

Now I had been warned about using Halfords Lacquer and how runny it is, couple this with falling over the cat with freshly painted goods made for some ruined results. But thanks to camera trickery you might not be able to see them:

And an overedit:

My future plans with these are to either get some seconds hand strips and send them to Spray Shack or get a friend to help re-do them. Then eventually get the front bumper moulds done.

Chris.

 

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More updates!

There is what appears to be a never ending list of problems with this car but saying that she has no problem clocking up the miles. Put nearly 8k on the clock in ten months.

Anyway, the brakes had become a bit hit and miss as to whether they would actually stop the car and after a few brown pants moments it was obviously time for them to be changed. Again with much appreciation with the help of Topgeartom!

(Worth pointing out at this stage I now use a Nokia Lumia 900 rather than an iPhone so pictures may vary)

Check out the amount of lips the pads have on the go, certainly got my monies worth out of those.

^^ The Lumia camera likes to focus on anything but the subject.

---

Next up as I said in the previous update about my plates I ordered a front plate from Fancy Plates that sits flush with the non-sport bumper. This particular plate is 98mm tall.

Whilst it doesn't looks massively different to a standard size one, this doesn't overhang the opening in the lower bumper - not as stubby as the 84mm sport equivalent but smartens it up all the same.

Thats all for now, next up will most likely be a new aerial.

Always appreciate comments, cheers.

Chris.

 

[cliokid gilmour]

i think ive seen ur car at pudsey service center ahahaha and i might be getting it if the 182 insurence is expensive for me. :rasp:

 

[Aandyy96]

hi nice car mate what's the coilovers like for cornering is it quite level or not because i'm sick of driving a boat round corners fast