Arctic 182 'OEM+' progress thread

[sburrell93]

As some of you may have seen from my other project thread, I picked myself up a fairly cheap Arctic blue 182 on Friday!

It's pretty much standard apart from a milltek backbox with custom decat/centre section, Apex lowering springs and Trophy Recaros. It also appears to have a very strong engine with proof of 160hp at the wheels, which is always a plus!

On the drive home it was apparent that there was a ball joint or wishbone needing replaced by how much it tramlined over bumps. On closer inspection, both on the N/S were fucked so that'll be a new wishbone on order from Renault. Also needs a N/S shock.

Got it through to the unit yesterday and first thing first, was to polish up the headlights and give it a good wash!

Headlights before:

And after:

Passenger headlight still has a mark inside it so I'll probably be on the lookout for a replacement at some point.

Following this, a quick wash, decon, de-tar, wash again and a coating of some spray on stuff my mate had, which seems fairly similar to CarPro Hydro2.

Got it inside the unit after this and up on the ramps to give it a good check over underneath. So far, the list of things to do are as follows:

Necessary fixes:
Replace N/S inner driveshaft gaiter
Fix pinhole leak in sump (fired some quick steel on the hope it holds for now)
Replace N/S wishbone/ball joint and shock
Possible track rod end/inner track rod needs replaced
Fix squint exhaust with some better mounts
Refit Cat and sort out the abomination of a centre section on it

Upgrades/improvements:
New front splitter (probably fabia one again but I'd love a proper cup one)
Clean up or replace fog lights
Sort/replace cracked rear bumper
Refurb Turinis
New tyres
Flock dash
Paint some interior bits that look old and tired (door pulls, centre console bit etc.)
Remove rear window stickers
Maybe a steering wheel refurb

Plan to just keep it fairly simple and have it in a sort of OEM+ condition. Will be doing as much as possible myself in the hope of keeping it cheap and cheerful but looking back at that list I doubt it'll stay very cheap!

 

[mossyv6]

Is this the one that was on gumtree for £1350?

Looked a great buy mate with the Trendlines and Recaros but was up in Scotland.

 

[sburrell93]

Is this the one that was on gumtree for £1300?

Not sure mate, was a friend of a friend who was selling it and I found out that way. Sounds about right though!

Edit: I got it for less than it was up for lol so with the trendlines it was a bit of a bargain! Even with a few things needing done to it

 

[mossyv6]

Absolute bargain matey. Here's the original advert for you. I really fancied it to be honest but the travelling distance put me off.

 

[David Stuart]

Lovely car mate. Colour is very nice. Love a trophy style with those seats and wheels. [emoji106]


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[sburrell93]

Throughout the week I plan on sorting out the whole nearside front suspension and driveshaft issues. As it stands the car just goes wherever it wants on right-hand bends and also probably has zero gearbox oil remaining as the N/S inner CV boot is completely split!

Does anyone know where's currently cheapest for genuine wishbones and shocks? RPD has wishbones for £60 a side and shocks are £55 a side but I'm not sure if they can be had any cheaper. Oh, and has anyone got a part number for the N/S inner boot against the gearbox?

 

[imprezaworks]

Shocks have gone up in price, sure they were about £40

 

[sburrell93]

Shocks have gone up in price, sure they were about £40

I thought that too. Was sure I could remember you could get a pair of shocks for under 100 quid.

 

[sburrell93]

Managed to find Renault Wolverhampton on ebay, pair of front shocks for £78. Winner!

 

[imprezaworks]

That's more like it

 

[Rubicon_]

Thats a bargain!

 

[sburrell93]

Got a couple of jobs done on this so far. Changed the leaky front shock and dodgy wishbone/ball joint on the n/s last weekend. The car no longer tries to kill you every time you enter a right hand bend! As you can see here... it was a just a liiiiitle bit past it's best...



So yeah... think I'm pretty lucky the ball joint never popped out on that tbh!

Also fitted a new inner CV boot on the nearside as the current one had sprayed most of the gearbox oil all over the underside of the car since it looked like this:

Annoyingly there's still a slight leak from it on the end that clamps round the driveshaft, so that needs investigated. Hopefully just needs clamped tighter.

It's now rocking odd wheels too. Swapped my F1's onto the back to replace the bald tyres that were on the turinis

Note the crack in the bumper in the above pic which needs sorted.

Rest so far has just been little jobs. Rear window de-stickered. CS sticker to go on when it arrives. Fitted some ridiculously bright reversing light LEDs. Oh, new battery purchased too as I was pretty much having to bump start it everywhere I went lol.

This weekends tasks are to fit the other front shock, find the oil leak, and work out what's causing a mega vibration on hard acceleration. Assuming engine mounts so I'll swap over my vibratechnics mounts from the ph1 and see if it makes a difference. Dogbone looks fucked though so I need a new one of those since ph1's are different 😞

 

[sburrell93]

I hate clios.

Something clutch related decided it didn't like being in the bellhousing anymore. Lots of metal shavings and lots of noise. Car still has drive so the clutch itself isn't broken but something's certainly spinning around in there!

Further inspection tomorrow night when I get the gearbox out hopefully.

 

[Djw John]

It was 100% that wheelspin when leaving KH. f**king hooligan.

 

[Jamess182]

Oh dear, hope it's not too expensive, otherwise it might not have been so much of a bargain after all!!

 

[David Stuart]

Let us know how you get on. Sure it won't be too serious.


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[David Stuart]

Since you are local. Back to KH or any other events in the near future? Be good to meet up with a few local members.


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[sburrell93]

Well the box is out and it doesn't look good 😂

(Yes, that is all metal shavings in the bell housing lol)

I'll do a proper update in the morning when I've had some sleep!

 

[sburrell93]

Ok so, after quite a struggle last night, we finally got the gearbox out and found the issue. Before we took it out we could see metal shavings throughout the engine bay around about the flywheel area, however we didn't quite expect to be greeted by the full bellhousing being coated in them! It was well and truly fucked!

Once the gearbox was out we were greeted with this:

Note the metal bits hanging out the pressure plate on the left. Once this was off the problem was clear...

Surprise surprise too...it's a valeo clutch! And a fairly new looking one at that. Another failure of theirs to add to the list.

Looks like the rivet holding the springy bit (or whatever you call those bits of metal) around the pressure plate had failed, and the metal has spun round scoring the inside of the bellhousing leaving a nice scoring all round it. It's cut a lovely big hole out the top too!

All in all, not ideal, and certainly not planned for when buying the car, but on the plus side, it hasn't put a major hole through the gearbox and a new clutch should be all that's needed to sort it.

I now need to find a decent clutch for it though, because I'm sure as f**k not putting a valeo one back in!

 

[sburrell93]

Since you are local. Back to KH or any other events in the near future? Be good to meet up with a few local members.


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I'll more than likely be up Knockhill again before the end of the year! There's always a fair few Clio owners up there regardless of what's on.

There's a meet organised at krispy kreme for this weekend if you fancy it, I'll tag you in the thread mate.

 

[David Stuart]

Looks like I'll be doing a clutch on mine. What you going for? Is it just a recent quality issue with valeo? I always thought they were ok on other cars I've had.


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[sburrell93]

Looks like I'll be doing a clutch on mine. What you going for? Is it just a recent quality issue with valeo? I always thought they were ok on other cars I've had.


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We went for a LUK clutch which, to be honest, looks far better quality than the Valeo item! Actually got it changed and back together the day after the gearbox came out but I've been on holiday since then so forgot to update the thread lol.

As you can see below the LUK pressure plate has a cover over the part that failed on the Valeo one, which would've prevented the bell housing from being cut into the way it has been.

As for the valeo clutches, I've now personally seen around 3 or 4 failures of the exact same component. From searching on here, probably 10+ failures documented from both track and normal road use. All with the same rivets on the pressure plate failing. I have a valeo clutch in my track ph1 172 and TBH I think I'll be changing it before I get it back out on track.

 

[CFAB]

Unfortunate that mate but for the money you payed it's still a bargain. Good updates, I too prefer the oem+ look.

 

[sburrell93]

Made some solid progress with this in the last couple of weeks but have been seriously lacking in taking any photos unfortunately! Stripped the full interior out of it and wet vac'd the carpets, front and rear seats, mats, and cleaned up any exposed metal areas, like under the seats and in the boot etc. Although it wasn't massively dirty before, the difference in night and day. Carpets and mats have came up like new and the seats look nice and fresh again. Got proper alcantara cleaner on order to hopefully get them looking even better.

In more mechanical news, sourced a polybushed dogbone mount to replace the utter shite orange floflex bushes that were on it! The engine no longer feels like it wants to join you in the passenger seat every time you lift the clutch now, which is always nice.

Replacing the shitty bodge of a centre exhaust section/decat was a good laugh. Removed the centre section to find it was in fact made from 5/6mm thick pipe and weighed a f**king ton. People joke about scaffolding pole exhausts but I genuinely think this may have had one. Anyway that's now been replaced with a new genuine Milltek centre section and OE cat with a new cat fitting kit. Turned out to be a total pain in the arse, due to the previous centre section being smaller diameter, so the sleeved section for the backbox join was far too small now and needed widening out. Lots of heat and hammering later and it was sorted.

Swapped out the O/S driveshaft too with the spare I got with the car when it was bought. The CV joint between the intermediate bearing and the gearbox on the one that came off was proper fucked, so that's solved the vibration on acceleration.

Getting there slowly. Hopefully the next update has some more pics, although it wont be that exciting! Next job is replacing the sump/gasket as it's leaking quite badly, followed by a service. O/S Rear caliper needs fixing/replacing too as it's sticking (anyone selling one fire me a message!)

 

[182_steve]

Unfortunate that mate but for the money you payed it's still a bargain. Good updates, I too prefer the oem+ look.

Agreed :up:

That's a cracking price for one and with the Recaros too, allows for a few problems to arise, just hopefully your getting there now

 

[sburrell93]

Agreed :up:

That's a cracking price for one and with the Recaros too, allows for a few problems to arise, just hopefully your getting there now

Yeah slowly ticking off the list of problems! I need to remember and get some decent pics now the interior has all been cleaned up! The recaros have come up especially good, although the drivers bolster still ideally needs retrimmed. Need to find a leather specialist close by.

Next up on the list is fitting a new sump and gasket to get rid of the oil leak, then re-undersealing the areas that have been stripped from a mix of gearbox oil and CV grease being thrown up under the car, then it'll hopefully be good to go.

 

[Djw John]

Transcal through my way are about the best interior specialists around. Not cheap though.

 

[David Stuart]

I’ve heard good things about Willy Ramsay through in Loanhead. Ramsay’s coachtrimming.


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[sburrell93]

Can't believe it's been almost a year since I updated this! Decided it needed a change of wheels again...

Not much has happened tbh, it's not been used much but things have slowly been getting fixed. Got an extremely cheap donor car and it's been used loads so far to fix little things here and there.

Voila, £300 worth of fully running Clio!

So far it's been used to replace both xenon's, rear calipers and lines, the horn, sticky interior trim with stuff that looks almost like new, swap out the cup rear bench and fabric door cards with proper 182 seats and alcantara door cards, and replace the interior temp sensor too so the climate control doesn't just constantly blow hot air. Also sleeved the cat so it no longer leaks. Probably a few other things I've forgotten too.

Bodywork is next on the list, but for now, the 'definitely-not-going-to-be-a-track-car' 182 is booked on at knockhill on Saturday... Meanwhile my actual track car still lies on pieces.

 

[scotiamr2t]

Where did the F1’s go?

 

[sburrell93]

Where did the F1’s go?

Still got them, they're just horrifically out of balance and buckled lol so figured I'd use the pro races for a while. At least until I get tyres for the turinis

 

[Djw John]

Who the f**k are you?!

 

[cpaterson76]

He’s turning into Fraser and stu ?

 

[Djw John]

He’s turning into Fraser and stu ?

Harsh ?