Vulgalour's Vehicles - 10/03 Ignition Switch Woe

[vulgalour]

New clutch fitted, gearbox on surprisingly easily with the assistance of the engine crane, starter motor bolted on and then a decision made to do this:


It isn't running yet, there's still a few more things to button up. You see, the weather decided to come over all Welsh, probably to celebrate the momentous occasion of this little car finally being reunited with its mechanical heart.


It was raining so heavily there was no point even putting the cover back on so when things are dry again I'll have to bail out the interior. Not far off coming off the axle stands now though and that means it's not far off coming home either.

[vulgalour]

Bit more progress done today. Been trying to get as many things connected as possible and use up as many of the fixings as I have in packets from when everything was taken apart. Today I got the choke and throttle cable/assembly reconnected. Speedo cable also connected. Clutch cable couldn't be connected, I'd forgotten the end was broken when we removed the engine so that needs replacing. Importantly, put the requisite amount of oil in the engine and fitted the new oil filter which is adorably tiny.


Figure out the routes for some of the coolant hoses and even some of the electrical bits and pieces so they were connected up. Steering rack also reinstated. Haven't yet fitted the new points, rotor arm or distributor cap.


I did make one mistake which was to put the gear lever brace in before connecting the gear lever up so I'll have to remove that and refit in the correct order. New air filter fitted too.


Not sure if I mentioned it before, the steering wheel wrap was one of the first things I removed after getting the car back from Wales and revealed a perfect condition steering wheel.


The green repaint hasn't faired particularly well and in places is rubbing off. I'm okay with this. Accelerated a little on the rear quarters because what I expected to be temporary duct tape covers ended up rather more permanent. Again, I have no problem with this.


What I am sad about is that even though the car has been covered the stickers in the tailgate are all disintegrating. There's very little of the original dealer sticker left and even the P&O one is flaking off. Replacing them all with new ones just won't look right so I have to accept this as just the ravages of time.


The keen observer will notice that the car is no longer outside. I put the driveshafts back in today and was going to roll it in on it's wheels, the upper ball joints were still able to be used so this shouldn't have been a problem. Then I remembered we had to cut off the lower ball joints and there's nothing to hold them together. Cue much faffing with my brother being gaffer and Mike and I pushing the car with the front end resting on two wheel trolleys across the uneven yard.

The reason for the car going indoors is to make the next few jobs easier. I need to order a pair of lower ball joints to get the wheels on properly. I've got brake discs that, as far as I can tell, are correct but I need to order some pads too because I'm not using the old pads on brand new discs. If I have indoor space for long enough I'll also tackle the gutters and eliminate all the rot, holes and sharp edges at the same time, that job is fairly important.

[JPB]

I'm enjoying this thread enormously, especially now that we're seeing more news of the R6. That wee car is, IMHO, an ideal candidate for "oily rag" preservation in a warts & all style. Its various signs of having lived a little make the car all the more special.
We've had the Cal Look phenomenon, the era of the stupidly mahoosive wheel is alive & well and now clay bars are so popular that even people with seats in the upper house are using the things on their Bentleys and vintage Bristols, so I reckon that the age of French peasant chic - but not solely in a 2CV way - is well overdue..
Bring it on!

[vulgalour]

That's entirely my intention. Make it mechanically solid, repair the rusty bits that are a problem (gutters, for example) and just put an oily rag/coat of ankor wax over the rest to preserve it just as it looks, mismatched panels and all. It's delightfully shambolic.

Happily I also managed, with the help of a couple of forums, to get the ball joints I needed and a clutch cable. Waiting on some more info on the brake pads I've found and a large drive belt before I pay for those, don't want to buy the wrong bits. Tomorrow I hope to get on with plugging some more things in and when I can remember where the battery cables go I'll see if I can get any of the dash to light up. Working slowly toward that first start, a thing that hasn't happened since at least 1993.

[kevin]

Turning into a lovely little survivor that will get a huge amount of attention when used!
Cant wait to hear the motor running!

Kev

[vulgalour]

Cor, another update! We're making good progress on this little car. Engine bay is filling up nicely.




It's amusing how many wrong parts I've managed to buy for this car. The new distributor and rotor arm are on and the new spark plugs in (had to remove the alternator to fit one of them). Here's the incorrect distributor cap I bought in its box next the correct new one fitted.


Couldn't fit the points either because, guess what, wrong parts again. I have the old ones on my desk so I can compare with other sets and make sure I get the correct ones this time. Old on the left, incorrect new on the right.


There's an ever diminishing selection of parts. I found these two rather substantial looking brackets and I can't for the life of me figure out where they go. The book wasn't helpful (as usual) and neither were the pictures I'd taken. I'm sure they're out of the engine bay, they have the right kind of look about them and oil on them. I suspect they're to do with the engine mounts but I can't figure out how. Also shown here are the front hub caps and the front brake dust shields.


This bracket, on top of my new brake discs which look to be the correct type, I believe attaches to the gear lever brace, I just haven't figured out how yet even with my photos for reference.


Another thing that happened was Crapaud's face was put back on and the bonnet refitted. Since getting the car the bonnet has always scraped the grille and the latch hasn't worked. A liberal dose of carb cleaner followed by lithium grease got the latch working beautifully and careful adjustment of the hinges and washer thicknesses got the bonnet to clear the grille.


One problem I do have is the headlights. I have been sent 2 right hand drive units, which is excellent. Trouble is the headlight fixings on the front are handed so I now have 3 drivers side headlights and one passenger side with no lens and almost no silvering. At the moment, my plan is to split the right hand drive lenses off the old backs and buy a new set of left hand drive lights (which are much easier to find) to bond them back on to so I have a good set. The headlights are one of the most difficult things to source for this car.


John Deere sent me the old spotlights from the ex-Dollywobbler Prelude (Autoshite forum members) so I could get them working and use them on the Renault. My guess was actually even better than expected when they were mocked up on the front of the car. They look in keeping with everything else too so shouldn't look like a new addition while giving me some better lighting on the front to see by.


Another present was this Bettaware sun visor extension. It is terrible. The vision through it is distorted and the filter not at all appealing. Of course it's staying with the car, it's too terrible not to.


So, we're looking a bit better. There's some wiring connector repairs to do before we can connect a battery and test things, I just ran out of time to do that today. Perhaps over the weekend we'll get that far. Here's an overview of where we're at.

[vulgalour]

Update time again. The upper ball joints arrived and I collected some 6mm fuel hose and a pair of wiper blades the other day. Today is not the day I fit those though.


I did figure out where the long bar goes and in so doing where the missing bumper iron bolt was.


An attempt was made to fit the sump-to-bellhousing stiffener brackets with the engine in situ. Because of the size of my hands this proved impossible so I shall be lifting the engine out just far enough to bolt the brackets on before putting it back in again. Not too difficult a job really. Here's an idea of access and visibility.


What I really wanted to do today was some welding, specifically gutter repairs. They hadn't got any worse since I applied the seam sealer a year ago but they also hadn't got any better. They were fragile for most of the length so I decided to get rid of the perforated rusty bits. Easiest way to do this was to fold them down against the bodyshell lip/platform the roof is spotwelded to and take a flapwheel to the edge to trim off the old gutters.




The A pillar gutters were still in really good shape so I left those alone. The roof still had lots of spot welds holding it down too.


Well, apart from the middle third where the gutters had practically disappeared.


This is all that's left of them.


I was originally going to tidy up the surfaces and make up some new gutters, welding them in carefully as per factory. Then I thought sod it, lets do this the easier way. There's that much work involved in replacing the gutters I deemed it pointless so instead decided to deseam the Renault. A section at a time I ground back the gutter ledge until it was not quite flush with the roof skin, then tacked the two pieces together before moving to the next part so the whole roof didn't just spring off. Then, taking my time so things didn't get too hot and having just two small fires when stray welder sparks hit a dust sheet, I seam welded the join.




After going back a couple of times to address any pinholes where I'd missed, it was deemed ready for filler. A lot of the big roof dent this side came out with the heat of welding, which was useful. A skim of filler was applied to smooth out the weld line. The roof skin surprisingly didn't warp, I suspect this is down to the brace that runs on the other side keeping the shape.




I'll finish sanding the filler another day. For now I'm happy the rust is gone and the car doesn't look that bad for being de-guttered. If I want to fit gutters in the future I can do so with ready made sections spot welded to the edge that is currently smoothed out. I tidied up the A pillar bit of guttering with the old damaged stainless trim cut down to suit.


Other items of note are that the door mirror was found to be adjustable and perfectly functional and I refitted all of the side trim. I do need some more side trim clips, the ones on the car are very fragile and not really good enough to hold the trim on the car at speed.

I'll likely not be working on Crapaud again until Tuesday when my new clutch cable and brake pads are due to arrive. I'll turn my attention to getting the brackets fitted, the new brake parts on and the new ball joints in so the car can go back on his wheels again.

[JPB]

I was reading that post, looking at the state of these gutters and thinking "just deseam the thing and have done with it", then, a few lines further down the page, you'd done that very thing! I reckon that was a good call but was reminded of what happened after I did a similar operation to a couple of my Reliant kittens. OK, so their gutters were stuck on and the dealers were responsible for fitting them so many cars never had their gutters added, but those that did were much more pleasant on wet days as otherwise, there was nothing to prevent all of the water that had built up around the door seals from falling into one's crotch area when getting out of the car, never a graceful exercise at the best of times. Why did I repeat that exercise, knowing that I would get wet all over again? Simply because Reliant dealer glue wasn't the best and when a gutter starts to peel at motorway speed, the best option is to pull the rest of it off, shove it in the boot and leave it there for the next four years.

So if you should decide, after driving around in and getting soaked by the car, that gutters weren't a bad plan after all, you could always use the very same stick on ones that Reliants should have had. These had a slightly narrower channel than the integrated steel gutters on the 6, but could be made to blend in if getting wet becomes a nuisance.
I would definitely have done the same though, but I would grind the welds back only roughly and then just use clear coat on the areas whence the gutters were amputated.

[vulgalour]

I'm fairly certain that the long travel suspension should allow me to shake the Renault dog-fashion before getting out and thus avoiding entirely the crotch wetting problem of having a deseamed car. Well, mostly certain. It might work.

[JPB]

Sounds like a plan. I believe that some modern Skodas come with an umbrella as standard, which a) may be an elegant alternative to the whole rocking side to side thing and b) may be VAG's way of saying "Sorry, we made our gutters far too small but at least this luxurious umbrella will keep some parts of you dry as you get out of the car.."