1987 Renault GTA :: Gone to a new home

[PhilA]

Reassembled it and took it for a quick spin.

 

Shite pez station shot because I've never taken one before.

 

 

Needed a run, but it's going ok. Intake air temperature sensor should be here tomorrow, current one is reporting is much warmer than it actually is and makes it run like crap before the oxygen sensor warms up or under full throttle, where it ignores the oxygen sensor.

 

Funny thing, the egr valve started to work on the way back, can feel quite a difference at cruise speeds.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

Took it for a more extended run and it's started to misfire and over-fuel randomly. Going to try get it to do the same thing again with the diagnostics box hooked up and see what it's doing.

 

Hopefully just a bad connection somewhere.

 

Phil

[Felly Magic]

This car is fighting you every step of the way

[PhilA]

Because French.

 

Cleaned the distributor cap, rotor arm, checked the leads. Pulled the plugs out. Cleaned the plug wells.

 

 

Two of the plugs had closed up. Regapped them to 31 thou.

 

 

One had some crap stuck to it. That will be the bad running and misfire, then.

 

 

Took it for a quick spin, it threw a wobbly at 5500rpm in 2nd, running on 3 for a moment, then cleared up.

 

Win

 

Phil

[DeeJay]

If you want it to run perfect hook up your diog thing and try to replicate the faults.

[PhilA]

I did, and the throttle position sensor appears to have shat itself also, only reading to a max of 56%.

 

Cleaning the plugs has rectified the lumpy running, not too surprising, it has been sat up for ages then idled a lot.

 

Intake air temperature sender arriving tomorrow because that's not reading cold properly.

 

Found the correct throttle sensor and because Jeep it's expensive, best I found $27.

 

Phil

[Asimo]

Autoshite persistance award for Renault-wrangling -- Awarded!

[PhilA]

Well, it's a case of fix it or I don't get to drive it. I do enjoy driving it.

 

--Phil

[PhilA]

Done a a little bit of work recently on the car. Typically the intake manifold sender unit I ordered had the wrong connector on it (a more modern variant) so I set about working on it.

 

 

Unorthodox, but I don't have a 19mm crow's foot.

 

 

That liberated the old sender.

 

 

The sensor thermistor was cracked. Not surprising, given that it lives in the flow of fuel and air towards the engine.

 

 

Took the Dremel to the new sensor.

 

 

Soldered on the wires from the old connector. Figured there's enough insulation there there for it to not desolder resolder with the heat from the engine. We will see.

 

 

Heated up the heatshrink tube I had applied.

 

 

Refitted and connected up. Starts a lot better when cold now. Discovered that the hot air damper valve was not opening, leaning on the airbox with the engine running it was cold. Pulled the pipes off the throttle body hat and connected them up- immediately the damper flap moves. Took the hat off and found this.

 

 

Yup, the thermostatic valve that controls the damper has broken off and been ingested. That'll likely be the cause of the misfire and the reason for the spark plugs closing up. I'm going to see about borrowing the boroscope from work to check that there's nothing left of it in the manifold or inside the combustion space. Not happy about that. However, research shows that's a standard Jeep part that goes back to the days of big carbureted Jeep engines. I'll check at the dealership to see if they have one or can get one.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

Well, that's slightly promising.

 

 

Stuck this piece of 1979's finest engineering into a piece of 1987's.

 

 

Uh, piston crown.

 

 

Sunrise over Saturn. (Exhaust valve)

 

 

The ghost of Pablo Picasso. (Intake air temp sensor).

 

Overall, no debris though there are signs of the parts rattling about in pots 1 and 2. It'll be in tiny pieces on the floor having been fired from the exhaust pipe at great speed.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

Well, did a few things recently. Put the car in for safety inspection which it passed, and bought a couple of cheap fog lights to replace the old broken Marchal units (which weren't original to the car anyway).

 

 

Replaced the driver's side headlight because the water had gotten in and taken the silver off. Aligned all the lights last night so as not to dazzle.

Brakes are getting better but still need to be bled again.

 

Progress

 

 

Phil

[vulgalour]

Hoorah, good Renner news!

[PhilA]

In true Renault style, the oil pressure light has quit (pressure switch gone bad) and the alternator warning light doesn't any more (heck knows why).

 

New switch and wiring investigation to follow.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

Oil pressure light operation restored after banging the switch a few times.

 

Been keeping track of the fuel economy too, and it's in the low 20's, which is pretty poor. I was driving the other evening and suddenly the car's performance picked up considerably, it felt a lot more lively (it's got a fair bit of poke to begin with) and I didn't have to push down on the pedal so much to hold speed.

 

It's gone back to how it was, and by comparison it feels very labored, as if the timing is all wrong.

 

I tried last night to check see if the EGR valve was leaking, opening it causes the car to idle like crap and nearly stall out- also got a fair bit of smoke from down the back of the engine (thinking that's is just oil that is burning off) because I'm not sure the transducer is working right and without a catalytic converter to make back pressure I'm not sure the thing is even opening.

 

So, with that in mind that is not causing problems, I'm down to one thing really, maybe 2. Vacuum leak or a faulty sensor or a combination of the two.

 

The three main sensors that affect timing are the crank position sensor but that's working, the manifold pressure sensor (quite new but who knows) and the throttle position sensor (which I think is a bit suspect).

 

Further investigation follows, might be replacing all the vacuum lines on it soon as a matter of course. Thankfully it doesn't have too many on the engine side, the cabin heating system is all vacuum operated though. I don't think that's leaking because it stays working after the engine is shut off for a while as the reservoirs hold vacuum.

 

We will see. I'll hook up the mt2500 and check too; that might give some insight. Oh, and I got an email from a guy who has expanded on my work on the ECU but working with Jeeps. He has a working handheld module for late eighties and early nineties 4.0 Jeeps now. Pretty smart.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

Okay, so took out the spanners today and had a general poke about.

Tightened up the manifold and TBI, no real signs of distress there. Put a permanent vacuum to the EGR transducer, which shows thay it is kinda working because that caused it to stick open after a 65mph run and run like a bag of poopoo at the traffic lights, cutting out and other fun* behavior. The valve has a release-to-atmosphere function so I'm thinking that's an expected behavior if there's permanent vacuum at the transducer.

 

So, looks like either the valve or pipe is not right so I'm going to put a vacuum gauge on the connector to the transducer and see if I get vacuum. It ran much better, and cooler (kept temperature happily) at a moderately high speed cruise so that's good, it's what the computer is programmed for.

 

Otherwise it's much the same. SWMBO broke the passenger side window winder by trying to open the window. I think I'm going to look at new mechanisms, these ones are crap.

 

Also; where did the weekend go?

 

Phil

[vulgalour]

You said transducer too many times so now you look like this when I read your posts.

 

[PhilA]

Just to be awkward, the problem has gone away and it has been running quite well.

 

Also put soapy jetwash to the aux belt yesterday and that has shut it up considerably.

 

Power steering full of stop-leak snake oil, shall see if that works any.

 

No other news, need to crack on fixing the clock but ran out of fk's to give lately.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

Filled up with 93 yesterday. Calculation for the last tank shows a 2mpg improvement (24US/29UK mpg) so cleaning stuff up and generally poking about seems to have helped.

 

Just had one of RockAuto's "wholesale closeout" emails, ordered some new brake pads for the front (right hand side got a bit of oil in it so going to change them), a new thermostat because this one is a bit sticky and a new drive belt because I took a look at the receipt and this one was changed in 2015

 

Just thought about it, I didn't order a replacement gasket for the thermostat housing. Nuts.

 

 

--Phil

[PhilA]

I cleaned my rear lights up yesterday because they were filthy. Bad design that allows dirt to ingress around the edges and make the lights look generally grubby.

In this picture you can just about see the lights look very grey on the reversing lights and dirty to the outer edge of the car.

 

 

Well, with a lot of cotton buds and soap I got them all cleaned up.

 

 

With the flash on, even the reflectors reflect now (they didn't before very well).

 

 

Hacked the reversing light reflector off and discovered that reflect it did not; masked it up and painted it with aluminum paint.

 

 

Much betterer.

 

 

In the bright sunshine there the lights look more dim than they actually are, but they are nice and bright now.

Next up, the box of stuff arrived, might see about getting a new oil pressure switch and I need to order a new thermostat gasket. At that point the car has done 6000 miles so I might treat it to a new dizzy cap and rotor arm at the same time.

 

--Phil

[PhilA]

I went to the auto parts store last night and checked to see if they had a thermostat seal for the car; they did. Also, the store manager said she used to own an Alliance back in the day. Funny coincidence.

 

Saw they had a special on oil and filters coming up so I'll probably take advantage of that. The diesel oil I've been running in it has done a nice job of removing the gunk from the top end so I'll probably switch to regular mineral oil now it's beginning to get dirty.

 

--Phil

[PhilA]

Bonus today. I was going to change the thermostat, so I had the hood open to allow the engine to cool faster. In standing around eyeballing things, I happen to look at the new brake booster, the rubber bungies on the aux takeoffs have perished and cracked up.

 

Replaced those with good ones and took the car for a run. Much better!

 

I also ended up using a random spare electronic capacitor to plug up a vacuum line that needed plugging. Yay for that fix.

 

 

Now to see if the fuel economy improves. The driveability certainly has, and the starting, not surprising really. That was a fairly bad, random leak straight into the intake manifold. The high rpm thrum it had is significantly less, so that will have been it running rich on 3 pots and lean on 1...

 

Phil

[PhilA]

Changed the thermostat out this weekend. The old one had witness marks on it, and when put in a pan of boiling water was getting stuck on the edge of its frame, not pushing out straight.

 

 

New one in, net result, the needle moves up and stays put now.

 

One thing off the list.

 

 

--Phil

[PhilA]

Stuck new front pads in. Both front outer CV boots have split, despite being new. Front passenger side damper has barfed all its oil and no longer damps much. Took it out for a run and the front brakes decided to bind.

 

 

Old pads were just a little bit glazed...

 

 

Decided to have a go at the clock tonight because I got fed up looking at the empty hole in the dash.

 

 

Ended up sending the new clock module up in smoke with a slip of a wire, so I've sacked it off for a while.

 

Phil

[Snipes]

Lol at the "hacked off" thread title! I think 99% of the population would have sacked-off this garlic- burger munching ungrateful bastard years ago!

[PhilA]

Well, bonus thing. Turns out the brakes only get sticky when they're hot, so it's time for a thorough clean and some copperslip. I didn't do a great job because it was raining.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

Read the above as I got annoyed that the CV boots had both split so just put the pads in and did everything back up again.

Even without bedding in well, the brakes are sharp now.

 

Was having a think, I might try go get a boot from a more modern vehicle, the ones I got were NOS and the amount of stretch these get put under on full lock just splits them open. Reading up on it, the fault appears to have been common so that leads me to think the boots aren't big enough.

 

Ordered a new clock module from Hong Kong. $1 shipping so that'll be here in August sometime.

 

Phil

[vulgalour]

Have you tried giving it a damned good thrashing?  Or does that only work on British cars?

[cort1977]

Stick with it Phil, that's a seriously rare car over here, I admire you for keeping it going against the odds.

[PhilA]

Vulg: I daren't. It might like it.

 

Cort: Beginning to realize why that is the case...

[PhilA]

Oh, I did forget one good thing. I bought a can of lithium grease because the driver's door had developed a loud and mildly humorous WAAAARRRRRK upon opening.

 

I managed to stop that and also for the first time ever managed to get the grease in the right place on the spring loaded thing that holds it in halfway and fully open, because that no longer goes frrnnkt-CLIK-fweeeek when I open the door.

 

Downside is the door now opens really easily and I almost flung it into the van parked next to me at work today.

 

Overall, non musical hinges are better hinges.

 

Phil