The Epic Austrian owned R16 from Germany doing French things in a Parallel Universe near England Saga

[Junkman]

You guys obviously never persevered for six years with a possessed Rover.

[richardmorris]

Ftfy

Defeatist!

 

These are just "getting to know you " problems with the Renault. A bit of use will always chuck up issues that need sorting.

 

 

Edit. Obviously if the car doesn't want to go to Leeds, don't take it to Leeds

[Junkman]

On a more positive note, the entire area underneath the scuttle is pristine!

[dollywobbler]

Brilliant!

[Junkman]

Right.

 

As you can imagine, that busted y-piece with integrated bleed tube hasn't been available since the 1968 Paris student revolt.

I hence - advised by Mr Conelrad to do so - ordered 16 quid worth of bits from Car Builder Solutions, a company catering to those daft imbeciles failing at building kit cars.

Holding a doctorate in engineering (I kid you not) it should be a simple thing for me to rig up something Renault had in mind initially, but didn't build in the end.

I mean, since when can't a shade tree mechanic outsmart an armada of very well paid designers?

 

WCPGW?

 

I will use this opportunity to also bring the cooling system up to scratch, something I actually wanted to do before Winter, honestly, but most probably would have never

done without a genuine reason for sale. You should see the atrocious brown silt that's cooling* the engine ever since we took off from Loxstedt.

 

So stay tuned to watch a big man going under with his little R16.

 

Skizzer was right. R16 owners live in a parallel universe.

[somewhatfoolish]

On a more positive note, the entire area underneath the scuttle is pristine!

Steam cleaned?

[Junkman]

There isn't too much dirt in the first place. I've now cleaned it out to new car spec.

The whole heater/blower thing is quite a clever affair, I shall take some pics and show you.

It clearly demonstrates that it doesn't have to be the very first thing put into an empty

body and then buried with dashboards and interior trim.

[Junkman]

R16 heater and ventilation system explained.

 

The heater matrix is as wide as the air outlet on top of the dashboard:

 

 

The hot water enters here:

 

And exits here:

 

 

The thin pipe on top passing the fan is for bleeding the system and ends in the engine bay for easy access.

 

 

This is where the y-piece was split:

 

 

The piece removed from the car:

 

[Junkman]

Fixing things started with a new grommet for the cable of the phamous phlap:

 

 

The old one was deteriorated and allowed water ingress into the passenger footwell.

 

 

Then I rigged up new plumbing:

 

 

 

I cleaned the expansion reservoir, which was smack full of brown sludge:

 

 

 

I then flushed the entire cooling system as good as I could. This is what the water looked like when I deemed it

sufficiently clean:

 

 

 

 

I then strategically placed four dishwasher tablets in the cooling system and put everything back together.

Not wanting to waste any expensive antifritz, I filled the system with water only and meticulously followed the

bleeding procedure outlined in the manual.

 

Note: R16s must be bled when the moon is between half and three quarters after the August Bank Holiday Weekend,

         when three witches meet at the crossroads and the neighbour's black cat just walked through your garden.

 

Anyway, I let it run until the fan came on, went off again, came on again, went off again. So two full cycles.

Nothing untoward was observed, so I'll keep the dishwashertabletted water in until the weekend, then drop it and

refill with proper stuff.

 

That should be it.

 

Well, it must be, because I'm not going to take off the scuttle again.

To reconnect the cable for the phamous phlap is such a dirty bitch, it almost drove me up the wall.

 

Anyway, this is what the water looked like after having it running for ca half an hour:

 

 

Not half bad, is it?

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

Nice! 

 

That old coolant was seriously rank. Lumpy and brown. 

[Junkman]

It was only that bad in the reservoir. What was in the cooling system itself wasn't that bad,

but there wasn't any antifreeze or corrosion inhibitor in it. It looked like stale water.

 

At least I figured out the bleeding bleeding procedure. You need two c clamps for step one,

with which you have to squeeze the heater return pipe and the carbonrater heating pipe shut.

[Junkman]

Speaking of the carburetter, it needs adjustment now.

Obviously the cooling system hasn't been working right for a long time and the carb is heated.

Once the car is warm now, tickover is way too lumpy and low revving.

[MorrisItalSLX]

I googled this to try and find out what it was phamous for.

 

How do I clear the browser cache?

 

Ben

 

Its phamous phor phlapping

 

[Junkman]

Okay, all together, carb adjusted, time for a test drive.

If you don't hear anymore from me, it went wrong.

[egg]

1hr23 minute test drive so far...

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

It's going okay.

 

[chaseracer]

I always find whenever I buy an old car it takes a year to get it up to scratch. The good news is you've put a lot right already, the bad news is it's French so may explode tomorrow.

 

There is much truth here.  Especially the last bit.

[Junkman]

1hr23 minute test drive so far...

 

It was a lot longer than that.

 

The car is driving beautifully now. The only untoward thing was that the front right indicator did a Peugeot.

Mr Conelrad papped me when I fixed it at the roadside.

 

Interestingly the bulbs only work when you slacken them a bit. So French.

[junkyarddog]

I remember my Dads total POS Renner 4 had a similar glass bottle on the inner wing,

 

I say "had" because one day driving along there was a loud bang,

followed by a billowing cloud of steam.

 

The fucking thing exploded!!

 

Lifting it's bent and battered bonnet revealed an engine in a cloud of steam,

covered with shit brown sludge that passed for coolant and thousands of shards of broken glass.

 

It got us the few short miles home,

Where Dad cobbled a plastic coolant bottle from a scrap fiat 128 onto it.

It was there till the day the Renner died.

(along with most of the sludge and broken glass)

[Junkman]

My upbringing couldn't have been in starker contrast. That there was an R4 is the only overlap.

 

My mother was in the fashion trade and bought a new R4 off the show room at the Camps Elysees every year

once the Paris fashion show was over, which coincided with the new models just having been delivered.

She would either buy a special model, or one in a striking colour combination if no suitable special was available.

 

Our local Renault dealer was a bit miffed about this, despite my father used to buy his R16s there,

although only in three year intervals. You know how it goes among business people in a community.

 

So when she needed some smaller vans for her business - she only had an H Van at the time, which also pissed

off said dealer - she bought two R4F4s off him. Those were around for quite some time, at least ten years,

but like the H Van constantly updated with varying magnetic signwriting and sticky stuff because fashion business.

They were always kept in mint condition, thus glass bottle explosure was not experienticated.

[junkyarddog]

My mother is an accomplished self taught seamstress,

designing and making clothes from a very early age,

 

She wanted to pursue this talent into a career by going to college and training as such.

 

Sadly in rural Ireland in the early 1960's such a thing was unheard of,

mainly through lack of money,but also the culture that Women get married have babies and stay at home.

 

So she trained as a secretary and that's how she spent her working life.

 

Something she still regrets to this day.

 

Anyway,lets get back to old Renaults

[Junkman]

When my mother decided in the 1950s she wants to go to a design college and then pursue a career

in fashion at the sink of iniquity called Munich, her father kicked her out of the house!

 

Junkdaughter number 2, the Renault and I nipped over to Chodmolestly for a fleeting visit this afternoon.

We just returned with not one untoward thing having happened. Even the heater works faultlessly.

[pshome]

When my mother decided in the 1950s she wants to go to a design college and then pursue a career

in fashion at the sink of iniquity called Munich, her father kicked her out of the house!

 

 

pure prejudice...

 

 

[Junkman]

Keep your Parisian car as Parisian as possible.

 

 

 

 

No shiny shit from China for my car, oh no.

[stormee]

Completely missed that thread, what a story! Took me some minutes* to read and really enjoyed it, vielen Dank dafür!

And how cool the late 60s must have been!

[Junkman]

Remember the days when you could nip down to the corner shop and grab two tins of brake calipers?

 

[Junkman]

Today it was decided to commence brake work.

The brake pedal gave me the sinking feeling each time the brake needed to be applied for any period of time,

especially when waiting at one of those traffic lights they have now every 30 yards, especially on gradients

(for those of you living in East Anglia, that's when a road isn't level).

 

Ergo:

 

 

 

The pipes came off easily enough, so for once I was lucky.

The payback followed suit:

 

 

 

The calipers are of the later type and thus all parts I bought to replace them with are wrong.

I firmly believe that I'm the only dolt who orders a stash of parts without checking what is needed beforehand.

Anyway, it was all futile anyway, since the brakes must have been serviced recently. Pads, discs, calipers look

serviceable for a long time to come.

 

 

However, there is an issue with the bleed nipple of the RH caliper:

 

 

Or better, the issue is that it's not existent. Since I didn't manage to extract the slug they crunched in there,

I suspect they borked the M7 x 1mm thread. Hence this needs to be mended by an engineering company

and if they can't do it, the caliper needs replaced.

 

Then the inevitable happened:

 

 

In summary, shit all round.

Some self inflicted, some caused by others.

Cretins, wherever I look. Even in the mirror.

[dollywobbler]

Ah, the joy of French bleed nipples. I'm convinced they make them out of left over fromage.

[Junkman]

Is that something I should get used to?

 

I could always replace them with Italian ones. Ducati motorcyces also have M7.

[alcyonecorporation]

m9, surely?