What to do...................with my Clio DCI ?

[Bradders59]

Sell it as spears or rapiers, or just weigh it in. Cant decide at the moment.

Its a 59 plate with 121000 on the clock. Previously cat S, due to being hit up the arse. The damage isnt that noticeable and doesnt affect usage in any way.

It was a great little car, but started to become unreliable. In the last year it had a new injector (not cheap), a new genuine Renault turbo , new cambelt, aux belt, oil & filters.

Developed an oil leak, believed to be from the cam seal , so I replaced that. After a few months it started leaking again so changed the seal again but it didnt help.

A week ago I put a new camshaft in it along with a genuine Renault oil seal,and new rocker gasket,  but it was throwing oil out again within seconds.

Im suspecting blow by or similar, and tried a mixture of ATF / Acetone into the cylinders to hopefully free up any stuck rings.

Have cleaned out PCV valve, intercooler, EGR valve,with no joy.

Im at the end of the road with it now and want it gone.

Dont know if its worth asking £500 spares / repairs, or pull off the new parts to sell on ebay and weigh the rest in.

It couldnt really be driven any distance. Would need to be collected by a trailer, unless buyer was pretty local.

Opinions welcome.

[cobblers]

1: Do you really want to deal with the kind of person who buys £500 clio spares/repairs? Probably not

2: Would the kind of person who buys a £500 clio spares/repairs even entertain one with on the face of it a totally fucked engine that someone has already been messing about with and tried and failed to fix? Absolutely not, unless they were a complete mentalist, and in this case I would refer you to question 1, but add "angry" into the mix when they find out how fucked it really is or make a total mess of trying to fix it

Absolutely, 100% just fucking scrap it.

[DodgeRover]

If you pull the oil filler cap off when it's running how much pressure is there? I would suspect a blocked breather first rather than excess blow by.

[hairnet]

youll get the omg its completely fucked why y u no tell me crowd

unless youre gonna fix it yourself (which youre not)

squash it and move on

 

[Bradders59]

If I advertised it, I would be honest and clear in the advert.

You may well be right, but scrapping cars goes against the grain a bit with me. It feels like failure. Someone who knows more might still bring it back to life and have a very economical car for not much money.

Scrapping it is probably the easier option though.

 

I have cleaned the breather system more than once with no effect. I dont know how to tell how much pressure from the oil cap (or anywhere else) is too much pressure to be honest.

[RoverFolkUs]

Firstly check for pressure up the dipstick. 

Secondly, was the old camshaft scored by any chance where it sits at the end of the head where the offending seal is? I'd be willing to bet it has worn away the head (or cam carrier, whatever you may wish to call it) and subsequently now won't seal properly. A repair sleeve might help take up the wear

All else fails pull off any valuable bits and scrap the fucker. Don't entertain any of that spears reapers nonsense 

[Bradders59]

The old camshaft did have a bit of scoring on the nose. and I initially used an SKF speedisleeve with a new seal, but that didnt fix the problem.

Surely the only thing the scoring would damage though is the seal ?

I then tried a new camshaft and seal, which I was pretty hopeful would solve it, but it didnt. 

[RoverFolkUs]

5 minutes ago, Bradders59 said:

I dont know how to tell how much pressure from the oil cap (or anywhere else) is too much pressure to be honest.

Normally you'd turn the oil cap upside down and place it on top of the filler. If it gets blown off - excess pressure.

Combined dipstick oil cap on those though?

[RoverFolkUs]

3 minutes ago, Bradders59 said:

The old camshaft did have a bit of scoring on the nose. and I initially used an SKF speedisleeve with a new seal, but that didnt fix the problem.

Surely the only thing the scoring would damage though is the seal ?

I then tried a new camshaft and seal, which I was pretty hopeful would solve it, but it didnt. 

If there's scoring on the camshaft then that means there might also be scoring on the head or cam carrier a bit further along under close inspection, the bit where the seal doesn't cover.

A speedisleeve was the line I was thinking along, so if that's failed then yeah, give up, scrap it 😅

[Bradders59]

2 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Normally you'd turn the oil cap upside down and place it on top of the filler. If it gets blown off - excess pressure.

Combined dipstick oil cap on those though?

Seperate dipstick / oil cap.

I didnt know about turning the cap upside down. I wish I had.  Ah well, too late now. I would have to replace the seal again before trying things now and Im completely out of motivation. 

[Bradders59]

4 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

If there's scoring on the camshaft then that means there might also be scoring on the head or cam carrier a bit further along under close inspection, the bit where the seal doesn't cover.

A speedisleeve was the line I was thinking along, so if that's failed then yeah, give up, scrap it 😅

Fair enough. I see what you mean now. 

Looks like its doomed then. All advice so far is to scrap the fucker.

[Dave_Q]

Scrap is still pretty high, you could get 3-400 from the likes of removemycar

[RoverFolkUs]

I completely understand your unwillingness to continue, to be honest chasing oil leaks on older high mileage engines can be a nightmare, quite often there's a multitude of leaks which makes it a fruitless excersize. You may solve this one and then another will be lurking that just makes a mess elsewhere.

[Bradders59]

2 minutes ago, Dave_Q said:

Scrap is still pretty high, you could get 3-400 from the likes of removemycar

Plus what I can get back by flogging the new cam and newish turbo and injector. So hopefully around £500 all in.

[bigfella2]

Also try https://www.motorwise.com.

[Dave_Q]

The price offered is quite area dependent, can be lower in the sticks and higher if you're near a dock I've heard. 

[RoverFolkUs]

If you can be arsed with the hassle take little bits of trim off that scrap man won't care about/notice and flog them on eBay. Especially door mirrors if electric, they're always good sellers. 

To get decent prices from scrap, they usually have to be relatively complete. Though that usually just means cat/battery/alloys where applicable 

[Bradders59]

Actually, the battery is pretty new. Might have to pull that off too. 😂

[Bradders59]

Instant quotes from removemycar - £353. Motorwise £330.

I wonder how much that cat is worth seperately ? And would the collection price be reduced by the same amount ?

Im guessing it probably would. 

[Dave_Q]

3 minutes ago, Bradders59 said:

Actually, the battery is pretty new. Might have to pull that off too. 😂

Are you even a shiter if you haven't got a part-worn Lion brand "sales battery" or two behind the shed?

[Bradders59]

I had three, but weighed them in a few months ago. 🤣

[bigfella2]

8 minutes ago, Bradders59 said:

Instant quotes from removemycar - £353. Motorwise £330.

I wonder how much that cat is worth seperately ? And would the collection price be reduced by the same amount ?

Im guessing it probably would. 

I don't think diesel cats are worth a great deal on modern stuff. 

[RoverFolkUs]

We have a stash of our shit batteries at work which get put in the boot of the scrappers if there's a decent one to take out 😅 Satisfies the battery requirement for scrap and woohoo, free decent battery

If you rob all the decent stuff off it, the scrap price will literally be what it weighs. Have heard that's average £150/ton at the minute? 

The enhanced prices can usually only be achieved when complete so it might make sense to leave it alone unless anything is worth serious dosh

What are the tyres like, we've weighed in a few recently with pretty much brand new tyres which made me wince. If they were a size any good to me I'd have done some switcherooing there too!

[Bradders59]

I have the old cam old injector and old turbo so can either chuck them in the boot or screw them back on for appearance, but will tell them its a non runner before they collect.

Tyres are ok, but nothing special.

[DodgeRover]

Honestly I think if it was blowby then it would be blowing either the filler cap off or the dip stick out.

Start it up, loosen the dip stick, if it blows out there a problem, pull off filler cap does it feel like a huge blast of fumes?

Where abouts is it? Manual or auto?

[Bradders59]

Ive tried both those things and there didnt seem to be a lot of pressure. Its near Halstead Essex. Its manual.

The thing is Ive farted around for months spending time and money and got nowhere. Unless I had a reasonably definite and easyish fix, Im at the end of my tether with it. 

I still have a slight niggling that it might be something much simpler, but Im at a loss as to what it might be. 

Might be the scoring around the cam carrier area of the head, as suggested earlier ?

If it was thats going to involve changing the head, and Im not up for that tbh. 

Having said that, I think that would probably take longer than the 1 minute it took to knacker the new seal, and Ive looked around there several times and not noticed anything amiss. 

Who knows ?  Not me, thats for certain.

[RoverFolkUs]

The only reason I mentioned the scoring is because the wear could be making the seal ineffective as a few thou of the surface has probably been worn away. It's a possibility and not certain by any means. Not worth the faff of measuring tolerances I don't think. Purely scientific* interest only

I'm not sure the scoring is going to damage the seal and as you say, certainly not within a minute causing it to leak. But rather if the area around the seal has seen some wear, the seal would be too small. Only by perhaps a few thou but enough for oil to seep through

The 1.5 DCI is known for sticky piston rings causing blowby so I wouldn't be surprised if it's that either

Or a combination of multiple things, which reaffirms the "don't bother" option!

[vaughant]

8 hours ago, Bradders59 said:

If I advertised it, I would be honest and clear in the advert.

You may well be right, but scrapping cars goes against the grain a bit with me. It feels like failure. Someone who knows more might still bring it back to life and have a very economical car for not much money.

Scrapping it is probably the easier option though.

 

I have cleaned the breather system more than once with no effect. I dont know how to tell how much pressure from the oil cap (or anywhere else) is too much pressure to be honest.

There are some real scumbags when it comes to dealing with spearsss and ReePers but also there's some ok people out there who literally want it for a front end the same colour or a gearbox etc. 

I've certainly gone and bought spares/repairs motors for that very reason and never fucked the person around. 

 

You'll tell pretty quickly if you use gumtree who's good and who's not, you'll get a week of "£200" or even "200" if they're that lazy then you'll start getting the ones who ask a few questions /leave you their number etc etc and I've found those people OK. 

I agree with your principles on it but I couldn't even shift my Berlingo on here with an intermittent overheating problem yet stacks of mot/tax for about 1/2 what they were fetching at the time, literally not even one reply to the ad. Now my theory is if I can't seem a berlingo that needs minimal work on here to the genuine people then what the fuck am I going to be dealing with in the public eye 🤣🤣🤣. 

 

I've decided to take any good bits for the other two I have, make one good one and keep a few bits for the other. I'll keep the car running and driving and still get £300 odd in scrap but most likely sell the good one away from here for more money than I'd like to ask a shiter for. 

[Talbot]

The other thing to do is find a single-marque facebook group or forum and advertise it as breaking.  Yes, you'll get some timewasters, but you might also get someone who really wants it and will give you the same scrap money you would have gotten anyway.  Worth 10 mins of time to advertise it.

[sierraman]

Take the good bits off and weigh the cunt in.