A Safrane goes back on the road!

[RustyNuts]

It only took 12 years!

They're not the most popular of cars but the Ph2 Safrane with the volvo powerplants was always a winner with me. That is, until i removed the engine, put it back, couldn't get it to run, then got it going, then the cooling went, the head gasket followed. I really do have the worst luck with car engines / gearboxes and this one was certainly no exception despite being a Volvo. I'm not a mechanic so i've had to do a lot by trial / error. It's literally the most screwed up then fixed car on the planet. There's nothing on this car i've not buggered up somehow and then had to work out how to fix it and in the process it's cost me more than i'd care to admit. It's been the biggest pain in the arse a car could ever be but for some screwed up mental block of a reason, i couldn't part with it. On a positive note, i've learnt a lot from it that i need to learn when to quit.

So the best course of action was to buy another (£600 jobbie - cars were cheap back then) which got scrapped after 8 months, then a 3rd which also got scrapped a couple of years later. I kept both engines (plus loads of other shit which recently got trashed too due to a house move) but I still had the 1st safrane. 7 years ago i put the 3rd's engine into it and that went the same way.. ran instantly but no cooling system despite coolant bleeding out of all the bleed holes. By this point i'd given away the 2nd engine so couldn't try that. Eventually I ended up swapping the head gasket out which was covered in mayo.. It was a pig of a job with it taking 5 weeks for the volvo dealers to even work out which gasket to order. The engine has far less space on the timing side than the volvo 850 so it was really tight in there and two of the bolts took a lot of head scratching. I got it done but despite the new head gasket, the cooling malfunction continued. 

Last year i had some luck when a couple of local lads came out and plugged in their snap-on kit for less than a penny. It locked up until i started the engine. One of them said he'd never seen that happen before and was stunned. Eventually it pointed to the coolant temp sensor which i knew was wrong as i'd replaced it twice! So they concluded that it had an electrical woe and i set about investigating the impossible again. I'm too embarrassed to tell you what it was but i shall say that it was something simple that i'd completely overlooked for over a decade. Sorted that, cooling fans worked again. All good right?.. well in all the passing years a few other gremlins had set in but i managed my way around those and 2 months after we'd moved again, i was able to collect it and take it for it's first MOT in over a decade.

More pics - taken today!

Just in the nick of time too. 2 days after the MOT my van went off the road again and so the car that the missus had disliked for years because "it's a fucking dead lump of metal" is now alive and slowly winning her back over now that it's doing school runs so she can still use her car for work. 

At 2.5L it's thirsty at 17mpg around town - that's 3.7miles per litre. 33mpg on a motorway is pretty much the maximum. Insurance is a pain too but i won't go there. So now i've got it fixed up and back on the road i shall have to SORN it again shortly and keep it as a spare motor. 

[Asimo]

Congratulations!

Don’t sorn it too soon, wear it out first.

[Schaefft]

Good to see one more Safrane back on the road, doesn't happen very often. I was hoping this thread would be about my ex phase 1 v6 one still floating around here as that car really needs to return from the dead!😄 Fingers crossed yours proves to be a solid one.

[Six-cylinder]

What a fantastic story.

[sierraman]

I’d count myself as one of the lucky few that have driven a Safrane. They were a really nice car especially the later ones such as yours, if I remember parts were tricky to get even back in the day? I remember my uncle having a right pain trying to get hold of a set of rear brake discs that weren’t a million quid from Renault. 

[leakingstrut]

Love to see a Safrane being kept going. About 20 years ago my parents bought a pretty low spec phase one 2 litre from an auction. It had a dodgy history - model designations on the wings were different and we found broken glass in every nook and cranny. But it was a lovely barge that did them well for years, albeit with some very French electrical gremlins. Felt so much more modern than the bluebird it replaced or my 309. 
 

I prefer the front on the phase 1, the more modern grill clashed slightly for me but that wouldn’t stop me from having one. 

[barrett]

Whatever happened to that other Safrane on here that was having a semi-epic 'light resto'?? I cannot for the life of me remember who had it, but I remember it was pissing power steering fluid everywhere at some stage. Did it ever get sorted and back on the road?

[Dick Cheeseburger]

  On 28/01/2023 at 20:33, barrett said:

Whatever happened to that other Safrane on here that was having a semi-epic 'light resto'?? I cannot for the life of me remember who had it, but I remember it was pissing power steering fluid everywhere at some stage. Did it ever get sorted and back on the road?

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@Andyrew's one?

 

[Floatylight]

  On 28/01/2023 at 20:33, barrett said:

Whatever happened to that other Safrane on here that was having a semi-epic 'light resto'?? I cannot for the life of me remember who had it, but I remember it was pissing power steering fluid everywhere at some stage. Did it ever get sorted and back on the road?

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Think this was @Schaefftone 3.0 v6 exec, went to @flat4alfa, I took it up north in a thunderstorm with the wiper motor in the boot and loosing its pa's fluid to @catsinthewelderwho won it in a roffle and ran it for a while, now owned by @Six-cylinderand @Andyrew

[brownnova]

Any Safrane returned to the road is cause for celebration!

Well done for getting it back on the public roads! 

[Surface Rust]

Apologies for gatecrashing your thread with this, but thought this snippet of Safrane history ought to be captured for posterity, and as your Safrane milkshake has already brought all the Safrane fanciers to the yard....

A few years ago I worked for a Peterborough based diesel engine manufacturer.  Languishing in the corner of the works car park was a Phase 1 Safrane (met green). Shitters in the car park were not unusual, my period of employment coincided with Xbollox. Anyway, this Safrane was a bit special, as it was an former development vehicle, housing a specially developed executive class 2.5 litre V6, twin turbo, Bosch VE diesel.  It was called the 'sunshine' project, and sadly after building several prototypes, including this fully functioning Safrane, it was eventually scrapped.

The Sunshine engine was, by all accounts an absolute peach, it developed about 168bhp and had received significant NVH benchmarking to place it well ahead of any contemporaries.

Apparently the Safrane was trailered over to France to be demonstrated to Renault top brass, but they decided to pursue their own in house 4cyl diesels instead.

What might have been eh?

[brownnova]

Talking of Safranes, these images seem to have done the rounds on social media again recently. Not sure if they’ve been posted here on AS. But… imagine a Safrane estate… then see this the long cours prototype.

[sierraman]

For the piece de resistance you want a Questor. 

[RustyNuts]

Well the Safrane is back on the road again, my van went kerput and so the safrane ended up being recalled to active service for the school runs etc. I wasn't keen on doing this, I'd prefer to use the van as my daily but the school runs took priority and the missus who really did stop liking the safrane decided she needed it back on the road so much that she stumped up the money to pay the insurance for a whole year in advance.

Safrane is back! It's being used daily, it's drinking my wallet dry but by god I love this car and feel so smug when using it.

  On 31/01/2023 at 20:23, sierraman said:

For the piece de resistance you want a Questor. 

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I did have one of those (had 3 safranes in total). Trouble is the guy I bought that from had removed the sat nav thinking it was worthless. Silly sod didn't realise it was actually the top spec'd car that he'd just savaged!!

[andyberg]

Just found this thread! I know you have posted on my Safrane thread. They are fantastic cars, I love mine to bits. And I too feel smug driving it, it’s a car I could just drive and drive. I am hoping to take her to France next year at some point. Mine has been pressed into daily duties while my jazz is in for repair. 
now following this thread😁

[RustyNuts]

  On 13/12/2024 at 09:44, andyberg said:

Just found this thread! I know you have posted on my Safrane thread. They are fantastic cars, I love mine to bits. And I too feel smug driving it, it’s a car I could just drive and drive. I am hoping to take her to France next year at some point. Mine has been pressed into daily duties while my jazz is in for repair. 
now following this thread😁

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I typically search this forum every week or two for the word safrane!

I find it hard to imagine life without this car. It was a very glum time in my life when it was off the road. I literally had no idea what was wrong with it, nobody knew anything about them, nobody wanted to get involved except the local dealer who quoted me over £1k to replace and program the ECU! The car just sat around on the drive for years and it was really grim seeing it slowly deteriorating. Money was tight and I literally lost hope on it many times then every few years I'd have a little breakthrough with something but it was never quite enough.  It has escaped the last chance saloon so many times I've lost count. 

Eventually got to the bottom of the woes.. the missus still wanted it gone but once I got it through an MOT she couldn't really call it useless anymore and so it's alive and doing daily duties again. My little lad loves this car too - especially when we take tight bends at high speed as the rear wheel steering kicks in and the whole car pivots - it's a fab car in so many ways and yet so underrated!

I still need to do a lot of work to it, especially rust wise. The MOT tester did say this year it was very close and the rust needs sorting as it won't pass next year. I'll get there..

[andyberg]

We must be twins!! My Safrane makes me feel the same way! I do worry she will deteriorate over the winter as I have no cover for her, that would make me sad. I have lanoguarded the hell out of underneath and have booked a detailer to come round and do the  paint. I really can’t see me without this car. 

[RustyNuts]

  On 13/12/2024 at 11:15, andyberg said:

We must be twins!! My Safrane makes me feel the same way! I do worry she will deteriorate over the winter as I have no cover for her, that would make me sad. I have lanoguarded the hell out of underneath and have booked a detailed to come round and do the  paint. I really can’t see me without this car. 

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The lanoguard will help but ultimately rust is rust. It'll still silently be progressing under the lanoguard. Even rust convertors like KURust and Jenolite etc won't really stop it. Halfords do sell some green rust remover gel - made by hammerite I think - which is pretty good at removing rust down to bare metal but it's a bit tricky to use. You basically ignore their instructions about stirring it every 20 mins and just leave it on overnight. Overnight magic will happen and you'll see clean metal but if you leave it too long it gets sticky and horrible to remove.

In 2014 i started an extensive rust removal project on the car. I wire brushed the hell out of everything, dropped the rear subframe, replaced brake lines, had the shocks out, wire brushed those...

I kid you not, the neighbours thought I was mad. Imagine going in your back garden to see your neighbour has two massive shock absorber springs hanging from tree branches (along with various other bits)! It was actually a clever tactic, hang them from the tree and spin them - that way I could spray paint them as they were turning. Yes, I had even wire brushed the springs to bare metal (not an easy task that one). Shock absorbers, rear subframe, tracking rods, parts of the chassis, wishbones and rods at the front, etc etc. Nothing escaped my trusty wire brush(es). Everything went back to bare metal and that includes nuts and bolts (left overnight in the rust remover gel mentioned above).

Shocks and springs got multiple coats of the (isopon?) Zinc primer spray from Halfords before before the multiple coats of black spray paint. They came out looking like new. Other parts got the black hammerite treatment (notably rear subframe, front wish bones, tie rods etc). Then on advice from some old fellas restoring steam engines I was convinced to switch to using red oxide.

That was in 2014. 10 years later, the shocks and springs are still alive but the rust is all over them. The Zinc primer from halfords is supposed to protect the metal however zinc is a sacrificial anode (didn't know this at the time) - it's used on ship hulls to protect them from corrosion. The zinc gives off excess electrons to replace those lost in the steel and thus the zinc deteriorates instead of the metal. Trouble is, on a car that's not worked out so well as it's sacrificed itself but then allowed the rust to carry on spreading back into the metal. The hammerite.. did well to start with, in some areas it's still holding strong (eg above the rear shocks (cup mounts I think they might be called?). No visible signs of rust coming back there and those two areas above the rear shocks were BAD! Even the wire brush didn't remove it all and I was too scared to carry on in case I created holes. Hammerite'd those areas and they're still doing well. However, some areas such as the wishbones and tie rods haven't done so well with hammerite. Despite going back to nice clean metal before applying the hammerite, the rust is creeping back through again and has been for several years. I'm a bit disappointed with it if i'm honest. 

Then we have the red oxide. I had mixed views about using this, unlike hammerite it's not particularly well advertised and some of the old boys who recommended it can be a bit daft - but they do have years of experience. At the time i knew it could be a gamble that might back fire if i used red oxide instead of hammerite however everything with red oxide on has survived a lot better than the hammerite'd stuff and the zinc'd stuff. The hammerite still looks pretty fresh and while there may well be rust still growing under it, I've seen nothing that concerns me so it must be growing very slowly. My only regret is not using it on everything else! I trusted Hammerite.. silly sod I am!

What I will say is that if you're any good with car repair, have some spare land and time, strip your safrane down and start looking for rust. I guarantee you its there somewhere but Renaults do rust a lot slower than some other brands (I think this one may have lived by the sea at some point). In france loads have vanished from the roads due to corrosion - I've seen multiple posts on the french safrane facebook groups regarding this. People discover serious rust and give up on them. The rear subframe can be an awkward one, when you pull it down there's nuts and bolts on top of it that are solid rust. I had to cut through the nuts to remove and replace. The brake lines were also so badly corroded that they literally disintegrated when the subframe was lowed by a few millimeters (a particularly unwelcome annoyance at the time). Yup, I had to go and get the gear to do new brake lines too, learn how to do that, practice repeatedly on some small sections of copper brake pipe and then go for the install. Brakes are now fine but had I not have had that pipe disintegrate, I could be a dead man now. It was an annoyance at the time but I look back now and am glad that I had to replace those brake lines.

The worst part for me was the metal plate on the bottom of the rear subframe in the middle. To access the handbrake cable / adjuster and all that, you have to unbolt this plate. Every single bolt was seized solid. With a 2ft breaker bar I could literally only get 1-2 degrees of movement on each bolt. The WD40 was everywhere that day while working those bolts back and forth. Helpfully the bolts are bolted in upwards (the head being at the bottom) and with liquid preferring to obey gravity, it wasn't easy getting the WD40 to go up into the threads. It took me something in the region of 3-4 hours to get them out but eventually they did come out intact (the bolt threads were treated to rust remover treatment and copper grease afterwards). That was one nasty job, my arms were physically exhausted after that.

Everything I've done with this car has been a struggle to fix financially (and mentally it really crucified me) but I managed to keep going and eventually got there. 12 years is kinda embarrassing but unlike a lot of people who will "fix it one day"  while doing nothing, I actually did. While it was off the road I tried to keep up with things that I could see deteriorating, I can't say I did a great job but I did more than some people would. I'm still struggling but at least it's back on the road!!

[andyberg]

Blimey! That’s dedication. I won’t/can’t go that far. In the plus side I know my car has been garaged all its life and spent the first 20 years in that London so salt corrosion should be at a minimum. Petrolblog (Gavin) that bought it from the original owner didn’t use it much and did keep it in either a dry garage over winter or a dryish barn during the summer. I hope I can get another 5 years out of her with the basic maintenance and rustproofing I can do. 

[RustyNuts]

  On 13/12/2024 at 12:36, andyberg said:

I hope I can get another 5 years out of her with the basic maintenance and rustproofing I can do. 

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As long as you keep on top of it every year rust-wise, you should be ok. Don't worry about the engine, that will take you to the moon and halfway round the solar system before it thinks about giving up - but just be sure to get the cambelt done every 70k or 7 years. They can go on a lot longer in reality, mine was 10 years and i knew another old boy who's Safrane was on 180k and never had the belt done. Remember these are Volvo engines and those guys don't mess around. Even the engine mounts are Volvo - they are stamped Volvo inside them but forget about getting replacements from Volvo, they don't recognise the part numbers at all. However, Volvo parts can still do the usual engine parts - head gasket, head bolts, distributor parts etc. All of that is available but it's just the custom stuff they designed for the Renault engine mounting that you'll not find (ebay is your friend).

But back to the rust.. keep on top of it every year with the protection. These cars can rot badly but I had two others that were pretty mint underneath - literally brilliant condition compared to this one (but this one was the special one i really liked - what a muppet I am).

Also they are becoming slightly trickier to find but still plentiful on ebay, the air filter should be done regularly too. The air filter housing screws and bolts can also seize and become problematic. I had an old air filter box in the shed so when I came to change mine and hit problems, I was able to make sacrificial cuts through strategic bits and still make good of the situation with the spare.

Understand this.. they are amazing and very underrated cars but they are quirky and not well supported by mechanics, Renault or independent specialists. You are going to come across times when you wonder how to get around a certain problem when there are no parts available - you'll just have to get creative and find used or repair somehow. For what its worth though, I remember talking to the renault dealer in the nearby city a few years ago and the parts guy said that they never had them come into their workshops for any repairs because they were so reliable. He said they never sold that many but they did sell several from that branch but none came in for repair, none ever had engine problems, none ever needed warranty claims. They just sold and were never seen again. If you ever can, find another and keep it as a donor car. Strip it as and when you need parts or break it straight away and stash everything but if you do that and keep the engine, keep coolant inside the engine or else without the rust inhibitor the head gasket will rot. The engine I'm using now sat outside on a pallet in all conditions for 2 years. It fired up instantly on installation into the car but because the gasket had been unprotected it soon failed. They are good engines they just need TLC.

Don't part with your safrane, if you do it'll be the worst thing you never forgive yourself for!

  On 13/12/2024 at 12:36, andyberg said:

Blimey! That’s dedication. 

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What can I say.. I don't like change! It unsettles me. Some people like to change their car every few months or a couple of years, other prefer to change partners. I prefer to recognise what I'm lucky enough to have and hang on to it.

[RustyNuts]

  On 13/12/2024 at 11:15, andyberg said:

I do worry she will deteriorate over the winter as I have no cover for her

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Forgot to address this earlier..

With experience from 12 years of it being off the road, I can honestly say a cover is the worst thing you can put over your car. I did this numerous times and every time i checked up on it a few weeks later, I'd find mould all over the steering wheel, the gear shifter, door handles etc. The covers never seemed to last long either. Compared to the time with the cover, the time that it spend uncovered saw much less suffering. I honestly do not think that car covers are all they're cracked up to be. The plastic ones keep the water out (ish) the breathable ones let it through and then it sits there under the cover and dries onto the cars paint. You're better off putting a gazebo over it.

[andyberg]

  On 13/12/2024 at 20:15, RustyNuts said:

Forgot to address this earlier..

With experience from 12 years of it being off the road, I can honestly say a cover is the worst thing you can put over your car. I did this numerous times and every time i checked up on it a few weeks later, I'd find mould all over the steering wheel, the gear shifter, door handles etc. The covers never seemed to last long either. Compared to the time with the cover, the time that it spend uncovered saw much less suffering. I honestly do not think that car covers are all they're cracked up to be. The plastic ones keep the water out (ish) the breathable ones let it through and then it sits there under the cover and dries onto the cars paint. You're better off putting a gazebo over it.

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To clarify by cover I meant a roof of some kind. Unfortunately she has to sit on the road. I have applied to the council for a garage but they are as rare as Safrane parts!! I get what you mean about covers though, my commuter motorbike suffers under a so called all weather cover so much so that over winter if it’s a dry day I’ll take the cover off to let it ‘breathe’

Thanks for all your tips, really appreciated 

[sierraman]

  On 13/12/2024 at 10:59, RustyNuts said:

I typically search this forum every week or two for the word safrane!

I find it hard to imagine life without this car. It was a very glum time in my life when it was off the road. I literally had no idea what was wrong with it, nobody knew anything about them, nobody wanted to get involved except the local dealer who quoted me over £1k to replace and program the ECU! The car just sat around on the drive for years and it was really grim seeing it slowly deteriorating. Money was tight and I literally lost hope on it many times then every few years I'd have a little breakthrough with something but it was never quite enough.  It has escaped the last chance saloon so many times I've lost count. 

Eventually got to the bottom of the woes.. the missus still wanted it gone but once I got it through an MOT she couldn't really call it useless anymore and so it's alive and doing daily duties again. My little lad loves this car too - especially when we take tight bends at high speed as the rear wheel steering kicks in and the whole car pivots - it's a fab car in so many ways and yet so underrated!

I still need to do a lot of work to it, especially rust wise. The MOT tester did say this year it was very close and the rust needs sorting as it won't pass next year. I'll get there..

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Keep going with it. Excellent underrated cars these.