Shakin' that RS - plastic surgery

[mintwth]

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away a vehicle was posted for sale in that mystical place of motoring delights known as autoshite. 

After protracted negotiations a chat about motorbikes, agreement was reached to pry that vehicle from the cold dead hands of its keeper. The collection was on!

[mintwth]

The morning of the collection started like any other day but little did anyone involved know what was to come.... 

[mintwth]

PC=2

[mintwth]

A breakfast of copious amounts of tea and some cereal (cereal that would allegedly keep hunger locked up till lunch unless nana's knitting is defective) was consumed before the first mode of transport was deployed

[mintwth]

This led to the unusual (for a weekend) second mode of transport, NOT a rail replacement bus

Yep, looks like a train

[mintwth]

It went to here 

With such extensive entertainment and catering establishments to occupy me, the wait for the next train flew by. 

[mintwth]

A sign of things to come? 

[Wibble]

Curiosity spiked

[mintwth]

Time for a bit of long distance sight-seeing as the train whizzes* by. 

A castle:

And a cathedral:

Are we 

[HillmanImp]

You picking something up from Nigel? 

[High Jetter]

Past tense, shirley? Our council don't like retrospectives. Are ye there yet, it's getting late 🤣

[mintwth]

And on to the next train

Which is the height of luxury* and has seats that rival the comfort of the finest armchairs..... 

.....after they've had all semblance of anything remotely like padding or comfort completely eradicated. 

[mintwth]

And now for something completely different..... 

A green train.

4th train of the day which has unusually and spectacularly failed to be replaced by a bus.

[High Jetter]

Southern? My condolences.

[mintwth]

3 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

Southern? My condolences.

Indeed. Although I wouldn't be on it for long and it did seem luxurious after the ThamesLink.

[mintwth]

Destination achieved!

Now what kind of vehicle was I collecting? 

Well, I had decided I needed* something that could carry more people than my modern (a 2+2 coupe), had more load space than my modern, was more comfortable than my modern, etc.

Something more practical and sensible..... 

[eddyramrod]

6 minutes ago, mintwth said:

Something more practical and sensible..... 

...so he's coming to me for a Jag!

[mintwth]

Something exactly* like @MrGTI6's Inferno Orange Renault Megane RS225! 

It has 5 doors! That can be opened enough to get in to (or out of) the car without being a contortionist even when a car is parked in the space next to it! 

It has rear seats that people with legs can actually use! 

It's a comfier ride over the smooth potholed roads, manhole covers and over any minor imperfections in or grit on the road. The seats are also far far comfier than any of the train seats that were avaliable on the collection journey.

The boot's a decent size and the hatch makes it easy to get stuff in there

 

It's practical and sensible......and quite quick....and French

 

Stay tuned to find out what's happened since I took ownership

[hairnet]

is dome or supernaut now jelus

[auntiemaryscanary]

6 hours ago, mintwth said:

Something exactly* like @MrGTI6's Inferno Orange Renault Megane RS225

It has 5 doors! That can be opened enough to get in to (or out of) the car without being a contortionist even when a car is parked in the space next to it! 

It has rear seats that people with legs can actually use! 

It's a comfier ride over the smooth potholed roads, manhole covers and over any minor imperfections in or grit on the road. The seats are also far far comfier than any of the train seats that were avaliable on the collection journey.

The boot's a decent size and the hatch makes it easy to get stuff in there

 

It's practical and sensible......and quite quick....and French

 

Stay tuned to find out what's happened since I took ownership

He's a fine seller of shite that @MrGTI6 !

Looks a lovely car that.

[MrGTI6]

There should be a prize for the most retrospective collection thread of all time @mintwth! Must be well over a year ago now! How time flies... 

I remember the handbrake cable detaching itself during the test drive. Hopefully not a sign of things to come! 🤣

That Megane was without doubt the quickest car I've owned. I'm convinced it was running more than the standard 225bhp. 

Surprisingly comfortable too. I suspect far more usable than the much-desired stripped-out track specials. 

Look forward to reading about how reliable* it's been! 

[MrGTI6]

4 hours ago, auntiemaryscanary said:

He's a fine seller of shite that @MrGTI6 !

I disagree, you were one of the lucky ones! 🤣

[dome]

11 hours ago, hairnet said:

is dome or supernaut now jelus

I do love a fast Renault 👌

[auntiemaryscanary]

3 hours ago, MrGTI6 said:

There should be a prize for the most retrospective collection thread of all time @mintwth! Must be well over a year ago now! How time flies...  

I did wonder why I'd not seen an ad for this fine ve-hic-ule in last few months or you didn't mention it when I got the Corsa from you a coupla weeks ago!

[mintwth]

13 hours ago, MrGTI6 said:

I remember the handbrake cable detaching itself during the test drive.

Indeed it did. Do you still have the scars from squeezing your hand into that tiny gap to reattach it? 

You'll be delighted* to know, those efforts paid off for the whole journey home from Lidl to the Castle car park via Sainsbury’s for some fuel. 

 

No pez station shot due the scene that played out while I was in the shop buying a sarnie.

Looking round the shop I hear a car alarm going. "Whose could that be?" thinks I. Yes, it was the Megane calling out to me. 

Pas de problem; n'est pa? 

Well, no. I can simply unlock with the remote button on the key card and stop the alarm. 

Can you guess what happened next? 

Deciding I have not given it the level of attention it desired, it auto locked itself and the alarm started going off again. By the time I'd paid for the sarnie and petrol and got out the shop the alarm had gone off enough times to get a fair few people's attention. With a police car pulling in and the alarm drawing attention, making a hasty exit took priority over getting a photo. 

[mintwth]

The rest of the journey home was a pleasure and went without incident.

Well. Without incident except for a loud metallic bang at one point. Nothing in the road but sounded like something metallic had been flung up and hit the underside hard. No noticeable change in how the car was driving and nothing to be seen when I took a look around. How odd. Wonder what that was. 

[mintwth]

What happened next? 

A period of annoying the neighbours with the alarm going off seemingly at random (who knew French cars had such a passion for attention?) until I discovered a cunning* way to lock the car with the alarm disabled. Oh, and deploying the age old 'fix' for a dodgy handbrake of parking in gear. 

All was well until I went to get in the car thinking I had the key card with me but having actually left it well out of range. Turns out my *cunning fix for locking the car with the alarm disabled had actually been to just leave the car unlocked. Oops! 

More Google-fu was deployed and suggested that an intermittent alarm was likely to be the bonnet sensor and that it could be fixed by sticking something to the bonnet to push the sensor button down a bit more. Tried that.

It worked! 

For about six hours....and then the alarm went off again (in the middle of the night). Maybe something had set it off. Got about 4 hours before the alarm went off again. Then some other random periods between the alarm going off. OK, so that hadn't worked, the alarm was still intermittent. 

More google-fu suggested the ultrasonic sensors on the c pillars were sensitive to disturbance (such as removing/replacing the parcel shelf) and could be unplugged. So I had a fiddle with those and couldn't figure out where they were plugged in but did manage to unclip them from their mounts and put them back again.

Thinking I was still no closer to fixing it, I decided to try locking the car again and seeing what happened. 

I'd only gone and 'fixed' it! 

For about a month

[mintwth]

At this point I'd resorted to reading the manual and discovered there was a way to disable the alarm (with a combination of putting  the key card into and out of the card reader, pressing the start button and/or moving the steering wheel from side to side).

This dance routine worked but had to be done every time before you locked the car or the alarm would re-enable itself. I used this rigmarole until I got fed up of having to take the radio out so I could get a hand in to retrieve the card reader from the depths after it'd become detached again (a common occurrence on these). 

Then I found another fix which has, touch wood, got the alarm to behave for the last 6 months or so.

Alarm fixed ✔️

[mintwth]

And the handbrake? That's fixed too. ✔️

Having removed the centre console you gain enough access to the handbrake mechanism to see it properly and to be able to get both handbrake cables properly seated in their slots and the flimsy plastic retainer that keeps them there (and also to improve the design with the use of cable ties so they can't fall out of their slots again). 

[mintwth]

What else? 

Gear shift improved. There's a plastic bush that gets dry and stops the gear stick from self centring. Regreasing that bush makes the gear shift much much better. 

Of course, you do have to remove the battery, ECU and battery tray first before you can get anywhere near that bush. 

 

New windscreen fitted. What looked like bubbles in a tint film turned out to be the screen delaminating.

 

Washer motor replaced. Only need to take the wheel and arch liner out to get to that on a RS. Got the motor from a Megane 2 convertible at the local scrappy where the washer motor is on the other side of the bottle (towards the bumper). 

 

Driver's window temic replaced with another from the scrappy to get that window working again. Temic failure is another common Megane problem and an annoying one when the air con doesn't and it's sunny/hot.  Someone had definitely been in there before. Finding 2 out of 4 trim screws had been left to rattle around in the bottom of the door, the various mangled broken trim clips and how badly it'd all been fitted explained why it rattled a bit. Not much I can do about the broken clips that are part of the door card but it's much less rattly now it's fitted better. 

 

Both wing mirrors replaced. The old ones had cracked by the window and may have been letting water into the door (possibly why the temic failed).