I've been meaning to move over to Retro Rides for a while now as Retro-Renault is dead and sure I was a bit late to that party anyway. I bought this Renault back in July 2011 with about 62,000 miles. Not bad for a 1984. It only had two previous owners, the first being a reverend. It starting out being a 'TL' model which in Renault terms is poverty spec. Exposed metal on the inside, no intermittent wipers, no rear wiper and bizarrley a one speaker radio. Can't even call it a stereo! There was a cardboard insert on the drivers side. I have to say I took a lot of modern car convenience features for granted when I first bought it. No power anything. The fanciest feature was electronic ignition. The only optional extra it was fitted with was a 5 speed transmission.
A Renault dealer had bought it off the last owner and fitted the 13" alloys probably from an R18 or Fuego (The turbo 11 wheels were 14"), mud flaps, new floor mats and seat covers as it looks like animals ate the originals. Paint work is fairly decent for a car of its age. Some rust bubbling on the door sills and one side of the boot area (tail gate gutter or something)
It has the old C1J 1.4 litre engine putting out 58 very tired ponies and the brakes are fairly rubbish. Just all round spongy with no feel for them being near lock up (if you can get them to lock!) The shock absorbers may as well have not been in the car. Probably original and totally useless. They'd bottom out with just me in the car going over a speed bump at low speed. Amazingly they pass the NCT (MOT) as they just have to be balanced either side.
I didn't have much plans at first for it at first. Just upgrade it slowly and make it a bit more tolerable for daily driving. Looking back, I can't believe I drove it with the suspension in such a state. The mudflaps constantly rubbed the ground with any weight in the car and it totally tipped in the corners.
First up was to add rear seatbelts. Having had so many E30 touring BMWs, I had loads of spares. the front seat belts from a 1990 BMW 316i fit the rear of the Renault. The bolt holes were already there behind some plastic caps.
A little chopping of the side panels in the boot and now only a slight lump that's barely noticable.
Next up was the radio. No picture of the original. Fitted a Sony which has been in every car I've owned I think. Put in some spare speakers in the foot wells too. OK sound now but no bass at all thanks to the totally open space where the speakers are fitted. I also put in a clock from my R19 which I had. It's a stupid place for it but then again the radio is in a terrible place to begin with. A really stupid design flaw. You have to take your eyes completely off the road in front of you to look at it.
At this point I still had an R19 but was thinking of maybe getting rid of it. It was a wreck when I got it for free. Every panel was dented, paint was peeling and the winter storms and snow with loads of second gear starts finished the clutch. I decided it would be a good project to learn how to change a clutch so I did it... Then the day I was finished I started it in gear and it smacked my next door neighbour's (at the time) brand new Skoda. Highly embarrassing is an understatement... All I did was break a couple of clips holding the head lights in on the Skoda but the 19 was caved in. Glad I wasn't in a real crash in it. Turns out it had been written off before but just went unreported and got a quick straightening out job. Did I do the sensible thing and junk it right away? No, I tied blue nylon rope to the front end and then the other end to a lampost. I kept slamming it in reverse until it was "straight enough", slapped on €100 worth of scrap yard bits and used a cable tie to open the bonnet. I took no pictures of this as it was so bloody shameful!
Here's my favourite shot of it. Grainy and slightly blurred. You can't see the horrific paint work or dents. I was showing my mom and a friend how to do hand brake turns in a snowy Lidl car park. The 19 proved very useful for parts later on.
Next on the list for the 11 was to do something about the basic gauge cluster. No tachometer and no coolant temperature gauge. Just the overheating light to tell you it's too late. I honestly never felt comfortable driving the car with no gauge as I've had many incidents in other cars where I've caught it before it was too late. I saw a 19 on the back of a flat bed on the motor way and I called the local scrap yard. I got there before they crushed it (who wants 19 parts anyway?). It was an RSi model so it pretty much had the interior from a 19 16V. I took the interior, the steering wheel and the gauge cluster.
I started pulling apart the cluster from the 19 and making it fit the 11.
The unit itself was a match. I think I cut a tab or two at the top
The plastic fronts are totally different
The 19 also had the black cover as part of the front housing. I had to re-use the 11s black plastic cover and cut out the extra holes with a stanley knife.
The wiring was a little different too. One problem was that the choke light and diesel pre-heat lights are swapped. I removed the diode on the 19s cluster beside the pre-heat light and ran a wire to where the light is supposed to be on the 11. The brake wear light stays on so I removed the bulb. I didn't want to spend time figuring it out when I wouldn't be stupid enough to let the pads go down that far anyway.
Mmm gauge clusters... How exciting!
Fits now no bother! The rev counter works with no wiring changes. The oil level gauge doesn't because there was no sensor on the engine for it and the temp gauge is dead also. This took me a long time to figure out. Turns out the sensor on the engine only had one wire going to it for the overheating light. There also wasn't even a wire in the harness for the gauge.
Yes the orange colour and the font is wrong but at least I have a full cluster. Also, it was very easy to match the mileage on the two speedos. No wonder clocking cars mileage used to be so common.
I drove the car like this until about May 2012. It used to die at the most inconvenient times. Once it bucked me out onto an intersection in Dublin city centre with busses coming at me from all sides. Turned out to be a worn distributor cap and rotor. I just wasn't used to the maintenance needed on an older car. The carb was always giving me trouble. It used to hesitate and buck the car violently when you hit the accelerator after decelerating. At the time I knew nothing about carbs. Again looking back after learning so much I know that it was probably just the accelerator pump wasn't working seeing as the idle mix screw did nothing to solve it.
I decided to scrap the 19 at this point but not before pulling the engine and gearbox. It failed the NCT on a misaligned rear axle and I wasn't going to replace it. Surprisingly not on my terrible repair job, semi-crumpled front support bars or partially collapsed steering collumn with washers to stop the steering wheel from rubbing.
Bye bye R19!
I wanted to try and fit the energy engine from the 19 into the 11. It would be a good learning project. The idea of 80hp vs 58hp (sadly the torque or lack of it is the same) and fuel injection sounding tempting. I was inspired by a thread somewhere about a Renault 5 campus with an energy engine swap too.
The initial plan was fuel injection but it proved to be a headache even to plan. I didn't want to deal with high pressure lines, fitting an electric pump and somehow pressurising the current fuel tank (as it isn't sealed) or fitting a swirl pot. It just sounded like it could only end in tears... or fire.
Will it fit? This was my biggest problem. I know it fits in a 19, 5 (from that project thread) and clio but I measured it (not that accurately) and it looks to be slightly longer (possibly an inch) than the c-type engine. I was afraid that even after I removed the power steering pulley from the crank that it may still not clear the 11s body. Cut and weld I hope not. It will be a very tight fit if it fits. (At this point I'm tired and just copying and pasting from my old thread and I've given up on changing present to past tense. Sorry)
At this point it started to really slow down. We were down to one car at home (my 11) as we were waiting on the Volvo 480 to come back from the garage yet again. I was also in my final year in college (Well I thought it was final year at the time but then I did an add on year for my sins)
I bought a 1990 Renault 19 Chamade GTS for scrap value so I could convert the energy engine I pulled from my white 19 (getting confusing now!) to a weber carb setup. A lovely brown interior!
What I needed to turn my E7J into an E6J:
Weber 32/32 TLDR carb (vacuum operated twin barrel)
Intake manifold
mechanical fuel pump
Ignition module/coil
Flywheel sensor (for the ignition)
The Chamade was a non runner. It had sat on a farm for years with the owner's sons driving it around fields or something. It was a wreck.
Last photos I took (at my cousin's wedding) before I took it off the road for the engine swap.
All the wires labelled, hoses disconnected and ready to be pulled.
Out with the C1J
Empty engine bay. I had to cut the exhaust as the manifold bolts were seized. I didn't mind as I knew it was going to require a bit of fabrication with the energy exhaust.
Realising there was more work than I had originally thought...
It sat like this for about three or four months... When I lowered the energy engine in it was stopped by the alternator fouling the brake master cylinder I thought I may as well just swap the cylinder and booster from the 19. It could also help the spongy feeling.
Nope, not happening. R19 on the right.
I also discovered that the master cylinder had started leaking around the booster so I bought a new one from France and replaced it. Again, nope! I was wrong. The leaky one is from the 19 and not the 11. I somehow got confused at the time with them out. All I acomplished here was wasting money and getting air in the brake lines. I didn't realise my error until this year while uploading these photos. It was also going to cause a lot more trouble in the future and more wasted money...
Looking back now on the alternator problem, I don't know if it would have fit if I had just removed it, fitted the engine and then re-attached it. I don't think so though. The early 11s had that brake cylinder you see above which is longer that the 19s and I believe the 5 so that's why other people haven't run into that issue.
I decided to move the alternator to the front like in the c-type engine's design. In this case I just used the alternator from the C1j engine and make some adapters.
Nosy helper
It's mounted probably where the A/C compressor would go. That's another piece of steel there on top that I added.
I cut the timing belt cover and added an idle pulley from a BMW M43 engine.
I also changed the timing belt and water pump at this point. They were overdue anyway. Also, I'm pretty sure the engine had about 132,000 miles on it at the time. It may sound a bit mad to put an engine in with double the mileage of the car but the 19 had been maintained by the same Renault mechanic since day 1 so it never missed a service. The previous owner (a friend's mom) had an uncle or brother in law working for Renault.
The belt system in all its glory but before I got a shorter belt to fit perfectly.
Don't you just love northern european weather! Notice the spare wheel on the back. I don't know how many flats I had while it was sitting up.
Engine is in! (it's a much later photo because I have no idea why I didn't take any at the time) So the crank pulley had to be swapped for one from the Chamade with no power steering. It woulnd't have fit otherwise and the 11 has no power steering anyway. The JB101 gearbox from the 11 did not fit. Only half the bolt holes matched. The internet seems to inform you that any JB1 gearbox is interchangable. Then again the internet will let you believe anything you want. I had to keep the JB1025 from my white 19 with it's weird ratios and slow final drive. Thankfully the driveshafts were the same length. The exhaust was actually too long so it was cut and welded at the local exhaust centre. You can see I used the E6J massive air filter from the Chamade. I wish I hadn't but at the time I hadn't known of the Fiesta XR2 Weber TLDM carb being so similar to the TLDR and having a nice chrome filter for it. Well I haven't tried it but it looks like it'll fit. Maybe someday... As for the engine mounts, the front engine mount is from the Chamade as I didn't need the power steering pump mount. The gearbox one I think was the same on the 19 and 11. The rear is from the 11.
I also tried to use the 11's radiator but it wasn't crossflow so the pipes lined up differently. Why I scrapped two 19s with both radiators is beyond me. Originally I butchered the pipes tried a mash up but it was ugly. So here I am at this stage paying the local scrap yard something like €40 for a disgracefully battered radiator to test and megane hoses which don't really match up properly.
It's past my bedtime so I'll finish this tomorrow. It's up to about December 2012 now.
A Renault dealer had bought it off the last owner and fitted the 13" alloys probably from an R18 or Fuego (The turbo 11 wheels were 14"), mud flaps, new floor mats and seat covers as it looks like animals ate the originals. Paint work is fairly decent for a car of its age. Some rust bubbling on the door sills and one side of the boot area (tail gate gutter or something)
It has the old C1J 1.4 litre engine putting out 58 very tired ponies and the brakes are fairly rubbish. Just all round spongy with no feel for them being near lock up (if you can get them to lock!) The shock absorbers may as well have not been in the car. Probably original and totally useless. They'd bottom out with just me in the car going over a speed bump at low speed. Amazingly they pass the NCT (MOT) as they just have to be balanced either side.
I didn't have much plans at first for it at first. Just upgrade it slowly and make it a bit more tolerable for daily driving. Looking back, I can't believe I drove it with the suspension in such a state. The mudflaps constantly rubbed the ground with any weight in the car and it totally tipped in the corners.
First up was to add rear seatbelts. Having had so many E30 touring BMWs, I had loads of spares. the front seat belts from a 1990 BMW 316i fit the rear of the Renault. The bolt holes were already there behind some plastic caps.
A little chopping of the side panels in the boot and now only a slight lump that's barely noticable.
Next up was the radio. No picture of the original. Fitted a Sony which has been in every car I've owned I think. Put in some spare speakers in the foot wells too. OK sound now but no bass at all thanks to the totally open space where the speakers are fitted. I also put in a clock from my R19 which I had. It's a stupid place for it but then again the radio is in a terrible place to begin with. A really stupid design flaw. You have to take your eyes completely off the road in front of you to look at it.
At this point I still had an R19 but was thinking of maybe getting rid of it. It was a wreck when I got it for free. Every panel was dented, paint was peeling and the winter storms and snow with loads of second gear starts finished the clutch. I decided it would be a good project to learn how to change a clutch so I did it... Then the day I was finished I started it in gear and it smacked my next door neighbour's (at the time) brand new Skoda. Highly embarrassing is an understatement... All I did was break a couple of clips holding the head lights in on the Skoda but the 19 was caved in. Glad I wasn't in a real crash in it. Turns out it had been written off before but just went unreported and got a quick straightening out job. Did I do the sensible thing and junk it right away? No, I tied blue nylon rope to the front end and then the other end to a lampost. I kept slamming it in reverse until it was "straight enough", slapped on €100 worth of scrap yard bits and used a cable tie to open the bonnet. I took no pictures of this as it was so bloody shameful!
Here's my favourite shot of it. Grainy and slightly blurred. You can't see the horrific paint work or dents. I was showing my mom and a friend how to do hand brake turns in a snowy Lidl car park. The 19 proved very useful for parts later on.
Next on the list for the 11 was to do something about the basic gauge cluster. No tachometer and no coolant temperature gauge. Just the overheating light to tell you it's too late. I honestly never felt comfortable driving the car with no gauge as I've had many incidents in other cars where I've caught it before it was too late. I saw a 19 on the back of a flat bed on the motor way and I called the local scrap yard. I got there before they crushed it (who wants 19 parts anyway?). It was an RSi model so it pretty much had the interior from a 19 16V. I took the interior, the steering wheel and the gauge cluster.
I started pulling apart the cluster from the 19 and making it fit the 11.
The unit itself was a match. I think I cut a tab or two at the top
The plastic fronts are totally different
The 19 also had the black cover as part of the front housing. I had to re-use the 11s black plastic cover and cut out the extra holes with a stanley knife.
The wiring was a little different too. One problem was that the choke light and diesel pre-heat lights are swapped. I removed the diode on the 19s cluster beside the pre-heat light and ran a wire to where the light is supposed to be on the 11. The brake wear light stays on so I removed the bulb. I didn't want to spend time figuring it out when I wouldn't be stupid enough to let the pads go down that far anyway.
Mmm gauge clusters... How exciting!
Fits now no bother! The rev counter works with no wiring changes. The oil level gauge doesn't because there was no sensor on the engine for it and the temp gauge is dead also. This took me a long time to figure out. Turns out the sensor on the engine only had one wire going to it for the overheating light. There also wasn't even a wire in the harness for the gauge.
Yes the orange colour and the font is wrong but at least I have a full cluster. Also, it was very easy to match the mileage on the two speedos. No wonder clocking cars mileage used to be so common.
I drove the car like this until about May 2012. It used to die at the most inconvenient times. Once it bucked me out onto an intersection in Dublin city centre with busses coming at me from all sides. Turned out to be a worn distributor cap and rotor. I just wasn't used to the maintenance needed on an older car. The carb was always giving me trouble. It used to hesitate and buck the car violently when you hit the accelerator after decelerating. At the time I knew nothing about carbs. Again looking back after learning so much I know that it was probably just the accelerator pump wasn't working seeing as the idle mix screw did nothing to solve it.
I decided to scrap the 19 at this point but not before pulling the engine and gearbox. It failed the NCT on a misaligned rear axle and I wasn't going to replace it. Surprisingly not on my terrible repair job, semi-crumpled front support bars or partially collapsed steering collumn with washers to stop the steering wheel from rubbing.
Bye bye R19!
I wanted to try and fit the energy engine from the 19 into the 11. It would be a good learning project. The idea of 80hp vs 58hp (sadly the torque or lack of it is the same) and fuel injection sounding tempting. I was inspired by a thread somewhere about a Renault 5 campus with an energy engine swap too.
The initial plan was fuel injection but it proved to be a headache even to plan. I didn't want to deal with high pressure lines, fitting an electric pump and somehow pressurising the current fuel tank (as it isn't sealed) or fitting a swirl pot. It just sounded like it could only end in tears... or fire.
Will it fit? This was my biggest problem. I know it fits in a 19, 5 (from that project thread) and clio but I measured it (not that accurately) and it looks to be slightly longer (possibly an inch) than the c-type engine. I was afraid that even after I removed the power steering pulley from the crank that it may still not clear the 11s body. Cut and weld I hope not. It will be a very tight fit if it fits. (At this point I'm tired and just copying and pasting from my old thread and I've given up on changing present to past tense. Sorry)
At this point it started to really slow down. We were down to one car at home (my 11) as we were waiting on the Volvo 480 to come back from the garage yet again. I was also in my final year in college (Well I thought it was final year at the time but then I did an add on year for my sins)
I bought a 1990 Renault 19 Chamade GTS for scrap value so I could convert the energy engine I pulled from my white 19 (getting confusing now!) to a weber carb setup. A lovely brown interior!
What I needed to turn my E7J into an E6J:
Weber 32/32 TLDR carb (vacuum operated twin barrel)
Intake manifold
mechanical fuel pump
Ignition module/coil
Flywheel sensor (for the ignition)
The Chamade was a non runner. It had sat on a farm for years with the owner's sons driving it around fields or something. It was a wreck.
Last photos I took (at my cousin's wedding) before I took it off the road for the engine swap.
All the wires labelled, hoses disconnected and ready to be pulled.
Out with the C1J
Empty engine bay. I had to cut the exhaust as the manifold bolts were seized. I didn't mind as I knew it was going to require a bit of fabrication with the energy exhaust.
Realising there was more work than I had originally thought...
It sat like this for about three or four months... When I lowered the energy engine in it was stopped by the alternator fouling the brake master cylinder I thought I may as well just swap the cylinder and booster from the 19. It could also help the spongy feeling.
Nope, not happening. R19 on the right.
I also discovered that the master cylinder had started leaking around the booster so I bought a new one from France and replaced it. Again, nope! I was wrong. The leaky one is from the 19 and not the 11. I somehow got confused at the time with them out. All I acomplished here was wasting money and getting air in the brake lines. I didn't realise my error until this year while uploading these photos. It was also going to cause a lot more trouble in the future and more wasted money...
Looking back now on the alternator problem, I don't know if it would have fit if I had just removed it, fitted the engine and then re-attached it. I don't think so though. The early 11s had that brake cylinder you see above which is longer that the 19s and I believe the 5 so that's why other people haven't run into that issue.
I decided to move the alternator to the front like in the c-type engine's design. In this case I just used the alternator from the C1j engine and make some adapters.
Nosy helper
It's mounted probably where the A/C compressor would go. That's another piece of steel there on top that I added.
I cut the timing belt cover and added an idle pulley from a BMW M43 engine.
I also changed the timing belt and water pump at this point. They were overdue anyway. Also, I'm pretty sure the engine had about 132,000 miles on it at the time. It may sound a bit mad to put an engine in with double the mileage of the car but the 19 had been maintained by the same Renault mechanic since day 1 so it never missed a service. The previous owner (a friend's mom) had an uncle or brother in law working for Renault.
The belt system in all its glory but before I got a shorter belt to fit perfectly.
Don't you just love northern european weather! Notice the spare wheel on the back. I don't know how many flats I had while it was sitting up.
Engine is in! (it's a much later photo because I have no idea why I didn't take any at the time) So the crank pulley had to be swapped for one from the Chamade with no power steering. It woulnd't have fit otherwise and the 11 has no power steering anyway. The JB101 gearbox from the 11 did not fit. Only half the bolt holes matched. The internet seems to inform you that any JB1 gearbox is interchangable. Then again the internet will let you believe anything you want. I had to keep the JB1025 from my white 19 with it's weird ratios and slow final drive. Thankfully the driveshafts were the same length. The exhaust was actually too long so it was cut and welded at the local exhaust centre. You can see I used the E6J massive air filter from the Chamade. I wish I hadn't but at the time I hadn't known of the Fiesta XR2 Weber TLDM carb being so similar to the TLDR and having a nice chrome filter for it. Well I haven't tried it but it looks like it'll fit. Maybe someday... As for the engine mounts, the front engine mount is from the Chamade as I didn't need the power steering pump mount. The gearbox one I think was the same on the 19 and 11. The rear is from the 11.
I also tried to use the 11's radiator but it wasn't crossflow so the pipes lined up differently. Why I scrapped two 19s with both radiators is beyond me. Originally I butchered the pipes tried a mash up but it was ugly. So here I am at this stage paying the local scrap yard something like €40 for a disgracefully battered radiator to test and megane hoses which don't really match up properly.
It's past my bedtime so I'll finish this tomorrow. It's up to about December 2012 now.
and put €20 of petrol in. Then it started driving absolutely fine? I made it into college (with no breakfast) after four hours of white knuckle driving at exactly 11am. I dumped it in the paid car park and sprinted into my exam 5 miuntes late... Never again!