1988 Renault 25 2.0 Monaco

Wow what a rare old motor, great work so far
I like that 👍

I still have my tax disc holder fitted with a reproduction disc celebrating the MR2's 30th birthday

Yesterday's update that I apparently forgot to post...

If you look closely at some of the interior photos of the R25 you will see that something is amiss with the cowling around the steering column and the stalks.



Aside from bugging my OCD, it means the wiper and indicator stalks aren't quite where they're meant to be, and the back of the wheel scrapes the plastic when turning.

Given I've seen prior evidence of this car having been broken into (passenger front window has obviously been replaced and I've hoovered out a bunch of cubes of glass), I had a hunch that was likely connected.

Yep!



Someone has had a really good go at breaking the steering lock - no idea if successful or not. The whole top of the column has been rotated to the left, meaning the ignition barrel isn't where it's meant to be.

That's a job for further down the line. I suspect a whole upper steering column from a breaker is going to be the way to go and bash the mount back closer to the right shape when the dash is apart. I just wanted to take a closer look today to see if my hunch was correct. If anyone knows of someone who might have a donor steering column floating around I'm all ears.

Was far too cold for doing anything much more in depth!

Ran out of steam before I could get it uploaded, but the webpage for the R25 is complete up to where we've got with it. Won't really be anything on there you've not already seen here save for some higher resolution photos.

It's now booked in on January 4th to have the front suspension looked at to hopefully get rid of the knocks and clonks coming from there.

Tasks I'd really like to get done in the next couple of days weather permitting:

[] General service. Caddy is due an oil change too if memory serves.

[] Inspect the timing belt. I'll change it (or have it changed) in the spring anyway as it's due by time, though it's only done ~600 miles since it was fitted. I'd feel more at ease if I've had a look at it I think.

[] See if I can get the stereo out to check for unplugged/damaged cables.

[] Clean the poor thing...

...Try not to come up with yet more excuses to drive it somewhere.

I'm not seeing anything?

That was the joke.

The gent who will be sorting out the rust for me does all stages of bodywork including paint, so we'll have a good chat about what's the best way forward with that when he's seen the car. Really the whole driver's side wants paint because of there being a scrape along both doors and the front wing anyway.

-- -- --

I've been waiting on some silver cable ties turning up so I could apply some additional security to the wheel trims on the R25. Slightly irked when they turned up and are actually just dark grey. Meh, will do for now. At least I know the trims are going to stay put.



I originally thought these were secured by the wheel bolts but they're not. Nor do they clip onto the wheels massively securely - especially with the modern zinc wheel weights being rather chunkier than the old lead ones. Combined with the number of pot holes that there are around here I could just see one of these frisbeeing itself off into the sunset one day and really don't fancy trying to find a replacement. So slightly ugly cable ties it is for now until I come up with a better solution.

None of my cars gets to live a completely sheltered life...They all need to earn their keep. While I'd draw the line at carting dirty waste in the back of the R25, I'm absolutely not beyond using it to cart a whole bunch of cardboard and an old bookcase to the recycling centre. Plenty of space once the seats are folded down.



The rear seat folding mechanism definitely gets a mention...I've never seen anything quite like it. As you fold the backrest down the base is attached to a linkage so you just need to give it a little lift to get it started then it folds itself up out of the way as the backrest drops - the reverse happens when you fold it back up again. The forward section of the parcel shelf remains attached to the seat back. I'll need to record a video to show how it works, as it's really quite clever...and more the sort of thing I'd have expected to see in the Merc S123 than an 80s Renault.

Made it look like there wasn't very much in here at the end of the day.



It took me a good 20 minutes or so carting stuff out of the house and dumping it in there though, there's a lot more in there than it looks like.

You remember me mentioning that repair tape on the exhaust? I have a sneaking suspicion that "about this far" may have been the limit of its durability, as I'm pretty sure the exhaust has got louder. It is neither obtrusive nor unpleasant, just a nice purposeful growl on acceleration - but I'm sure it's louder than when the car arrived. I mean she probably hasn't had a decent run in forever, so that may just be I've now blown a load of curse word out of the system...but that sounds like wishful thinking. Exhaust may wind up being first up after the front suspension is sorted then. Especially as there's a godawful rattle from it somewhere up front-ish at certain revs which is incredibly annoying...



No, I wasn't kidding about how annoying it was!

The exact source of which has thus far eluded me...It kind of sounds like it's coming from inside the front silencer. Though it's quite hard to get a good look - ground clearance isn't something this car has a lot of so I'd really need to get it up in the air to have a proper look I think. Especially as the front silencer runs right to left across the car more or less under the front seats I think rather than down the middle front to back on most cars. It's a bit of a ridiculously complicated setup for a car of this age with no less than five sections.



I know that (from the front) parts 3, 4 and 5 don't look to be in their first flush of youth, 4 is the one which has currently got tape on I believe - and I don't give good odds on any of those bits coming apart intact.

That is not going to be cheap to have made up in stainless...but I see this car as a long-term keeper so may well just go down that road. I don't fancy the odds of cheap aftermarket systems (if I can even find one) fitting properly. Which is moderately annoying when you're trying to get two bits of pipe to line up and have some wiggle room - but the third section sits about an inch away from the inner sill and 4 actually passes *through* the rear chassis rail, so the potential for my descending into madness trying to fit an aftermarket system here is very high I reckon.

Sadly Autodoc don't list any bits of the exhaust, the things it shows up are just "universal" things.

If you look closely at the photo in that brochure it actually shows GTS on the rear quarters. I'm guessing the first examples were probably badged that way.

The colour is interesting, it does just look "brown" so far in my photos, but when clean and particularly in direct sunlight there's a much more coppery base hue in there. Somehow they managed to get away with the gold badging on the rear quarters when it managed to look so overly blingy on any Lexus (in my opinion).

Hopefully I'll be able to get this one looking vaguely tidy one day.

Today was largely spent twiddling my thumbs waiting for a transporter to materialize to collect the Cavalier - who then never appeared. Apparently 0830 tomorrow morning, we'll see I guess.

I did swap the air filter out on the R25 though as it was an easy, quick thing I could do while I was still waiting for them.



I wanted to take a closer look at the housing to investigate the crack I'd seen in the lid. Turns out it is indeed through to the clean side of the filter.



I've temporarily patched this with some aluminium tape, I'll deploy some epoxy to more permanently fix this shortly until a replacement lid turns up.

Today I learned that you can't just pull the stereo straight out of the dash in a Renault 25.



Even with the helpful little panel above it that unclips there's nowhere near enough room to pull it up before it hits the dash.

Looks like it's a pull the whole centre console out job. That's a job for some time that's not right now.

Seats are looking healthier now after half a dozen passes with the leather feed.





Now feeling a good deal less like cardboard.