A rather large box arrived a couple of days ago.
Which somewhat unusually in my experience for a box from a car dismantler turned out to contain a couple of items that were exceptionally well packed.
After I had filled almost an entire recycling bag I finally managed to extract the contents.
The steering rack was a bit of a shot in the dark as they were listed specifically as LHD - though visually I couldn't see any obvious differences - and at €35 I was willing to take a gamble.
The tail light on the car had a pretty substantial crack in the top so obviously needed replacement.
What I hadn't realised was quite how knackered it was until I had it off the car.
Yeah, that had seen better days. New one looks far better.
There is a tiny chip out of the one corner but it's not massively obvious once on the car and is definitely a huge step forward compared to what was on there.
It wasn't in the photo the seller listed though, so I'll give them the opportunity to replace it if they wish. I'm not particularly worried either way as it's a huge step forward from where we started out.
Next task... steering column replacement.
The one this car came with had been damaged by a previous (as far as I can tell eventually unsuccessful) attempt to steal the car. The take away message from that seems to be that Renault steering locks are formidable adversaries if you don't have the keys.
I meant to take more photos than I did along the way, but the process is basically:
[] Remove steering column top and bottom cowl (two screws - one in my case as the offside one wouldn't go in because the ignition barrel was the best part of an inch too far forward).
[] Remove lower dash cover. Two screws in the top edge then it unclips downwards.
[] Unplug and remove the indicator and wiper stalks, two screws on the underside of each.
[] Remove the ignition barrel. There's a position between the accessory and ignition positions marked by an arrow at which the retaining pins can be pushed in allowing it to just be drawn out of the housing.
[] If you're smart (unlike me) you realise that the wiring connector is actually a few inches down the wire and don't waste ten minutes trying to work out how to separate it from the barrel for no reason. It's these two beefy looking connectors down here.
Unplugging those *before* releasing the ignition barrel would make your life easier. Renault helpfully staggered the connectors so they don't try to bind up on each other when being fed through the ignition barrel housing.
With the barrel itself out of the way the first really visible evidence of the damage sustained started to become visible.
Also, I really need to give that bit of dash a good scrubbing, there's clearly 34 years worth of hand grime there from putting keys into and out of the ignition.
[] The sensible next step (I missed this initially) would be to undo and remove the pinch bolt holding the upper and lower column together. Note the body of the bolt also acts as a safety device locking the two together as well as the tension - so it does need to be totally removed.
I forgot about this step so wound up having to do it while the whole lot was hanging off the car. Oops.
Another glimpse of the violence this column has been subject to.
Note the bracket that the rear column mounting bolts (well...they're studs that nuts attach to actually). This should be LEVEL and FLAT.
Yeah. Though given that they had managed to bend the actual STEERING SHAFT ITSELF that doesn't really surprise me. This is relatively thin sheet metal, and likely is designed to deform in the case of an impact.
[] Once that pinch bolt is out, then the four 13mm nuts holding the column on can be removed. At which point the whole assembly should just drop out. There was one little plastic clip guiding a cable over the top of the column, but that was the only other thing I found that needed to come off.
[] I actually chose to leave the steering wheel attached to the column as it gave me something to get hold of to manhandle the assembly by. It's quite awkward to hold onto otherwise.
Though it would normally be important to crack the steering wheel to shaft join before removing it from the car as it can be a bit of a struggle. Except here it isn't!
Renault have been really considerate here - in the block that secures it, they have provided two threaded holes into which you screw the mounting bolts to act as a puller. I like that.
What I didn't like was that I then utterly failed to get that circlip off. A set of circlip pliers is something I lacked, and I couldn't get by this time. I decided to just come back to that later - putting the wheel back on could be left to literally the very last step without causing any problems. I *could* probably have wrangled it off with some brute force - but I didn't have a replacement clip so wanted to keep the opportunities for it pinging off into low earth orbit (or getting embedded in one of my eyeballs) to a minimum.
So, column off, let's take a look at things.
New next to old. Aside from some slightly more flexible looking mounting holes (the donor is off an earlier car), they look to be identical.
This is good, as the replacement was specifically listed as for LHD cars (I've not been able to locate a RHD one listed anywhere since I got the car).
While the sheet metal I'd seen bent in the car wasn't massively substantial (and I was able to more or less bend it back into shape with my much abused Saab toolkit pliers), the column itself is quite beefy. Nevertheless, it's taken a heck of a beating.
Looking up the column from the base makes the scale of the damage really obvious.
The top of those brackets should be level. You can see how the shaft itself is pushed off towards frame right as well rather than sitting centrally in the bearing.
Yep, the only place this is going now is into the scrap metal bin.
The metalwork under the dash has been more or less bent back into shape. It's never going to be perfect, but it's a lot better than it was.
To really do any more with that would require at least the instrument panel to come out so I could access things properly from above.
[] Reassembly is as the Haynes manual loves to say, reverse of disassembly.
Only thing I'll say though is to reattach the lower column pinch bolt before anything else. As you need to get things lined up right, laterally and obviously you can't really move things once the column is bolted in.
With everything bolted/screwed back together (with the notable exception of the steering wheel) this was the result.
First thing that's obvious is that the ignition barrel is actually in the cutout in the cowl, whereas it used to be displaced about an inch forward and down.
It is still clocked very slightly anticlockwise, but only a tiny bit.
"Before" photo for reference.
At that point it should have been a simple matter to swap the wheel over, I just needed to grab a set of circlip pliers. As I was passing by Halfords while running other errands in the afternoon I thought I'd grab some there. This turned out to be a mistake...the only ones they had were cheap and nasty in the extreme. I wasn't exactly filled with confidence by the packaging!
Yes, that is a Halfords tag stapled to a nameless OEM card package...and the tool in it broke the first time I tried to use it. This was extremely frustrating and meant I wasn't able to get everything back together the same afternoon.
The following morning, armed with a set of actually working set of circlip pliers picked up from Toolstation - which were cheaper than the ones from Halfords - we got the clip off and the wheel transferred over.
Doesn't that look better?
Notable from the driver's seat is that I can actually see the switches and associated indicator lights to the right of the steering wheel now. These were always obscured by the wiper stalk before.
Getting the wheel actually straight was a right faff. It's still clocked very slightly off centre, but I can tweak that when it's convincingly above freezing.
How badly bent was the actual steering shaft? Well about this badly.
That was recorded in landscape...thanks for ignoring the metadata, YouTube.
I don't want to know how much force that took...well actually that's a complete lie. The engineer in me is really curious to know how much force that took.
Here's the state of the keyway the steering lock locates in.
Having the steering wheel actually rotate around its own centre and only moving in one plane rather than two really does make driving the car rather more pleasant.
Here's how the wheel used to move around before:
Have to admit, I was kind of dreading this job. These cars seem to have a bit of a reputation for being difficult to work on, but this job at least really couldn't have been easier. The only holdups were caused by either errors in sequencing on my part or not having tools on hand. I reckon you could definitely easily do this in an hour if you were organised.
That puller built into the steering wheel boss in particular was a really nice thing to find. There were a dozen things which could have made this job a whole lot more annoying like wiring routing and hiding fasteners where other things were in the way, but a lot of that seemed to have been done in a way that recognised that things might need to come back apart one day. The whole job involved probably less than half a dozen different fasteners, including the screws holding the trim panel and cowling on. Think two sizes of Torx bit, an appropriate driver, circlip pliers and a pair of 13mm sockets were the only tools needed.
I'm very glad to have this task ticked off as aside from the steering wheel being wobbly being really annoying, I was never going to fully trust that the wheel wasn't going to snap off in my hands one day due to the trauma the steering shaft had been subject to. Essential? Probably not as it would likely have been fine. Am I glad to have done it anyway? Absolutely.
