1987 AMC Renault GTA 2.0 - Gone to a new home.

I appreciate that.
The production numbers are always somewhat different depending upon who you talk to. So the entire production run of the GTA was 3600? Wow. Mine is marked in various places with October 86, so I don't know where that fell in the run. I'm not sure the date they quit making/selling them.

Your GTA looks good, by the way. Makes me sad to look at mine, all raggedy looking.

I ordered a fuel injector yesterday, as well as putting the car on charge. I tried to start it, but not even a sneeze. Then the battery went flat.

There was a job lot of Renault dealership parts offered for sale a couple of weeks back in (I think) Alberta. Only one guy I know has been close enough and had the spare cash to be able to show valid interest.

If you ever need new (manufactured a few years ago) manual steering arms and ball joints, let me know. I have a set of genuine Renault ones I bought in error...

I'm still mostly after cosmetic parts and bits of body kit. Haven't found any spare yet that anyone is willing to part with.

I also brought the front grille with me back to the house to rub down and paint. It will never look too special because the hood check strap has broken and at some point the hood has folded down forwards and cracked the grille and dented the hood. I'm going to hide that behind some Cibie spotlights

Hopefully a more meaningful update soon once I get the fuel injector in the mail. It is a rebuilt one- I put the logic that an original will suffer from the same degradation of the rubber that this one has due to the corn alcohol in the fuel here, and a rebuilt one should have alcohol-resistant seals, and at least will have been flow checked recently.

Time shall tell. I'm thinking about dropping the wife off at work, going buy an oil filter and giving it an oil change today. The weather isn't too hot.

-Phil

Send me a list of the body parts you need and I'll keep an eye out. I'm heading to eastern Ontario in a few weeks for a conference and I know of two guys who used to have GTAs parked around for parts. I don't remember any silver ones, that was the rarest colour, but since you're respraying anyhow... The problem would be getting them to you though as postage would likely be more than the parts.

I don't have the time to do a full analysis of your issues and I'm not a mechanic anyhow, but a few things pop to mind to see if you've checked them. First, I'd replace the fuel injector as you're doing just to be sure. Then, two things that go bad or I've had my concerns about are what you called the donut valve. It's basically a plastic clamshell held by a couple of plastic clips with a rubber diaghragm sandwiched between. This rubber goes bad and in your heat probably has. It's supposed to transmit pressure from one side to the other without allowing flow, but if it's cracked then it could cause issues. Again, without dragging out all of my literature, I'm not sure how they would affect performance.
I bodged mine a few years back just putting some RTV on it, but my plan was always to find a suitable grade rubber and replace it, putting a small bead of RTV around the edge for good measure and to provide a seal. Check yours out, it comes off easy and if you're careful, should snap apart without breaking. They're cheap to buy but hard to find if it breaks.
Another thing I was wondering about in my old GTA was that exhaust condensor thingy shown in the right of the block here (your photo, if you don't mind)

smg.photobucket.com/albums/v298/nigefoxx/Renault/?action=view¤t=DSC04613.jpg

This thing just presses into the block and has a metal mesh inside to condense oil vapour and prevent it from going into the vacuum lines. With the miles on your engine I was wondering if it's plugging up and what that would do to the crankcase pressure and operation of the system. Your's looks a bit rusty so it might not be worth taking a pipewrench and trying to twist it off. Something might break. See if you can get any indication of how gummed up the device is.

It's a long shot but this is what you resort to when you don't buy a Ford/GM muscle car and a la Powerblock TV go out and buy all new parts and the hardest job is hooking up the tuning software that sets up your crate engine for you. You actually have to diagnose things on 25 year old parts in various stages of decay, something that would be a problem on any North American car BTW as well. Lack of parts availability for the Renault makes it a special adventure, as you've found.

(I believe) there are slight differences between the convertible version and the sedan version of the kit, for instance, the doors aren't interchangeable as well. But I would guess that the plastic bits behind the wheels are the same and the front plastic as well. Just the sides would be different if I am right.
Now as to other variants, if you watch this ad

you'll see an early ad showing a black grille on the red car, which to my knowledge was never used in North America. All the cars had body coloured grilles with just the area surrounding the headlights blacked out. But the ad does show, around 1:38 in, the rear spoiler that was on my original car, which was one of the first ones sold in Canada. I've only seen a few others with that spoiler. So I'm thinking that only the first few received that version before they switched to the one on your car. Since my original one was much faster and handled better than my friend's later GTA, I'm guessing that there were other differences but I have never been able to confirm any of that.
So to the best of my limited knowledge, any mouldings from behind the wheels will do.

Purchased a bit more wet and dry, some sheets of 800 grit and a combi pack of 1000, 1500 and 2000.



Some plastic primer, and a matching brand of acrylic semi-gloss. I'd rubbed the paint back in a few places to the plastic underneath. It is stamped as ABS so it should stick.

Rubbed the grille back thoroughly, got the last of the bits of the paint off which threatened to flake off, and set it in the laundry room to dry.


IMAG0249 by renault9gta, on Flickr

It sat there overnight and dried off nicely.

Took it out back into the professional spray booth for this new house. It is an improvement on the last one.



Got a good dust over it, and only managed to put one small run on the underside of one of the slats.

Brought it in once it was tacky because floaty seeds and bugs were trying to land in the paint. It is currently back in the laundry room, stinking the house up. the wife has yet to come home...

More if she doesn't kill me.

--Phil

Welp, the paint on the badge reacted, so back to square one with that.

The grille, however, took quite well to paint. It is by no means perfect, but for being painted in the back yard in fading afternoon sunshine, it isn't bad.



Not the best backdrop, but the satin black looks good.



Reasonable for straight out of an aerosol can.

I might rub it back because there are one or two pocks, but the badge isn't great, and nor are the lights. the entire car isn't perfect, it never will be. I'm going to be driving it regularly.

If my painting skills improve then maybe I shall do it better, but for now, for something that's going to be be splattered with bugs and chipped by stones, it'll be fine

--Phil

If you want to upgrade your Renault badge, check the dimensions on item 320529358504 on e-Bay and see if that's the right one. It looks a bit wide to me but that may be just the camera angle. The same guy has a few others if that one doesn't fit.

First of all, I suck. No pictures because I stuck the camera in its case then forgot to bring it.

I stopped in, opened up the car, which is smelling a bit fusty and damp. Popped the throttle body lid off, undid the electrical connector and the girdle holding the injector in. The old one was out in maybe three minutes, and the new one marked for position (it has a small roll pin that acts as a locator dowel to keep it aligned which makes it awkward to put in), tightened down and reassembled in maybe ten minutes.
I reconnect the battery, come round to the engine bay and short the starter relay with a wrench, it fires up beautifully for a half second and dies again.

Thereafter, no joy. A douse of carburettor cleaner down the intake sees it roar into life briefly.

Upset, I grab an allen key and adjust the fuel regulator out then in again as I notice the injector wasn't spraying properly.
No difference. I grab the pressure gauge I made for it and screw it in.

A wobbly 3 psi or thereabouts. Adjusting the regulator makes no difference. More aggravated, I take the regulator off. I clean it out as it has a little bit of water gunge inside. It looks good though.
Back together again, no difference.
I take it off again and run the pump, getting fuel everywhere in the process. Proving nothing much, I reassemble that again and take the entire throttle body off.

I dismantle the injection plate from the top, take the regulator apart again and make sure nothing is leaking internally, that nothing was split. I even put the fuel pipes on the other way round and checked the pressure (zero at that point) to make sure I hadn't done something silly like put the wrong pipe on the wrong union because they are both the same size.

Nada.

I put it all back together again as it is getting dark and SWMBO was beginning to make noises about being hungry.

I figure one last test, put my finger over the pressure pipe direct from the pump. It made a weedy pressure against my finger.

Nuts. Either something has split, come off, cracked, perished or blocked.

I'm thinking that something has split in the tank just after the pump because with no restriction the fuel comes out looking like old faithful, but will not build any pressure. I'm hoping it is just the pipe from the pump has broken, and not the pump given up.

Next task, drop the tank again.

Not looking forwards to that.

On the up-side, I actually have a workable symptom now. I also picked up the tien signal lenses to put into the grille. I brought the grille with me but ran out of time before I could fit it.

The car really knows how to test my patience.

-Phil

Rub badge down.
Paint with acrylic enamel.
Watch react.
Rub back still with the paint soft. Fail.
Wait to dry.
Rub back properly.
Prime.
Watch as wind catches badge and blows it onto floor, wet.
Wait to dry.
Rub back again.
Prime.



This time it got this far, so good.

That's going to dry overnight, maybe tomorrow I can get some paint on it if it doesn't rain.
We have a cold front coming in, it's going from 30C and humid (today) to 9C and dry (tomorrow). That is quite a change!

--Phil

Following your trials and tribulations with interest.
Any chance of some pics of the big rig in the background?