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

Got any working indicator switches? Mine died lol

The ratchet mechanism inside no longer puts the main beam on when you pull the stalk with the dip lights on. It flashes them though but from what I can see that's a different ratchet.

--Phil

common problem on renaults of that era mate .
i remember having a spare switch somewhere ,i will see if i can find it in my aladdin`s cave of parts ,lol

Good job that you got it running!

Your 2 liter block has unique bore stroke combination which was never in the EU. We only got a 2-liter block in 1993 and that one features a different bore and stroke.

Perhaps you could find parts from Latin America. Renault had/has a engine factory in Brazil.

Had the replacement wheel bearing pressed in today.





Looking a lot better but the guy said he was having to press the old piece so hard it nearly pushed his tool apart. It took a 20 ton press and a bearing puller used in conjunction with each other to get the old one out it was so malformed and rusty. He said it looked like the original factory one. I said I didn't doubt that.
Twice what he quoted for the job later ($31 lol) and I have a shiny new SNR bearing in there. He said he'd take on the other side if required, so he's still undeterred!

One more task off the list.

--Phil

Thanks!

Some more kinda random detail shots of the car, as it stands today


Front of the car.


Front foglight, SEV Marchal, manufactured by Valeo.


Back of the car. Got a plastic plate on it from a local dealership.


Fixed the numberplate lights. they work well now.


Looking into the boot.


Detail of inside boot.


Driver's side detail. Straight, but missing some trim. Slight crease at back edge of door where someone's tried to break into it in the past.


Passenger side. More of the same. Knocked out the dent that was behind the door.


Wheelarch detail. Nice and clean apart from spiderwebs and spiderpoop.


Engine.


Detail of engine.


More engine.


Build and emissions labels.


Dashboard. Original mileage.


Vacuum-fluorescent digital clock. Retro


Standard turn/lights/horn stalk and optional cruise control stalk.


Manual air-con heater controls. (As opposed to the electronic one they had with buttons).


Sun visor on passenger side, with lights.

Quite a lot of stuff from a middle-of-the-road spec vehicle.

--Phil

just read the whole Thread... wouldnt it be muuuuch easyer to insert a Megane 2.016v F7R Engine in it? or the 1.8 16v F7P from Clio 16s/R16 16S?

Considering neither the Megane nor the Clio were sold here, no. Hence why I'm rebuilding the current engine.

This was the only instance of the Fxx series engine sold in north America, and it differs from any other with a different crank and bore. (93mm stroke, 82mm bore). All the other series engines were either the 1.4 Cleon or the 2.1 or 2.2 variants which are architecturally different and just as scarce. There were only produced about 2000 of these engines so finding parts is hard. A lot of people who race/d them fitted 2.0 or 2.3 Pinto or Lima engines from the Mustang, claiming greater reliability and spares availability.

I'd love to be able to put a 1.7 turbo lump out of a Volvo but again, another variant of an engine that was never sold here. I'd have to import it in pieces too because a) entire engine would have to meet EPA regulations for emissions (the Volvo units do not) and b) it'd be expensive to import by ship.

Either way, it runs.

--Phil

Continued with the LED theme tonight, but the green ones I bought are possibly not up to the task so I started with the blue one for the high beam indicator lamp.

Here's a bit of a howto, to fit LED's into the tiny little 1.2W capless bulbholders for warning lights.


Firstoff, this only easily works with the older style ones where the bulb comes out of the holder. The newer ones tend to have the bulbs fixed into the plastic.


Grab an assemblage of parts. I went to Radio Shack, but stuff from Maplin, RS etc. works the same.
I bought LED's in the range of about 1Cd (one candlepower, oft referred on the box as 1000mcd), with a forward voltage between 2 and 3 volts depending on the colour of the LED.
To run the LED's on a 12V car system you need to drop the voltage down, so I worked it out- 650 Ohm for the 2V ones and 450 Ohms for the 3V ones. I divided each by two so I'd have a resistor on each leg, added the values together and makes the legs the same length.


Snip, snip, solder, solder. Two 220 Ohm resistors on a 3V blue LED. I got the one with the widest "viewing angle", ie the bright spot of light it makes is really big close to on this one. It's a 330mcd one, not one of the insanely bright (3000mcd) ones.


Now it'll happily run off a 9V battery. Without the resistors it'd be very bright for about a second or so then burn up.


Grab the connectors with pliers.


Pull the little connector pieces out carefully.


Position the legs inside the original spring pieces of the bulbholder, with the resistor in the cup of the spring where the bulb would push in. Keeping it short here means that the LED won't stick up much further than the original glass bulb. I could probably have made it shorter by clamping the resistor in the spring section.


Carefully solder the pieces in, taking care not to overheat the resistor. About 5-7 seconds of hot iron is about as much as they can take.


Soldered in. Repeat for the other leg.


Tidy up with a bit of insulating tape and push the connectors back into their grooves.

This assembly will tolerate being plugged in backwards briefly, and will outlast any filament bulb you can fit, with the added advantage the colours tend to be a lot more rich than the printed gels. Downside is some LED's need their faces ground down slightly on a file else you get a bright spot in the middle of the warning lamp and nothing else.

I ran out of time tonight before being able to take in-dash shots, but basically instead of being a sickly greenish-turquoise, my high beam warning light is now a very certain blue.

--Phil