mickthemaverick wrote: 04 Dec 2022, 20:05
Zel, I think you may have missed my last post about central locking remotes and mince pies?
I thought I might have cracked the central locking problem today, but not quite sadly. So you might still be on for that!
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Didn't have quite as productive a day today as I'd hoped. Apparently I didn't budget my energy yesterday quite as well as I thought I had, so got kicked in the behind this morning and it wasn't until the early afternoon that I was really mentally firing on all cylinders again. Which is particularly annoying as I'd really hoped to get along to the last Milton Keynes Classic Car Club breakfast meet of the year with the R25, moss and all.
I always find it slightly surprising when people go and spend major amounts of money resurrecting a vehicle...
Then there's another one a couple of months later for another £800 of work...Yet then they skimp on things like you know...Replacing the tyres.
This is the newest one on the car. From 2003.
They're all budget brands, and two of them appear to be pre-2000. Can't say I'm surprised as it's something I see all the time, but it's just something which doesn't compute to my brain. I'm also of the opinion that tyre condition is one area that the MOT is way, way too lenient.
Suffice to say a full new set of tyres will be getting ordered tomorrow and hopefully will be on the car by mid week.
A slightly worrying thing from the driver's seat is the fact that the temperature gauge sits roughly here under normal driving.
Moving around pretty much exactly as you would expect on a car with a real gauge rather than the nonsense a lot of moderns are fitted with when traffic etc, but with no signs of distress that I'd tend to expect if we were near enough brushing the red. I got the IR thermometer out today and confirmed that it's sitting somewhere around 90C (the actual head even on the exhaust side is around 120C), which is about what I'd expect to see. Even when pulling off the road and immediately checking it, the hoses are uncomfortable to touch, but not burning so and there's no excess pressure in the system. We'll see if a new sender sorts that out. Though I'm sure I do vaguely remember this being a somewhat common issue.
In an effort to extinguish the washer fluid level warning light I went to put some screenwash in - oh look, it's full.
So that will be a problem with the level sensor then. Unfortunately it's not a simple matter of unplugging it as both the washer motor and level sensor use a combined connector - curse you Renault!
I have a sneaking suspicion given how long this car sat around off the road (and that the tank appears to just be filled with water) that the reservoir will be somewhat full of slime and the float is probably just stuck to the bottom of the tank. I'll really need to get it out of the car to investigate though as it's pretty much impossible to even look down the neck of it in situ. I need to delve into the scuttle anyway to clean and lubricate the heater blower motor which is a little squeaky anyway so may as well hit both of these jobs at the same time.
The engine bay is filthy. Though astonishingly free of bodges for a car of this age. The only obvious thing I've found is an aftermarket cooling fan having been fitted and the wiring for that being a little untidy (though perfectly serviceable). I am very looking forward to cleaning this though.
It always felt to me like that manifold should have a heat shield on it, though I've never actually seen one on any of these. Possibly a shroud for the warm air intake for the carb fed variants maybe?
This pretty much confirms my suspicions that while this car had a good couple of grand spent on it back in 2017 it's never had a service since.
That filter's been on there a day or two. The oil's not disgusting but is definitely dirtier than I like to see in my engines. I'll be ordering in a service kit tomorrow.
Speaking of cleaning things, the coolant expansion tank is absolutely foul inside. The actual coolant I can see looks nice and clear, but the tank is grim. I think this was used on a whole bunch of models, so replacing it (so I can actually see the coolant level without having to remove the cap - you currently can't) might wind up being the easier option to sort this mess out.
This brings us to the vicinity of the worst of the corrosion I've found (so far!) on the inner wings.
Plus a little hole down here on the offside.
Given the lack of "stuff" around these areas and that the outer wings are bolted on I don't think getting these bits properly sorted should be too massive a headache.
It's always nice on cars like this when you find a set of factory mats still present, as aftermarket ones never really fit as well. I don't think these are original to the car as I think they would have been a lighter colour - though I'm quite prepared to be proven wrong there.
There are a few bits of glass floating around the interior as she's obviously had the passenger window smashed at some point. Kind of supports my belief that she's spent a fair time either sitting around in a city or a storage yard somewhere.
Given we've established this was a Northampton registered car, I have to wonder if these are actually still the original dealer plates.
Given the format of the phone number they must date pretty early from during the car's life.
The sticker in the rear window on the other hand has fared rather less well!
One nice feature I was glad to see what still there was the original stereo - these were rather special by the standards of the time and were very much part of the look of the dash.
Sadly I've not been able to get any audio out of this save for a soft thump when it's powered on - though that may well be tied in to the issues we have with the digital display as if there's a problem with the comms to that panel which might make it think a button is being permanently held down it could lock the system up. Failing that I'll need to do some further digging. This wasn't just a flashy looking bit of bling either, the stereo in these cars sounded really good, especially by the standards of the time. I remember being really impressed with it back when I had my previous one in 2003, and my home hi-fi wasn't exactly poor then either.
There are quite a lot of nice touches on this car, one of which I'd forgotten about until noticing it this afternoon is the mini-sun visor in the middle.
Which does away with the usual gap you get between the left and right ones around the mirror.
There are (really rather large) door pockets hidden away under the arm rests, which you could be forgiven for missing entirely if you didn't know they were there. A nice way of reducing visual clutter, and keeping stuff out of the way of prying eyes. I do have to wonder if this is where the idea for the ones in the Series 2 Xantias came from as they're very similar...
I am in the market for a couple of parts. Firstly, an offside tail light as this one has a crack in and has a small ecosystem merrily growing inside which is less than ideal.
I'll clean it out and seal the crack up, but it will want to be replaced long term.
Additionally one of the prongs that holds the cap onto the driver's door driver's side electric window switch is broken so the cap falls off. There was a spare in the car but it turns out to be for the passenger window switch, and they have differently keyed connectors. I'm sure the switches are actually identical and it's purely to aid in assembly (as the switches are visually identical), so I could just hack away the extra bit of plastic if it came to it.
Interestingly the boot was hiding a box full of a set of wheel trims...which while for a French car, not *this* French car. If anyone with a BX wants these, drop me a PM.
Few scuffs around the edges of a couple but they could absolutely be cleaned up.
I went to pick up to dispose of what I thought was an empty plastic bag sitting down by the handbrake only to discover there was actually something in it.
Keys! Most importantly a spare door key as I was expecting getting hold of one of those to be a right war as they're such an odd type.
Also present was a key blade for fitting to a remote fob...and two of said fobs...one in decent shape, one rather ratty (this key isn't for this car by the way which is why I've not bothered keeping the bitting of the actual key hidden at all).
My theory was that the one that was falling apart was for this car, and the other one was from a scrapper intended to donate the case. The innards of both remotes worked with a fresh set of batteries, but sadly neither locks or unlocks the car. Shame, but it was being a bit optimistic. As I understand it these remotes are paired to the car at the factory and there's no way to sync a different one with the car after the fact. So unless I could get one coded to the car from Renault (which I really rather doubt at this point) I'm probably out of luck there.
Does mean I've been able to assemble a remote style key for the car though, so I can use that instead of the "backup" style one shown to the left below. This is a good deal less fiddly to get into the ignition it has to be said.
Ran out of daylight and energy by that point though, so that's where we draw to a close for today. Tomorrow I'll get the necessary items for a service in and a set of fresh tyres ordered up. If time permits I'll start cleaning it, but I suspect the three and a half minutes of usable daylight we have at this time of year will run out before I get that far.
Don't think you'd get away with that nowadays 
I was convinced it was yellow and a snippet of which appears in one of your pictures! 
Is the colour Marron Glace? I used to have an R5 in that colour in the early 80s...
That's outrageous... Was that price as your primary 'modern' or as a classic? 