Renault 5

Mod Diary

Day one
Today we decided to do the front brakes on the car and give it a general look around. what happens is as follows

Firstly we got the car into the garage as it was pissing down as usual and got the offside wheel off. we checked the thickness of the discs with a mic and they were fine, followed by looking at the pads and finding that the wear sensor was gone and that they looked worn but not too bad. After removing the girling calipers we had to prise the pads out as they were wedged in with shit. Deciding that the pads had been sitting for a long time and didnt have too much meat on them we took a trip to halfords to find some replacement ones. Stupidly we forgot the old one to match the new one too. After a good search for pads in the R5 section and finding nothing of the right sort i found the right ones in the clio section strangly. we bought a pair of them tarted around for a bit and then came home to try and fit em.

With a wire brush and scrapper we thoroughly cleaned the calipers and pad slideways. before we could fit the new pads the piston in the brake cylinder had to be backing into the caliper. to do this we used the old discs as drifts with a screw driver wedged between them and the backplate forced the cylinder back. Finally before installing the new pads the slideways were given a fine coat of coppergrease to stop them seizing but not enough to contaminate the pads friction material. After reassembling the unit the brake wear indicators were plugged into the pads and the wheels were refitted, the car dropped to the ground and the wheelnuts "torqued" with a big bar as we didnt know the correct setting ;)

The next wheel was done in the same manner. Although there was a slight incident with muzz when he moved the car into the garage he gave it a bit too much stick and almost ran me over and nocked one of the bikes over but nothing was damaged other than his pride hehe. As a final check we tested the cars steering rack and wheel bearings at the front, all seemed well. Then we gave the bodywork and engine bay a quick looking at. The corrosion and missalignment is worse than we first thought and may take some pretty involving work to sort out including removing the front windscreen and alot of the panels. But worse was the dampness around the bottom of the engine. The gearbox seems to be leaking which could be a chore to do. Also the sump gasket needs replacing. The most dangerous find was the throttle cable ajustment nuts were not loose and ones had come off... this meant that when the throttle was wide open the sheathing could have moved fwd and the throttle would then have only returned to half throttle not idle. That was easily sorted.

Before we packed up for the night we also examined the plugs and although worn they seemed to be ok and will last a bit untill muzz can find a bit of cash to replace em.