Time to remove that wing & other tasks.

With a full Saturday to play around with the car and two out of three us around for the weekend, it was time to embark on some cosmetic and essential pieces of work. There were four tasks that required doing;

1). Undertake a compression test to check the general health of the cylinders and see if we have any problems with our pistons.
2). Sort out the alarm & immobiliser, 20 minutes to lock or unlock the car was getting pretty frustrating!
3). Replace the stupid looking useless wing mirrors which give little visibility with used ones bought off eBay for £2.50.

4). Remove that WING!!

First task was to get the immobiliser looked at, it was getting pretty frustrating whenever we needed to use the car and the battery section of the alarm fob had now completely come away from the circuit board. A quick trip down to our local Clifford specialist allowed us to order a new fob and find out a way of starting the car using the car's PIN code (very helpful if we ever lose the fob, run out of batteries etc). We also discovered the alarm & immobiliser is a pretty good one, which is reassuring if anyone tries to steal the track bitch. All this for around £30.

After getting the car home we set about doing the compression test, neither of us had done this before and all we had were instructions from the third owner on an email and an American Youtube video showing how to do the test on a Pontiac. We did have a brand new Compression tester and a brand new socket set. After spending a good 45 minutes (internet searches, Haynes manual and finally a call to our mate) trying to find out how to stop the fuel pump from sending petrol to the engine we were able to start removing the spark plugs.

By the way if you do want to unplug the fuel pump on a Renault 5 GT Turbo the connector is under the centre of the car towards the driver's side. :o)

Spark plugs were easily removed and after a lot of faffing around with the compression tester and its numerous connectors, we were ready to start the test. All you need to do is connect the tester to the spark plug socket and turn the car over five to six times, this would then tell you how much pressure was in the cylinder. Unfortunately it was not this simple. Could we get a reading on the gauge? No chance! After numerous connecting and unconnecting of the kit, checking the internet again and head scratching, we gave up. It was not to be, we believe the kit was faulty as no readings were given. Whether it was the kit or a case of bad workmen blaming their tools remains to be seen, but today we were not going to find out how our cylinders were performing.

Now time for the cosmetic stuff. Ever since we bought the car we said that the wing would be coming off. It looks absolutely ridiculous, makes the car stand out more than we'd like and probably weighs a few kg. We'd tried removing the wing before as had the previous owner, but after removing the bolts we found it was stuck on with some super strong adhesive. Putting chisels underneath it caused the wing to crack and pulling at it with all our strength proved useless.

This time we were going to require new tactics.

We set about it with a hack saw blade which seemed to be doing the trick but making a real mess of our paintwork, so after five minutes of sawing through the bonding we changed strategy and used a fresh Stanley knife blade, cutting the bond at a snails pace. After around 30 - 45 minutes of cutting away at the bonding we had a bit of movement, so I pulled on the wing whilst my mate got a screw driver underneath it and slowly the bond began to give way. The wing was off! To our surprise with not too much damage. The excess bonding was removed carefully with a blade and then light alcohol removed the rest. We then filled the holes left with some old bathroom grout I had lying around (nothing like a proper job). We'll aim to get some proper filler and paint in the near future, but this will prevent water getting in for the short term. We are really pleased with the results and think the car looks a lot better with the wing off, we have also saved a massive 7kg! Pictures shown below.

BEFORE

 

AFTER

 

VIEW FROM SIDE

All that was left now was to remove the pathetic vanity mirrors and replace with our £2.50 eBay bargains, an easy task. Admittedly they are the wrong colour and need a touch up, but they'll do until we get some paint. Finally the car has started to look normal.

So overall a relatively successful day, it was a shame the compression test did not produce any results. Something we'll have to try again another day with a new tester kit.