Finishing the back axle & suspension

Two Team Trackbitch members met 10 days later, the target was to finish off the rear end and get the car off the axle stands. We'd managed to attach the axle successfully 10 days ago so all that we had to do today was remove the old knackered shocks, fit the new shocks, reattach the brake lines, handbrake cables and bleed the brakes.

Getting the old shocks off was a bit of a pig but after lots of WD40 they both came off, it was only after removing the shocks did we realise how buggered the rear suspension had actually been, when you compressed the shock it would take forever for them to rebound. We were fitting perhaps the best shocks that were available for the Renault 5 -  GAZ fully adjustables for a bargain price of £94. After a bit of fear of crossing threads the new shocks were on and torqued up.

Picture below shows old and new shocks side by side.

Next up was attaching hand brake cables and brake lines, again this went to plan without too much pain, a quick bleed of the brakes and our rear end was finally finished. Wheels were attached and the Renault 5 was finally looking normal again. It appeared that our new rear axle was set to standard ride height so the transformation was quite dramatic (shown in the before and after pictures below).

BEFORE - lowered to death

AFTER - standard ride height

So, the back end was complete, all that was left to do now was fit the turbo.

A trip to Telford

Today was suppose to be the day we were taking the car for its first track day, but instead we were using our day off work to drive to Telford to pick up a new rear axle and forage through random parts in the hope of getting all we needed for our turbo. 

We set off early as the plan was to obtain all the parts we needed and then try and fix up as much as the car as possible, so we arrived in Telford in good time. We had a choice of two rear axles, both were pretty crusty but one had end caps on the torsion bar and was in a lot better health than the one we'd taken off the car and at £40 a real bargain. We then proceeded to look through numerous boxes of turbo parts looking for the oil-in connector that had been alluding us, we were also after an actuator bracket as the standard T2 actuator did not fit. After a good 30 minutes of looking in numerous boxes of old oily Renault 5 parts we found an oil-in line that could be used, but still required an adaptor to fit to the turbo. We were told that a hydraulics company down the road should be able to help with the last remaining part. Next up was the actuator bracket, after another 20 minutes of looking through old oily boxes we found one that fitted, the only bad thing was it was on eBay and someone had already placed a bid. There was only an hour to go on the auction so we decided to head over to the hydraulics company whilst trying to win the auction on eBay for the actuator bracket.

After a short journey down the road we found the hydraulics company, to start with the guy behind the desk looked like he was going to find the adaptor instantly, he seemed to have a sixth sense for thread widths, looking through vast amounts of adaptors and finding parts that would sort of fit but not screw all the way in. (Until now I never realised how many different types of threads there are). After about five or six failed attempts things were not looking good and I was starting to get grumpy, were we ever going to find a part that fitted this Frankenstein turbo? The guy behind the desk now called the manager over and they starting scratching their heads and looking curiously at the hole they were trying to find an adaptor for, finally after lots of head scratching the part was found. This just left the actuator bracket on eBay.

Whilst we had been in the hydraulics shop and off for a chippy lunch the third trackbitch member was at home busy winning actuator brackets on eBay, we only had to out bid the other person by 50p. All that was left now was to drive back to the garage where we'd bought the axle, pay for the actuator bracket and then head back to Manchester.

All parts now in hand we headed back onto the M6, only to be told that the motorway was shut at junction 16, we attempted to come off before the road started to back up and get onto an alternative route before everyone else tried it, the first part of this worked well, but it soon dawned on us that all alternative routes were going to be stupidly busy. Instead of getting home in 1H 15M it took the best part of three hours, this really killed our mechanical time. :o(

By the time we got back it was 4.30 - 5.00, to fit a whole rear axle and new turbo before it goes dark was never going to be possible. So instead of doing two half jobs we focused on the axle, even this proved to be difficult due to moving over brake lines and hub assemblies, but with light fading we managed to get most of the work done, all that was left to do was fit the new shocks and the back end would be finished. However that would have to be left for another day. 

The day had been partly successful but it was appearing that my expectations of how long the mechanics would take to do were very wrong and instead of two days of work and a track day, we'd spent three days working on it with perhaps another one and a half days left of work. In addition, the next time we could all meet up would not be for another two weeks which meant the car was on axle stands til then.

Raising the suspension & fitting the new turbo - Part Two

A trip to Demon Tweeks

We made good time travelling down to Demon Tweeks in Wrexham and things looked promising upon arrival with acres of racing goodies on view. Full racing suites, steering wheels, engine pipes, crash helmets and more gauges than a power station. Surely this would have a few poxy oil attachments and a few other adaptors.

After a few minutes queuing it was our turn at the counter, we presented the sales assistant with our puzzle. 'Have you got an adaptor that will fit between this adaptor and this oil pipe' (drops a load of oil on the floor). The guy behind the desk started to flick through numerous books full of adaptors and pipe fittings. 'I'll be back in a minute'.

After a few minutes he was back looking puzzled and called over the manager, we explained our problem again, whilst dropping more oil on the sales floor and got a glazed look and a sharp intake of breath. 'What's that off mate?' This was not looking good. We felt like saying it Frankenstein's monster but told him what we knew, 'it's for a Renault 5 but has some internals from a Nissan SR20'.

After a lot of scratching of heads and numerous looks of 'are you mental?' it appeared that we were not going to get what we wanted.  A large queue of people buying steering wheels and race shoes was forming behind us, it was time we stopped wasting everyone's time with our impossible shopping list, wiped the oil off the floor and counter and got back to ponder our next steps.

On the way back we had the bright idea of, 'if we can't buy a part we'll make one' and dropped into Screwfix in Warrington to buy a tap & die set. Time was now getting on after our lame attempts at Demon Tweeks and getting lost in Warrington. Finally we got home around 6.30pm and thought we'd try a bit of DIY.

A spot of DIY

We started with the oil in pipe and adaptor, using our new tap and die set we re-threaded our adaptor to once again find it did not fit. We then attempted to saw off the end of our oil pipe, this failed miserably and another part was ruined. Nevermind, let's try and get the actuator off the bracket, without a vice to hold the actuator we sawed through the actuator and ruined it and did not managed to separate it from the bracket. Another part ruined. Time to give up on the turbo and try and tap out the torsion bar from the back end, this resulted in breaking our new tap & die set (cheap Chinese steel) and snapping off a bolt in our torsion bar. All together a pretty crap end to the day. It was time for a beer & BBQ, when was that track day again?

It's a bonnet off job fitting a new turbo.

Day Two - Raising the suspension

There was not much more we could do on the turbo, so we thought it was best to make a start on the rear end and try and sort out the stupidly lowered suspension, we'd worked out that at some point in its life the car had been lowered by 95mm, this is quite a lot and can prevent you from being insured. In theory it can be quite a simple job, remove torsion bar end caps, slip out the torsion bar, rotate the splines as much as you require, put back in and the car is magically higher. However, this is The Baron and he is not simple.

As the car has a body kit, this meant we could not access the torsion bar, we either had to remove the body kit (very messy), drill holes in the body kit (still messy) or take off the whole rear back axle (messy and awkward). We opted for the third option as it should be easier doing the job off the car. To remove the back axle requires undoing the four main bolts which feed into under the rear seats, undoing the brake lines and hand brake cables and undoing the rear shocks. After two or three hours the axle was off, all that was left was to tap the torsion ends and wind out the torsion bars. This is where we hit our next obstacle, the car had no end caps, so many years of road crude had badly corroded our torsion ends, and on one end it looked like someone had actually welded the end together. Our torsion bar was pretty screwed up and no end of belting it with a hammer and tapping with our cheap Chinese steel tap & die set was going to fix it.

Picture of our knackered torsion bar, WD40 and hammering were not going to fix it :o(

So, we'd failed on fitting the turbo and the back end of the car was missing, the shops were shut and there was nothing left we could do, apart from cancel any plans we had of a track day. Our plan was to still use the day off we'd all booked and rather go on a track day we'd continue fixing up the car. We'd drive down to CGB Motorsport in Telford, buy a new rear axle, take our turbo and any other none fitting parts and try and find a match, drive back and fix it up.

It was a shame we'd not achieved what we'd set out to do but we always knew this would not be simple, it's a 22 year old temperamental car after all.

Raising the suspension & fitting the new turbo - Part One

It had been a long time coming, finally the three of us were all together for a full weekend of sorting out the car. The whole weekend had been allocated to two things. First thing was to sort out the rear suspension, second was to replace the old smoky turbo. When we purchased the car we new that both these things needed doing within the first couple of months and now it was the time to tackle them both. We had even found a track day at Cadwell Park on the following Tuesday that we could attend if all the work had been completed. A fun few days were in store.

Sourcing & fitting the turbo

After undertaking quite a lot of research on turbos we were just about to settle for a T25 turbo as they were quite easy to lay our hands on and would provide a nice upgrade to our standard T2. However, just as we were about to source a T25, a reconditioned T28 hybrid had just been listed on eBay (with a correctly setup engine this could be good for 220bhp+) As we had a small capacity engine we needed a .49 housing rather than the .69 that is normally on the T28, by some freak chance on eBay was the exact T28 hybrid we needed. We negotiated to pay £250 which was a bit of a gamble, as we really did not know the history of it, but as it came from a reputable source we decided to take the plunge. It's easier to gamble when there's three of you :o) Now all we had to do was match up all the oil in/out and water in/out pipes.

In the week leading up to our main mechanical weekend, myself and one of the other owners had been trying to lay our hands on all the relevant turbo parts. We'd discovered that everything we needed to fit our new turbo was a different size, oil in need to be smaller, oil out was a T piece and water in was a different sized banjo bolt. After much frantic ordering on eBay we managed to source all adaptors and fittings (inc ordering for a second time when one of the parts we'd bought did not fit). The last part we needed arrived on the Saturday morning, it looked like everything was coming together.

As I'd been spraying WD40 on all the bolts for the past week the old turbo came off quite easily, a few awkward bolts, but nothing major and within an hour and a half we'd got the old T2 out. There was quite a bit of oil in the intercooler (see picture below) and a large crack in the housing so it was clear that our old turbo was pretty knackered.

Hole left in our engine with the turbo removed.

Once the old turbo had been extracted and put alongside the new T28 it was clear how much bigger it was.

All that was required now was to fit all the new adaptors and connectors we'd spent days researching and hook up the new turbo.

Oil out - we knew this was quite a bit different as we'd gone from a normal oil out fitting to a T-piece but luckily we had a spare oil out lying around from a Renault 21T so with a small amount of bodging and a new gasket it was possible to get this to fit.

Oil in - the connector arrived in the post and sort of fitted into the top of the turbo and in my naivety I thought we could make it fit or find a suitable adaptor from somewhere like Demon Tweeks, we just needed to take off the oil pipe and take this, with new adaptor to a specialist motorsport shop. A task for later.

Water in/out - Our new banjo bolt purchased off eBay fitted and the Turbo came with the water out pipe attached so another two parts crossed off.

Exhaust elbow - Our current T2 turbo only used four of the five bolts so we fully expected that our new turbo would be the same or even better, use all of the five bolts. To our horror it only matched up with three of the bolts, things were not looking good. We either had to risk using only three bolts, try & find a way round it with an adaptor or buy a new elbow. Once again, naively something I thought would be easily sorted by adding to our afternoon shopping list.

Actuator & actuator bracket - We had two options for our actuator, use the standard one or fit a bigger one from the Renault 21T. We matched up the one from our T2 (with a T2 the actuator is riveted to the bracket) we once again had a nasty surprise the bracket fitted the opposite way round, the only way we could get this to fit would be to separate the two parts, which is easier said that done. Using the T3 actuator seemed a good possibility it was big enough and we could hopefully use the bracket off the T2. With a bit of bodging it should work.

So out of all the new parts required, we scored two out of seven, things weren't looking good, but with a trip to Demon Tweeks planned we thought all would be fine. So we downed tools and decided it was time to pay a visit to Demon Tweeks.

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.

Trying to fix the smoky turbo

As mentioned previously, there are three of us that have gone into this project, one person with a lot of mechanical knowledge and will fix anything, a second with good general technical knowledge about cars and myself with little mechanical or technical knowledge. I know the basics but I am clueless when it comes to getting my hands dirty, I am hoping that I will soon start to learn.

If things were simple we'd all live near to one another, but we don't, and the best mechanic out of the three of us is 100s of miles away, things are never simple. As the car currently spends time at my house I get sent mechanical tasks via email by the person 100s of miles away. The first of these tasks is to try and work out how fried our turbo is and see what is causing it to smoke (intermittently).

My first task was to try and understand if oil is getting into the turbo itself and if it was how much. If there was a lot then we knew the turbo was pretty gone, if not a lot then more investigation maybe required.

Quite a simple test of;
1). Running the car for 5 minutes to warm it up
2). Disconnecting the intercooler pipe to see if any oil was in the housing

3). Disconnecting the air filter pipe to see if there was any sign of any oil

4). Finally, seeing if there was any play in the turbo shaft.

Surprisingly I managed to pull the task off and a stubborn air filter was the only mild complication. The only downside to the work was that there was no visible signs of oil in either of the places we were expecting and only a little play in the turbo shaft. This left us a little confused as we had believed the test would have proven positive with regards to the oil.

Doing this work also allowed us to find the serial number of the turbo to try and see what we had under the bonnet. To our disappointment we found only a standard T2. I wonder what happened to the KTR230 that was originally on it?

As we've now discovered the turbo is pretty standard and the rest of the engine has apparently been upgraded, (larger intercooler, uprated carb) we've now taken the plunge and bought a T28 with the hope that this will stop the smoking, but if not will give us a better turbo to build our track bitch.

The turbo is a newly reconditioned T28 Garrett which has had little/no use (apparently). We've paid £250 for it off eBay, so taken a little gamble. Fingers crossed it'll be goodun.

The first run out

Immediately after picking up the tax disk, myself and one of the co-owners felt compelled to take a drive out in 'The Baron' (sometime between picking the car up and it being MOT'd we managed to name the car The Baron, due to its dodgy wear wing addenda).

We didn't go too far or anywhere too exciting just some local roads in the area which include nice spaced stretches of dual carriageway split up with roundabouts, followed by a trip underneath two tunnels beneath the airport, for aural pleasure.

Initial thoughts on the car are; it has a quite a bit of turbo lag (currently running original spec T2 Turbo) it is slow to react, but when it does, it seems pretty quick. We've not timed it yet or had much to compare it to, but it does seem fast.

The brakes are superb, excellent feel, progressive and do a good job of stopping, having had a big brake conversion in the past this seems to have been very beneficial. Good brakes is always desirable on track, it will be interesting to see how they hold up lap after lap.

Handling I am still not sure on, the rear suspension has been completely 'slammed' and I wouldn't feel very safe on high speed corners on a race track, it is definately something for us to sort out.

Fun - the car is a lot of fun, very loud exhaust, dump valve (perhaps a little chavvy), light weight and not much to the build of the car all contribute to this. Myself and one of the other owners had a very entertaining evening out. Both of us are pretty pleased with our new purchase.

 Considering how much we've paid, the car represents tremendous value for money. We're hoping for many future enjoyable track days this year.