Introducing My Clio PH1 172

Well its about time i introduced the latest addition to the fleet, i've been a little lazy as i've owned this for 2 months now but i'll start from the beginning. Yes it isnt a 197/200 either so if your not partial to abit of mk2 chavviness then switch channels now :tongueout:

So after 2 loyal years of ownership my little runabout had expired its welcome with me. I was bored of it, hated driving such a slow car ( dangerous at times ) and it did little for my street cred. It just so happened the wifes old man had just blown his van up and was desperate for a replacement, so i kindly gave this away for nothing. Ignore the wife posing, she tries to jump in every photo!

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For the replacement i was initially looking at either a 206 GTI 180 or even a Laguna 1.8. Then this came up on Cliosport for a reasonable price, viewed it that weekend and fell in love with it at first sight, tried to haggle the owner down but he wasnt having any of it and rightly so as i think it was under sold anyway. £1700 later she was finally mine.

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There she is again haha,

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Spec when purchased:

2000 W Reg Titanium silver RenaultSport clio 172, 83,000 miles ( Alloy bonnet/shift light model )
Bilstein B14 coilovers
KTR solid top mounts
KTR stealth exhaust system
RS tuning module remap

The first weekend i had ownership she was up the ramp at work for a good old inspection. To my suprise for a sub 2k, 12 year old RenaultSport it wasn't a dog! I was genuinely suprised how little was wrong with it. Anyway with all that in mind every car has bad points and the list of work involves:

1) Stealth exhaust needed repositioning, it was not stealth! someone at work asked if it was a diesel car. It was also knocking on the rear beam due to poor fitting.
2) Oil was clean but half a litre overfilled, also had a cheap filter on. All in all a bloody good reason for some fresh slippery stuff.
3) Rear pads worn, may aswell fit new discs at the time
4) Front wheel bearing rumbling
5) Throttle occassionally got sticky, common fault with ph1s
6) Those fancy Bilstein coilovers have worn out already on the front, common issue. Will be either rebuilt or replaced with different brand.
7) Many other little niggles that need to be tidied up ( Decent mats, fresh wheelnuts, engine cover was missing etc ).

Anyway thats it for now, next update coming immediately! Thanks for reading my essay.
 
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Right first update. Collected a few parts for a good service and refresh, these include:

Motul 300V 5w-40 oil, this was in storage at mine for the 197s next oil change but im sure she wont mind :tongueout:

Brembo HC front discs, genuine renault rear discs and CL RC5+ pads all round. Reason for choosing this pad? Use them in the 197 and the cold bite, fadeless performance, pedal feel and overall stopping power are untouchable with any other pad i've tried.

Powerflex front lower arm and ARB poly bush kit, along with new lower balljoints for a suspension refresh.

Genuine RS 182 mats, very flash.

Demon Tweeks heatshield to replace crappy old bulkhead mat. IMO easiest way to tidy up the bay. Also picked up a mint engine cover from eBay.

182 silver metal interior door handles, originals had cracked.

Front wheel bearings.

Genuine spark plugs with fresh inlet manifold gaskets and lots of silver VHT paint for under the bonnet.

ITG panel filter and genuine pollen filter/fuel filter.

Prima racing uprated exhaust mount.

New Toyo T1R tyres fitted on all four corners.


Anyway down to work:

Unknown brand of oil removed:
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In with some stuff i can trust, only the best for my ph1:
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Quality filter, i hate using cheap filters:
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Genuine discs and CL pads fitted all round:
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VVT controller seal was also seeping, i hate a messy bay so had to be sorted:
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The old exhaust mount had seen better days, nice effort from previous owner though! Replaced with Prima racing mount now:
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Stealth exhaust twisted round and fiddled with to actually hide it, also doesnt knock on rear beam anymore, result!:
Before:
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After:
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Sticky throttle had become worse over the past month. I tried multiple 'cheap fixes' but they were all only temp bodges, so bit the bullet and bought a new TB, potentiometer and cable from renault at honour of £350 ouch:
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Also managed to fit the new engine cover and heatshield on the bulkhead. Gave it a little scrub up under there too. The original airbox was missing 2 clips and i didnt like the 2 way riveted inlet, looked messy. Had an old JMS V6 airbox in the garage so whacked that on to tidy it up with the ITG panel filter inside.

Next plans are to sort the worn coilovers out, they make a very annoying noise on lock and over bumps. Also looking at taking it on a trackday next month so possible preps for that. :smile:

Thanks.
 
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Update 2.

Just a quick addition to the thread. Engine bay tidiness is a biggy for me so thats where most my efforts will go. So far its just the airbox swap, engine cover and heat shield fitted. Future plans include alloy header tank, black silicone coolant hose kit, powercoated inlet, VibraTechnics engine mounts and a bloody good scrub up.

When purchased:
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As it stands:
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Whilst we're on the subject of ph1 clios, WTF is up with those cats lmao? Somethings gotta be done about that!
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Cheeky firm fave shot aswell, cant beat the front end of the ph1:
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Nice looking motor mate. I really like ph1s! Looks like your doing it properly and making her mint again :smile:
 
Update 3. ( time for a royal cock up )

So the cars been whistling and grinding a little on tickover, quite common fault on these is the tensioner and idlers becoming noisy with age. Upon inspection the belt certainly looked cracked and tired so a genuine tensioner kit was ordered up:

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Stayed behind last night after work and started stripping the bits off for replacement:

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Okay first thing first, i wish i'd read up on this job. I went in head first assuming this would be a standard aux belt change, couple hours tops? I've never seen such a stupid setup, apart from having to practically lift the N/S of the engine out the car you still only have about half an inch to play with. Smallest hands in the world to work on this!

Anyway after much struggling got the old tensioner off, lucky i decided to change it, pulley was found damaged:

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After even more struggling got the new tensioner on along with the lower idler. Then the real problems came. The idea of the design being you use a 3/8 rachet drive to inser into the tensioner and then push back to compress spring and allow belt to be fitted. Even if renault hadnt fitted the hardest spring known to man then the location of it blocking the 3/8 drive recess would have just as much stopped me. Struggled for ages until i gave up and resorted to doing some homework on cliosport.

Now it seems it isnt just me who has trouble with this job, its a well documented nightmare. Anyway some people suggest using a jubilee clip to compress the spring, good idea? Well i gave it a go being at a last resort. It was all going fantastic until the highly strained, compressed spring bent in the middle, sprung out and snapped a eyelet mount one side...

At this point i was a little angry and it was getting late, some tools went flying and i had to call the wife for recovery ( a lift home lol ). So put the car back together minus a tensioner and belt, then attached it to the forklift and dragged its sorry arse to a temp resting place :worried:

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Still someone found it amusing:

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Okay so that was yesterday, where do i go from here? Using the misses 182 to commute whilst she very kindly walks to work and i've decided to bin the air con in favour of convienience of fitting future belts and the obvious performance benefits, plus it looks good under the bonnet :wink:

So bought a Pure motorsport air con delete with lightweight pulleys and hopefully they'll arrive for the weekend and i can get it up and running again. Looking forward to ripping out that pesky air con gear lol.

Thanks for reading.
 
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Love this , will be interested to see how far you go with it . Good luck .

I'm thinking forged internals, ITBs with extended trumpets, 6 point cage, 4 pot calipers...

Nope im on a tight leash with this one, just some tidying up and a few choice mods ( 182 manifold, decent wheels, possibly a little more ).
 
Looks great that. I love the look of these outside, the vents under the lights and the whole subtlety to it really appeal, but the interior of the facelift looks much better.

Some good work you are doing by the looks, I like the fact you are going fairly OEM with it, far too many are modded within an inch of their life and I like an OEM look. It'll be rare to see on the roads soon I bet!
 
I'm thinking forged internals, ITBs with extended trumpets, 6 point cage, 4 pot calipers...

Nope im on a tight leash with this one, just some tidying up and a few choice mods ( 182 manifold, decent wheels, possibly a little more ).

I cant help but get a screen grab of this :smile: will use it on you when you have all the above lol "enjoy" you budget build lol

your like me no control LMFAO
you going to go tdf or elsewhere ?
 
Looks great that. I love the look of these outside, the vents under the lights and the whole subtlety to it really appeal, but the interior of the facelift looks much better.

Some good work you are doing by the looks, I like the fact you are going fairly OEM with it, far too many are modded within an inch of their life and I like an OEM look. It'll be rare to see on the roads soon I bet!

W reg 172s are rare enough, only press release and demo cars.
 
Keep it OEM them mate, nothing like a mint, original nice and rare motor.

Wouldn't mind one myself.
 
A2ON your right lol it's a serious problem, I've already got a set of KWs coming to replace the worn Bilsteins, but the misses doesn't know about that :wink:

I'll do the work myself but a remap at TDF could be on the cards, possibly a little more work with them :tongueout: