Hi and welcome to my project thread,

I'm sure I had one before but I couldn't find it, so here the new one

I ended up owning this phase 1 Renault Sport Clio 172 by acedent really. I was always a Ford man at heart, (still am deep down.) I took it in part ex as an non runner. I traced the fault to the engine bay wiring loom and I was going to shift it on right up untill the point I took it on roadtest.

What can I say. I so wanted to hate this stupid pile a Renult crap that had been a pain in my arse for the last couple of days. Sadly It took 3miles for me to decide it was staying :drive:

The first thing that drew me into the car was just how lively the engine was. It pulled so hard and just felt like it wanted so much more than all the abuse you could chuck at it. The steering was so tight and sharp, and as for the handling, it was just increadable. How it gets round corners at the speeds it does still baffles me today.

This is what it looked like when I brought it.





So the Clio was staying. I decided to use it as a track car as i wanted to get into track days. My theroy was that if I binned it, it didn't really matter as it would be cheap to fix or replace (turth be told now, Id be gutted if something happend to it!) So the track prepping begun.

The first thing to do was to fit the bucket seats from my old Focus RS powered Transit Connect Van, Strip out the interior and fit a better steering wheel.



















I then did my first track day at castle combe. I could fault the car. It punched so much higher than it weight, holding off Civic Type R's, Scoobys, Evos, VXR's



The only real issue I had on the trackday was getting the heat out of the brakes. They overheaded a coule of times, so i removed my foglights and made some home made brake coolers



As the standard wheels were fitted with Toyo R888's for track use, I treated it to a set of Team Dynamics Pro Race 1.2's



Just before the next track day, I fitted some Vibra Technics engine mounts (full kit) and binned the aircon. Both very affective mods in my opinion.



Here she is on track at silverstone. Thats my mum in the passanger seats and the brake discs are just starting to glow :twisted: :twisted:



I then took it off the road for a bit and carried out a full check over and fitted some gaz coilovers, comp brake top mounts, heat wrappped the exhasut mainfold, fitted a trackday exhaust and some camber bolts. I then did a soaking wet track day at beadford autodrome.







All was going well with the Clio untill one nice going down to lakeside cruse. On the way down we found a brand new R35 Skyline to play with, Not that there was much playing, Them things are rapid. After a couple of 3figure speeds passed the him, and then him past me, then me passed him (fair play to the guy. He seemed to really enjoy a little tear up) the Clio started to feel down on power. I couldn''t put my finger one exsactly what it was. It just didnt feel itself.

When we got to lakeside I checked all the levels witch were all fine and set off home. Sadly on the way home it started to knock

After 140,000 miles the engine had finally taken all the abuse it could and had spun a big end shell.













The damage



I wasnt't gunna let this be the end of my awesome little track car. As a matter of fact, this was a perfect excuse to put some plans I had into action.

Im now half way through rebuilding the engine, fully forged, low comp ready for a supercharger. The figure im going for it anywhere between 300bhp-350bhp. No more No less. Im also going to be fully rebuilding the gearbox and fitting some 4 pot brakes.


I wanted to upgrate the brakes on the clio without moving to bigger wheels (size 15inch) and I didn't want to use wheel spacers either. I found a cheap set of 406 Coupe Brembo 4 pot calipers and I came up with this..........

Normal brakes, Forgive the rust, the car has been sitting in the garden for 8months now.



Note how far out the standard disc offset is



I needed to move the caliper more inboard so's not to need wheel spacers. I decided to run a different offset disc to move it all in. These are Ford disc's im guessing due to the 4x108 holes in them but they were easily re drilled to 4x100



Note how much more these discs are tucked in by



Once I knew where the disc was in refrerance to the caliper mounting bolts I was able to fab up some new mounting brackets in the correct thickness to alow everything to run inline. I used stainless steel witch was proberly overkill but its what I had laying about.







Once I was happy with the bracket I'd made, I gave it a quick paint. Im not one for shiney bits everywhere.





Annoyingly the caliper needed to sit right over the top of the bracket mounting bolts so I had to shave away some of the caliper but luckly is wasn't that much so didn't affect the strenght of the mounting.



And there we are done! I use the Team Dynamics everyday and the standard wheels of track use and both if with about 5mm of clearance.

 

Cracking mate Im planning on getting one for track use soon myself.

 

i went round the 'ring in the beater that JC and the northern crew had- best fun i have had in ages... iirc it was davecos4x4 driving! never shat myself so much, but on the other hand by fuck do they go!

L

 

cool little track toy, you always build some cool toys. connect van, have you still the fiesta courier van?

 

The courier van died sadly. I managed to buy a TDCI transit connect van with every option on that needed an engne and a bit of paint work, it for the price I sold the escos wheels and bumper for lol. So the engine from the courier was converted to TDCI, de-cated, fitted with a bigger turbo and put in the connect van.

The new connect is an awesome van. Im half way through putting a focus ST FMIC on it, then ill get it dyno'ed. It already pulls past sportline transporters

 

awesome mate, keep it up

 

Love these!! Drove my mates 182 many a times and had so much fun. Majority of french hot hatches are brilliant fun!

Ps that colour your car is, is really rare in the phase1 172s. Its called "Monaco Bleu"

 

that clio is brilliant! lol

 

pmsl thats my mom in the passenger seat my mom would rather walk than get in a car with me let alone go out on a track top mom award right there pal. and clio looks sweet been thinking about a 172 for an every day driver for a little b road fun

 

will be a great track car!

 

Really liking this thread!
Could you please post detail on your engine build too if you get a chance?
Let us know if you discover any worthwhile F4R mods - seems hard to get real proven power gains on these without spending big money...any advice appreciated

I just bought a clio 182 while the S2 is in the garage - can't believe how good it is - although the french rep may be justified - just put on a new alternator @ 29K LOL.
Up until now my fave N/A engine was the GTE16V but this sadly beats it - nice kick too @ 5.5k!

 

Nathan go to cliosport.net for loads of info on there but does seem that you need to do major mods for any performance gains from what I can gather.

 

Small update today.

Ive decidied I want the car too be 1000kg with me in it. That gave me too options. Lighten me or Lighten the car!

So today I started by taking out the dash and removing the sound deading from behind it and removing anything elce I felt I could live without.







As it was all apart, I decided to remove the heater box and get rid of the air-con matrix too



.

Also as everything was out, I decided to try and find a way to lower my steering coloum. As my bucket seats are mounted very low to keep my weight low, even with the colum on its lowest setting, the steering wheel was still a bit high for me. So I got to work on the lathe with some round bar and made these spacers.











Next I got a bit carried away and cut the dash in half. It actully fits very nicely.







Then to finnish the day off i fitted my Cup spoiler and suck on a couple of track stickers. Yes I have driven every track that I've stuck on lol.



Next week im going to rip the ABS pump out and the brake lines ready for full braiding and install all the cables to put the battery in the boot.

 

Looking good Mike. looking forward to a passenger ride in it when its complete

 

fair play mike , cracking work fella,

 

thanks bud, will do

great thread keep it coming please

 

You'll love it with the charger on

Been in the passenger seat of RS Tunings old ph1 when it was roughly 270 brake and geeezzz it could move.

See the lad beating the Scooby Sti for proof on youtube lol

 

The engine parts have finally arrived back from the machine shop!- Engine part porn inside this post!

After shite service from a local machine shop, they have finally delivered the goods and appart from there crap customer service, there work is as always TOP!

Work I had done:-
Pistons weight matched
Rods end to end balcenced and weight matched
Flywheel skimed
Block Faced
Block Bored
Block Honed
Crank chain gear and cambelt gear keys
Full rotating assembley balanced.







First job was to repaint the sad looking block to smarten it up a bit



Then I had to measure all the ring gaps to make sure they're all correct for aplication.



Once I was satified with the ring gaps, the rings could go on the pistons, and the pistons onto the rods.







Next it was time to full clean the pistons and rods after putting them together and totally cover them in oil before putting them into the block.









Next is a big order from renault, Bearings, Gaskets, Seals to finnish off the bottom end. Then I can start work on the head

 

Pictures of this connect please mate, clio is going to sound the nuts

 

Utter pron mate! Keep up the good work!