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Unparallel Renault 16 Happenings

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:08 pm
by Junkman
I can't really remember why I suddenly wanted an R16. I guess it has a lot to do with the 6 year ordeal of P6 V8s I went through.
As always when you start looking for something, the black hole mantra set in and there simply were no Renault 16s available, or they were so heavily scene taxed that I almost gave up on the idea because of boat sailing hasage. However, it was clear from the onset that I would only ever settle on an LHD anyway, because I just find that more authentic. After months of digging around on Leboncoin (a French site exclusively listing stuff that isn't for sale anyway), I found one. In Northern Germany. The price was right, it looked shonky enough for my taste in the pictures, the seller appeared and later also turned out to be a superb bloke, so the GGG inner core set out on a collection mission to retrieve it from Loxstedt, which is near Bremerhaven. We expected a drive home riddled with minor and major disasters, but to our dismay we hardly had anything entertaining to report. This changed upon arrival, since at the then still necessary MoT test, it turned out that the car suffered from the cheapest performance enhancement known to man, rust holes where floors are supposed to be.Subsequently there has been weldage, but other than that the car has hitherto provided sterling service over meanwhile 22,000 km with merely minor niggles and no FTPs to speak of.

I don't want to bore you with endless waffle now, so let's photoz.

Collection phase.

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Declutter phase.

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Despair phase.


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Resurrection phase.
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Re: The Parallel Paradox - This is a Parallel to Parallel R16 Ownership. And the Universe. And 42.

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 9:53 am
by Junkman
Anyway, while the car received a little bit of welding, the GGG was off to France again - shopping.

The usual thorough travel preparations for a Continental trip were made.

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And on the road we were.

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We stayed at a nice hotel.

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We enjoyed France's nightlife.

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This was the result of our shopping spree:

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Oh, and this:

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Which resulted in this:

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Although those seats are in fact from a TX and thus incorrect for my car, they only cost €50.00 and are a massive step up from the worn out black latex shit it was befitted with originally. Herein lies the problem, good early interiors are rare. But I will find one eventually. Until then, this will do.

Re: The Parallel Paradox - This is a Parallel to Parallel R16 Ownership. And the Universe. And 42.

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 10:07 am
by Junkman
Well, after it was registered, it was ready for the Queen's Highways, right?

Fraid not.

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Some ad hoc bodgage commenced.

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Tis fookt.

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So let's fix it before it can be called an FTP.

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Behold the elegant repair!

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Also behold the condition of the car!

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Ultimately it was this part that gave all that trouble by failing after merely 51 years. French cars, etc etc.

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Sadly it's made from unobtainium, so a fish tank shop was raided.

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Re: The Parallel Paradox - This is a Parallel to Parallel R16 Ownership. And the Universe. And 42.

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 10:16 am
by Junkman
The next thing was that the brake pedal gave me that sinking feeling. Which means the brakes were a bit shit.


So I ordered a new master cylinder. This was when I learned the difference between my R16 and the ones you can get spares for.

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For the 1968 onwards master cylinder, you'd need a different brake pedal. For that, you'd need a different pedal box. For that, you'd need a different steering column. And if you had all that, you'd need a different gearshift linkage. And for that, you'd need a different ignition lock and a different choke cable and knob.
So I decided to whack a seal kit into the old master cylinder.

Brake bleeding was done courtesy of the original Conelradish GGG Atmos-Bleed-O-Matic.

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While bleeding the system, we noticed that the O/S brake caliper had no bleed nipple. Instead a self tapper was hammered in.
Renault used M7 bleed nipples, same as Ducati. So I drilled out the self tapper and cut an M8 thread.

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However, I couldn't get the new bleed nipple to seal.

New brake calipers are in the neighborhood of 300 Roros apiece from your friendly R16 specialists. Plus core charge.
So I had one for a Zastava 101 sent from a classic car parts dealer in Pula in Coratia, at a cost of 25 quid including postage.

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However, it turned out that the calipers in my car are the 68 onward type. They would thus require the 68 onward type master cylinder, for which you'd need a different brake pedal. For that, you'd need a different pedal box. For that, you'd need a different steering column. And if you had all that, you'd need a different gearshift linkage. And for that, you'd need a different ignition lock and a different choke cable and knob.
So I ordered two tins of brake calipers for my car from a Professor in Germany for 25 quid including postage.

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I have not installed them yet.

Which means the brakes are still a bit shit.
Which nicely coincides with me not really giving a shit about brakes.

Re: The Parallel Paradox - This is a Parallel to Parallel R16 Ownership. And the Universe. And 42.

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 10:27 am
by Junkman
Anyway, after not really fixing the brakes, it was time to not really fix another problem. The Carby. Long story short, it needed a service, or so I thought, and it was a Solex, which means I couldn't get any parts for it whatsoever. Hence Conelrad made some.

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However, even this effort didn't alleviate the issue, so it was replaced with a Weber, as I was advised to do by people in the know.
This wasn't as easy as it sounds, though.

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But it was doable in the end.

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Now, the ones of you in the know may have spotted, that this is a dual throat carby, which wasn't even available for my car from the factory.
Someone must have at some point installed this setup, likely courtesy of an R15.
Since I'm not a fan of this sort of hop uppage, I meanwhile collected all the parts necessary to convert the car back to its original setup.

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These pictures do not tell the story how involved it was to obtain these parts. Several attempts

Re: The Parallel Paradox - This is a Parallel to Parallel R16 Ownership. And the Universe. And 42.

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 10:33 am
by Junkman
Now, I just realised that this thread may give you the impression that owning an R16 is all doom and gloom and no enjoyment comes forth.
However, this is not so and I herewith leave you with some pictures showing the fun I had with the car.

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Re: The Parallel Paradox - This is a Parallel to Parallel R16 Ownership. And the Universe. And 42.

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 10:44 am
by Junkman
Entirely btw, the car was first registered in Paris. How do I know that?

Look:

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This might explain why the front bumper was rather Paris spec.

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It's also the wrong type by being TS flavoured, which means it has flat indentations to accommodate the fog lights, which were standard on TSes. Of course I wanted the correct one for my car and equally of course, this constitutes a problem. They are rare as shit from a toothed rocking hen. TS (and TX) ones are common as muck, however, because once the R16s became remotely worthy of preservation, the base models were merely considered parts cars for the posher ones, as it is so often the case. They were thus gutted and cubed mercilessly and being a prime choice for the French version of stock car racing didn't help matters either.
Long story short, after a lengthy search in vain, I was offered one by Clint.

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So it's just a matter of installing is the reverse of removal, right?

Well, guess what.

There were captive nuts that weren't all that captive anymore.

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Would you believe that there are two versions of dumb irons, too?
So if you want to be like me, make sure you have the correct ones for your bumper!

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Bonus pic of debumpered R16:

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In the end, what looked like an hour's job took until after dark.

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But result:

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Re: The Parallel Paradox - This is a Parallel to Parallel R16 Ownership. And the Universe. And 42.

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 10:52 am
by Junkman
Fancy this arriving when you order parts for your R16.

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Despite I hitherto didn't hear of an oil filter that's actually alive, I still felt like someone has put myself into my place.



However, the next big expenditure was to replace the incorrect tyres it came with with the correct ones.
Just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about:

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I don't know why people are doing this kind of shit.
All I can say is that since the correct tyres are on, the car improved immensely. Yes, the entire car.

It does look different.

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It also sits right, the speedo shows pretty much the correct speed, the car steers better, doesn't tramline and it knocked quite a few RPMs off the motorway speed.

Re: The Parallel Universe of R16 Ownership

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 11:36 am
by Junkman
This, my friends, was most of a carby I know nothing about, not even whether it works.

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This was a perfectly fine running engine.

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So I changed that.


Out with that newfangled hop up tosh.

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The one that came out is on the right.

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Here the manifold is installed.

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Looks like a straightforward job, ay?

Well, it wasn't. The old manifold put up quite a fight due to space constraints, so studs had to be removed and heat shields unbolted.
When installing the new one, a thread had to be cleaned up. In an aluminium cylinder head. My nerves haven't been the same since.


In the end, we were carbureted once again.

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Of course this was the third time it was installed. I had to take it out two times because I forgot to insert some bolts required for plugging unused threaded holes in the cylinder head, then once more because some linkage had come undone.


I didn't disassemble and clean the carby, because I thought this can still be done if it runs like shit. It started up pretty instantly, but of course
ran like shit, so I took it apart.

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There was a herd of elephants living in it.

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Thorough cleanage ensued, all the jets were cleaned out, sticky valves made unstuck, everything.
After putting it all back together, it still ran like shit.

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So we did what any normal person would do and took it on a full lap of the M60.
It did wonders. It became better with every mile and was now deemed in a stage where it merely needs a bit of fine tuning.
However, the car ran again bad enough to the last Glossop gathering that more carby tinkerage was deemed necessary. It has brief bright moments when everything is working fine, so I know there is nothing fundamentally wrong. A lack of knowledge and the carby not having been used for God knows how long are the most likely root causes. Hence the decision was made to take it apart once more for thorough cleanage before Bromyard. Two days before Bromyard to be precise, with reassemblage and adjustage planned for the day before Bromyard in this typical GGG WCPGW fashion.

When I opened the carby, of course I broke the new gasket like a fucking eggspurt. Bromyard suddenly felt much further away.

All the removable bits and pieces and the main body were treated to an overnight non brewed condiment bath. This is what they looked like afterwards:

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Reassemblage had commenced:

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I also used new gaskets at the carby base this time:

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A gasket was fashioned because a breaking one doesn't keep the GGG from hooning to the other end of the country without breakdown cover:

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The other annoying thing to tackle was the exhaust system I had installed by a garage last Summer, which was practically permablowing and spectacularly off falling in France.
Crooner once gave me a surplus original front pipe he had and just by looking at it, I thought it's much more suitable than that repop thing I managed to purchase way back when.

Here you can see the difference:

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Now, what preceded taking above pic is that the front pipe was welded to the silencer, because we could never get a proper seal (never mind we couldn't get it to seal even with welding), so we had to separate them first:

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I then did some precision* engineering*:

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Note incorrect file holdage.


And look:

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I inserted some snake oil:

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A quick round of the M60 Ring followed, despite I had to share it with a flock of bisons allegedly:

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Afterwards the car was made presentable enough for a high end classic car gathering.

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However not all was well.

The engine ticked over fine and it pulled and I could drive along at 30 just fine in 4th in towns. It also ran fine at 60 - 70 errrr .0000, since I'm on a public forum.
But doing a constant 40 or 50 it was still rather juddery, which lead me to believe it's running too lean at mid range.

It turns out that the manifold bolts needed retightening.
So for the moment, it runs fine.

Re: The Parallel Universe of R16 Ownership

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 9:14 pm
by CLINT
If this newfangled forum had a like button then I would have pressed it as I have nothing constructive to add.