Cams are in + A Rant

Why the f**k do people insist on bodging stuff? Renault make a perfectly good set of tools for changing the cambelt on an F4R and yet people (i.e. garages charging for it) insist on bodging them with tipex and buzz guns.

My cup didn't pull as well at high RPM as I though it should do, this was explained when pulling the old cams out today by the fact the inlet cam was retarded a good few degrees from where it should be. Tipex marks on the pulleys and back of the cam cover/bearing carrier pointed to a back street cambelt change - however I was a lot less amused when it turned out that some tit had buzzed all the pulleys up with an airgun, knackering the exhaust cam pulley mounting stud - I know exactly what they've done here as well, when fitting the belt they've tweaked the pulley with a spanner to get it to line up with the teeth on the belt only to find the bolt move rather than the pulley. Assuming its 'loose' they've buzzed it up tight. This mean it was an absolute bastard to get the exhaust pulley off, the exhaust cam pulley mounting stud was actually stretched with knackered threads meaning the Dremel and miniature cutting discs had to come out to machine through the nut so it'd pass over the damaged threads. Back street garages BUY THE PROPER TOOLS!!!!!

Fred cam to the rescue with a spare Laguna cam shaft that we were able to salvage the stud and nut from avoiding having to wait until Friday for the bits to come in (and yes I know the book says to always use a new nut etc. etc. but this one is my car so I made a judgement call, anything else would have new) which means the project is still on target at the moment. Fred I owe you a beer or six :-)

Once that little lot was sorted the new Cat Cams went in with no problems and the rocker cover was bolted down after sealing with high temp silicone sealant.

New tensioners and belts on tomorrow and then its just a case of building back up. Oh and I need to mount the battery... and sort some sort of induction/filtration setup. Theres a rather nice and bloody huge ITG filter in the AB80 airbox on the race car which may be temporarily installed as a solution so we can get it calibrated. Regarding the battery I've decided to stick it in the boot as per the original plan, the race engineer side of me just won't let me stick 6KG's that high up in the car!

I'm guessing circa 190bhp at the moment - it'll need a trick fabricated manifold to make 200+ but thats part 2 of the project ;-)

Busy Day! Inlet manifold, engine mount, tarting bits up etc. etc.

Good progress made today - mainly be being in the 'shop' until 10PM.

I've also port matched the upper and lower inlet manifolds and replaced the standard lower manifold with an RS Casting. These along with various other bits such as the cam belt covers, engine mount etc. etc. have all been VHT coated - very much a none bling job as its a dull matt grey/black once done but its more function than form and I reckon it looks pretty good. I'll do the cam cover/cam bearing carrier tomorrow when its off.

I've also coated the new ECU mounting plate and secured this in its final position along with the power distribution block. This is mounted to the engine bay fuse/relay box with a couple of big washers to spread the load. The standard cable lengths are perfect for this and it all looks quite OEM. Plus side I've saved a bit of time and effort by not having to remake parts of the engine bay loom.

The battery still isn't mounted as we're having a think as to where the best place to put it is. Options are in the spare wheel well or in the scuttle panel on the drivers side. In the boot will allow us to move a few kilos rearwards and offset it on the gearbox side but the overall weight may be a little more as it requries 4.5M of 25mm2 cable to do it. The scuttle panel reduces the cable run but puts the weight high up at the front of the car which negatively effects weight distribution and CofG - not exactly by a great deal but its nice to engineer things nice ;-)

The engine is now ready to have the new cams fitted tomorrow morning, just need to debelt it and pop the cover off. I need to pop to Renault in the morning though and order a few bits - don't have any cam end oil seals or a VVT actuator oil seal for a start! Was well worth pulling it apart regardless of the fitting cams aspect of things as a few seals were beginning to weep oil down the back of the block. From what I can see of the cams they look mint and damage free which bodes well for a reasonably well looked after engine. I'm going to pop the big end caps off and see what the bearings look like, if there is minimal wear they can stay in there. If not I have some standard replacements ready - the engine was making very good oil pressure previously so I reckon its in pretty okay nick.

Also hit a bit of an issue with acquiring an airbox so need to pull my finger out and sort an AB65 out somehow or other as the car is going on the rollers on Friday!!

ECU relocated and battery gone from the bay!

Only a few hours spent on the car today. However more than enough time to strip the battery and standard airbox out of the engine bay along with a huge amount of brackets and bits of plastic.

My plan was to mount the ECU flat on the battery tray/upper engine mount and the new airbox over the top of it with the battery moving to the boot.

With everything out we had a quick measure up and decided the easiest solution was to machine and fold the standard horizontal ECU mounting plate to fit the gearbox mount carrier/battery tray using the mounting point already present in the tray. The ECU mounting plate was folded on two corners which brace against existing webbing on the gearbox mount carrier and bolts into the carrier at three points. This wasn't a big job at all and once done the ECU bolted directly to the new plate with the standard mountings.

The battery positive cable needs breaking out further down the loom and the loom needs retaining with a rubber lined p-clip but it all fits with minimal messing about and its easily accessed if needs be.

The battery is being replaced with a boot mounted Odyssey PC625. As such a simple power distribution block is being used to carry the standard positive cable and fuse box feed cable with the new feed from the boot mounted battery feeding them. As such minimal modification to the standard looms are required. The battery distribution block will be secured to the suspension turret via a riv nut or existing fixing point - it depends how I want it to sit and how much clearance I decide is required around it.

Exhaust and Gear Linkage

The standard exhaust on the Cup had seen better days, the rubber hangers were fairly knackered, and the back box was rotten. Still it was 6 years old!

The replacement is a fairly default choice, a K-Tec Stealth with a silenced decat. Plan with this was that it was quickly available, cheap, not too noisy and fairly well designed. Downside is its not the lightest exhaust out there!

We got the Clio up on the lift and set about stripping the old exhaust and brakets off. It all came off easily bar one captive nut securing the rear box hanger which was no longer captive when we came to undo it, 30 second inconvenience. The downpipe to cat flexible mountings were as much fun as they always are!

With the exhaust off we also took the opportunity to fit a modified front end gear linkage setup. This is a direct fit to the standard cage. The standard cage is knackered in this car though so I'm after another at the moment. New linkage is very good though - its got another few hundred grams of weight on the top of it which helps with shift feel and the pivot point is relocated slightly reducing shift length when compared to standard.

The K-Tec setup was then offered upto the car. It all fitted pretty well. I tweaked the positions of a couple of heat shields to ensure decent clearance, although with new mounts all round the amount of play in the system should be fairly minimal. The downpipe to cat pipe flexible joint was a complete bastard as always - this is about the worst bit of design on the 172, bar perhaps the aux belt on the air-con equiped cars, there is literaly only just enough room to get your hands up there and then only if you've figured out which hand goes at which end and what bits of gear linkage and heat shield you have to bend around to get access - its never any less of a PITA either! Once the front end of the exhaust was bolted up I loosely bolted/hung the rest of it and lined it up properly. Once done the whole thing fitted pretty much spot on with minimal play. The silcenced decat does a decent job of quitening it down although its still pretty rorty at WOT, part throttle cruise and low speed is pretty much as per standard though which is nice. Unlike the original it no longer knocks and bangs over speed bumps either!

New gearlinkage feels very positive, nice snicky change which is something very much missing from the standard linkage. The throw is still fairly long but this is no bad thing as there needs to be a bit of throw to allow the synchros time to work.

Engine work starts tomorrow!

Brakes!

Boxing day is usually pretty boring so I spent boxing day afternoon in the workshop tackling the first bit of the Super Cup project. The brakes.

Theres nothing wrong with the standard Cup calipers or disc sizes - these are the same as used on the 172/182 Clio Cup Race Cars and they do the trick no problem on a car as light as the Clio, assuming the components in them are fairly decent.

The original spec was Brembo HC discs on the front - however I scored some Brembo Max discs for the same price as bogo HC's. The Max discs are actualy HC's with (mostly cosmetic) grooves cut in them. I've also got two lots of pads to try - Carbon Lorraines and Performance Friction 01 Compound. Will let you know which is best for a mixed use car such as this Cup but the CL's are in first!

Having stuck the car on axle stands (the 'other' Clio was on the lift) I stripped down both front corners and got in there with the wire brush to clean the muck off the uprights, wishbones etc. The ball joints and track rod ends were all in good nick so no need to change those. The Calipers weren't in bad nick but the slides weren't as free as they could be and they looked a bit of a state.

I stripped down both front calipers and rebuilt them with new slides, boots and seals. Then gave them a paint with some fairly default VHT. If it stops them rusting I'm happy, not really into bling red calipers ;-)

I also had a set of Goodridge hoses to go on, I tend to use braided hose on cars which'll be on track mainly because it is much more resistant to damage from abrasion or contact with other components - not because it is 'better' as such.

Once done I bled the lot through with AP 5.1. I also added some temperature tell tales to the outer front pads and caliper body so I can see what sort of temperatures the brakes get upto in hard use. This'll give me some idea of how much work the pads and fluid are doing and if I've cooked them or not!


Once bedded the CL's seem pretty good but
fairly noisey. Required pedal effort is minimal and pedal travel before the brakes start to retard the car is pretty much zero. Feels very nice!

I think that's everything now

Oil Filter, Oil, Gearbox Oil + misc bits on their way.

Remembered the gearbox in the Dremel died whilst using it more like an angle grinder than a Dremel so have ordered up another one in case I need to match anything.

Also got 16 fresh tappets and rollers here as well and a set of big end bearings.

Think thats about everything required bar dampers which will be here third week in Jan.

Project starts a week today! :-)

Exhaust is here!

Yep, exhaust is here and picked up a silcenced decat earlier today as well. That's pretty much everything in now bar the dampers which I have dropped a bollock on and now won't be here until after Xmas - oh well only a day to fit and setup so not too much of a problem.

Also realised that the cam pulley locking tool and a few other bits were in a flight case I 'lost' at Silverstone so bit of a panic there as a week before Xmas isn't the time to be needing to order specialist bits from Renault! Luckily Fred off of Clio Sport has helped out and agreed to rent me his :-) Much appreciated Fred, have two lots of a Cams to fit over Xmas and would have been stumped without it!

Just default service bits to pick up now (Oils, Filter, Coolant etc.) and its ready to rolled into the workshop for the build (bar dampers Doh!)

Trying some Toyo 4's at the moment and quite impressed with them, they may take over from T1-R as the road tyre choice for the project - wet grip is pretty good and they bite pretty nicely whilst still maintaining quite a bit of compliance, which is never a bad thing for a road tyre!

Even More Bits! Not many left now

The battery cage and a big parcel from VWS arrived this morning so thats everything required for the new battery location/setup. The standard battery clamps will be chopped off and in their place 8mm ring terminals crimped on and heat shrunk. The +12V side of things will then terminate in a bolt down distribution box mounted on the battery tray and from here the 9.8mm cable will run to the boot via the interior of the car. The original battery earth will terminate onto the inner wing in a suitable position to ensure a good earth. In the boot the battery will be bolted down (offset for weight distribution reasons) and +12V feed will run through a Maxi/Mega fuse and bolt down on the battery. The earth will run from the battery to a convenient earthing point, possibly the original tool tray/spare wheel hold down stud if that provides a decent earth.

Exhaust is on the way as well and should be here Friday and managed to pick up a silenced decat at a decent price so that should keep the exhaust under the common 98db trackday limit.

Need to sort some towing eyes out now!

Exhaust Sorted

Nothing fancy as I want it to be as stealth as possible. Hence the aptly named K-Tec stealth exhaust system. The 90 degree bend at the end of the backbox isn't the greatest for flow but as its so far from the exhaust manifold and the gas speed and temperature will have dropped off by then it doesn't really hurt things.

Cat is going to ensure there is plenty of flow capacity in the exhaust. Modern Cat designs are very large/efficent but the 172 being a 6 year old + design doesn't benefit from this so there are gains to be had by removing the standard cat.

Build Diary - Busy Xmas!!

On the 23rd December the Clio will be wheeled into the BPM Racing UK Technology Centre in Northampton, it needs to be pretty much complete bar final engine calibration and setup by the 5th of Jan.

Theres no chance of me being sober on the 23rd, 24th or 25th and the first is obviously a write off so that gives me about 7 days to get it done with a spare day in case. So......

Day 1: On lift, wheels off, brakes off, front bumper off, exhaust off, airbox/battery/ECU out. Cam covers off, old upper engine mount off and in the bin, belts off and original cams out.

Day 2: Sump off for big end bearing inspection, assuming it passed fit ARP big end bolts. Paint inlet manifold, upper cam cover, rocker cover and bake. Afternoon spare in case I need to rebuild the bottom end.

Day 3: Refit sump, Fit new upper engine mount, Fit new cams, fit new belts, tensioners etc. refit rocker cover/upper cam bearing carrier at same time, fit new inlet manifold with new injectors.

Day 4: Move battery to boot, fabricate battery cage, make new cables, install terminal/distribution block under bonnet, fit catch tank, reposition ECU on battery tray, fit induction/filtration system.

Day 5: Rebuild calipers, fit new discs and pads, fit braided lines, bleed through with 5.1, fit new clutch cable, fit new front end gear selector, fit new exhaust and decat pipe, fit new lower dog bone mount.

Day 6: Fit new suspension, new ball joints, new track rod ends, rebuild driveshafts with new gaitors and grease. Corner weight and geo.

Day 7: Finish up and calibrate engine package.

Easy :-)

More bits arrive!!!

Cams are here, battery is here, brakes are here etc. etc. Have also ordered all the bits needed to move the battery to the boot. Vehicle Wiring Products supplied cable, crimps, boots, ring terminals, power distribution blocks and all the other misc bits required to do a proper job. I have a decent stash of rubber lined P-Clips so that was one thing that didn't need purchasing! The battery won't feed the vehicle electrical system via clamps, it'll use bolt on/screw down terminals to secure the feeds to the battery which is both safer and stronger.

Also ordered a catch tank as I want to remove and redesign the standard recirculating oil breather setup. Inducted oil mist does nothing for healthy engines, it reduces the effective octane rating of the mixture in the chamber and makes a mess of nice shiny throttle bodies etc. etc. The car is also going to be tracked heavily so I don't want to run the risk of sucking in lots more oil mist than usual and laying down clouds on corner exit - it won't have a Cat to scrub most of it out either! New setup is going to use a remote mounted catch tank with a single entry and breathing to atmosphere via a cotton gauze filter. Catch tank will be fed from the standard breather outlet - it's not going to be anything fancy but it'll work! If needs be I can look at using engine vacuum to put the tank under vacuum and scavenge crank case gasses this way but I don't see this as being neccesary as the F4R 830 24 Hour endurance race engines I have built have managed perfectly well with purely atmospheric pressure catch tanks.

New Battery

In order to effectively package the airbox/filter with the least amount of loss it's going to be necessary to move the battery to the boot and move the ECU somewhere else in the bay, most likely flat on the existing battery tray on some AV mounts.

The battery in boot idea isn't a new one and in motorsport its pretty much standard practive to have the battery somewhere in the passenger cell for weight distribution reasons.

Battery I've picked for the Super Cup project is an Odyssey PC 625 which despite only being 170mm x 99mm x 175mm in size and less than 6KG in weight is capable of supplying 625 amps for short periods of time and a fairly sustained 400 amps. They are used pretty extensively by the Lotus boys and its a fairly perfect size for the Clio. Just need to make a nice ally mounting bracket for it now and bolt it into the boot in place of the tool kit.

Cams Ordered! :-)

Spoke to Matt at CatCams today and got the bumpy sticks for the stage 1 engine ordered. Should be here in the next couple of days. Plan is to see what power we can get out of these milder cams and then if needs be push what the standard management can do with a more aggressive profile if we're not reaching the just over 100bhp/litre we're after.

Also have a large pile of oddly shaped boxes turning up so getting well on the way to having all the bits I need to get my hands dirty over Xmas and get the first big jobs out the way.

Just an Aux belt kit to order now and an exhaust. Quite fancy a K-Tec Stealth to preserve the none attention seeking nature of the car.

Bargain Hunting!

Just picked up a pair of Brembo Max front discs for £80 incl postage.

Yesterday nabbed a decent (i.e. none B&M) quick shift for £45 - I'll be having this PTFE coated black and modifying it slightly as I only really want to reduce the play in the linkage rather than shorten the throw massively.

Diesel Kangoo Van engine mounts were £30 a piece, quite a bit more cost effective than 'group n'.

Have spun up some dog bone bushes on the lathe out of some poly I had kicking about so they were free.

Got the Cams to order now! :-)

Black Circles

Boring but important bit of kit are tires.

I've used Toyo in the past for various bits of kit and get decent discount with them so its R888's for track and dry weather use and Proxes 4's for general road use.

The 4's are the potential replacement for the T1-R which was always a decent and cost effective boot so I'm interested to see how the 4's compare.

Just need another set of Turinis now. Then I can paint the current ones black for track use and have silver for road use.

Tarting It Up

Stone chips don't bother me, in fact I consider them more a badge of honour but as the project was going to have quite a few new shiny bits thrown at it then it seemed a bit rude not to do something to tidy it up a bit.

The front bumper was heavily scuffed/scratched/had chunks missing on the passenger side and the rear spoiler had a 5p sized hole in it. There were also a few misc scratches, chips and dents. The worst of these was on the passenger rear arch which had been caught on something in the past and was fairly worse for wear.

Quick call to Nathan at Revive - Cambridge resulted in a plan. Bumper damage and rear spoiler was no problem for him and he kindly touched in a few of the other scuffs in the car whilst he had the paint mixed up. The rear arch and misc dents are a job for Dent Devils in the near future and then Nathan will be back to blow in the arch. Total spend to sort them all out without having to paint most of one side of the car or add any filler is looking to be under £300. Bit of a bargain I think as it'd cost more than that to have a bumper and a wing sprayed when you factor in the number of broken plastic clips and time and effort required!

Nathans works is top notch and I seriously can't tell where the rear spoiler has been repaired - as it had a 1cm wide 1cm deep hole in it thats pretty good going! If your around Cambs and need some paint touching up give Nathan a shout nathan.holmes@revive-uk.com

More On The Engine

To give some background detail on the decision on the choices behind the engine spec I'll do a quick overview on it.

The bulk of modifications will be to the inlet manifold and cylinder head. The inlet manifold will be CNC machined to ensure as good as possible a match between the two cast halves of the manifold and the cylinder head. The lower section of the manifold will also be machined with o-ring grooves in order to improve sealing and minimise any steps between cast components as well as to allow quick disassembly for access to the plugs and leads without having to bother about gaskets.

The cylinder head will retain standard valve sizes and ports but have a custom valve seat profile cut to aid flow.

The cams will be off the shelf Cat Cams items, I've used Cat previously with good results and have been very happy with the quality of their kit. They are also the cam supplier for the BPM Super Endurance 197's. At the moment the profile may change - 281's are considered the most you can run on standard management/induction setup due to any greater overlap causing the map sensor signal to degrade to the point where the ECU has issues running the engine - however a sneaky secondary map sensor plenum with a restrictor in it may solve this. On to finalise!

Induction/Filtration will be via an ITG AB 80 WTCC spec airbox/filter fed from the front bumpeer and mounted in place of the battery with the ECU moved to sit flat on the battery tray. A Varley Red Top will go in the boot in place of the standard tool kit.

Exhaust will be off the shelf K-Tec stealth as there is realisticaly no benefit from having one exiting through the bumper. The Cat will find a new home in the workshop racking for MOT use only ;-)

Engine Calibration will be a job for Paul at RS Tuning, Paul has mapped a huge amount of Clio's and rather usefully has an emulator which will allow us to live map the ECU on his DD Rolling Road.

Plugs, leads, head gasket and misc bits will all be standard Renault spec. Bottom end bearings will be refreshed as a matter of course and new timing and aux belts/tensioners/rollers will be fitted to ensure the valves and pistons keep out of each others way. A set of ARP big end cap bolts will make sure it all stays in place at 7800RPM - I've used these in F4R 830 race engines and they are now standard fit in the Oreca built 830 Clio Cup engines.

That lot should give over 200bhp at the fly based on previous experience with F4R 730 and 830 engine packages in the race cars.

Got A Car

Having looked at a couple of Cat D cars that hadn't been repaired that well and another currently unrepaired Cat C Cup that would have needed an awful lot of work I stumbled over a 90,000 mile 172 Cup on Pistonheads.

Couple of e-mails and a bit of bartering and I drove to Wales to see it. It was completely standard, high mileage, had some service history and plenty of dents, scratches and stone chips. However mechanically it was spot on and above all it was the same price as the repaired Cat D's. I'll have miles over serious accident damage any day and 3 hours later it was at home.

So to recap 2002 Clio 172 Cup, completely standard, 96,000 miles and aside from scraped bumpers, a chunk missing out the rear spoiler and a few dents it's absolutely spot on. :-) Have stuck 800 miles on it in the last week to identify any problems and all I can find is a mildly sticky clutch cable and some rattly ARB drop links. It appears to be pretty much one owner as well as the lad who had it previously didn't have it very long at all. If anyone knows who it was let me know.

The Spec

Spec'ing up a car for any application is always tricky. With a limited budget it makes it even harder. Clear goals need to be set out for what the car and project as a whole has to/needs to achieve.

After a bit of a think the following 'goals' were decided on.

• Minimum Power/Weight ratio of 200bhp/tonne.
  
• Capable on road and track without being too compromised for either.
  
• As much suspension adjustability as reasonably possible.
  
• Maintain use of as many standard components as possible to minimise running and repair costs.
  
• Maintain drive by wire throttle actuation and standard electronics package for reliability.
  
• Reduce weight where ever possible without heavily compromising the car for road use
• Be capable of repeated 58.5 second laps around Brands Hatch Indy.
  

Based on these a spec was developed to achieve as many of them as possible within budget. It'll need to be trimmed down a bit during the course of the project!

Engine spec was the first to be drawn up. The car needed a reliable 200bhp, if not a smidge more to meet the target power/weight ratio. This is easily achieved on ITBs/Port Throttles but for cost and reliability reasons I wanted to maintain the single throttle butterfly/plenum setup. The pic on the left shows the final spec.

Suspension and brakes was an easy job. Having worked with Gaz kit previously they were asked to produce a set of their 'Gold' Coil over dampers to my specification for the front of the car with a seperate damper and adjustable spring platform on the rear.

Braking wise the standard none ABS Clio Cup setup is pretty good and all this would require was an overhaul to ensure all was in decent spec, some 5.1 Fluid, Brembo HC discs and a set of Performance Friction 97's in the front with standard rear pads. Performance Friction were our supplier for the Britcar 24 hour where their 01 compound pads ran in the front of the BPM Clio for 12 hours at a time with perfect performance and reliability. The 97 compound pads are a slightly milder pad more suitable for combined road and track use.

First on the list is the need to acquire a car. With prices for 172 Cups at 3.5K - 4.5K and as the base for this project was going to be pretty much rebuilt I really didn't to pay out for a mint car as 1) Most of the stuff going onto it would be new and 2) It was going to spend a fairly large amount of time being battered around race circuits.

I needed a standard car that was either high mileage or a Cat D/C. With high mileage cups being rare (as most end up in ditches before 50K miles) I was expecting to start this project with a bent shell.

The Start

Having been around Renault Sport products for the previous three years with a pair of Megane 225 Cups and later as Technical Director for BPM Racing and their Super Endurance Clio 197 race car I'd quite fancied a capable and lightweight Clio of my own.

In mid November I got rid of my Impreza as it was far too heavy and under powered to be any use around a race circuit and started to develop a spec for a Renault Sport Clio.

The goals were simple. Low weight, decent power with good reliability and the application of some trick engineering to make sure it punched well above its weight.

A 172 Cup was the obvious base car due to it being the lightest of all the Renault Sport Clios.