Back towards the start of January, we had ourselves a little fettle of the Clio 172 as piloted by the Burd. With the exhaust sorted, it was fired in for an MOT a couple of weeks ago.
As expected, it didn’t sail through, instead needing a fair few fixes.
- A rusty front disc
- A rusty rear disc
- A non functioning right rear caliper
- A buggered balljoint
- A front Spring that was cracked
- A rear Spring that was cracked
All in all, nothing too major – although there was plenty potential for random French based faffery.
Funds were marshalled, motor factors and ebay was scoured, and a pile of parts was amassed.
Usually with the Clio, seeing how the simple parts of the job go gives a good overview of how the whole thing will go.
That meant front discs first:
Unlike normal Renault procedures, all 4 disc retaining screws ( with allen key heads) came out without issue, and the front discs were removed easily. Grateful for such mercy, I wasted no time in fitting the new discs and getting the calipers bolted back on.
Next up was the buggernated balljoint. On this 2001 Clio,it appeared to be original, and severely worse for wear.
There appeared to be 2 potential balljoint types available for the car – ones with 10mm bolt holes and ones with 12mm bolt holes. I bought 2x of the 12mm ones, but hedged my bet with a 10mm one being purchased too.
2 18mm bolts/nuts hold the balljoint into the bottom arm, and 1x 16mm nut and bolt is used to pinch the balljoint into the hub. In preperation for tackling this job, I’d liberally dowsed the bolts with penetrating fluid over the course of a few days.
this worked a treat, and despite difficult access due to the driveshaft, the bolts all came apart, and the balljoint hammered out easily.
For future reference, it was the 12mm hole balljoint that was needed. I have the other side to do shortly, but as it was not an MOT fail, I focused my efforts elsewhere.
The snapped front spring was plain to see, and as luck would have it, my mate Brian had recently updated the suspension on his Clio 182, allowing me to blag the front strut I needed to change the unit complete (Cheers Brian!).
Yeah, I’d say that has sprung..
Having a complete unit to swap in made this task nice and easy – a 21mm nut on the topmount, plus 2x 21mm bolts at the hub end were all that required removal. A combination of breaker bar, ratchet and buzz gun made short work of the job!
With the front end back together it was time to start on the rear.
The clio 17/82 use a single piston caliper, with seperate pad holder and a lever operated handbrake. Such a set up is surely the work of a masochist – making even the “drum in disc” set up on the rear of my e30s seem like a sensible and effective engineering solution.
The sliders for the for the right rear caliper were as stubborn as my good lady, and despite significant persuasion with a hammer, refused to yield or slide.
After a touch of too and fro, a replacemet caliper was located and fitted. The arrangement for getting the brake fluid to the caliper is Gallic in extremis. 2 front to rear solid pipes run to just before the rear axle, before going into short flexis. The flexis then connect to yet more solid pipe at the Axle, before turning back into flexi (crimped) and finally returning to solid line into the caliper, via way of an 11mm/13mm fitting. Utterly bizzare.
Regardless, the caliper bled up ok, and there was a handbrake.
Next up were the rear discs – a single 30mm nut holds the disc on the rear stub axle, and once loosened the discs and wheel bearings just tap off. Replacement discs were sourced cheaply from Ebay (Mintex brand, with rear bearings already pressed in and ABS rings on). they fitted well, and have reduced rear end noise, whilst improving the rear braking.
These done, it was time to sort the rear spring that was broken – a simple affair involving unding the bottom shock bolt, and having someone stand on the hub. this allowed the old spring to be wiggled out, and the new one fitted.
A couple of days later, and Babette won a new MOT certificate – rapidly replacing the Fabia as commuter of choice for the burd.
This was good news for me, as I can now focus some attention on my cars!
fu'guttycars 