E200JVV GTA TURBO Resto

Keep telling you need to move up north ......far better class of petrolhead

I did feel a little guilty, but to be honest the lump needed a rebuild in the end as I'll show, and a fair few pennies and John had set his heart on something tastier......and didn't have the skills to build it .......so I think I'm golden.......aren't I .......am I....?
I ran the car up this summer and he was as chuffed as bits to see his engine sweet, and jokingly mentioned me finishing the P4 and I jokingly said I would for 10k plus parts so we'll see.
I had a small ford or chevy block in mind running carbs and dizzy for simplicity, couple of years spare time though, and it would have to here in my den to stand a chance of getting done, There's a lot of bits and pieces to do brackets, pipework, wiring, seat fixings etc etc etc .........
It also threw up a V8 GTA in my tiny mind, 5 litres,300bhp.....they're not that heavy with ali heads I don't think? .........Ye Hah.... budget Pantera..........might be a tads tail happy tho'

So anyhows as you can see the new engine had not been fully drained and the water jacket had become somewhat furred up, the picture in my previous post is despite flushing when I was considering fitting and crossing my fingers.
The moral to the story is when buying these lumps make sure they are bone dry in the jacket and even that is no guarantee, in fact they are now so long in the tooth unless it came out running and heard, with comp figures and oil pressure I'd say it is spares or repairs, as I found out some weren't even right from the factory. But if you're desperate as I was getting, you take what you can and that is a sellers market, like it or lump it.
I had sourced some fleabay piston rings and was under the impression bearings would come along just as easily, wrong,...my usual suppliers shook their heads and I only got really worried when my call to 'all things impossible and really ancient engine wise' F.W Thorntons turned up only mains and they weren't cheap either, I could scrat about for ever and I'll admit I have found more engine bits since but as I wanted to crack on I rang Lee and pretty please can you put a set of mains, big ends and a couple of HG's on your next order to France, leaving me to carry on the strip and clean.
John had assured me the engine was nice and quiet, no knocks, rattles or smoke and in the main as I stripped and clean the engine down found nothing to doubt him. I had ten good liners honed by the engineers I use in Clay Cross, Cotteralls, who have the greatest machine shop known to man. Bits of engines everywhere, names you have never heard of from pre war era, if they can't get it they will make it and I had my gordini crank balanced by them and I was originally going to do the GTA but as money was starting to go fast and I was starting with an early non cross bolt block and on reading Martin Faulks excellent posts I thought it prudent to just build a nice tight engine for now and leave all standard including my planned port clean up. It was after all my first foray into PRV land so if I could build it right first time I'd be more than happy. Besides things like getting the liner heights right made me worry. I got away with just cleaning the block and there was very little corrosion in the jacket, but after honing I picked the best of the liners which turned out to be four from the R25 engine and two from the GTA which had very slightly, and I mean slightly different heights lip to tip so much head scratching and moving liner seals about, not made that easy by the fact according to my local Renault dealer they had deleted the base seals thickness's down to only two, I can't recall which it is now but I have a feeling that made it more difficult when I doubled up the base seals to get the protrusion right and at four squid a seal for something that would blow away if you apple tarted near it I was none too happy. Suffice to say I wriggled a little, even scanning a new seal then tried printing it out, but the size changed slightly, my plan being to use paper shim.........well I tried didn't I ?
Anyway here's a nice clean block.................

And they crank which was perfect

In my view the only decent use for a conservatory in real mans world, nice and light, clean near to the kettle and you can wave at the neighbours as they tut and shake their heads " Have you seen what he's up to at no. 4. if it's not motorbikes running for five minutes a week, silly old cars, then it's engines in the conservatory"......................................

[BIG_MVS]

Hey Turbell I read about "Mouse" last night!

Martin I take it you either been flicking through old Renotes or have downloaded it, hope you enjoyed it, if anyone is interested I may post some more pics of 'Mouse' and some of the less informed will see from where our cars started.
Back to the engine build, I had toyed with vapour blasting the external castings but as a third party would be doing it I scrapped the idea due to possible contamination of the oilways, there was no guarantee something would get in somewhere so just solvent washed the outside, then hot soapy water lots of wire brushing and finally a can of carb cleaner through the oilways which I had blocked off prior to the external cleaning. Then a light blow over on the block only with some VHT ally paint to spruce it up, all the other covers were left bare ally apart from the rocker covers which were satin blacked.
I then could build up the bottom end and fit the skimmed heads which I had cleaned up and ground in the valves, now you remember I said the PO had assured me it didn't smoke, well I think it had a five a day habit as one of the stem seals was flapping about the exhaust stem of No.5 and the exhaust post was chocker block with carbon, the white nylon looking valve stem seals are pants, go brittle and stop doing there job eventually breaking up as this one had.
As I mentioned some time earlier I had intended doing a bit of a clean up of the ports but having read Martin Faulks posts and looking how short the inlets were I didn't think it worth the effort, a quick clean with some 80 grit and that was it, I am no tuner and not about to take great lumps of metal off, so leave that malarkey to the people who know what they doing.........like I said before, a good comp, sealed, healthy engine will do me fine for now .

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Nice work indeed, looks good, and I'm sure it will / does perform very well indeed. Thanks for the kind words, but moreover, seeing someone having ago and getting a nice result is more than worth it.. I would like to see all our members motors showing we can do it better

Cheers,
Martin

Yes, I have found if you can read about other peoples experiences it keeps you interested, especially when the nights are cold and dark, just a little at a time in the winter keeps the project going and by the spring you may have got over some niggly problems or slow parts of the project and can start doing bigger bolt up jobs
I made all the paper gaskets for the engine only buying the HGs from Lee ( I haven't worked out how to make them yet !) and of course the crank seals and dizzy drive seal. For all the O rings I used a local source, taking advice on application as far as material was concerned. For instance its well known the Y pipe seals get a hard time sitting under the turbo, so I used Viton for these as this was recommend as the highest heat rated seal, I am only going on what the supplier told me ......if anyone knows better or wants to comment feel free. Two of the bolts also snapped clean off and I broke every extractor I own trying to get them out, then had a brain wave .......drill and tap 'em and use M6 studs and nuts,.....be warned I only had to do it with the back two so I am alright but if you choose to follow my lead ..........well the Y pipe won' t clear the heads before it has left the studs....meaning heads off or much more likely studs removed....just saying they are bolts for a reason.
I had never made exhaust gaskets before and when my factor got me six at £6 a piece I thought now was the time to start............you can send them back sonny

One of my friendly neighbours ( he lives a few doors away so the angle grinder is less intrusive) is my go to guy for little engineering jobs, so I asked if he had anything to cut the blank gasket material, no problem sheet metal cutter which I knew of and had, but not the size needed then something that looked like it was made a hundred years ago.
Basically a round block of steel as big as a side plate, four inches thick with a gap in the edge, an inch or two by a quarter, then different size holes all round with flat ended punches in them.
Put your gasket in the gap in line with the right hole punch in and whack with a hammer, bingo perfect holes.
Best of the two engines chains, guides, oil pump etc etc and then into the garage while I could still lift it........

Carry on build up of engine inlet on, new fuel pipes, waterpump etc..............

New Valeo clutch kit and then mate up to gearbox, new HD gearbox rear mount from CGB, good engine mounts from R25, new linkage bush from Renault on the car end and some of Lees balls stuffed up my gearbox's rear end..................

Clutch slave wasn't giving any problems but I got an Espace one for £16 and thought it was just the remote bleeding part that differed from the GTA turbo. I let engineering neighbour have a look and he came up with a compression fitting that was fitted into the enlarged bleed nipple hole and then it was a case of fitting the remote bleed pipe in to the other.........all well and good but when I came to hook up the feed from the master ( the bit that you can undue when dropping the rear end ) I found the tube nut was different and the hole on the Espace much deeper.........time to give up and go for a new GTA one you think....Nah another tube nut cut down to take up the extra and I machined a counter sink in the upper end and loctited it in. I also swapped the internal spring from the old Gta one as I am not keen on the pressure that it exerts on the release bearing at rest ? seems strange to me.

It may seem strange to some people the extremes I go to, but its not just about the money, although I am on a limited budget and it was important to keep the project rolling come what may, but more about what I could achieve and how you could overcome things, without bodging, just a little of the Fred Dibnar back street mechanics after all I am doing it because I enjoy it !

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Some nice touches, thought, and good points made there... thanks for sharing, can only help the whole community, be good to see more of this Return spring, interesting point, not played with that, what did you use for a reduced force spring? How long have you had it running now, I take it no issues?

Thanks,
Martin

Yeah, stripped new and old slave as I didn't know which way to go when I noticed the bleeding issue, i.e use the original with the new innards etc here's a pic of the two stripped,

As you can see the new (upper) is a steel solid piston with a cup seal, rather like a wheel cylinder, where as the old lower has an alloy piston with a seal fitted onto it. Diameters were identical. If my grey matter serves me right the new one was Unipart for an Espace V6.The other difference is the wire diameter and length of the return spring, and yes the the old could have been compressed over time and use but that new one I'll tell ya, was feckin major strong, and all I had visions of was the pressure it was exerting on the release bearing onto the pressure plate.
Correct me if I'm wrong but it's only reason to be there is to keep the piston extended so when pressure is applied the movement is on the pressure plate and not extending the piston until it gets to the point it can do the work? Otherwise you'd be pumping on the pedal ?
I also rebuilt the master using a kit from a well known brake factor that only had halve of its contents and I got my money back , but this forced me into looking into our brake master stocks and I found that I had loads of bits anyway and yes I had a broken spring in that as Lee has covered before.
On the subject of its performance, it was perfect straight away, the bushes solved the difficult reverse and clutch operation is a dream, Lees modded gearbox balls smarten up the change no end, just a little noisier through the linkage.
So far I have done about a thousand miles on it, although I have noticed as the temp dropped outside it was starting to baulk a little into third when cold, whether the clutch has bedded in and some air has found its way in and the clutch circuit needs a little bleed, or it may be just the box doesn't like the cold I don't know, we'll see.

I would suggest that the stronger spring is there because there is far more potential metal to metal contact,You can see that the skirted type piston is also relieved above the skirt rebate .I had a Venturi in a while back with intermttent clutch issues .It had one of those newer types fitted and after a bit of head scratching I'm fairly certain that the piston was 'tipping' occasionally and locking up .
Skirty type fitted and as far as I'm aware has been sweet ever since .
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=6161&hilit=venturi+rats&start=15

If I read your post on the Venturi correctly Lee, you say its a bitsa , the internals same as my new one and the old outer. It seems quite likely this could have been your issue and the short piston tipping as you say.
I did try the new piston in the old but correct outer but it plopped in quite loose, so quickly scrubbed that notion, and ended up with the mods to make the Espace one fit, and the spring from the old GTA one.
I think bearing in mind where it is, and the labour involved in fitting it, the correct skirted type as OE is best, I'm happy with what I did but would say it's not worth the faff for anyone else. But I stand by what I said about that spring in the Unipart solid piston type or whatever, way too manly.
I find the release bearing in constant contact weird anyway, not normal on a cable system? My old man used go nuts 'O' crazy nuts at my Mum resting her foot on the clutch.

I carried on the theme of using whatever was in the best condition from the two engines, such as the exhaust manifolds were from the 25 as the Gta ones were cracked around the port flanges, the turbo from the 25 at first seemed like the one to go with, going on the engine condition, but possibly due to a K&N filter that just rattled round the airbox, not sealing at all, the compressor turbine looked very smooth with marks all over it and although I at first thought the play was lesser than my Gta unit, the more I wobbled it, the worse it got. So was probably carbonised oil making it feel better than it was.
No problem my unit was smoke free and had minimal play, the compressor wheel was sharp and undamaged and it boosted well, so may as well run it on a known good unit than recon for the sake of it.
Now when I say it boosted well is a bit of a porky, as looking through the very organised history the PO had got hold of most of the owners in the car history and one stated the car was modded to 280 bhp!
If you were about in the late eighties and early nineties you will know about the varies 'chip tuning' companies one of which was Superchips, well there was a sticker on the ECU stating that 'this ECU has been modified by Detection Techniques' and according to my father in law who was a Turbo Techniques dealer at about this time this was the earlier incarnation of Superchips. Right or wrong that's how I remember it.
Don't worry, I have never thought it was anything like that, in fact sometimes it wouldn't boost ( when colder) then would sky rocket and cut........sound familiar?
I found out the cause of the above, well some of it, the actuator was not the same as the 25, much bigger, but backed off so much I think there was barely a thread in the wastegate end, so much so it was not even seated at rest, and on putting the actuator in the vice it was virtually solid..........no cold boost?..........cutting out?.......making sense ? ( don't worry I'm not a cold thrasher, just the cooler end of warmed up)
In the end it got the 25 actuator left as it was, then I fitted as much to the lump as I could. The boost/ECU bodge doesn't end there of course but more on that later.
The engine bay was flatted back and satin blacked, and I copied the two braces that span the rear turrets to the engine bay shelf as these were harbouring rust, removed all the heat shields and polished them, re-riveting where needed.
I left the turbo heat shield and plenum off to make the unit a bit shorter then under it went and jacked her up, new wheel bearings and the Koni's I had fitted first time around, plenty wax everywhere......

No excuses now time to fire her up fingers crossed ..........churn..ch ......ch.....ch....click............click.........oh dear, looks nice tho'......
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Indeed sir, does look very nice, and superb work too.

As to the "Detection Techniques"... that did make me laugh, as you would have needed extremely good "Detection skills", or just a great daydreamer to see anything that had been truly modified... well as we should all know by now, I have harped on about this enough - they didn't do anything - period. You paid out a nice lump of your hard earned to be treated to a waste-gate bleed valve, an ecu that had just gone on a round trip care of the postal service, and if you were "lucky" (not) the MAP sensor op-amp voltage divider PCB jobbie, so that the ecu MAP sensor input line didn't hit the 5V rail that triggers the boost cut in hardware ie boost brick wall where the injection gets hard cut until the boost and rpm fall (nice not)... something that a 15 pence 4V7 zener diode from Maplin could do a whole lot cheaper and in fact a technically superior job (as the former drops all the load lines down relative to the actual pressure)... what else did you get... a sticker... a right royal rip-off if you ask me, and sadly sold as state of the art tuning?! You might have got an uprated fuel pressure regulator, mostly from what I have seen you didn't, possibly a bit better - so what did you get from the kit - diluted MAP sensor output signal, squeezed more boost out of tiny over spun compressor, no remapped fueling, and OE retarded timing - yum yum - what can I say total pants - The only ones at the time actually modifying the prom map values, well replacing it with a modified binary code in the UK was BBR, and there is a story behind that... but anyway you get the picture... the community was getting sold a pup... So what variety of bodgery did you find fitted to yours?

Ah Ha yes, If you want I'll post a couple of pics of the modified bits, namely the actuator and ECU board, and if I fast forward to when the car is on the road I took it to Lee who commented on the lag when putting your foot down and that if you proper booted it it would wake up, this reminded me that on its first long run to Doncaster racecourse, it felt as though if was surging/missing/stuttering on a light throttle at 3k ish.
It felt map sensorish...
With the 25 actuator on I was only boosting well within the red on the dash gauge, so off with the ECU lid and I found one of the pins on the board side cut and something soldered in plus something soldered across two of the pins.
I haven't reversed this yet, as remember I had a spare 25t ECU and just bunged that on,.......and what a difference straight away the best drive I have ever had, peppy, sweet and pulled strong into the red, there is a test route I use with and oval roundabout with a hairpin at either end, well sighted reasonably quiet ........up and down that barsteward so many times with a grin as big as Simon Cowell on payday, why and how people could pay for that ballax I will never understand......just shows what people will do for some Bar Bragging .............................
I'll find the offending items and pic post up