Clementine's Garage
Clementine the Cat
 
Image of flower
Yellow R4
 
home my cars restoration tech tips guides forum
Réparateur d'automobiles

Peppers Renault 4

Shame the right hand side won't tidy up so well, its had a very bad respray at some point and its all got to be stripped down and the wings taken off and replaced/resealed and then sprayed better. I may get the front wing and bonnet blasted back to bare metal as everythings falling off it and rusts under the paint. Luckily I have a friend who has a blasting and powder coating business.

Here's a half and half picture
 
  • DSC00044.jpg
    DSC00044.jpg
    50.9 KB · Views: 358
pepper said:
AARRgh blue hand disease is it dangerous?
Click to expand...
Oh dear. Blue hand desease is deadly. It's caused by the additive they used to make the blue R4s go faster than the other R4s.

Get a little blue on your hand (it can often be transferred when you tune the engine) and you will go uncontrolably fast even without the aid of the Renault. Most recorded deaths were owners impaled on flutes after seeking breakfast following the quick morning tune up. They were unable to stop in time at the bread shop.

The only known cure is to encase your legs in concrete. I hope that's helpful. :shock:
 
Luckily for me my local Homebase were giving a pallet of cement away last week, I am therefore in posession of the correct ingredients to heal myself.

Although at the moment I could do with using the concrete block as an Anchor the brakes seem very non existent and I think the right hand side handbrake cables seized.

It seems to have a leak somewhere as they are very spongy so its going to be a repipe next on the agenda, anyone know where I can get a new handbrake cable at a reasonable price from?
 
It does look a lot nicer after a polish. Der Franzose would be my best guess for handbrake cables unless your local motor factor can still order some.

Most other braking parts I tend to buy from the motor factor - the discs and drums from later cars were used on a lot of other cars and are still available. Do you have discs at the front on that one?

The rear brake proportioning valve can often make the brakes seem a little soft.
 
malcolm said:
Blue hand desease is deadly. It's caused by the additive they used to make the blue R4s go faster than the other R4s.
Click to expand...

I think the newer members of the forum might not know the importance of the different colours for R4s, Malcolm. Perhaps you should explain it on the bit about colour charts so people have a better idea which colour they should choose.

It's been a good day for R4 van spotting. Here's one of the faster R4 vans at Mr Bricolage.
 
  • blue-van.jpg
    blue-van.jpg
    37.1 KB · Views: 372
Hi Malcolm, the car has drums on the front with the handbrake to the front wheels. I stripped the drum off last night but got busy looking after children in the evening so couldn't get much further.

I always thought the colour Red was fastest? (Well the colour seems to fade away quickest after all).

I always thought Renault 4tls only came in two colours Blue or Beige, its all I ever see around my house in France, apart from my neighbours metallic blue clan.
 
No Pepper, the red ones are generally less rusty but the blue ones have the more powerful engines. The green ones are slightly more aerodynamic so have a higher top speed. The yellow ones have the most comfy seats and brighter headlamps. The white ones carry more and the silver ones are invisible. :smile:
 
After getting the engine running nicely I decided my next task better be getting BB to stop reasonably quickly!

James was with me so I got him to press the brake pedal whilst I watched the brake lines, this is what I found inside the left hand wheel arch. Every time James pressed the brake pedal that little lump of rubber expanded to twice its size, now I know why the pedal was so soft.

So James and I set too undoing the unions and pulling the old pipe out (which overall wasn't in bad condition) then we made up a new pipe and put it back again, tomorrow we're going to do the other other rear one and then whilst we're about it we'll do all the other too.
 
  • DSC00046.jpg
    DSC00046.jpg
    67.7 KB · Views: 338
Oops. The original steel ones can get a bit thin with rust. I've pulled some off that have folded in my hands. Decent MOT place should fail them before then but they are tricky to see inside the rubber sleeves.

Rest of the metalwork looks immaculate. Looks like a good one.
 
Tis why I bought it, the metalwork is fantastique!

I pressure washed the underside before I brought her into the workshop, (I hate working on oily cars).

Everywhere's really good, the rear chassis is as clean as can be on a 25 year old car, it just needs the light rust de rusting and then painting to keep it that way, followed by my usual liberal doses of Waxoyl. (note to self to buy more shares in that stuff).
 
Do you rate waxoyl? I'm not happy with the stuff. Though I don't re-apply every year like the sales people ask me to. New sills required on the MGA now, and I only did them 15 tears ago.

I don't think it gets into the seams unless you can heat up the car.

I'm starting to think clean engine oil would be the thing apart from the niff. Independant tests (mine) suggest it should work but is too smelly. We had a thread a while ago when someone suggested odorless fish oil.
 
Erm I do find it does need renewing every year, October is normally Peppers waxoyl time, though I bet engine oil would do just as good job really and I've known many people who have immaculate cars underneath from years and years of oiling them once a year. The only thing I can think of is the oil would probably affect the rubber components more than waxoyl type substances.
 
I also don't think that with welding we can stop the rusting easily either. Unless we can zinc dip the bodies like a lot of them are done these days then the rust is just going to break back through again quite quickly! 2CV's are easy to get galvanised as they don't have a roof which is the part which warps, if I were restoring a 2cv body shell it would be one thing I really would consider doing after repairing all the body panels
 
I'm thinking inside chassis members. For outside I'm thinking wheelarch liners, 2 pack paint and anti-stonechip. I suspect if you oiled the underneath of a car every year you'd end up with an oily car. Though it wouldn't be rusty.
 
Which wheel arch liners would you use? Has anyone else used a wheelarch liner with any success? I do agree they are one thing which stops the inner wing tops and headlight bowls from rusting on a car.
 
Knew I was talking to someone about wheelarch liners but forgot where. I'm considering cutting liners out of the bottom of a plastic dustbins, then screwing them on where they touch. The bins are quite cheap to buy apparantly. I've not tried that approach yet, but I feel it ought to work.
 
Malcolm, I suggest that you make sure that the bins are not made out of eco plastic otherwise they are are designed to deteriorate in a set number of years. Maybe a good old fashioned galvanised dustbin may be better material to use;)

Seriously, I do remember seeing somewhere that a company made fibre glass wheel arch liners for a select number of collectable cars. Back in 1988 I restored an Austin A35 and purchased a wheel arch liner kit that fitted very well.

However, do we really need liners for our cars considering that the only bits that rust at the front end are the tops of the wing/inner wing, front of the wing and the lower A panel? Good modern sealants should prevent any corrosion for the future if applied correctly.
 
Help anyone got any ideas about front drum brakes?

The right hand side brake is seizing on on BB so after finishing the repipe of the rear brakes today I thought I better try and get this sorted.

I took both front drums off and compared sides and noticed that 2 of the shoes were smaller than the other two, but on the left hand side the smaller shoe was at the rear and on the right hand side the smaller shoe was on the front!

SO I thought, ha! and stripped the right hand brake down and swapped the shoes over, (these are not easy shoes to change are they?) So after swapping over I now can't get the drum over the larger shoe at all! Grrr.

Anyone know which way round the smaller shoe should be properly?

The Haynes does not mention this at all.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Community platform by XenForo® © 2010-2025 XenForo Ltd.
Back
Top