R4 restoration made in France

[John Doe]

You should start producing them in large quantities

 

[R4 Felix]

Reply to Thread

What a great work!!! :eek:
I've just bought the same set of wheel as a birthday present to my R12.
right now she is wearing four different types of wheels.

Best regards!

 

[Snoopy1974]

Hi all, and happy new year to you !
Long time passed since my last post but we are in winter, and because of rain, snow, and cold, the job is very difficult and slow. The châssis is carefully stocked in my garage waiting for the re-fitting of the engine (I decided to keep my engine with 240000 km which perfectly works).

I started the dismantle of my car last saturday when the weather was a little better, at the end of the last year I saw that my muffle was dead, this is the moment I decided to stop définitely the car before restoration:

I started with the inside of the car:




And as I feared many parts of the body are severely damaged by rust, in fact all the traditional problems ever seen on Renault 4's :




The bad surprise today is the discovering of a big problem at the front of the body, driver side :shock:



I removed the 2 front wings which will be throwed (don't forget I have now moulds to build GRP wings). The inners of the front wings are also dead and will also be moulded to be rebuilt in GRP.


As Soon as the temperature will be sufficient, I'm going to make my GRP front wings; I'm also going to remove the engine from my car, to clean it, before fitting it on the new chassis...

 

[DavidN]

Hi all, and happy new year to you !
Long time passed since my last post but we are in winter, and because of rain, snow, and cold, the job is very difficult and slow.

Hi Alexandre,

I know exactly what you are talking of. :neutral:
I have to wrap myself in at least 2 layers of warm clothes to stand the temperatures inside my garage.
When I paint parts with one-component lacquer they need at least 2 days to dry and about 2 weeks until the varnish is kind of hard.
These circumstances really makes a restoration job not much easier.

Go winter, go away...

... And as I feared many parts of the body are severely damaged by rust, in fact all the traditional problems ever seen on Renault 4's...The bad surprise today is the discovering of a big problem at the front of the body, driver side ...

Sorry to hear that!
But this way I have the chance to catch up with my restoration project.
The body of my R4F6 only has minor rust problems...

All the best!

David

 

[Snoopy1974]

Hi all, David, if you have decided to finish your R4 before summer, I'm now absolutly sure that mine won't be finished before yours...

indeed, these days temperature is too cold to make my GRP front wings so this monday I started to dismantle the body, the front in particular, and I discovered other very bad surprises.
The inner of the front wings are severely damaged by rust, in particular at the top, but I don't care because after preparing them, I will make moulds to have these parts in GRP.




I knew this place was totally kaput:


But THE bad surprised of the day was that :


I think the water entered by the rubber of the windscreen and stayed inside the body, behind the dashboard, so at the left side, there are holes made by rust, I'm terribly disappointed i really don't know how I will be able to repair this place ??...

I removed the wiring loom and all the accessories around the engine:



My car now looks like that:


I have to admit I actually wonder what can I do with all the repairs on the body, the time and the cost I wanted to spend at the beginning of the project are certainly going to increase Pfffffffffff

 

[Snoopy1974]

Hello everybody, no, I'm not dead, even I'm very discreet these times, I continue to work on my car, slower than David with its F6 but contrary to him, I don't have a date to finish my car

I stopped my jobs on fiberglass, here, the winter were absolutly awful and the temperature was definitely too cold to make good job, I prefer waiting for spring and better conditions.
Few weeks ago I removed my engine/gearbox before cleaning them to fit them in the restored chassis:



I bent 2 steel sheets of 5 mm thickness, drilled two 8mm holes in each one, and I fitted them on the engine holes mountings. Now I can work on my engine without problem of balance or security:

As you can see on these pictures the engine and gearbox are... dirty :eek: A lot of job in prospect to clean everything...


The following tomorrow....

 

[Snoopy1974]

I decided to remove most parts as possible to clean them and have an engine as aesthetic as possible. This engine has about 200000 km, it works very well, the clutch has only about 30000 km, the engine oil have been checked up and all is OK, so only the external accessories will be removed. I want a perfect finishing for the engine, as good as the job still done on the chassis.

I only have few products and my drill to do the job:

Firstly I spray engine cleaner everywhere and wait for several minutes, then I rinse with hot water+washing-up liquid before final cleaning with acetone. It's really an awful job but after several hours the engine is really better, it tooked me from 6 to 8 hours to finish the job:



All the parts removed which were painted like the cover, oil pan, timing gear cas, etc will be epoxy coated in black or in light grey for the pulleys.

The engine hardware and other differents parts will receive a chromate conversion coating:

All the new seals have been bought at Renault supplier:

And the exhaust system, here is the induction manifold, will be aluminium sprayed to protect it against rust, you can notice that the holes have been filled with wood sheets, bolts and nuts:

Before reassembinlg all these elements, the engine block and the gearbox are going to be painted in green, with a special paint, to have a "vintage" look

And when all this job will be done, normally my engine and gearbox should look like those of my Seven Replica which receive the same treatment in 2003 !

 

[DavidN]

Hey Alexandre,

good to "hear" that you didn't give up!
The pictures of your stripped engine remind me of that awful work I finished just a few weeks ago.

I'm now about to prime the body, did a lot of grinding and worked with body filler the last days (not really one of my specialities).

Keep on the excellent work!

David

 

[angel]

I can recognize at least two R4 bits on your Seven!!

Can you tell us more about that aluminium spraying? It looks nice on the Seven manifold.

 

[Snoopy1974]

Hi Angel, indeed, there are many R4 parts on my Seven -except the motor and gearbox of course - because there are the simplest and the most reliable parts I ever found on every cars to fit on my replica, I know it's out of subject, but if you look attentively the pictures below, you should recognize many parts of our lovely R4



The process I want to use on my manifold and exhaust system is called aluminizing, it consists on a projection of aluminium or zinc on a steel part to protect it against corrosion.
I'm lucky to have my neighbour who has his own company specialized in this kind of work. The aluminium or zinc are conditionned in the form of thread, and they are melted down and projected with a "oxy-propane" flame gun.
Zinc or aluminium get colder very quickly and make a protect coat on the manifold.

I try to translate the best I can a french article, I hope you'll understand this process !

 

[angel]

Thanks for the info, I understood, it is called flame spraying or metal spraying. It's a very nice idea.

 

[Snoopy1974]

Good evening everybody,

tonight I started the restoration of the engine and gearbox, after testing the green paint on another engine (this paint is 6 years old and I want to be sure that it's still in good condition), I decided to paint the gearbox.

This job took more of 1h30, but I'm very satisfied of the result, I started by the underneath of the gearbox and turned around it, to make good job I used a 1.5 cm width paintbrush:



Tomorrow will paint the engine, the epoxy coating is finished, and when the hardware will be back, I will be able to start the reassembly of the differents parts.

 

[angel]

it looks very nice! Is that the original Renault colour tone? Do you have any colour code? I was looking for it for some time, with no success, then I decided to take a Dauphine engine photo I found in Gazoline magazine, to a paint shop, to have it scanned...the result was a colour somehow lighter than yours, that I didn't like too much, but I had no other alternative...

 

[Snoopy1974]

Very nice angel ! I'll be glad when my body will be fitted on my chassis like yours, but unfortunatly I have a lot of work before be able to do it

The paint is not really a Renault colour tone, it comes from the french supplier RESTOM specialized in products for collection cars, they sell very good products for many uses:
http://www.restom.net/

On the page you can see my paint which is available in 5 colours and relatively cheaper: 24€/500 ml, I painted 4 engines and gearbox with it, and I still have half the pot.

 

[Snoopy1974]

Hi, today I painted the engine, nice isn't it ?




After painting the engine and gearbox I decided to clean or restore the differents peripheral parts like the water pump, I had many difficulties to remove the seal and clean the mating surface, to do it I started to cut the most of the seal with a stanley knife before ending with sandpaper from 120 to 500. Here are pictures during and after the job:


The outside of the pump will need a lot of job to be well finished:

To remove all the fur inside the water pump I decided to dip it in vinegar, someone told me it's a good method


Today at 6 PM at the front of my home you saw something like that

From left to right: My blue 87 bought after the dismantle of the one I restore; My grey 86 with its new chassis behind the left door in the garage; my brother's beige 81 which needed some work as I already told here; endly father's 92 Bye-bye, the car is at home because the rear brakes broke today !...

 

[jjad]

Great work. Thanks for the pictures

 

[Snoopy1974]

Hi everybody, this week I cleaned all the parts before fitting the engine and gearbox in the chassis. My manifold is now ready to fit:

It costed me only 15 € fot the job, thanks Bernard
For many days I'm busy with a very dirty job: cleaning of all the differents parts like starter or ignition coil... After 4 days of an awful job the parts are cleaned:

Some of them really look like new ones

My engine moutings are in very good condition, I've been heard that some moutings sold nowadays are not as strong as the genuine ones, so I decided to keep mine. They received 2 coats of the same primer of the chassis and then 2 others coats of black paint:


The ignition coil and the alternator pulley received a coat of the same green paint used on the engine block:

As Malcolm said on David thread, the new balljoints bought on a french website are not protected against rust, this is the reason why they will receive 2 coats of black rustproofing paint:

Here are all the parts cleaned and painted, actually I'm only waiting for the hardware to be able to reassemble the engine parts...

 

[DavidN]

Awesome, Alexandre !!!

I know how time consuming it is to restore/recondition all these tiny parts and pieces...
Very good job, especially on the starter that lookes like a new one and the exhaust parts. 15 Euros, that was a VERY good offer of your neighbour.
I'm jealous!

All the best!


David

 

[Snoopy1974]

Hello everybody, I'm coming back to tell you the following of the story of my restoration... during march the threatment of the different parts of the engine was finshed, epoxy coating and chromate converting, very nice

View attachment 3468
View attachment 3469
To refit the oil pan, I hanged up the engine to have a good access, I took a picture of the crankshaft, I hope never see it before a long time !


I decided to use a Loctite seal with the oil pan gasket, to be sure to have a good watertighness, and to hold the gasket in position. I also red that it was recommanded to use such a seal at the extremities of the oil pan:

The following part to be reassembled was the timing gear case, and if you have never do that, you can't understand how awful it is :eek: I spent about 45 min to try to put it in the good position, when an extremity was ok, the other one was about 1cm near its good position, horrible Finally I fitted it but I believe it was the first and the last time I do that :shock:


This little cap at the rear of the cylinder head was infinitely simpler to fit

The engine brackets are going to be screwed at their place:

Everything is ready, the engine is going to be -normally- refitted in the chassis

The chassis is waiting for the monster !


To be continued...

 

[DavidN]

Hey Alexandre,

good to see that you found a little time to work on the R4 again!
The engine looks fabulous and the chromate coating is awesome!
That gives the restoration the ultimate finishing touch!

Keep us posted!

David