Heater removal, gauges, OMEX shift light and brake compensator valve.

Well I've had a couple of busy days in the garage. I was very lucky on Friday that we had a big thunder/lightning storm which woke me up at 3am, and then just as I was about to drop back off to sleep the baby woke up and wanted his breakfast at 5am. Normally he doesn't wake up until 6.30 then goes back to sleep for a while, which means by the time ive fed him, its time to go to work so I don't get any time in the garage. However, 5am feed was perfect, he was back asleep by 5.30 which meant I could get a good couple of hours in the garage.

I figured Id start by finishing off the welding under the passenger side sill.



You can see the state of it in this picture here. Its not too bad really, just a few holes so I will weld in a new piece here.

With welder at the ready and baby monitor close to hand I can multi task!

Unfortunately at that point the end on my welder where the wire comes out decided to weld itself to the tip and in getting the old tip off it looks like the swan neck is cross threaded so I need to get a new one. With the welding off the cards for today I turned my attention to the rear brake compensator you can see on the left..

Its pretty rusty. Its held on by 2 13mm bolts which you can see from under the passengers side right wheel arch. As per usual the one which is easy to get to undid a treat but the top one was a nightmare. In the end I had to hammer on a 12mm spanner and use that to undo it.

Its times like this im pleased I have some ratchet spanners.

You can see the difference between the old one and new one here in the pic on the left. On the right ive got it fitted to the car. It was a nightmare to try and get the bolts through the bracket, through the metal shield and into the compensator. The new one is a slightly different shape and looks like the one on normal Renault 5`s. However Renault list this part number as the correct replacement now for the 5 GT Turbo`s one. I ordered this one from France via French Ebay for £35 which I thought was a bargain compared to the £95 some of the UK GT Turbo Specialists wanted. Once fitted I could start doing the new brake pipes. Im using polished copper nickel pipes here. They certainly bent a treat by hand and look ace. I've new braided HEL brake lines here too which go on the flexi-pipe bit between the car body & the rear axle.

That was it for Friday morning. Fortunately I managed to get Saturday working on the car also. 3rd Saturday in a row! Amazing! I decided to now rip out the heater. I figured I don't really need it, it will lighten the car and will free up some space on the dash for me to mount my gauges. Firstly I started removing the dash. This was fun... lots of bits to take off - steering wheel, centre console, ash tray... you name it. The dash is held in by one clip each side and 3 along the top. I didn't realise you have to reach under and release the side clips so a bit of force on my behalf meant I ended up breaking one. Once id done that, the other one i released properly. The top clips I read were notoriously hard to undo. However I found them really easy. The RH one you can see with the speedo out. 

A screwdriver to lever this out and the dash popped out easy. The middle one, I just reached under with my screw driver and levered roughly where it was and again it popped out. The LH one was buried behind the glove box etc. For that, I just pushed the dash up and smacked my palm hard on the front of the dash. Hey presto it popped out.

The next stage was under the bonnet. The picture above is where the coolant pipes attach to the heater. I cut the old pipes off and with a bit of violence and some mole grips the original clips came off.

The next step was to remove the heater fan. You can see this in the bulk head. The plastic mesh screen undoes easily with a couple of plastic wing nuts. Then the white fan which also contains the motor simply pulls off. The main heater unit is held to the car by 2 10mm bolts at the top which you unbolt from inside the car under the dash. Then the whole unit drops out - its pretty big as you can see below.

In fact didn't actually have to remove the dash in the end, simply pulling and lifting the LH side of the dash up, I had enough room to pull the heater unit down and into the passengers side footwell. Watchout as there is coolant in the heater matrix which may come out.

My plans for the holes the heater left in the dash were to fit some gauges in the top vents and where heater controls were I would mount a couple of new cool gadgets ive got. Namely a OMEX rev limiter with launch control & an OMEX sequential shift light indicator.

Looking around the garage I needed a bit of metal or plastic 23cm x 6cm and 24cm x 6cm. I happened to see an old number plate and hey presto it was perfect. It even had a black backing, so I wouldn't even have to paint it. I cut 3 52mm holes using my hole cutter attachment for my drill and offered it up. As you can see, it looks pretty good.

The shift light ECU fits perfect here. It has buttons on it so you can adjust when the 4 sequential led lights come on. The lights are in a separate small little pod which I can mount in front of the speedo. The rev limiter / launch control ECU should be the same size and can sit nicely next to it. Strictly speaking once you have set the rev ranges you never need to alter them, so in the long term I can move these somewhere behind the dash and use this space for something else.

Gauges mounted! Ive an AEM AFR gauge on the left, an AEM Boost gauge (goes upto 35psi) on the right to replace my old 20psi boost gauge and in the middle I have a mechanical mocal duel oil temperature / oil pressure gauge.

Both the AEM gauges come with their own loom which is really nice. All the gauges ive fed their wires/feeds through the big hole in the bulkhead where the heater fan was. I`ll weld in a panel in to cover this hole and feed the wires through using some grommets when im finished. Ive an AFR probe to fit into the downpipe, oil pressure and temp sensors to plumb in, and the OMEX ECU`s need wiring up to the coil. So ive quite a bit of work to do under the bonnet next. Ive wired them upto the old cigar socket which is a switched live, so they all light up and have power once I turn the ignition key. Ive some old wiring I need to remove from behind the dash and then I can refit the speedo/cluster.

So all in all a couple of productive days.

Final couple of pictures... on the right we have what was a £50 set of lockwood white dial kit which is now more of a gold/yellow kit as its faded over time. Ive a new set of dials to fit in here. Although I that the needles have also faded so not sure what to do about them, whether I can repaint them or not as they are see thru plastic. And below we have just a small piece of the sound deadening I took out. There was literally tons and tons of this heavy stuff so I expect ive lightened the car by about 50kg just by dumping this stuff!!!