My old Clio's plus other cars

This my mums old clio 172cup in a sorry state just before i sold it.

She bought the car when it was about a year old with 9k miles on the clock and was a brilliant car, very reliable and economical, handled great and was a nippy little car.
We never had anyproblems with the car upto 66k miles other than i think a cv joint needed replacing and perhaps the odd suspension spring or damper.

Then i insured the car to use myself and all went wrong lol but mainly due to being ripped off by garages doing shoddy work. First thing i did was to get the cambelt changed because it had never been done and it was over due, a friend of my dads said his mechanic could do it cheap so i said that would be great as its an expensive job (big mistake!) the belt snapped 2 days after   the guy rebuilt the engine for us but did a shoddy job and the car never ran the same again.
Then i had a gearbox oil leak but it must of all pissed out in one go because i did not see any oil patches, the gearbox developed a whine but me being a naive 19 year old didnt realize what the wine was and continued to drive the car wile i was waiting to take it too the garage to get it fixed. obviously by the time i had it looked at the gearbox was verry noisy and ruined, but the car still drove ok.

i decided to get the box repaired or look for a second hand box when another friend of my dads recommended a guy he knew who would do it cheap (i should of learned my lesson the first time) when i got the car back it was never right, the speedo was going crazy because there was something wrong with the speedo drive, the imobiliser was playing up and before long the gearbox packed up and oil pissed out everywhere and the diff spat a tooth out the bottom of the engine casing. after a lot of arguing with the guy that owned the garage i eventually found out who he had got to do the gearbox work and he told me that he had been instructed to bodge it as cheep as posible and he had repaired the diff with silicone and metal filler  

in the end i got my money back from the guy but now i had a f@#kd gearbox and an engine than ran poor and was down on power  

  bad story mate!!

clio are known to have some syncromesh issues on the 3rd and 4th speed, i'm sure about the cam shaft are not well put (timing). shitty box, better to get a new one in exchange (more than 1000 pounds i think), and get the job done by a real mechanic....

i had 2 1st gen RS clio, first had the syncro issues, but it has 160 000 kms....second one had the gearbox changed and the engine changed too...never had any issues unless the shitty throtle body well known to be crappy past 150 000 kms...but easy job to do, and not so expensive.

unless these, this model is particularly reliable, and first gen are lighter than others....

After having such poor luck with the clio i decided to give up on it buy another car, after looking at similar cars i just thought why not get another 172cup because i had a whole car of spare parts just sitting there (proved to be a wise move)

i bought my second clio and the car was great, 2 owners, full dealer history etc but my bad luck didnt end there. one day wile overtaking my friends 1.25 zetec fiesta (of all things lol) i accidentally went from flat out in 3rd gear to 2nd gear instead of 4th (not one of my brighter moments) it just when straight into second no crunches or anything, i instantly realized what i had done but my foot was already half way up on the clutch pedal, i instantly pressed the pedal too the floor but it was too late, there was a large bang and the sound of metal fragments flying everywhere, i looked behind me to see a massive cloud of smoke and pieces of gearbox flying everywhere  

the clutch had literally exploded and destroyed half the gearbox casing and tore the gearbox clean off the engine and ruined the engine casing were the box bolts on. it also damaged the flywheel and a piece of gearbox cut through one of the radiator pipes and went through the radiator  




hears the remnants of the box and clutch at the back right of the pic



Fortunately i was able to salvage the engine from the old car which had been stood for at least 2 years and did not run good since the guy who did the cam belt ruined it. i got about a year out of this engine then the oil pump went and the engine was ruined so i just sold them both gave up on clios lol

all in all my luck with Clios was poor to say the least.

the moral of the story, always use a proper mechanic!

oh and dont put it in second gear when going about 100mph   

sure! especially for big works like cambelts and gearboxes!!!

But Clios are very good cars!!

Some of my dads old cars before all went tits up (we haven't got the money for these kind of cars anymore lol)







one from back in the day  

fred05 wrote:sure! especially for big works like cambelts and gearboxes!!!

But Clios are very good cars!!

Yeah i loved my clio fred, thats why i bought another, they are quite reliable too if you dont have the kind of bad luck i did  

I don't think you had bad luck lol sounds like you thrashed them like all new drivers do!
My first cars were destroyed all the time! Wheel spins and hand break turns were the norm for me at that age!
And I raced everything around!!!

Yeah the garage bodged the gearbox on the first one but I'm guessing he was told to do it on the cheap!?!?
You get what you pay for unfortunately.
Live and learn

Yeah your right I did thrash the living day lights out of them  lol well the first one anyway, I calmed down a little by the time I bought the second lol

My dads friend who knew the guy that owned the garage payed a fortune for the gearbox to be done but the owner of the garage took it to somebody else and told them to bodge it. It's a long story but he got his money back in the end and gave it to me towards a new car.

He's a good friend of the family but unfortunately his friends were just out to rip him off because they knew he had money and he knew nothing about cars.

I think he payed £800 for the work to be done  If I had of known I would of told him he was being ripped off but I thought because it was his friend doing the work he would be doing it properly but turns out he wasn't such a good friend after all

I felt so bad because he did his best to help me out and ended up getting ripped off and I had to go and tell him he had spent all that money for nothing  

As for destroying the gearbox on the second car that wasn't bad luck that was just damn right idiotic, certainly not one of my best moments considering I had been driving a 172cup for the past 4 years    

Lol good job he had money to burn then eh hahaha
That was unlucky with the second box! I've known it happen on a Gtir! But the damage wasn't as bad, well on one of them!
Evildes on here was racing a Ferrari and dropped the wrong gear and fucked his gearbox etc lol

Ouch! I feel his pain lol, at least he was racing something worth wile, a Ferrari and not a 1.25l ford fiesta like me Haha