Big Thank you to Cliolord ( but my problems continue lol )

[jay s]

as some may know the Headgasket on VLF went pop in January due to detonation ( my fault as car is mapped for 99 and i ran it on 95 plus it was running lean ). I thought about attempting to change it myself but decided against it due to not wanting to mess about with cam timing etc. Before the headgasket had gone i wanted to take the car to gaz for him to do some bits on as i was very very impressed with his quality of work that i had seen in photos ( snowmans, jrt, jgx, etc etc ) so while having a chat with gaz on msn one night he offered to do the headgasket along with the cam timing and a list of other jobs that needed doing all at once for a very good price if i could get the car to him in Bristol ( i live in london ).
i used a site called shipley on gazs recommendation to arrange for someone to collect my car and deliver it to him in Bristol , within 2 weeks i had a quote for £100 delivered 123 miles away :D

The list of jobs for clio lord went something like this :

Remove head, replace ****ed bga gasket and replace with much better payen item :D
check and adjust cam timing to piper specs to open up the top end of the rev range.
Realign exhaust system
Remove stuck and leaking supersprint manifold, seal and refit
fit new ball joint
fit rear brake calipers
adjust bias valve/ brake loads
bleed whole braking system
find and fix an annoying oil leak at the front of the block
fit and adjust a new tps
fill with £20 of v-power

so the car arrived with gaz on a Wednesday afternoon and and i get a text to say car has arrived safely and that he will be starting work on it straight away :D Wednesday night i gave him a call to see how he was getting on, was very pleased to hear that the head had just been removed and indeed the shitty bga gasket had blown between cyl 1-2 ( comp was 110, 100, 192, 190 ). He also informed me that he was able to remove the downpipe from the manifold :D ( i had massive problems trying to get this off in the past so just left it be ). Told gaz to call it a night then as it must of been 9:00pm lol.

Before removing the head gaz checked the cam timing of the cams in case any changes that were made ended up being worse. checked at tdc with a dti gauge the inlet cam had 2.95mm lift at tdc exh wasn't so bad at 1.7mm at tdc. std piper figures are 2.18mm for both cams , so the timing was out quite abit it seems......

Thursday night i get a call from gaz to say he has fitted most of the head back on and its almost ready to start up :D . While doing the timing to my request of std piper figures he came across something strange, while tensioning the cam belt the cams would actually start to turn a little leading to the timing being out, normally this wouldn't happen but for some reason it was on my cams. The way he had to do it was get the belt to the correct tension then set the timing or something like that, sure he will explain if need be ( was very happy i didn't attempt it at this point lol )

Friday morning i get a call from a very happy sounding gaz to say its ALIVE :D was very happy to hear that, also the manifold was sealed and no longer blowing he said he is gonna finish off the rest of the jobs that i have requested and get back to me if there is any problems :D

Over the next few days gaz got on with completing the jobs to a very very high standard, fitted my new rear calipers as one was seized and balanced them both to 100kg effort each. On the fronts he came up with a problem, the front passenger side wilwood was giving 190kg effort but drivers side was 120kg leading to very uneven braking. I knew the pads were very low on the front so this was more than likely the cause and i said i will bring a new set when i come to collect the car to see if it cures it which it did, was 200kg per side with fresh pads :D Brakes are unreal now btw mate
I had a random knocking sounding coming from the passenger side of the car that i wanted him to find, sounding like it was a ball joint knock i got him to change the ball joint. unfortunately the knock was still there so he investigated further and found the bracket that holds the dogbone to the gearbox was was loose... tightened it up and knock was gone along with engine now feeling solid :D

Get a call from on the Tuesday to say everything is done and the car is ready to collect so i booked my train ticket for bristol and off i went on the Saturday...
Got to the station to be greeted by ronnie (clio-girl) in her hybrid to take me to gazs garage :D , arrived at the garage and see my car. first thing i noticed is how clean and shiny it was, he had given is a full clean and polish :D Got talking with gaz and then he lifted the bonnet, my god it looks clean under there, gaz had cleaned all the shit off from the under skin of the bonnet and polished that as well along with a full steam clean of the eng bay as it was previously covered in a load of oil etc. looks brand new now tho :D
Then went for a drive with gaz, i was hesitant to push the car hard as i knew it was previously running lean but when we had a vxr ring ed trying to overtake us i couldn't resist the urge after being away for so long even with 2 of us on board it easily pulled away from the lard arse vauxhall but i did have my eye on that afr gauge which showed lack of fuel at the top of the rev range

knowing the car wasn't at its best fuel wise i went easy on it just cruising most of the time. got back to the garage and had a chat with gaz about what to do about the map as mat ( zmaster ) had just had his mapped by kj and got good results i decided to see if he could do it... spent the rest of the day at the garage with gaz and ronnie sorting little bits on the car etc. he wouldn't let me leave untill everything was 110% :D then made my way happily home in the night. just took it easy most of the way home but on the little times i did put my foot down the car was fast, very fast in fact. was easy to tell that something had changed :D Car drove the 123miles perfect without a hiccup. got home and lifted the bonnet to check if all was well and it was absolutely PERFECT

I have been over the moon with the work gaz has done on the car and would highly recommend him to anyone who needs work done on there car by a very skilled mechanic with anal attention to detail seriously mate you've given my car a new lease of life driven 1200miles since the work has been done and all is well ish.... ( everything you done has been perfect lol)

OK on to the problem now

i needed the car mapping asap to sort the lean issue and make sure its not deting still. i spoke to kj about mapping but unfortunately he was fully booked untill April :( i didn't want to risk waiting till then so decided to give Paul at rs tuning (Leeds) a bell to see if he was able to do it. I told him Ive changed the timing and it is running lean, said it was about 14.5/15.0 at the top of rev range at full throttle and he said that is very bad and to get it to him asap. would cost £100+vat to adjust the map where needed , bonus :D he had no Saturdays available for a long time but said he can do it any day in the week so i took yesterday off and set out on a 202mile journey to Leeds :D

Arrived at rs tuning and Paul got the cars straight on the rollers to see what it was doing, when i 1st got the car mapped by him last year it made 170bhp 148lb/ft on his rollers so we pulled up that graph to see if changing the timing had made any difference where i wanted, before the cam was tailing off to early at 6k, should be at least 7k with the spec of the cams. ran it on the rollers and it made 168bhp , didn't see torque till end. but the afrs were all over the place running lean through most of the rev range and loads up top. Paul hooked up his equipment and set about mapping the fueling on the rollers .

Everything was going fine and the car started making more power then Paul said we have a problem , we are maxing out the injectors at max duty cycles and they wont provide anymore fuel at 5.6krpm now this is a problem as i still have another 2k to go nearly ( 7.3k limit) seems the tiny 191cc are no good for me anymore Anyway at this point the car is making 174bhp 156lb/ft at 5.6k. had a word with Paul what to do and he said the only thing he can do to make it 100% safe is set a 5.5k limit lol other than that don't rev it at all in that rev range as afr is very dangerous up there on full throttle.

Luckily while the car was with gaz i went shopping and got myself an omex 600 but was planning on doing it at a later date but i now have to get it fitted with a decent set of injectors asap and end this fueling bollocks for good. good times ahead

Sorry for the essay but thought id let everyone know whats happening with the car :D

Before and after graphs from yesterday
Red is before when i had it mapped with my old cam timing
Green is now with new timing maxing injectors..

[robi1000]

[northy]

nice write up jay

[jay s]

Cheers lads, will say again he did an excellent job and is very competent :D

Was all going good until some arsehole decided to take a penalty kick on my drivers door yesterday leaving a massive dent in it ,I now need a new door. what makes it worse is i was only round the corner from the car and heard a loud bang but thought nothing of it until i went to get in and couldn't unlock the door..... wish i had got my hands on who ever done it

the now scrap metal

[Smokey McPot]

Kin hell. They must have put some effort in to make the dent around the handle and lock... :(

[Wobba]

Nice one mate! Keep the love alive man :D

I went with some Saab 350cc (roughly) injectors in the end as I knew the power would be too much for OE Megane ones. Make sure the can handle the injectors you get. Some like high impedence.

[sideways danny]

Nice one mate! Keep the love alive man :D

I went with some Saab 350cc (roughly) injectors in the end as I knew the power would be too much for OE Megane ones. Make sure the can handle the injectors you get. Some like high impedence.

lol, mixing your tech terms a bit there.

standard ECU needs low impedence injectors, majority of aftermarket ECU's need low impedence or the ignition drivers will overheat and burn out.

Mathematically, stock megane F7R injectors are maxed at 184bhp, and stock williams/valver injectors are maxed at 168bhp. You can normally squeeze a little more out but they'll be running wide open and you'll lean out as you climb the revs/bhp curve.

[sideways danny]

nasty dent by the way Jay, your cars always looked lovely, thats horrible

[chip]

Nice one mate! Keep the love alive man :D

I went with some Saab 350cc (roughly) injectors in the end as I knew the power would be too much for OE Megane ones. Make sure the can handle the injectors you get. Some like high impedence.

lol, mixing your tech terms a bit there.

standard ECU needs low impedence injectors, majority of aftermarket ECU's need low impedence or the ignition drivers will overheat and burn out.

Mathematically, stock megane F7R injectors are maxed at 184bhp, and stock williams/valver injectors are maxed at 168bhp. You can normally squeeze a little more out but they'll be running wide open and you'll lean out as you climb the revs/bhp curve.

You mean high there not low I assume?

As its low impedance injectors that take more current draw than high.

[sideways danny]

typo. Aftermarket use High imp