I was going to write up the restoration on my blog but have decided to do so here instead. So. Let’s start at the beginning… My restoration started a week ago when I picked up a C840 LEW from Nottingham. I bought it on ebay and may have paid a little too much considering its condition, but it was still less that a racing clutch and master cylinder for my Elise and although I may have been able to find a better example I wanted something I could make a difference to rather than a basically sound car that I could tart up.
Why a Renault 4?
1. I like Renaults – I’m a big far of Dauphines (in which I learnt to drive when I was ten) and R8s, and I like the 4L for its honest simplicity.
2. It is light and small (so can be wheeled in and out of my domestic garage)
3. It’s uncomplicated
4. It’s cheap
5. It has a separate chassis so I can remove the body and more easily get to grips with chassis and suspension
6. Parts are easily available
7. There’s this forum and Frederick's tech tips! Knowing that help is at hand was a definite consideration.
And why am I doing a restoration? Because although I have a couple of high performance sports cars I don’t do any work on them myself and spend my days sat in front of a computer. So I decided to deconstruct a car and put it back together again in order to learn some new skills and get away from the computer. Anyway, enough preamble. This is what I did in the first week.
The bonnet more or less fell off.
Getting the right hand side wing off was fairly easy.
Initially I thought I'd leave the left wing as it is solid and the inner wing has been patched, but now I've decided to remove that side as well.
However, I am currently stuck as I cannot undo the bottom nut and bolt that holds it to the triangular panel behind the wing and I cannot get my angle grinder to it.
When I removed the rubber floor mats, it was not a pretty sight.
I guess this was once soundproofing.
I then removed the front doors to give me easier access to the interior. I almost removed the rear doors but thought they might provide structural strength when I remove the body from the chassis (?). So I left them in.
The seats came out easily. They're not in very good condition and will need recovering. However,I don't like the beige colour anyway so I'm not too disappointed.