Clementine's Garage
Clementine the Cat
 
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Yellow R4
 
Réparateur d'automobiles

Keeping the magic alive...

snailshed

Enthusiast
Messages
154
My GTL has now been off the road for about 4 years waiting for restoration (it's coming but behind a row of 2cv's...), but I felt the urge to go and see it tonight. It might be a bit sad sitting in a dusty, dormant car half under it's cover, surrounded in spare parts but that is sometimes what it takes to maintain the enthusiasm. Accusations I was playing with the gear lever and making brumm noises are entirely refuted...

Keep waiting old girl, and your time will come.
 
Keep your chin up the time will come and when it does you'll enjoy it more :laughing:.
 
Rene C303 suffered a similar fate Snailshed, but its hard to think he has panels in for paint! As Bobble says, the time will come (Took Rene apart in 2011 :( )
 
Well, looking at the first post it has only taken a year! Got that super smug 'passed my Mot this morning feeling' and already put 70 miles on her. Turns out it was six years since it's last Mot (the tester can check) but despite that everything works just fine and I'd forgotten what a laugh they are to drive. Renault 4 + Sunshine = Good times.
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Looking nice and fresh......aldo really stick to my eyes plastic door trim (new stile) with all that chrome (old stile)
 
It looks brand new! how great to have it on the road again. Are your wing mirrors good finish? I bought some of that pattern off ebay and they are terrible quality. Franzose seem to sell the same design but indicate quality good so im curious!
 
Snailshed..Looking Good -should be a chick-magnet :cool:
Jonathan..always good idea to "treat" chrome-bling with a Thin layer of urethane-laquer. Wash & polish ,heat spraycan (or paint-box) in warm-water bath
then lay a THIN coat but be careful to cover nooks & crannies.It'll last a Long time and if/when you need to freshen-up again you just remove urethane
with some white-spirit and wash/polish/paint again.It'll make your chrome-stuff survive much better..
PS: be Sure to polish out Any/All traces of polish-stuff for best adhesion
PPS: lay on THIN -or it'll go cloudy.(easily removed for another go,but it Will put a dent in your self-consiousness :vsad: -Reid
 
Thanks Reid - yes i'll need to lacquer them before i take in the open air or they will be orange dust in a month!
they look tlike the kind of quality we used to buy for our bikes with pocket money when we were kids
 
Thanks for the kind comments. The side trims are a quandary. The photo flatters but it's all original paint other than the front wings. To take the side trims off means grinding off the stubs that hold the trims on, which means you can never put it back to original if you want to without serious work and I'm not sure I want to do that to it. It's the same reason why I bought a Twingo sunroof but can't bring myself to cut the hole in the roof either!

Jonathan, I'm with you, the wing mirrors are absolute shite. The worst thing other than the atrocious chrome quality is that they don't have enough adjustment in them to be able to see anything out of the passenger mirror either. I should add they are not Franzose, but off of ebay.fr so who made them I'm not sure.

What I will give Franzose a ringing endorsement for is the set of new tartan seat trim I've put in. They are beautifully made, look classy and fit the original frames like a glove. My one gripe was they don't come with the stitched in wires around the edge and there were many choice words in stripping these from the old covers and installing them in the new.
 
It's a great shame the bumper manufacturers can't be encouraged to produce a few pairs in stainless steel. I really don't see the point in poor chrome plating. Cheapness, I guess. I like painted bumpers on an R4 but 'shiney' would look nice.
 
I've quite a bit to say on all those points....Snailshed the removal of the plastic trim on the doors certainly is a big job. Welding the little rivet holes up without distortion is quite difficult then one hell of a lot of finishing if you want it to look as it should . Personally on your car in that colour with those wheels I honestly think it looks great and I love the grille too. Yup the wing mirrors are poor but they do adjust . Just fitted mine this eve and discovered you can alter the angle of the arm in relation to the door. You have to pull the arm back toward the door handle then up or down as you please. There is a castellated edge that retains the position. The mirror on the other end is also adjustable but it's a tight thing to budge. Onto the chrome bumpers. Well I did a ton of research bought two originals and they are not great chrome. Got repro ones and they are very respectable. Honestly the quality of chrome on an R4 couldn't have been that great. Apparently the bumpers are made in one place and have 4micron covering.( a higher spec than original) Mine are good. Honestly. Der franzose must get them from the same place. The seat covers come from a little guy in France who also sells to Der Franzose. I agree my covers are amazing and great quality and honestly cheap for the work involved ! Didn't find it hard getting the wire in though .
 
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Hi Jonathan, I agree that the arms can adjust outwards by rotation but it isn't the arm that's the problem for me. It is that the cup on the back of the mirror section does not have enough adjustment inwards to sightline down the side of the car body, whichever setting I have the arm on. It's there for show as much as anything as I tend to look over my shoulder when turning or changing lanes anyway. With regards to the bumpers, I am 99% sure the pair on the car are stainless. They were NOS imported having found them on ebay.fr and were clearly fairly old. I was initially disappointed that they were not more shiny but they don't look like they'd rot which was a bonus.

I have chrome 'lovehandles' for the front but the repro front wings don't come with the captive nuts to fit them, and I'm a bit loathe to drill holes in them to put them on. I also have the pukka 60's chrome waist trim set (which I was going to stick on rather than drill holes for the clips I don't have anyway) but when I tried taping it on to see what it looked like I didn't think it overly worked with the plastic body side trims.

Anyway, there's plenty of time to try playing about with 'the look' after the list of finishing jobs are covered off. They are never really finished are they?
 
Hi Snailshed stainless bumpers that sounds interesting. Yes I agree the waist trim with the grey 'rubbing strake' wouldn't look right. (You could always sell your 'waist band' set to me :whistle:) I quite like mine without. I do have wide stainless sill trim though which I will be putting on this week.
All my trims including name badges will be stuck on with black double sided foam tape. Envious you are on the road. I'm on hol in a couple of weeks and only a handful of evenings to finish off as I'd love to take Womble on holiday
 
Oh and the love handles I fitted on to the inner front wing edge with bumper chrome bolts. These have heads nice and flat allowing clearance . Surprised you don't have holes in the repro wings anyway. One of mine was in the wrong place though
 
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