Her Little 4TL - Time Lapse

[Kraut]

So she wanted a reliable, frugal and cute runaround. I went and bought her that:

It's a '86 Renault R4 TL 1.1, made in Spainistan by Fasa.
She was pretty solid, ran sweet and needed little but cosmetics. Well, loads of them...

First it was time to swing the hammer, bumpers were quite banged up.

Before:

Rear

Front

After:

Rear

Front

I'm gonna leave them like that, the chrome is pretty much undamaged, plus it will be her daily and in Spain bumpers are used as such...

The wheels:

Before:

After:

Nasty surprises to be found on the way:

Oh well...poked it with a key and it just collapsed. Some cut out the rusty bits and filled it with...um...dunno and painted it.
Both sides, but easy to fix.
Tacked some sheet metal in, then glass on top. It was easier to shape the lip for the seal that way.



Done:




Taking care of them wrinkles:





I found some more rust too:




Other than those spots there was little rust on the body, the chassis is in great shape. The car lived in northern Spain for quite some time so I've expected worse.

A couple of afternoons took care of both rust holes and dozens of little dings.

A owed favor payed for the actual respray. I only had to prep it, the pro threw some paint on it.



To be continued...

 

[Kraut]

Usually a project ends up costing more than you think, in this case I've spent about 50€ and the damn thing was resprayed allready!

There she is, dressed up in RAL 9010 dishwasher white:









The pics are crappy, I'll put some better ones up at some point.

It came out alot better then I hoped for, white hides quite alot of fugubs.

Some new wing mirrors and trim for the grille:




A couple of weeks ago I took the French to get it's ITV done, our version of the MOT.
Cars over ten years old need that every 12 month.
It's quite anal- brakes on dyno, emissions and then the poor thing goes on a shaker to check bushes etc. Tyres not older than five years, this was my only worry. Mine are like ten years old...
But it passed no problem!



Then I ordered a stereo:


It's a 28€ motorbike stereo kit, ordered from China.
SD slot, USB and AUX plus FM radio. I wasn't keen on a normal car one as there is no place for it. That'll hide nicely somewhere. A tiny amp and some decent speakers are on the list too. Maybe a sub under the seat...
Just put it in yesterday, it came with speakers wich sound ok, but the audio guy in me wants better.


On the weekend I took her out for some posing:









My girl made some seat covers for it and gave it a good clean up, together with some truck bedliner on the floorpan it looks quite nice frome the inside, too. I take some pics tomorrow or so.

Next step will be a carb rebuild and new fuel pump. That stuff is so cheap it would be daft not to.

Cheers,

Chris

 

[iMacThere4iAm]

I see you've got the hang of Spanish culture there