1988 Renault 21 Nevada GTS

[düdo]

This is the newest vehicle I have ever owned. It's the practical modern family wagon. Giving in to responsibility.

Its hefty 1.7 94hp F3N Renix multi-point fuel injected engine hasn't turned since 2001. Yes Renix : a cunning portmanteau of 'Renault' and 'Bendix'. Dubious 1980s French electronics and I own it whether it works or not.

Found in a field not too far away where an old Hot-Rodder called Bo was purveying it for €450. The word 'prestige' comes to mind








I said : €200
he said : €300
I said : €250
he said : €280 ..

and he wouldn't budge. I paid him the load. What price modernity? Electric windows, power steering, central locking. Fuel injection. Who cares if it doesn't work?

Owned. October 2012





This was the crazy, crazy, impossible dream

[The Jackeria]

My mum had one of these though I'm sure it was called a Savanna. I haven't seen another one since she got rid of it in the late 90's. It was out first 7 seat car, we used to fight to sit in the back. Can't be many around now.

[loudandproud205]

I was talking about my mums Savanna today actually she had a blue one and played Erasure's Blue Savanna song to death in it.

My mum replaced hers with a Mitsubishi Shogun.

[düdo]

Thanks for the memories. Yes, in the UK they were called Savanna for some reason. You don't see many about these days - none hereabouts sausage-side. Still a few in France, nudging towards the scrapyard.
I was giving it thick last night with my intro. Don't blame the booze. No no. Blame the fact that other than having seven seats, there's not too much to get excited about really!

Here they are together c.2012 - two Frenchies with dubious early engine management/ fuel injection systems. Beloved BX 16v now gone to make way for His Royal Brown-ness of Cruiser. True to form some sensor failed, the BX wouldn't start/lift and it took the buyer and I a whole day to get it out and onto a trailer. Hoorah for springs.





I hoped it would all be over/done by Christmas 2012 and I would be driving around in palatial foaminess but after discovering the horrors awaiting underneath I welded up axle mounts, jacking points, floor patches til it got too cold to function in the barn. Then the work stalled when our third kid arrived and we found they could all squeeze in our BX estate.

I thought that the F-type 16v motor found in some Renault 19s would drop in there nicely so I was keeping half an eye out for a suitable donor while occasionally searching for inspiration on the web. Er.. yes






Nothing moved until a few weeks ago, with offspring number four en route I thought I'd better apply myself. Now we need the seats and the wife will not, never, drive the Cruiser even if it was legalised ( what a palaver).


Picking up where I'd left off in late 2012. Stuffed fuel pump probably the reason for its exile in a warehouse from 2001-2010 then onto Bo's field til 2012. Ebay spued up just the thing in new-old-stock form wrapped in waxed paper. The obligatory shot, fed through a cheesy filter called 'Laguna' - Renault connection





Rusted out rear springs dealt with, rusted out tank strap/snapped off captive bolts dealt with ( see new exciting replacement below), rear brakes re-built. Axle on the floor so I can clean up my slightly bodgy welding of 2012 on the mounting points




Old petrol siphoned out. Dodgy tank sender was showing empty but forty litres poured out. I had to hunt around the barn for some cans and found this. Stamped 1944 and 'W D' - War Dept. British/Jerry can.




Not the first priority but wheels rubbed down and sprayed. Part-worn rubber fitted by the hilarious father and son team who run a tyre service out of a barn in the next village. It's amazing they get anything done - they're always arguing, with the son always nagging at the eighty year old dad to stop slacking. And when they're not arguing they're drinking beer.




The powerplant and the glory. The horses will be unleashed..

[07lilredwagon]

This is as much fun for the narrative and adventures as it is for the car...and I am a fan of estates, mind....

good stuff, good luck with it...it looks like its coming along

JP

[düdo]

Thankyou for the encouragement JP. Have to weave the words a bit when dealing with such an item of normal.

Yesterday I saw in the local small ads an F7P engine for sale - the 16v variant of the Renault F-type which is fitted in the Nev' at the moment. It's out of a '95 R19 16v and packs a mighty 132hp ( +40hp!!). No gearbox, and this appears to be a headache as there were three or four different boxes during its production run which don't appear to be interchangeable even if I can find one. If anyone knows anything about this?

A complete R19 16v donor seems to be the way - with all ancilleries, loom, ECU, etc. Then I need to clone myself and set that clone to work on all the projects and building sites that I can't get on top of with just two or three hours on an occasional evening.

[düdo]

 Brace yourselves for another slice of banal.
Today I dropped the tank to remove the pick-up/sender unit. What greeted me was quite a surprise. The tank was lined with a treacle like slime and the sender is finished. The picture shows it half cleaned up before I realised the futility of going on. I had no camera with me in the barn to show the foul black treacle that poured out of the tank.
In the picture can be seen where the arm that held the float has just corroded through and likewise with the wires and contacts. I've never seen such contamination in a petrol tank. I've seen slime in diesel tanks but nothing like this. It's been off the road since 2001 so it's quite a good advert for having a look in the tank if the car's been laid up. Trying to find a new sender unit could be a problem - nothing in the usual places on the internet.

[sciclone]

bleck.. that looks horrid.

What about the F9Q from the suzuki grand vitara diesel. Quite a few parts interchangeable with the Renault Trafic's, but they're turbo diesel...

You can usually pick them up from people who have a DPF light and don't know how to get a diesel nice and warm to burn off the crud. A $200 replacement DPF and driving like you stole it, the engine will keep going.

[düdo]

Yes, I've been considering what other units might do the job. It comes down to the compatibility of the cable connection and the number of out/inlets. Most other Renault senders of the era don't appear to fit. I don't have the time or inclination to modify something else to fit - there's enough bits lying around already.
I have suggested a French scrapyard 'holiday' but the wife didn't seem too excited about the idea. From here I can get  over the border  to a couple of good scrappers in 90 mins - just got to be certain there's a dead/dying Nevada to be picked over. Most seem to get crushed as they're no/low value I suppose?

I'm not a chemist but I thought that petrol was a solvent so I don't know what happened in the tank? Must be as the petrol breaks down over time. The fuel feed pipe to the pump is sludged up as well so that's what stuffed the pump. Just hope it didn't get any further down the line to the 'Renix' injection system which in its old age needs all the luck it can get!

[düdo]

This update will really 'sender' y'all to sleep. Searching for the fuel tank sender has sended me to a separate dimension - very thinly inhabited. I feel like I've got the last Renault 21 this side of the scrapyard - spare parts seem to have all vanished.

I tapped in the serial number of the old infested sender and found a NOS on Ebay.de for a very reasonable €19.99. Only thing was it had ended a week before. Some other selfish Renault freak had bagged it. My six year old daughter then witnessed me jumping around shouting : It's not fair! It's not fair! That was mine!
Then me explaining to daughter that this behaviour was immature and in the scheme of things it was small fry indeed.

That was the only bite I got - nothing in any of the dark recesses of the internet, all the possible equivalent aftermarket manufacturers numbers and codes were sought and entered which resulted in a lot of hits in Romania and other undecipherable places looking quite Russian.

Eventually on the second day of my weird hunt, the 'Jaeger' equivalent number produced a match in Italy. My daughter witnessed me jumping for joy til I entered the description into the language translator : ' Nuovo Con Defetto' means ' New With defects'. Ahhh. Looked alright in the solitary photo so I pressed the familiar button - 'Buy it Now' in some other language. Only the next day occurred to me 'defects' is a pretty wide field.

Arrived today in a bag marked : URGENTISSIMO and contained in a charming 'Jaeger' shoebox which has the warning upon it : 'Only for ground based motor vehicles not for aeronautical purposes'.

The fault turns out to be a piece of the lid/top is missing. The rest is indeed new and the rheostat in the float wiper works fine as does the low fuel warning. So tomorrow I'm going to swap the tops over and do a bit of soldering of connections and hopefully she'll be right.





'Old and foul' ( lying on URGENTISSIMO gunk protector) and 'new' with the broken top

[düdo]

Just to show that I'm still on it, a small update.

I've now sorted the rear end, got the tank back in with its new sender and cleaned out all the fuel lines which were full of treacle.

Then I moved onto the front and things got a bit pear shaped with the replacement of the subframe bearings. Three of the four mounting bolts sheared off leading to hours of faffing around with fire and heavy steel in very confined spaces. The Renault system for mounting the subframe left 50% of the bolt exposed to the elements so they were well and truly rusted in.

Finally prevailed and today I took the subframe for a little drive to the local scrapyard to use their press : the remains of the old bearings out and new ones in. Just got to do a bit of welding on one of the body mountings which cracked under sustained pounding.





My hoist is a bit old school and bloody heavy to lift into place but does the job.

[düdo]

I had a frustrating day with this today. I couldn't budge one particularly stubborn hub/drive shaft nut despite two hours of various ploys and varying lengths of scaffold. Eventually I removed the whole hub with the driveshaft hanging out and took it to a friend's workshop and he buzzed the nut off with the rattle gun in about 30 secs.

Then the steering tie rod nut turned out to be an equal barsteward. After another two hours of wasted effort - cutting off the balljoint and welding a nut onto the shaft, levering and levering, tools breaking, I threw in the towel for today.
Sometimes we have days like these - much effort and little effect.

I've got two weeks to get this running now and down the testing station!

[matfenwick]

I feel your pain! Sometimes you really wonder why you don't just jack it all in and buy a new Dacia...well, almost.

Good to see some progress anyway, even if it isn't going smoothly right now.

[choaky]

Aah the memories! My dad had a 1987 1.7 model of these and then went on to get the 1993 facelift 2.0 auto which went like stink! (We'll I was about 13 at the time and it felt like a rocket to me then atleast :-)) He then replaced it with a 1985 Toyota space cruiser! WTF! Which was also auto and a turd. After constant complaining from me and my little brother about how wibblepoo the cruiser was (and a slight overheating which resulted in a damp interior after the tad cap shot off) he dragged the savanna back off the drive, hoovered off then then mouldy seats (it was stood up six months) and we had the 'cool' car back :-)

[düdo]

Thankyou for kind words and happy to provide a nostalgic glow for those who remember one of these cars actually working!

Those blasted seized nuts were nothing compared to the last weeks trials : trying to get it running. Ha ha. Sweaty and frustrating. I was expecting an 80s electrical hellhole anyway but its really excelled itself. Tested almost everything : fuel at the rail and spark. Replacing one sensor after another, injectors sometimes deciding to inject or not. Did a compression test this morning as I was starting to think : this is stuffed. It does have compression. Now focusing on the injectors again. curse word/Injecting into the wind.

Try finding a rear manual window mechanism, try finding a back door lock. This car wants to be scrapped! But I'm not giving up, not til I'm crawling around the floor frothing at the mouth muttering : Merde! Merde!

Pictures will be presented when I get it running for more than ten seconds..

[actionslaxx]

Loads of folk doing stuff like your doing all over the world , it doesn't always make sense but everything we do is just entertainment, if you knew what I was doing you would feel very sensible in comparison. Good luck with the car, its a cracker.

[düdo]

Aug 10, 2015 21:52:33 GMT actionslaxx said:

Loads of folk doing stuff like your doing all over the world , it doesn't always make sense but everything we do is just entertainment, if you knew what I was doing you would feel very sensible in comparison. Good luck with the car, its a cracker.

Thanks for the support. Now you've tempted us, let us see what you're doing then actionslaxx - get a thread going on your illness/hobby! That's how people look at my condition.

I've bought a set of reconditioned Bosch injectors ( four for the price of one here in D) from the USA which would have been used in the 'Eagle Medallion' which was the bizarre American version of the Renault 21. I think there's a bloke on here who's been grappling with an 80s American Renault.

[PhilA]

Aug 11, 2015 7:33:45 GMT düdo said:

I think there's a bloke on here who's been grappling with an 80s American Renault.

There is a possibility you mean me.

--Phil

[düdo]

Aug 11, 2015 17:35:05 GMT PhilA said:

Aug 11, 2015 7:33:45 GMT düdo said:

I think there's a bloke on here who's been grappling with an 80s American Renault.

There is a possibility you mean me.

--Phil

Hello Phil, yes I do mean you. I have read and enjoyed your thread and it's good to know there's another here with the affliction 'Renix' . I know who to consult regarding electrics issues now. Our engines are not that dissimilar : 1.7 F series engines and mine is rated around the 94bhp mark too( in theory, if it ever moves forward under its own power). I can see it's a chore finding parts in the U.S. There's still a load of stuff available in France but it's actually connecting with it that is the challenge.
A recent scrapyard tour in France turned up a solitary R21 Nevada which was not only inaccessible under a load of other chod but was one of the second series so almost useless anyway for what I need. I persevere : just found some dead stock in Italy with a couple of parts I need . Good to have internet language translators.

[düdo]

I am making progress.. the injectors arrived from Michegan after getting stuck in German customs for a week. I installed them and without too much optimism turned the key and it fired up and actually ran! And I was starting to think it was just a Renault shaped lump of metal that was cluttering up the corner of the barn.








Moved the Mercedes shaped lump of metal. Starts and runs great, wish I could just 'head out on the highway' but got to finish the welding and put it back together.





Ready to leave its dock, where it's been stood for almost three years. At this point I had no idea about the condition of the clutch or the gearbox and was dreading another load of grief from that area.





Engaged first, raised the clutch pedal - all in order - and it moved forward under its own power for the first time since 2001! Emerging into the new century





I let it warm up to check thermostat operation and switching of cooling fan but as it got hot it just stopped and wouldn't start again.





It starts once its cooled down again - after two hours. I'm waiting for a new coil pack, distributor cap and finger and couple of new sensors. Still not out of the 80s electrical swamp.
 Italian Stefano and my son with Nev. When I first brought the Nevada here three years ago on a trailer Stefano was walking past and helped the father-in-law and I manhandle and push it into its corner in the barn. He was walking past yesterday when it emerged so I captured the historical moment.