Need a bit of advice...

My sister in law has a nice little Clio that has recently failed it's MOT on a number of items:

Front coil springs
Rear suspension bushes
Hazard switch needs replacing

The garage it failed at (Walkers of Selby) has quoted £850 to fix the car and won't release the car until the points are fixed.

Personally I think they've bumped their price up based on a perception of a young girl who needs her car back and they think they have a captive audience (already been quoted £650 by a different garage).

So, I'm off to recover the car with a trailer tomorrow (and thus remove their bargaining power, so might try and haggle the price with them).

I will have a look in the Haynes manual and see if it's worth bothering with fixing myself or do a bit of ringing around to find a better garage (one I trusted my Indy to for MOT!).

Has anyone ever done either front coils or rear bushes on a Clio before? Any guidance on the task/complexity or lessons learned would be appreciated

Cheers

Steve

Rear suspension bushes are not very common at all, I would get a second opinion on these.

Front springs, undo the nut/cup assy in the engine bay with the weight on the car and leave it loose,jack the car up then remove the two lower bolts/nuts.

Pull the upright towards you to clear the shocker (be careful on the n/s as the inner boot is bolted the the box and the shaft rotates inside it - put the upright too far and the bearing will pop out the boot and you will lose the box oil all over the floor) fully remove the top nut you loosened and pull the shocker out with the spring.

hazard light - its easier to pull the whole panel out with the 3 buttons in it and change the switch. If you buy one for a renault master they are 7 quid as opposed to 17 quid for the clio, you just need to change the bit you push over as they are a different colour.

HTH

Shaun

[Edited on 8/7/10 by prawnabie]

Front springs are about 100 from renault

Remove and replace another 100

As said, never heard of a clio needing rear bushes still though, won't explain the 650 quid for it.

Get the springs from GSF, your looking 100 max for all the parts, a few hours labour and take it to another garage for an MOT!

sounds like the typical mot tester failing the rear bushes because they are no longer bonded it pisses me off that mot testers not all of them class a bit of movement as excessive i would tell them that you will contest there findings with vosa they have to assist you in doing so

excessive wear is defined as in the case of bushes and ball joints at the point of failure/excessive movement

front springs common

Cheers guys.

The plan is indeed to take it to the bloke who does all my tin top major work/MOT's.

If only someone had suggested to my sister in law that she should take the car to the same garage in the first place...

I'm still in the middle of convincing her that trading the car in for the £500 that Ford have offered (in it's current state) against a brand new Ka is at least a £1500 loss on the trade in value of her car (it's very, very clean and bang on the mileage the glass's guide states £2150 trade in for), as well as the residuals on the Ka AND the APR of the finance as well. Al that to end up with a brand new car that will, at some point, also need to be fixed.

So, I have decided to just get on with arranging the repairs before she does something daft and regrets it for a deposit, 36 easy monthly payments and a final sum of about £4k

The only renaults that have problems with rear bushes as far as i know are 2001 lagunas onwards.

Friend of mine has just done the rear bushes on a Clio they do go, unfortunately its a specialist tool job to get them off

Chee wizz I bought a clio for a 150 quid gave it to the girls who ran it for two years before it bled to death....sold it on for 125 quid making a 25 quid loss for two years motoring.....
Bangernomics makes perfect sense when I see demands for 850 quid to fix a few parts...You are right about the sharks..young girl must have wheels and they see them coming. Its the very unbelly of the motor trade.......showing its true colours

I don't know which bush it is on the Clio but a lot of them need a special tool which is usually something like a threaded bar and two pieces of plate or large washers to pull the bush into place. Blow lamps are the best tool for getting old bushes out If you pay for the test they cannot refuse you access to the car.

[Edited on 9/7/10 by Peteff]

I've got the car back now and am having a read through the Haynes manual.

There's also a CV boot needs doing on the report, but none of the tasks are particularly taxing, just maybe a bit more hassle using axle stands rather than a 4 post lift.

And the place where the car was being kept back? It was a bloody Vauxhall main stealer!

Funnily, they didn't seem to give me the same cock and bull story. The lads did have a chuckle when I broke my mates alloy ramp with the car (we alays wondered what the breaking point would be - seems to be a clio ). So, I just shrugged it off and went back an hour later with a 16 foot tilt bed - took the smile off their faces a bit (bit scary to tow that trailer with a clio on board with my poor volvo scraping the ground and very much on it's towing limit )

[Edited on 9/7/10 by StevieB]

quote:

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Originally posted by prawnabie

...pull the upright too far and the bearing will pop out the boot and you will lose the box oil all over the floor...

[Edited on 8/7/10 by prawnabie]

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