Took my wife's Renault Zoe to a car wash the other day, and ended up with a couple of inches of water in the front passenger footwell.

Decided that I would rather have the local Renault dealer sort it out (yes... I know...) but they quoted more than £120 just to take a look! I booked it in - but...

I remembered when my daughter's VW Golf Mk4 had various problems (including water leaks into the passenger compartment) so I went researching on YouTube - and it seems that leaks into the front footwells is fairly common on the Zoe. As I sort-of expected, it's down to blocked drainage, but I chickened out when I first looked. I immediately found a video by a UK mechanic who went through all the steps to sort it out, and I now know that it's well within my capability.

FYI: under the wipers there's a plastic grille with a plastic tray underneath. Under the plastic tray there's a metal shelf with drains on each side that take excess water down into the wheel arches and away. If these drains are blocked then the water spills off the shelf into the front passenger footwells (yeah - great design).

The video goes into clear detail on how to get access to the top of the drains and clear them, so that's my next task when the weather's decent.

I'm just wondering when I lost my touch... I've built a car from scratch, done fairly significant maintenance on quite a range of modern cars, but I looked under this bonnet and wimped out. Sigh.

It's because you looked under the boonet and didn't see an engine

It's definitely an age thing. I designed and built a car from scratch, but nowadays I doubt I'd bother even changing the brake pads myself. Fortunately they never wear out!

I've got a set of suspension bushes and arms to completely rebuild the back end on my BMW 535d but I've had those parts since November 10th and haven't even started fitting any of it! I've always got loads of other jobs around the house to do and just don't want to crawl around on the cold floor battling with suspension components!

I really need to get it done though because the bushes are worn and are causing inside edge tyre wear and the cost of tyres are horrendous as I don't need to tell you guys. I'm on winter rubber just now which aren't so bad but will need to switch to summer rubber soon and the back tyres alone were £450 for a pair last time around. Michelin Pilot Sport 4 275/30 19s in case you're wondering.

Definitely not as keen to roll around on the garage floor at 51 as I was at 15 but thankfully my garage is almost ready for the installation of a lift of some kind. I just need to decide between 4 post, 2 post or scissor. 4 post is easier since it doesn't need such strong concrete but I was going to go with 2 post and just cut out the floor and replace with 8" of reinforced concrete. But scissor lifts have come a long way and might actually be a better option for me as I can move them around. The manager at my local Halfords garage said he's pick a scissor lift if he had to choose just one.

(although there's not a lot of space under the bonnet - it's full of gubbins...)

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Originally posted by scudderfish
It's because you looked under the boonet and didn't see an engine

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Must say I agree, I used to do everything on all my famillies cars. And like others I have had 6 kit cars that I built myself or restored and also helped others build their kit cars. I've rebuilt several 'write off' cars (my first age 17!) And now aged mid 70's I seem to feel like getting someone else to do most jobs. I did put a new towbar on my 2017 (new to me) DS4 yesterday though. And am organising fitting new discs and pads to fit on my sons (he is only 40) VW Troc when we visit in Cumbria in May. And..
It's an age thing I guess.... for all of us ... can't quite give up though

First thing to check is the drains under the windscreen, it can cause complete havoc when the get blocked with leaves. Our Nissan actually has clip on grills so you can get your hand in and scoop the crap out. The drains on that aren't even proper drains but just a gap in the panels, once it fills up it pours right into the heater intake. There's some great vids on Youtube of cars full of gallons of hidden water sloshing around. It's sometimes a good idea to drill through the plastic bungs they fit to sills and panels these days just to let out water if it ever starts to build up.

Then you get the funny looks when explaining that well I had to remove the wipers to work on the suspension well the stupid struts are under the windscreen...I didn't design it!

I still do the normal maintenance on a few modern cars and I find them ok most of the time but some are way to overcomplicated, with very little space to work and everything takes a so much longer. I have also had to buy some pricey diagnostic readers but they always end up paying for themselves. I was servicing the Suzuki at the weekend, the Vitara. I give that 10/10 for ease of access and a lovey really well thought out engine bay, it was actually a total joy to work on

Similar here, had cars I did everything on and built a kit I likewise did everything on.

SWMBO's car now is too complex and worth a bit more so much of the work is entrusted to a known local garage. Exception being the DSG gearbox service, which I chicken out further and entrust to a main dealer (local garage doesn't have the kit/experience).

Elements of...

Laziness - possibly

Value preservation - again possibly

Since this thread started talking about a Zoe EV and how modern cars like EVs can seem intimidating to maintain, here is a video I just saw last night about how to replace all the body colour panels on a BMW i3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHGpBfvuhnc

As some of you know, my wife has an i3 and we've had it from new in 2017 and she absolutely loves it. And certainly while it was still under warranty, we got BMW to service it and MOT it etc. There was also a fault with one of the LCD displays which was done under warranty plus a wheel speed sensor that was done as goodwill 2 weeks after warranty ended.

But since it came out of warranty I've done a few jobs on it and it's really been a joy to work on. If you watch or at least skim through the above video, you'll see just what a unique and IMO well engineered car the i3 is. I honestly think we'll look back in years to come and view it as one of the most innovative cars ever made. Sadly BMW had to take a step back to more traditional manufacturing methods with successors to the i3 but I still applaud them for what they did.

The servicing is a doddle and comprises the cabin filter replacement (same parts as Mini) and brake fluid change plus the usual lubrication of hinges and door catches etc. Brake servicing is just like doing something like a Mini as well and even shares the same pads. I've also done the front top strut mounts as they were a known weak spot but new parts have been redesigned to should be fine. I've also had the rear bumper off to fix a corroded parking sensor loom connector and I fixed the driver's door handle when it became loose and stopped working properly.

The only job I didn't (couldn't really) tackle was replacing the HV electric AC compressor which was a somewhat painful £2940 job by BMW but since the compressor itself was 50% of that cost and I would have voided the warranty unless I could prove it was installed properly using the proper AC drain, flush and fill equipment, so it didn't make sense to try to do it myself. The AC is also much more than just for interior cooling on the i3 (and probably other EVs) because it both heats and cools the interior and more importantly heats and cools the battery modules so it's not an option to have it not working.

But honestly, it has been a joy to work on, and seeing Wisely automotive remove all the body coloured bits just shows what a unique design this car has. I bet this car was a production engineer's wet dream to design a production line around! In fact there are a number of YouTube videos showing the i3 product process and they are even more fascinating!

For anyone on the fence about whether to buy an EV, you could do a lot worse than to go visit Wisely automotive and buy a second hand but meticulously prepared i3 from them. I'm nothing to do with Wisely by the way but am just a fan of their YT channel. The i3 is very cheap second hand for what you get and if you get a 94Ah or 120Ah model then you'll get a good 120+ mile range minimum and lots of fun driving it.

And here ends this advertisement for BMW i3 and Wisely automotive! Sorry!

Gotta love Renault - they all seem to have this issue, access to clean the drain is difficult. However should fix the ingress, it our Megane cc is the same, drains were very blocked but had yet to spill inside… quite well built really but seems form before function in some places…

In the end I followed the instructions in the YouTube video - it only took me a couple of hours yesterday morning, and I wasn't rushing. So, instead of paying £120+ minimum charge for the first hour at the Renault dealership, I spent £9.99 for a windscreen wiper arm puller and did it myself, with the added use of a wet-and-dry vac, airline, and various bits of rubber and plastic tubing that I had in my garage. The car now has clear drains and I have a useful new puller in my toolbox!

The drains were full of silver birch seeds, which are a total PITA for getting everywhere in and around my house!

The only extra tool I could have done with was a decent torch - it wasn't easy looking into dark recesses with the sun shining into the engine bay, So that's a further £9.50 I've spent on a Hitachi torch that uses my cordless drill's battery, which hopefully will arrive in the next few days. Another useful addition to my toolkit ready for future jobs!

A nice bonus is that my wife bought me a bottle of my favourite beer as a thank-you gift...

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Originally posted by Bluemoon
Gotta love Renault - they all seem to have this issue, access to clean the drain is difficult. However should fix the ingress, it our Megane cc is the same, drains were very blocked but had yet to spill inside… quite well built really but seems form before function in some places…

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