Renault 5 GT Turbo conversion - December 2008

Getting it togeather


Phase 1 throttle body to make life a lot simpler with cable operation as opposed to fly by wire!

From 172 conversion

Four paddle clutch used but plent of life, no more slipping clutch!!

From 172 conversion

RTOC national day at Mallory Park

For those that don't know RTOC stands for Renault Turbo Owners Club www.rtoc.org, today was national day at Mallory Park. It was a great chance to put some faces to names and generally mingle. Anyway here's a collection of footage from the day consisting of oddly enough Renault 5 GT turbo 's, a sideways Renault 5 turbo, a Renault GTA and few other turbo'd motors.
Below are a several of my favorite pictures of the day the rest are available on My Photobucket account. Please if any of these are your car's let me know and I can send you a full size image if you like.

The Fuel Tank
Yes that is a jerry can, It was the cheapest way I could find to create a fuel tank.I simply bought a length of 10mm steel tube from B&Q and drill three holes - one for the feed, one for the return and one for a breather. I have used this tank with no problems and as you can image the original design of the jerry can is to be a robust way of transporting flammable liquids so safety isn't an issue. I'll post a guide on the various stages of mounting and creating the tank later. The only thing missing is a fuel sender although I know roughly how many miles I can do from a tank - usually about 80 miles :)

A mock up
After a day of cutting out metal from the rear of the car, I could resist putting the subframe in situ just to see what it looked like in the back, at this point I had a very long way to go!!

Homemade Coilovers
This is one of my homemade coilovers using a kit bought from Rally Design, the cheapest coilovers retail for around £300 for a pair, this cost me £30 plus a pair of springs (less than £20) . Providing you don't weld the kits on too aggressively they are reusable on another set of shocks - when I get the money I'll by a set of uprated dampers and convert them. I'll post a guide of how to convert shock absorbers later

The Renault Is Returning

I'll soon be starting work on the next phase the fitting of a Clio 172 engine to my Renault 5 Turbo!

The main reason being reliability, being normally aspirated (not turbocharged) but still providing the same power - well actually a bit more, means there are less components to fail.

My first thing that needs doing is to lay some new slabs on my drive!

What's this about?

This is my car, it's a Renault 5 GT Turbo built in 1991. In 2004 I started to convert it from front to rear wheel drive. I'm not sure there was one particular reason why I started, but I did! I completed it in January 2007 when passed it's MOT.
It's certainly more of a fun car than practical, but I do use it as a daily driver (when on the road) . Although my main aim is to go hill climbing or sprinting.
Throughout my webpages or blogs you will be able to read about the conversion itself among other conversions such as my MK2 Fiesta XR2 turbo or should I say turbo's as I've had a few. Throughout the pages you will find guides on how to do these conversions yourself and various other snippets of information.. if you wished :)


Lets see where this goes...

Renault 5 GT Turbo conversion - December 06 Coilovers

How to convert to coilovers

This is a guide on converting your shock absorbers to coilovers, using your existing shock absorbers and an adjustable spring seat kit.

This is a great way of having adjustable ride height without the cost. Once converted you can run any 2 1/4" spring that will fit between your platform and the underside of your strut top.Here's a picture of the kit


First of all you need the kit from somewhere like Rally Design, bare in mind you struts need to be less than 2" in diameter or you may have to find a more specialised product, also when you order pay attention to whether the top of your strut is either a round 10mm or D shape.

My conversion was done on my Renault 5 GT Turbo that I have converted to rear wheel drive, I have used phase 1 shock absorbers on the front and phase two on the rear. You can use either phase shock on either phase car providing you use the matching strut top. One other distance is the total length of the shoch absorber travel which caught me out when ordering the springs.

The process of fitting the coilover kit is actually quite straight forward. First follow your trusty Haynes manual to remove the shock absorber and with the aid of a set of spring compressors (quite a cheap tool) compress the spring and remove te strut top.
Then remove the springs from the strut.

Once these are off you can slip the new spring platforms over the shock absorber, you may need to file down any lumps or bumps stopping the threaded tube reaching the old spring platform.
At this point you have two options 1)leave as it is and tack (weld) the sleeve to the strut or 2)remove the majority of the old spring platform. I removed mine mainly because it gave me a lot more room to work and more options to change the shape of my suspension turrets at a later date, it also made them look a bit more like factory coilovers (if I were to spray them).

Either way you will need to tack the threaded sleeve to your strut, you need to be careful at this point as I have been told not to get the strut to hot as it could damage the shock absorber. My best advice is to prepare where you are welding making sure the metal is clean and look for points where the sleeve and shock are already touching as opposed to trying to bridge a gap.

Okay with the sleeve secured, now would be a good time to clean up the shock absorber and paint if desired (don't paint the threaded sleeve) I put a bit of copper grease on my sleeve this gives it a little protection against corrosion.

Now thread your two threaded collars onto the thread and wind them down to the bottom as far as they will go without forcing them. The reason for two is that one will lock the other, ideally you will want a 'C' spanner for adjustment they aren't very expensive around £5 each

Next on will go your spring - Springs will require a bit of research hopefully the guys where you bought the kit from will be able to give you advice as there's a huge range of poundage and lengths

Following this by the last part of the kit the top spring seat, hopefully you bought the right one and it fitted nicely, finally re-fit your strut top assembly which should go over the top. Despite choosing what I thought was the right size I needed to bore the hole out so I could get the original strut top back on. I did this with my pillar drill ensuring the hole remained central as this part is to keep the spring in line.


Just before you fit the shocks back to your car make sure you nip up the height adjustable collars so that the spring isn't wobbling around.

There you have it fully adjustable ride height

Renault 5 GT Turbo conversion - Febuary 2007

February 07 - Hydraulic Clutch Conversion for Renault 5 GT Turbo
Here's are some details of my hydraulic clutch conversion on my Renault 5 GT Turbo. I have had a number of problems with the extended clutch cable I originally had made this is probably due to the length of the cable and the weight of the clutch. The cable finally gave way one fine morning on the way to work, fortuanley only a couple of streets away I manged to start it in 1st gear and get the car home.
Since the conversion I've only had it on the road for a day but the feel is unbelievable it's like driving a new car not because it feels anyway new but the pedal is so light the only comparable car I've been in has been brand new... Anyway here's a list of the parts used...

• MR2 MK1 clutch pedal and housing
• MR2 MK1 master cylinder and first section of pipe
• Toyota Starlet (I think) slave cylinder
• Bit of copper 3/16th pipe - £3.49
• A rubber brake hose (from rear of GT turbo with two female ends) - £free
• 4x male brake unions - £3.96

The first three parts I got from a scrap yard for a bit of elbox grease and £30 - bargin!!
This is the bracket for the slave cylinder, the first being the cardboard template and marked metal the second being part made



Here another picture of the bracket nearing completion and a shot of the clutch release arm as it was prior to welding



Now this is the arm after welding I cut a bit of a clutch release arm from the scrap yard that already had a hydraulic clutch and simply filed it and welded it to the exisitng, the second picture maybe a little hard to work out but is a shot under the dash where the new pedal and braket mounts to, it was in line with the bolt for the windowwiper motor so I just drilled through and used a longer bolt (kind of lucky really)



Here is the pedal in situ with the rest as you can see it's now a million miles away from the old position, the second is a shot of the master cylinder under the engine bay



More shots of the Master cylinder it has a lot smaller profile that I imagined so I see no reason why it couldn't be fitted to front engine R5's as an alternative to the long arm conversion