F7R 710 engine

Mon Nov 28, 2005

Well, I bought this on ebay a few months back and it’s been sitting in my ‘workshop’ ever since, waiting for me to decide what to do with it. It is a 2.0 16v engine, the same as Stan’s, from a phase 1 megane coupe. Basically it’s the same as the Williams Clio engine, but with a few small improvements. Nobody wants to read all that crap yet again though so I won’t regurgitate it here. The guy I bought it off had been using it in his clio for amateur rallying, running on carbs so it’s probably had a hard life. He also gave me a bunch of other parts such as ECUs, an oil cooler and rad, hoses, manifolds etc.



It came without most of the ancillaries and bracketry etc. and what it did come with was mostly megane stuff. I have a spare 1.8 F7P engine from a 19 that I stripped though so I can just pinch whatever bits I need from that.

Originally I was going to slap it straight in my blue phase 2, but now that I have the black phase 1 to restore, it’s obvious that I have to rebuild it and put it in that when it’s ready.

Black phase 1 project: http://www.retro-renault.com/forums/...?p=405#post405

The plan is to strip it totally, renew all the bearings, rings, seals, gaskets, pumps and so on, paint the block up nice, and clean all other components so that it will basically be a nice fresh new engine. I will also do a spot of headwork on it, basically just cleaning up the ports and rounding off corners etc. to release a few more ponies. I’m not going to start buying expensive performance parts and so on, just do the things that I can do ‘for free’. I did see a DCOE manifold that could be used for throttle bodies on ebay a while back that went for £50 or so and I didn’t bid and have been kicking myself ever since.

So at the weekend I began the strip down.

Plugs out… Triple electrode jobs – yuk! I’ll get some nice NGK or Bosch singles for it when it goes back together.



Cam cover (plastic!) off, looks nice and clean in there which is a good sign!




Head bolts out and head lifted onto the bench.




It was at this point that I took a chunk out of my thumb. With the engine free standing on the floor, cracking off the headbolts proved ‘troublesome’. With 3ft breaker bar in hand, I braced the engine against the leg of the bench with my foot. One of the bolts was quite stubborn and when it finally cracked free, I was slightly off balance and scraped my thumb along the sharp edge of the cam housing :shock:

No pics of the thumb sadly, I was busy trying to stop it bleeding. Still, like the macho man that I am, so as not to be beaten I lifted the head off anyway and proceeded to remove the cam housings and cams.



A shot of the bottom end with the head off. I could make out some small ‘dinks’ in the piston crowns where some of the valves are meant to clear, so this engine has probably suffered a cambelt failure at some point in its past. Any valves that were damaged have obviously been replaced though so no bother to me.

Cams out. These are actually slightly milder than the cams in the standard 1.8 engine, so I think I will use the cams from my spare 1.8 when I put this back together. Again, a few more BHP for free. Every little helps!

You can spot a few drops of my blood in these pics... That's dedication!


All looks good so far. Next time, once I get my own valve spring compressor, valve removal!

I also need to buy an engine stand to get the bottom end off the floor and start to strip that down. It still has a sump full of oil so that’s going to be fun.

Total spent so far: £205