stop the rot!
I bought this car in May 2000 (that isn't me in the picture above by the way, I intend to remain a mystery to site visitors!), and part-exchanged my old car Angelica which was in a sorry state. The following set of photos were taken by the previous owner, and they show some of the considerable work that he performed on the car to prevent rot setting in. Here in Manchester, a city well known as one of the rainiest in Britain, it is often difficult to maintain older cars because of the rust and rot. Renault 4's in particular have common problems with this, due to some elements of their design and materials. Had my old car not been trashed, it would still have been unroadworthy as the bottom was falling off. The same thing happened to the R4 my sister owned a few years ago. The underside, rear axle and chassis legs are notoriously prone to rotting away, and addressing this is near impossible without spending huge amounts of money. Some garages might perform a cheaper fix, such as putting a bar across to give the axle something to hold onto, but this is usually a short term measure which won't secure the problem for long.
Unfortunately if, like me, you're not a dab hand at welding and restoration, you've either got to be lucky and know someone crazy enough to do the work for you cheap or free, or have it done 'professionally' and face an enormous bill, and even then the quality is not always reliable. Fortunately, the previous owner of this car had gone to ridiculous lengths to prevent any more deterioration in the hope of keeping the car himself, but after a change of circumstances he decided to sell and I happened to be interested in a new R4 at the time. He spent much of summer 1999 doing the work seen here, and practically made himself sick from the level of effort.
These sections under the bonnet are another area of concern for many R4 owners. Here you can see how the front inner wing panels were straightened up, primed with red lead primer, and in the above photo you may notice the far side has been finished, with further coats of protection and repainting.
Miaow.
Now to some serious work.
The first in this series of snaps shows one of the areas of corrosion on
the underside. The rear chassis has been completely stripped down, with the
rear axle and fuel tank removed in order to carry out the repairs.
All the rot was completely cut out, then the affected metal was replaced
with brand new class A zinc galvanised steel. This sort of treatment is not
what you would expect to receive at a garage, which will instead usually perform
a bodge job to get a car through the next test. Typically, they will just
fix a steel plate over the affected area, but this serves only to make the
problem worse, by creating a water trap which quickly erodes all the surrounding
metal, and you could find the entire back chassis rotted away within a short
space of time. Once the corrosion reaches the rear suspension mounting points,
they begin to move when driving, causing banging when driving over bumps etc.
By this stage you'll have difficulties saving the car from the scrap heap.
Government warning: Going to these extremes could seriously damage your health!
You can see above the final effect of replacing the bad metal on the near side. Below are some shots of a similar repair on the off side.
As if that isn't enough, the chassis and underside was shot blasted, red lead oxide primed, enamel painted, undersealed with Finnegan's Underseal, then the entire car body was injected with Waxoyl rust prevention.
The rear axle was removed and shot blasted before being primed with six coats
of red lead primer, and finally finished with four coats of Hammerite.
Various other jobs were done on the car after this, including a full conversion to unleaded fuel. Even the fuel tank was painted green! As the number of R4's becomes more scarce, it'll be difficult for those people living in wet countries to find models in good condition with no rot. One option may be to go abroad and import one from a drier country, and inevitably many cars will be stripped down, with the best bits being combined to make one good model. I guess what we all want is for Renault to continue manufacture of the R4, or at least guarantee the supply of new parts for many years to come. After all, a car that's sold over 8 million surely deserves to make it to 50 years of age. I hope to continue adding pictures of my car as it is today to the site - you'll find them on the my pics page in the gallery.