Note: A more extensive version of this article, focussing on the repairs, can be found on the Technique page of the Articles section, here.

Further repair work was required for Reflexia's summer 2008 MOT, so I again took the car to Derek's Renospeed garage in Lewisham, London. Amongst the jobs planned (not all of which were MOT failures) were considerable welding of the rear boot floor corners, new rear wheel bearings and some attention to the rotten area below the rear off side quarter window. In fact, this entire side of the car was set to be transformed over the course of the year, in part by myself, including the fitting of a new front wing that Derek sold me to replace the rotten old thing seen below. The image above was taken in the autumn, before I set to work on extensive repairs to the off side outer sill area.

I experienced many troubles with flat tyres and unreliable fitters before and after the MOT, necessitating a lot of wasted time and money on replacements and puncture repairs. Indeed, I was beginning to suspect that somebody had it in for me. Eventually, following some additional minor costs such as a fix to an electrical problem during the car's MOT retest, a replacement Euro-style number plate for the one cracked at the front some months earlier, and a new distributor cap and rotor arm, 2008 was going to see considerable further investment in the car as I set to work with a bunch of new tools and equipment, one item of which was an angle grinder.

I'd never used an angle grinder before and am not particularly keen on doing such work. Nevertheless, I was all kitted out in overalls, goggles, ear plugs, dust mask and gloves, grinding back all the rusty paintwork to the bare metal underneath. The sill section on the driver side was my main concern, though a few patches on the lower rear wing and the A-frame section behind the front wheel also needed some attention.

The picture above demonstrates the scale of the task I was facing in the nastiest area of all, below the rear passenger door at the join of the rear wing. The metal was so rotten that it flaked away in my hand and left huge holes. Also visible in the above photo is a big hole on the floor area inside the door. This was a result of years of water entering around the boot seams and running down the length of the boot floor before collecting at this spot.

Many days of back-breaking work, due to laying on a cushion working upwards whilst sanding and performing other tasks, was required to get all this sorted. My back was so bad after each day that I could not stand up straight and I could barely walk. The above image shows a final splodge of filler being applied to one area that was not quite flat after the previous layers had been sanded.

The total length of the sill section was stripped and sanded before being painted, as seen above, whilst the picture below shows the nicely tidied up section underneath the rear quarter window, repaired by Derek previously. Contrast this with images taken in recent years of the driver's side, where an ugly patch of rot could be seen clearly developing.

So, after these many sequences of slog, I slapped on a layer of grey primer using a brush, in order to provide the car with adequate - if temporary - protection. Application of a final top coat was not something I was in any rush to perform, since various other areas of bad bodywork exist around the car, and I would prefer to consider a complete respray once all these other areas are touched up, should I be able to find the time. Indeed, I was in something of a rush to get all this work finished before the colder, darker days of autumn fell, and the wet and windy weather began to take hold on the car whilst it sat exposed for another winter.

Looking at the above image, therefore, it might seem like pretty much everything is done according to my plan, but you'd be wrong. I hadn't counted on the sad ranks of the nation's tedious curtain-twitchers foiling my plans and hard work. Just like many years ago, when damage was caused to my previous R4, Nicolexia, by a Salford City Council worker whilst I was in the process of restoring her bodywork, I now encountered another humbling example of local services twittery. This time, I had my car parked in the Hanover district of Brighton, where I often left it for the day whilst working in the town. When I returned, I found a notice on my windscreen from the county fire service, stating that they had cleaned the road due to leaking fuel from my car. The notice unhelpfully advised:

1. not 'parking the car on a steep camber', which it wasn't - the road was completely flat; and
2. not 'overfilling the petrol tank', which I hadn't - it was only two thirds' full.

Coincidentally, or not, some rotten old bore appeared at his door behind me confirming the arrival of the fire brigade earlier in the day. The streets in this area have terraced houses fronting directly onto the road, and residents often get narked at whoever decides to park in front of their window, due to the lack of spaces available and the need for them sometimes to park several streets away. They get particularly annoyed when people like me park there for the day and go off to work in the town. We're outsiders and don't belong in their community, and we callously steal their parking spaces because the area represents the last part of central Brighton where it's still possible to park for free. Middle-England gits like this man are particularly enraged when they look outside their window and see a jumbled up piece of individualism staring back at them only two feet from their living room.

The zealous twonk indicated that the fire officers had lifted my car during the operation to counter terrorism, or should I say, to wipe the road with a little bit of rag. I enquired as to whether they had coincidentally been passing, and he stated, 'they were called', which clearly meant that he had called them. I could tell from his whole demeanour that this was an issue that bothered him, and there could have been nobody else both meek and bored enough to have done it. If I'd been aware at that moment of the full consequences of his actions, I'd have had difficulty refraining from punching his stupid, self-righteous, smug face in until it had a generally concave profile.

Looking at the above photo, the obvious damage doesn't necessarily seem that terrible, and that was the somewhat annoying reaction of some persons I showed it to, but the enormous amount of work and toil I had put into repairing it in the first instance now felt wasted, and I was furious. Whilst moving my car to wash the road for the benefit of Mr Community Safety Spokesperson, the fire officers had attempted to lift it using the very rear wing that I had just repaired, resulting in it cracking and breaking, as displayed. This was evident from the grubby fingerprints that were visible on the edges of the panel. I cannot believe such cretinous actions could have been performed by a responsible organisation. It could have been any area of my car that was damaged in the incident, but for it to be the exact part I had just spent so long seeing to felt like a great slap in the face.

I sent some photos to Derek at Renospeed to gauge his opinion on the damage, and whilst it is true that I had incorrectly filled the bottom section of the join between the sill section and the rear wing (these two areas should be separated by a gap), there can be no disputing the cause of the damage given the fingerprints on the panel, the knowledge of the car being lifted, and the fact that I confirmed the area as undamaged on the morning of that day, due to my still being in the post-repair zone of contentment which required me to marvel at my work every time I walked past the car.

I had also been in a hurry to get the repairs done due to my forthcoming visit to France with the car, in October 2008. The work replacing the front wing was put on hold until I returned, because I have come to learn over the years that even the most simple Renault 4 jobs never go quite as planned, and one or more annoying things always cause what should be easy tasks to take several times longer than expected. This turned out to be exactly the case when I set about replacing the wing after returning from Rouen, where I had spent two pleasant weeks studying in the Normandy region, which required little effort from the R4 due to the city being less than an hour's drive from the ferry port in Dieppe. Whilst I didn't snap Reflexia in the surroundings of Rouen, I did spot a few other fellow Fours, a couple of which can be found in the Mystery Cars section (#189 and #190). I also laid my hands on a Renault 3! More about that can be found on the News & Updates page.

Removal of the wing was hampered by the most common cause of consternation that I consistently encounter when attempting repairs, that of rusty nuts and bolts, in the most awkward of locations. Having been advised that the replacement should take around an hour, I spent a full afternoon just getting the damned thing off, and due to the new reduced winter sunlight hours, I was forced to concede for the day. The next morning, I set about fitting the new wing, seen laying on the ground in the above image, only to discover that despite being a standard and uniform R4 part, I may as well have attempted to fit a wing from a Ford Fiesta, a Datsun Cherry or a Boeing 747, since all would have been equally ill-fitting as this thing.

Eventually, as the sun was beginning to set on a second day of tedious toil, and after much hammering, twisting, heaving and cursing, I managed to get the blasted part in place, though it still didn't look entirely straight. The knowledge of how much stress was probably being exerted on certain areas of the panel in order to hold it in place was not going to make me feel so comfortable in driving the car in future. I have imaginations that at some point there'll be a big bang as the forces on the panel cause it to shatter. The above picture clearly shows the mis-match in height between the wing and the A-frame section behind it, most visible on the groove running at mid-height along the full length of the car. Whether this is the result of the new wing being manufactured slightly askew, or the previous one being slowly bent into a contorted shape by the forces of the car running during several years, I cannot be sure. It seems unlikely that the part would be duff, so I can only assume the latter explanation.

So, 2008 has been another fairly costly year in keeping the R4 alive, though in many senses I don't see it as particularly expensive compared to the sums most people spend on their cars' lifetimes these days. Aside from the initial outlay for a vehicle, many modern cars have mechanical systems that prevent repairs by persons not having the right equipment or specialist knowledge, and increasingly these fittings and the warranties that accompany the cars mean only main dealer servicing is a possibility. It's not uncommon for replacement of standard parts of some cars to now result in a four-figure bill, for such things as a new clutch. In addition, most of these cars are on the scrap heap before their age reaches double figures. Considering my Renault 4's twenty-four-year age and its almost absolute reliability, the sums I find myself forking out for its maintenance each year are still favourable compared to most alternatives.

The second-to-last photo above shows my new GB number plate. I opted for the more expensive version with the Euro symbol since I expect to be using the car abroad more commonly in the future. Although I would need to also replace my rear plate in order to avoid the necessity for the magnetic GB sticker, I wanted the GB mark on the front for another reason.

Some of you may have read a small article on this site about an unlucky R4 owner in my own town of Brighton, a few years ago. They had their car taken away and crushed due to an error by a council official, who had failed to realise that the car displayed no tax disc due to being a foreign model that was exempt from the requirement. I simply wish to ensure that no such thing happens to my own car whilst it is in another country. My trip to Rouen was made in anticipation of moving to France more permanently in the near future. More news on that (almost certainly accompanied by pictures of Reflexia in romantic Rouennais locations) will follow as events unfold.