Project Phoenix
 

Car: Renault Megane Coupe 2.0 16v F7R

History: This car was manufactured in 1999 and with one previous owner and i bought it in 2005 with 55k on the clock as a standard Monaco Blue Coupe from Newport South Wales for a total of £2600. Since then its gone through many changes as i will explain in the next few posts. The car is always covered / garaged and engine is on 69k at current! I hope you enjoy my project log and welcome to all opinions, good and bad :)

When i first bought the car:

1.

• Lowered 40mm front and rear
• Full Scorpion 4" Exhaust System
• Renault Mudflaps
• GB Number Plates

2.

• Full Set of Hydraulic Tappets
• Pipercross Induction Kit
• Aluminium Tax Disc Holder
• Aluminium Gear Knob

3.

• All Calipers painted red
• 18" Kei Racing Force 8s

4.

• Keis Resprayed White

5.

• Astra Mk4 Spoiler
• Angel Eye Lights
• Respray Quote- 1900 for all the work inc paint and all the little mods ive asked him to do.....car booked in for April the 25th.....said he will do me a progress CD so ill see what the car looked like in stages..

6.

• Car Respray Pictures

7.

• Richbrook Door Plates
• L.E.D Underground Neon Blue Lights

8.

• 17" Rotaspeed white alloys
• 45mm front lowered

• Black Mesh added to front

9.

• French Metal Number Plates
• New Front Bumper - as i wasn't happy with the Rally giant lights on the front
• Phase 2 Rear Lights

10.

• Coilovers
• 17" Gold Torque alloys

11.

• The gold Torque alloys were refurbished white and the car was taken to its first car show, the French Car Show. Along with this mod the car was given a full service dated and stamped also a new MOT, Tax....finally polished in a full week ready for the show

12.

• During the summer the car was once again SORN'ed, reason being i felt the car needed to go a different direction, so out comes the tools and i started to strip the car....the white wheels were sold

13.

Front/Rear end refurbed behind the bumpers

Before:



After:

14.

• Arches front and rear refurbed and hammerited

• My car was also in the Performance French Cars :)

15.

• New 16" Schmidt Modern-Lines

16.

• Sanded, primered and black hammerited the boot today, also stripped all the seats out

17.

• 25mm hubcentric spacers for the rear

18.

• The car had a full underbody (arches/chassis) sealent with waxoyl

19.

• Better pictures of the car with the rear 25mm spacers on.

And now i introduce you Phoenix! Following mods were done to the car during the last 9 months:

• Full new respray in Morello Red (new shape Ford Fiesta colour)
• Satin black roof with a hint of blue tinge
• Roof rails sprayed black
• Black smaller diamond mesh for front end
• Chrome side repeaters
• Both rear arches were cut about 5mm around the edge and rust proofed (so that 25mm spacers wont cause tyres to rub on arches)
• Ariel / Rear jet washer / Badges removed and smoothed
• Front bottom bumper line smoothed
• Front bumper fogs removed and smoothed
• Rear bottom bumper line smoothed
• Rear boot button circle (where key is inserted) flushed in
• Front dash sprayed black
• Battery compartment & under scuttle panel rust proofed and sprayed
• All black plastics exterior wise sprayed black
• GB pressed number plates
• Bosch Aero-wipers
• Richbrook sills
• Richbrook Handbrake cover and gaiter
• Gearknob gaiter
• OMP Boss kit
• After market steering wheel
• LED rear number plate bulbs
• Chrome Dial rings
• New splitter from Renault
• Two tone snail disc air horns (pair)

The paint wasn't crystal clean when the car came back from the bodyshop so i hired a professional detailor to machine polish the car to get rid of any light scratches or swirls that were caused by the bodyshop buffering after the respray. I was very happy with the result :)

The car looks black in the pictures as the sun had gone down, but i will get some better pictures (including the new steering wheel and black dash) in the sun in the week to show the real colour :)

All opinions good and bad welcome.

And back in my garage:



Im addicted to the machine polishing now so leaving the car alone for a while and putting funds into cleaning gear :D Like i said i will get more pictures in the sun when i get the time :)

Wow, when I first opened the thread I didn't think youd ever be able to make it look as good as it looks now. I'm not really a fan of these but you've deffinitely made it something special and worth the money you've put into it :D

one sexy car. What is it like to live with, power, handling, motorway etc?

Looks amazing shane!!!!!

2 things mate...

Needs more of a stretch on tyres

Can I have some of your money please?




Lovely car man

WTF...i have some seriously mixed opinions on this

At first i was like ah i hate these cars

Then i seen your first wheels done in white and they looked amazing!

Then you changed the wheels and they looked just as good!

Then you changed them again and did them white and again looked amazing, i couldn't actually pick which set of those wheels i liked most, they were all amazing!

Then you changed the wheels again to ones i don't like

The respray in white looked amazing, but not keen on it now it's black (your thing says it's Ford Red though??)

As it stands now the car is so so clean, but it doesn't appeal to me much, and the front bumper is nothing special

But when it was white, even with the bumper with the big fogs, it looked amazing!!

So to sum it all up..

I hated it at first...

It looked amazing at this stage:



Still looked good at this stage, although i've decided i liked the previous wheels more:



These wheels looked better than the last ones but not as good as the first ones, and the bumper wasn't as cool:



Then at this next stage i started to fall out of love with it:



Of the 4 stages i posted, the first one is definately the best, looked sooo good! But whatever you like best is the main thing..

How much money have you spent on this car up until now? And how much did the car cost?

thought you said morello red ?
looks black to me haha

Look closer, you can see the red glimmer

Loooks great get the neons off though lol

Looked lush all the way thru bar the headlights. Just couldnt like the Angels lol sorry.

looks good this mate! what do you do to afford all of these re-sprays etc etc????

To be honest the car is never driven, has been in my garage for the last 3 yrs. From what i remeMber the handling was good with the suspension setup on coilies. Personally i love the way the Megane drives and handles

thanks mate, ill pop over this week to see the Saxo, we need to catch up :)

Was thinking more stretch but didn't want to go illegal tbh. And i have no money after this respray :panic:

Not sure what so funny but if you read my post above i did say it looked black but the respray is in morello red. Im sure the pictures below will confirm this!

Neons were out the windows years ago mate :)

I am a part time valeter, delivery driver, GP assistant and trainee doctor

@ Peter:

Have a portfolio and receipts add up over 8k. Car was bought for £2500 in 2005. And Peter thankyou for your input. White was a rushed decision tbh, every time i looked at the car and many white cars the doors always look a different shade of white, and it was the same with mine. I wasn't happy, hence the change. I may of gone OTT in deciding which wheels, but i like my current ones. I am going to try a set of turbines which are being refurbed white with low profiles to see how it looks like :)

More pictures as promised:

thanks for the opinions guys, i know everybody wont like it but i love the way it looks. More pictures as promised:

Ahh i see the colour now in those new pictures! Does it glow red in the sun, but is like black when not in the sun? Kinda like the black colour Honda do, where it tinges purple when the sun hits it, like on the Accord?

What are your next plans for it, any more wild changes? It's a shame you moved on from the white car with the big bumper and white Kei wheels...it was the nicest Megane i've ever seen at that stage, imo

Edit: Nicest OLD shape Megane i must add...the new ones are in another league...especially a white Megane sport with the decals :P