Renault grand scenic 05

[phipck]

Hey guys and girls, so I’ve just finished my Xsara thread as I update what’s happened since disappearing from the forum around 2014 I believe. The close of my Xsara story rolls with the start of my Scenic story. 

So in 2013 my wife and I welcomed little baby Rayna into our family and 9 months later we had a crash in the Xsara, so a larger family car was considered to a company our family of 4 and all our luggage requirements.

Despite my wife eyeing up a blue grand scenic, me having had problem French cars in the past I point blank refused to consider another French car as a possibility and started looking to Vauxhall and VW to cater for our 5+2 ideal family car.

I didn’t feel the need to go for a full 7 seater at the time because although we often gave our son Logan’s friends a lift places it never really required a permanent 7 seats. However the insurance company were dragging their heels with the payout and being 9 months into raising a baby our budget wouldn’t stretch very far, it barely stretched into the reliable looking Zafiras and wouldn’t quite get a VW Touran. Either way the insurance company put a spanner in the works and demanded the courtesy car be returned before we had been given our insurance payout so we had just 1 day to find a car for as much as we had in the bank at the time and you’ll never guess what appeared in the paper that morning for £1600, a blue Grand Scenic exactly the same as my wife had seen at the start of our endeavour so mend and make do we bought the Scenic. I was not convinced but needs must!

[phipck]

I had for some time been making little YouTube videos and intended to increase my presence on the platform with my new/second hand car

 

 I don’t believe I’ve added any videos since for reasons I will expand upon elsewhere in the forum but I will continue shortly with the list of scenic tales :-)

[Tony]

It's a tidy looking car for sure...... I really like the look of the back.

[phipck]

There’s purpose to the design of the big butt boot design too as it gives a little more headroom when the hatch is up but there’s a couple of flaws. One is that rain channels across the hatch in it’s up position draining directly into the open boot at both sides which is a design flaw in my opinion and also as a personal gripe having the butt boot means when reversing it is difficult to gauge where the bumper/tow bar is because is extends further than the rear glass. You get familiar with it but having the glass where the boot ends does help with getting close when parking

[Tony]

I never thought about the visibility.... I take it, it doesn't have reversing cameras or audible warnings.

[phipck]

No, as an 05 model it doesn’t have any reversing mod cons. Of course I could install a system but in fairness I’d rather get shot and replace with something that has it built in. 

 

More to come

[Tony]

There are some cheap kits out there..... I was looking at some for the 360 since it's rear vision is terrible.

[phipck]

Yeh, I saw you  had bought the 360. I have a mk2 mr2 as well as the scenic so I know some of your visibility woes.

 

i think I’ll make a list of pros and cons for the scenic. It will probably help others understand where my head is at with this car

[Viking]

On 27/08/2019 at 19:00, Tony said:

It's a tidy looking car for sure...... I really like the look of the back.

It's a redesign of the Renault Vel Satis from about 20 years ago

[Tony]

Was it the scenic that was setting the air box on fire, or was that the Zafira?

[phipck]

I might be wrong but I thought that it was the whole range that took on a new image in about 2002? The Vel Satis was the flagship, the Laguna, Megane and the clio platform all got the same design treatment at the same time. 

Tony, I think it was the Zafira with the air box issue, but there are other issues the Renaults had.

I guess my pros list will include the following:

fuel economy -1.5 dci 6 speed gets a consistent 47+ mpg with my rural driving

strorage- if used as intended as a 5 seater and occasional 7 there is a good amount of space and many storage boxes .

equipment level- for its price like many French cars you get a lot of spec for the money, my 05 model has airbags everywhere, finger pinch protection on all windows, panoramic sunroof etc 

i can imagine somebody buying one brand new at the time of release would be quit happy with their bang for buck.

10 Year’s later however in the second hand market and you find many of the flaws

[Tony]

You can't argue with the mpg...... Arne't the rear seats collapsible if i recall correctly?

[phipck]

There are 5 rear passenger seats. A row of three independent  seats with recline and slide, then two boot seats that are fold flat into the boot. So not a permanent 7 seater, but handy. It’s built on the megane estate platform so not a huge car. The Espace  is the next model up and I believe the 05 version is with permanent 7 seats and is built off the Laguna platform

[phipck]

So I bought the car in 2014 for £1600, a couple of hundred more than I thought it was worth but had no other options.  It had a very slight puff of exhaust smoke on full chat that dissipated almost immediately which I put down to accumulated diesel crap in the exhaust and the brakes needed some work with disks and pads at all 4 corners.

having only owned petrol cars before I approached servicing it in the same way, tyres, oil and filters then sparks, although of course being a diesel it has glow plugs. One of which was badly cracked and caked in crap, a sign of things to come. I replaced the brake disks which the rears have integrated bearings so that’s handy, one less concern but a slight increase in cost. 

Come my first MOT it needed suspension joints on the passages side looking at, I thought the wear on the tyres was uneven down to bad tyre pressure but it now suggested it had been a suspension problem before I bought it. Not major and seemingly resolved for the cost of a cv joint or rod end (can’t quite remember). Emissions were clear but close to limits.

 

a week or two later and a injector seal lost its sealiness and power dropped right off. I could tell something started to happen because we all got sore throats and coughs the week or so before the car started to loose a little power and as soon as I could smell exhaust gas in the cabin I knew there was a bad leak in the engine bay.

it took probably 4 hours to extract the injector, clean the area and replace the seal. I had almost given up which is a rarity when I managed to free the injector.

 

[Tony]

I know what you mean with the fumes.... My old Vectra had a leaking exhaust and the fumes really get you..... Well done with the injector because historically they snap and that's a whole world of hurt.

[phipck]

It’s the sound that’s a dead giveaway because you can hear a chuff noise in time with the engine. The injector removal was tiresome and slow entirely because I couldn’t have one break. This last two years we have been very reliant on having a working car and breaking one injector simply wasn’t an option so lots and lots of soaking the injector well with carb cleaner on an already warm engine to dissolve the gunk, with fingers crossed and only using hand tools to reduce the risk of breaking.

A handy trick I learnt off a Pole, while not ideal, worked quite well. With the engine intact and having soaked the injector he suggested disconnecting the injectors wiring and undoing the injector retention bolt a couple of turns so it’s a mm or so removed then start the engine for a second. The compression and gasses escaping round the injector should help free the injector. While not ideal it actually worked, nothing on first attempt but after a second soaking and turnover the sound of high pressure pssst changed to a chuffing and the injector was loose enough to remove by hand.

a lot of cleaning the injector and it’s location in the engine and reassemble, torque to spec and hope for the best!

Over the last 5 years i have had to do the same on the other three injectors and none were as bad as the first. 

[Tony]

That's a handy tip.... I had to change the injectors on the countach but luckily for me NickT did it... Knowing what your doing helps, i think i would have snapped them all.

[Rich]

Sounds like you're looking after it well

I've not done injectors before, sounds like a nightmare if it goes wrong. There are some jobs I just won't try. The cambelt needs doing on my MX5 and although I fancy trying to do it I'm not sure I want to!

[NickT]

23 hours ago, Tony said:

That's a handy tip.... I had to change the injectors on the countach but luckily for me NickT did it... Knowing what your doing helps, i think i would have snapped them all.

That only seems like yesterday Tony! 

[Tony]

Yeah it does....

[phipck]

6 hours ago, Rich said:

Sounds like you're looking after it well

I've not done injectors before, sounds like a nightmare if it goes wrong. There are some jobs I just won't try. The cambelt needs doing on my MX5 and although I fancy trying to do it I'm not sure I want to!

If anything goes wrong on your driveway it’s likely a tow to the garage and specialist tools. Which equals big money!

ive always tried to keep ahead of maintenance issues as best I can but as soon as I realised why my kids and wife had chest coughs it’s not really a question of if I should get it done but when.

so with the injectors sorted we got to the warm months and I started to having start issues. The car would start instantly on the push of the start button but not every time. Initially I thought it may be a battery connection or earth strap but it became clear that the keycard itself was the problem. 

I searched online and found others with the megane keycard not detected issue and noticed my dash occasionally said the same. Solutions to the problem ranged from tweaking the keycard while seated in the dash all the way to sliding a knife down the side of the keycard and twisting while the key is in the dash. 

I’m not one to blindly follow suggestions and although some methods helped nobody seemed to give a reason for the issue. 

So i decided that despite being the only key I had for the car I would pride it open and investigate. I will mention I fixed computers for a living so am reasonably competent and wasn’t too concerned I would kill anything. Which paid off. It turns out that over time a couple of solders on the cards antenna crack over time, bending i your pocket causes the problem and the solution is to carefully open the card, repair the antenna solders and glue the card back together. Now I have a faultless keycard for free.