RENAULT R4 GTL  Year of Construction 29.01.1986

FRAME OFF RESTORATION

 

I bought this car the 8th of January 2015. This, when I decided to put the restoration of the VW beetle Cabrio on hold.

I bought it from a young woman in Maastricht, Netherlands. When she brought me the car she said that there was a noise. So we made another test run when the noise was getting louder and louder. It came from one wheel.

        The left rear wheel had lost one brake pad.

 

3.2.2015

I started stripping the car to take the body off the frame.

 

11.2.2015

 

    The housing is off the frame.

The state of the car is not so bad, but a full restoration is indicated.

Here are some expressions.

    bbb 

   

  14.2.2015 the motor is removed.

Interesting detail, filler on the frame    but there is no other damage to see.

 

20.2.2015

Stripping of the frame and cleaning the frame from body sealant. Here was the FEIN Multitool very helpful.

After stripping the frame I brought it to the sandblusting.

 

20.04.2015

The frame comes back from the sanblusting with a lot of new holes, but without any rust.

   

  The axle mounts are scrap-ripe                                                   

 

22.4.2015

To protect the naked frame from rust I primed it with "Brantho Korrux nitrofest". Also the rims and all the other parts form sand blusting after I primed them with zinc spray (Würth "Zink Perfect"). The advantage of this zinc spray is that it is filling a little bit all the little rust bubbles, so we reach a nearly flat surface.

 

 

                                                     

 30.4.2015


 The axle mounts I bought from "Der Franzose", but they did'nt please me so I built my own ones from 2mm steel plate.

   


   

Good to see in this picture are the inside reinforcements of the axle mount.                                                                           

  and here the distance gauge to keep the axle mounts on the right place. 

 

 

 

23.5.2015

 

 

It continues with the welding of the triangular plates and the rest of the chassis.

     

 

Now I made a great break to realize other projects so as building a home for my daughters etc.

 

19.6.2018

It was Tom coming to help me to work off all the projects I wanted to realize, especially this project, because Tom had just experience in the frame off restotration of his own R4 first series.

  We made the slanted foot plate (missing in the left picture) ourselves.

     

 

Further we welded the base plates parts

   

    

 

14.11.2018

Finally, we have again applied new body sealant on the welds and joints.

 

20.01.2019

Next steps:

 

01.02.2019

Today I finally found the time to prime some of the chassis attachements.

 

Monday, 11.02.2019

Today is the day of the R4 GTL again. So we interrupted our work at the 1968th R4.

Finding a lot of other parts to be sandblustered so I did it today. I primed the welded parts of the chassis and sealed the seams and primed at least the sealed seams again.

       

     

Wednesday 13.02.2019

Painting the chassis.