GTA V6 24V Widebody project.....

I think it's time I shared the story of my Alpine 'project'.
After 7 years of GTA turbo and Atmo ownership I decided in 2001 to find a decent Atmo car to modify and improve.
After some time I found a really nice car that had been sort of abandoned by its previous owner. In 2001, £2900 was a pretty good price for a car that today would be unlikely to make £1500. It was solid, well looked after in the past, had leather interior and no sign of accident damage. It was by far the best GTA I had ever driven.
Whilst I didn't have a clear plan for the car I suppose my influence were the RS Porsche models and the 924 GT Carrera. I guess I wanted to build the sort of car the Renault might have done.
This was what I found:

If I'm entirely honest, I'm not sure that's a photo of the actual car, but you get the general idea.
Having run it as my 'second' GTA for a while, I sold my turbo and sent the atmo to Ireland to a friend's garage to start work on the car.
Time has moved on now and I can't even remember the remit I gave him back then!
I think we were looking at big carbs, or a single big american carb, new exhaust, bigger wheels and perhaps blister arches a la 924 Carrera GT.
Then I swapped a set of Spider OZ race rims to get a set of Le Mans rims.

They stick out a bit!

So decisions had to be made about the body work.... blister arches like a 924 or Le Mans type body work.
I got offered an accident damged front end for a Le Mans and that swung the decision. Then I got a rear bumper off a breaker and bought the other panels from Politecnic. The inner wings are Gp4 Mini arches!
My friend did his best, but full body mods weren't really his bag, more of which to follow, but he got on with it:

Progress was slow, mainly due to lack of funds and nothing has changed there.
I also decided to get a set of Spax suspension from Simon Auto which lowers the car considerably.
The next decision was the engine. Having considered the big carbs, cams and pipe option - good power, crap MPG, I looked into other Renault options. I even bought a Laguna V6 engine to put in it which should be good for 200ish hp.
Then, out of the blue, whilst looking for a cheap local runabout in the Auto Trader, a Citroen XM V6 24V beckons to me.... £300 pounds later, I am in the Citroen Owners Club!
I ran the car for 6 months and it seemed a good engine (they have their issues you see) and sent it over to Ireland to be dismembered.

This engine is regarded as the ultimate derivative of the 90 degree PRV V6 engine. 4 valves per cylinder, and about 200hp in the Citroen, hopefully about 230 with a decent ECU and a pipe.
It suited my original aim of a powerful atmo, the ultimate GTA Renault might have built.

Of course, the engine swap was not without it's mishaps. My friend sold my old engine - together with the bottom casing and sump.... Disaster.
Then made up some mounts of his own to refit the Citroen engine. This was all resolved much later on.
Nevertheless, with a Mecaparts exhaust, Emerald ECU and a great deal of time spent, hey presto:


But as you can see we were still some way off, and since he'd omitted to put oil in the gearbox other problems were to follow!

Eventually, matters came to a head, and rather then cause offence I got Richard (Simonsays74) to collect the car and attempt to push the project on.
The only problem now was that I forgot to mention my lack of money!
But take it on he did. all the bodywork was removed (probably copied ) and refitted with the correct filler and alignment, quite a monumental job. The filler that had been used originally was not flexible enough for the fibreglass panels to join on to the polyester.
The engine was taken out and a correct casing and sump fitted, the gearbox rebuilt, the engine rewired.... in fact, pretty much everything redone.
David Gentleman was selling a fully reconditioned subframe - one he'd prepared for his own car - and our leader persuaded me to buy that too! Unfortunately, typical of this project, it wasn't that actual sub frame that got delivered, but Richard sorted it all out and it went into the car.
I wanted to improve the brakes and found out that the brembo caliper from a 406 Coupe fitted straight on. At £200 for a pair and with clio discs at £50 a pair it seemed a cheap way to go. Although spacers were needed to get the wheels to clear the caliper, it went remarkable well, so well that Richard has the same set up on his 'FAT turbo'.
By now it looked like this:

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[/url]http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i148/crugbun/27072008036.jpg[url]

And another later shot of the front brake set up:

[/url]http://img3015.photobox.co.uk/6162646245bb80895664672e6ef9b2f7cb79ddb5e44ddcf50ab4672f6b27763a29fe22d3.jpg[url][/url]

No edit !

Now it was getting close to paint time!

Red is okay... but I'd had three red GTAs and wanted a change:





I was a little troubled - I love the Le Mans colour and knew that a dark (ish) colour suited the body best. I'd always wanted a blue Alpine, and I do like the Audi blue colour....

and with a black roof!






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So blue and black it was....

Combined with audi chrome side repeaters and clear front and rear indicators... this is how it slowly transformed!

So, finally painted, and almost paid for, I decided to bring the car home to try and finish it off earlier in 2010.



Of course, it might look nice, but there is a vast amount of work to do.
The engine is still not really set up right, cold idle is awful and it runs very rich.
But the first problem is the rear brakes seizing. I'm certain this is to do with the new master cylinder and it's relationship with the pedal box.
Then the interior - strip out or standard - or somewhere inbetween. Retrim doors and carpets, headlining (of course), rewire gauges, ICE, the list goes on.....
I want to fit Air con too....
Door locks and windows that work....
A demist fan that works!...
But this year has been a bad one, a broken toe and knee cartilage problems has meant I have rarely been able to work on the car... in between rebuilding our house...
It's been a long project, and one I sometimes need to remind myself why I ever started.
Yes, I could have bought a nice Le Mans for the money I've spent, but I honestly didn't want one - I'd had enough of the turbo thing, they are just not quick enough with 175hp, and I didn't want to modify one because they are so rare.
I know what I wanted - and I'm almost there now, but that was nearly 10 years ago. I'm just hoping that when it is done, it will give me the pleasure I originally hoped for.

[BIG_MVS]

Nice thread Rupert thanks for posting

You will get there, the car looks stunning and it's a one off!

Keep at it

Nice thread, thanks for taking the time to put this up, makes good reading for all. On the ecu, is there any reason why you couldn't just use the standard ecu for the engine from the donor?

Thanks.

I think the ECU on the citroen is integrated with a lot of other stuff... but I'm probably wrong. My desire was to have the ability to easily (ish) remap the engine in the event of a low pressure supercharger being fitted.

Though now I realise it'd be cheaper to fit a Clio V6 engine if I wanted a bit more power.

One of the most frustrating things, due mainly to the car being so far away, was the number of little components that have got lost over the years. But getting there!

Yeap understand, but if you have the ecu and hardware I think you could get it going relatively straightforward. It's not impossible to remap the Fenix 4. Did you manage to retain the inlet tract tuned length system, or now set at the high rpm position?

Massive project Rupert, and well done to you, I'm sure you will gain a great deal of pleasure from it soon.