So, after a year and a half of building, we FINALLY got the Megane out on track, let me take you through our journey to getting there!
Chris bought the Megane at the end of 2021 as a personal project after seeing a few of our customers enjoying them out on track. The plan has always been to build the Megane using our brand partners to show off their products and for it to be a way for us to physically test new products brought to us.
This particular Megane is a MK3 RS Trophy, one of 500 made by Renault, it was destined for the Scrap yard in the sky, and we managed to save it!
Once the obvious repairs were done, we switched out a few of the factory originals for some of our associated brands’ products. Starting with the GAZ Mono shock Suspension which we created a short video of the process, you can view it here on our YouTube channel. We fitted a Wagner intercooler, opted for Mintex Brake pads (M1155 for the rear and F4R on the front).
The team at Rota got in touch with us to help them find a wheel that fits the Megane perfectly. Initially we tried the Grids, they were a bit ‘heavy’ looking for the car and the fit wasn’t quite right, we ended up with the Fighter Wheels in 17” (9J 5×100-5×114, ET50) which suited the style of the car a lot better. Paired up with the Nankang AR1’s, a b compound semi slick tyre, the exterior of the car was pretty much finished. Styled with our branding and a bold Yellow/Blue colour scheme mimicking a classic Renault F1 livery.
The interior continues the colour scheme through with a coordinating Yellow roll cage made by SW Motorsport and the Blue Harnesses made my LUKE, supplied by Corbeau along with the Revenge X FIA approved racing bucket seats. Other than that, the rest of the interior has pretty much been stripped out to save on weight.
Technology wise we wanted something to be able to keep tabs on performance, in a simple, easy to use/read way, we have recently partnered with Garmin, who make the Catalyst which does exactly that but without the crazy price tag of some of the data analyst tools Chris has used in the past in his own race cars.
In early July we booked a track day for the 16th August 2023, with about 6 weeks to get the car fully prepped and ready it seemed easily do able. The pressure was on last minute to get the last few jobs ticked off the list, it was corner weighted to set the suspension, which highlighted a damaged track rod end, which was obviously on back order, fortunately we managed to source one in the 11th hour, then whilst bleeding the brakes (last on the list) on the Friday night… it wouldn’t start!! The team stayed back after hours to try sort it, with little success, more hours were put in over the weekend and we thought we had it back but then it cut out again! Our magicians (I mean technicians) figured it all out and she was loaded up onto the trailer and driven off into the sunset, not to be seen again until the following morning at Brands Hatch.
A crazy early start, saw Chris, Nikky and Phil at Brands Hatch at 7:30am for signing on and briefing. I wont go into too much detail about the day as you can watch that here, ultimately we EVENTUALLY got the answers we needed from the day, as always with Cars, the drama came with it too!
If your looking to upgrade any of the parts on your performance vehicle, you can shop most of our products online, by all means pop us a message on Instagram or Facebook if you need any assistance finding the right parts for you!