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1 Year in a Renault Megane GT220

I have been a little slow on writing the next installment of the ownership experience with the actual 12th months of ownership arriving in mid-June 2014. However as the car isn’t being driven much this 4 week lag really reflected a grand total of maybe 300km of driving!

The 6th month Review had seen us covering almost 7000km, which is a stark contrast to the barely 4000km covered in the last 6 months. So much so that over 25% of this distance was completed in a single week!

Operating Costs:

It’s amazing how cheap a car is to own when you don’t drive it! Fuel consumption is still averaging a low ~9L/100km in mostly city driving, although the usage pattern has a lot more short trips that are inevitably edging consumption higher.

Total Distance (km):	10706.9
Total Fuel (l):	994.28
Average Consumption (l/100km):	9.27

Average Fuel Price:	$ 1.73
Average Cost/KM:	$ 0.16

Fuel Consumption Chart — Fuel consumption over the past 12 months.

The numbers above are cumulative – that is based on the total 12 months of ownership – and I guess more than anything reflect a lack of change in the usage pattern.

Service costs on the other hand finally copped a hit with the required 10000km/12 Monthly servicing being completed slightly early in April. The cost was the fixed $299 Capped Price (Elf Oil used of course) and no other expense was incurred.

It’s a Renault. What has fallen off it?

Nothing. Nada, Zip!

That’s not to say there’s not been a few quirks that have raised their head.

Quirk 1: I raised it in the last review installment but as a recap the car was delivered without a fairly simple rubber seal fitted across the bonnet shut-line. This seal doesn’t appear to do much except prevent bugs and dirt from getting into the engine bay from above, for someone with a bit of a detailing fetish like me this is a good thing. At any rate the missing seal was fitted during the first service in April. I’ve not noticed any impact of this change so I guess I didn’t have to demand it be fitted.

Quirk 2: The stereo, OK another repeat from the 6th month point, it’s not great but the real issue is that unless it’s placed into “Driver” Mode the tweeters aren’t being driven. This naturally produces a flat and somewhat muddy sound quality. Unfortunately “they all do that” and until Renault realises that EVERY Megane Wagon with the 2013/2014 stereo has this problem I’ve found a reasonable workaround with manual tweaking of the Driver mode (including changing the LHD bias) to make it “acceptable”.

Quirk 3: It’s actually a bit of a precious flower when it comes to fuel quality, in my town everything is just perfect with Shells 98RON fuel, switch to an alternative brand like Caltex and suddenly “starts second time every time” for cold starts comes into play. It’s not a big deal but something to keep in mind – change fuel brand to something more to her taste and voila problem solved.

Fault 1: Yes we have a fault, just one, and it’s not critical, but it can be annoying. The passenger seat base has a rattle, only without a passenger in it, and most likely related to something needing a little plastic sleeve or bit of tape around it, but not having that sleeve or tape. Either way bumps on the road or a light tap on top trigger it. The entire seat base is most likely to be replaced under warranty.

Back to the Living and Driving with Question

Earlier this year I did a couple of solo long runs in the car, in Australian terms they were not that long – round trips of 500 to 750km – completed in single days.

In both cases Celeste reaffirmed by confidence in her dynamic abilities and tourability.

The trip out to Temora was a great run on rural roads in generally poor conditions, with the highway run up to Sydney later that week tested the carrying capacity, and the driver aids late into the night.

The Visio (Lane Departure Warning) and the Adaptive BiXenons certainly work together very well, and when I was dead tired the beeping alerts of the Visio system were a great “NO, Seriously you need to take rest stop” reminder. The headlights themselves are stunningly effective in High-beam and it’s sad to hear that the 2014 Facelift models don’t get the Adaptive BiXenon lights – even as an option – then again there’s no more GT220 model available in Australia either.

The “white” leather has remained surprisingly resilient to staining with any marks coming off during regular cleaning and treating with Meguiars or Chemical Guys leather products. It’s still a little daunting when chucking unknown fabrics into the car though – I’m waiting for the day where there’s some strange coloured mark left that just won’t come out.

The Carminat (Tom Tom) navigation system has been updated quarterly as new maps have come available. The update service cost me AUD69.99 last year and the next 12 month renewal should be a lowly AUD49.95 as long as I don’t let the offer lapse. The update process is a little clunky requiring the SD-Card to be ejected from the SATNAV unit, then updated on a PC before being returned to the car. I’ve no complaints with the system itself, and while Tom Tom doesn’t make the LIVE or RDS Traffic services available in Australia it’s hardly Renaults fault.

There’s not much more to add, tyre wear has been good, despite the front end scrabbling for traction due to the lack of LSD. Brake wear is minimal despite the heavy layers of brake dust on the wheels (Bowdens Own Wheely Clean works wonders) and the pedal remains progressive with good feel. It turns out the front rotors and pads are shared with the Koleos soft-roader so there’s a few options available in the aftermarket when the time comes.

The Forage – 5th July 2014

Hitting The Forage in the depths of Canberra winter is a cool experience, not only is the biting winter chill fighting through the layers of clothing but only the hippest folk in Canberra get out to these sort of events.

There’s a lot of that cultured hipster feeling that Canberra seems to do so well, the carefully manicured appearance of thrift and alternative so that it’s “an individual” yet someone exactly in the pattern locals are used to expecting.

Sure the battle for parking around the New Acton precinct can kick the evening off with a frustration – surely driving on the correct side of the road and following a few arrows isn’t that hard Canberra? However it’s nice once you’re in. Our first stop was the Peruvian Chanchito stand, my first introduction to such a beast and hopefully not my last. At $12 for a good sized (1.5 hander) burger heaped with pork belly and slaw, between a slice of sweet potato and a rustic roll it’s big on flavour providing ample fuel to ward off the cold.

We boosted our our inner warmth unloading a closet of rarely used blankets to the Vinnies Winter appeal, sadly it seemed so many of those hipsters among us forget the struggles of some and shied away from donations, be that of coin or warmth.

For the organisers there’s no doubt the formula worked, can it be repeated through the year as intended? Only time will tell.

My Mini-Z Collection – July 2014

Pretty much as the collection stands after unearthing from storage!

My Original Kyosho MR01 Porsche GT3 Body!

Back into Mini-Z

Well not quite but as I start to sell out the remaining stocks of parts (Check out what I have listed on eBay; http://www.ebay.com.au/usr/au.mih2) I’m making my fleet of (now retro) Mini-Z the best it can be.

There’s a few MR01, an MR02 and Monster or two in the mix. Some are still in storage but as they get unearthed and hopped up they’re going to appear here.

A tirade about Oates and Poop

There’s a humble invention in this world that serves a very noble purpose. Today that invention inflicted a cruel injustice upon me.

There’s a sense of betrayal lingering in my mind, I was betrayed by corporate greed and uncaring bean counters who obviously felt a dab of glue would stretch the supply chain costs beyond acceptable margins, a dab too far into the profit machine that is Oates.

I introduce to you the object of my ire, a shiny stainless steel wrapped tool, a tool my friends, thats sole purpose is to allow those of us who clean the dignity of keeping our hands away from the inner workings of the vessel in which we (and anyone who uses our bathrooms) poop.

Today this tool tore my dignity asunder as the head, like a bristly hedgehog if cleanliness calmly unwound from its shackles – or as it turns our poorly fitting screw in handle – and tried to scurry round that pesky S-bend towards the probably gator and piraña infested mystery that is the Canberra sewer system.

Dear reader I swallowed my pride and a cup of concrete, reached down and chased that while bristly beast, snagging it from the porcelain confines and restrained it once more.

I have done the unthinkable, the horror of realisation that I reached into a toilet, down into the that abyss where poop swims into a distant memory, not to save an iPhone, not save a Kitten, but to save a brush. Either I’m a great humanitarian or a fool, or maybe just a 39 year old dude who had to shove his hand down a toilet because somewhere someone decided a dab adhesive of would be the difference between profit and the total loss of consumer faith in their products ability to keep the place of pooping at a safe distance.

People of Oates, I salute your ability to be uncaring and cruel.

GT220 & RS265 Cooling System Diagrams

Now that I have limited access to Dialogys software I’ve been able to start working through the Parts catalog and establish what the differences are between the RS265 and GT220. So far as “the Internet” already says they’re the same.

From the diagram you can see the oil/water heat exchanger and the supplemental coolant pump to circulate water through the turbo under various conditions. To say the system is complicated is an understatement.

Over time I’ll get all the diagrams and parts lists working and maybe online. But his is just a teaser before I get the Perfohub conversion parts lists completed.

How is that going? well this morning I extracted the diagrams and over 100 part numbers for the “stock” GT220 setup. It takes quite a while as each part needs to selected individually and transcribed.

Renault Megane Perfohub Transplant – About

What is Perfohub?

Perfohub is the magic front suspension design that Renault developed to separate the drive and steering axis of their the Megane RS. Otherwise decribed as the “Cup” suspension option and usually paired with an LSD and Brembo 4-spot front brakes.

Perfohub Diagram — Perfohub diagram showing major components

Otherwise known as a “double-axis” strut system the basic principle has been used by Ford, Opel and Renault on their pinnacle hot-hatches to resolve some of the negative handling characteristics of hight performance front-wheel-drive systems.

Can Perfohub be retrofitted?

For buyers of special editions such as the Mk3 Megane GT220 there’s no choice to tick the “Cup” box so we get what Renault provides, a well tuned combination of conventional strut hardware and all that goes along with it.

These pages are the compiled parts lists and technical drawings to show the parts required for retro-fitting the Perfohub suspension, the swap has already been done by other owners – however they have used complete (used) RS265 subframes to achieve the swap.

Considerations

This is not going to be cheap, either using used parts or new parts from Renault.
There are a lot of “sundry” items that increase the costs. Things like wheels with the rather unique RS265 offset. Standard GT220 wheels will extend at least 15mm out from the body line!
You need to address both ends of the car, the conversion will increase the front track of the vehicle and a matching increase should be made to the rear – ie doing the equivalent RS265 parts swap there.
The benefit of Perfohub without an LSD can be debated – yes you will get less torque steer, yes you will be able to get better grip and cornering accuracy. Refer back to the comment about sundry costs.

Important!

I’m approaching writing this as the owner of a 2013 Megane GT220, a chassis that already has a lot of RS265 DNA – the brake master cylinder is the same as the Brembo equipped RS265, the gearbox and engine are the same and so on. If you have a different model you should research further.

The Parts Lists

On the following linked pages I’ll cover off the parts that make up the Mk3 Megane GT220 and RS265 front suspension packages along with the diagrams from Renault Dialogys.

About the Perfohub transplant (this page)
Mk3 Megane GT220 Front Suspension Parts – Parts Diagrams 1
Mk3 Megane GT220 Front Suspension Parts – Parts Diagrams 2
Mk3 Megane RS265 Front Suspension Parts – Parts Diagrams 1
Mk3 Megane RS265 Front Suspension Parts – Parts Diagrams 2
Parts Common between the GT220 and RS265

Panasonic DMC-TZ40 Mini Review

I’d only had the Panasonic DMC-TZ40 for a couple of weeks before leaving for my Malaysia trip and in that time had played around enough to learn where the basic settings were and understand how the WiFi function could be used.

As the camera itself is an “old” and now discontinued model there’s not much point in a full review, so consider this as a way of me reminding myself just how little I paid and and just how good it was on the trip.

One of the big reasons I bought the TZ40 was the Zoom, at 20x optical it was going to bring the action closer. Now in practice that zoom works well on a clear sunny day when the shutter speeds can be drop to deal with the camera shake. In practice newer generations of this camera and its competitors are going out to 30x zooms. I’m not entirely convinced that this is a good thing given the difficultly holding the camera steady enough.

The best zoom point for the camera is in the middle of the range though, the above shots were “easy” grabs and most from this position in the stands to the corner (a few hundred metres) were sharp and clear considering the hazy conditions.

When working with closer faster moving subjects the same middle of the range zoom point coupled with the burst mode on the shutter got me what I really enjoy – closeup clear sharp pictures. The success factors were again influenced by the ability to aim and stead the camera. So much so that I feel investing in, or making a “grenade grip” or large handle grip is going to be on the cards. That way the weight of the camera is better supported by the left hand while the right hand can guide the shots while triggering the shutter.

In short there’s not enough camera to hang onto solidly if you have larger hands, the same reason that makes the TZ40 a great travel companion is its downfall in these scenarios.

The huge amount of indirect light thanks to heavy cloud and haze cover did cause all of the automated functions some grief, the chrome finish of the Mclaren cars flaring out in most shots and confusing everything from shutter setting to focus points. I think had I not been relying on so much Automation I would have tweaked the Aperture and Shutter settings to specifically suit, however while the high-resolution screen nthe rear of the camera is bright and very sharp the lack f size still makes discerning these sorts of issues impossible in the field.

More conventional livery wasn’t a problem though with the mix of colours and contrasts being well picked up.

There’s really no true substitute for a DSLR at capturing super detailed pictures, but to be very honest I travelled to Malaysia with under 6kg of clothes, electronics and camera, I certainly didn’t have the space (or will) to wrangle more stuff.

The Panasonic TZ40 bridges the chasm between “good” mobile phone cameras with all their foibles and the new-generation of mirror less interchangeable lens cameras. The small external size packs a lot of useable features into a very pocket friendly package.

Overall I found the battery life to be very good, using a “power bank” to top-up the battery when walking around, having lunch and so forth extended the life and the change to the spare (at 199RM for a genuine battery) was completed quickly and barely interrupted use.

I had initially been using a Patriot Class10 32GB SD card which was “fast” enough for our DMC-TS3 indestructible camera but when filled I went out and splurged on a 64Gb Sandisk Extreme in MicroSD form (with adapter) to allow sharing with the GoPro. While on paper the specification difference between the two cards is not extreme it does play out in practice with the Sandisk card giving a faster save-time and consequently better burst mode performance.

At night the automatic Nightshot mode rarely faltered with the superbright lights and a colours captured clearly with minimal user effort. Motion blur in stills as expected but very little evidence of shake.

In bright light colour and detail are good, again this is a point and shoot (and the images are resized) but the level of detail captured is more than adequate for decent prints.

Overall I quickly became comfortable with carrying and using the TZ40 – I got good results most of the times I pulled it from the pocket and by contributing more effort on my part even better results would have been attained.

For the price of these super-zoom compact cameras I have no idea why some people travel relying upon mobile phone cameras to capture memories.

F1 on a Shoestring – What Went Down!

We are heading for a month since I wrote my last entry, at the time I was just 7 days away from departing for Malaysia onboard AirAsias A330 for the 2014 Malaysian GP.

Well considering part of the goal was to travel light I ended up taking just an iPhone 4S, a Kindle and the Panasonic TZ40 to capture the moments of the trip.

So first lets answer the question of accommodation; I stayed at The Victory Exclusive in Bukit Bintang. Rather than write yet another review here’s what I said on TripAdvisor. In summary though – the room had no windows a comfortable bed and was generally clean and functional and for the price I’m not complaining.

As with my previous visits Malaysia had me captivated with the pace of development and the friendliness of the people. In Australia we often like to think of our country as being “multicultural” – and for a anglo-dominated 1st world country that may be the case – but Malaysia seems to incorporate a greater mix of cultures, languages and lifestyles with a ease that I don’t feel back home.

For me this trip was all about trying to have a good time without simply throwing money at the experience. So I grabbed a Touch’n’Go MyPass and got around like a local on the Trains, Buses and Monorail. The added advantage was the massive cost saving compared to taxis, in 10 days I went through about 70RM (about AUD25) on the card and was on some form of mass-transit at least once! I can’t speak highly enough of the convenience of the system and wholeheartedly recommend any traveller to Malaysia pick one up as soon as they can.

F1 on a Shoestring – A bed for the (10) nights

With my budget drained by picking up options on airfares and the travel insurance I was now in the difficult position of trying to make the accommodation fit.

As I knew I’d be travelling with minimal luggage and only staying a short time I wouldn’t need the largest room, but I did want my own room, and own bathroom. At 39 years of age I don’t think I need to do hostel style anymore.

So I hit Hotels.com – we’ve been using it with moderate success to get good deals and to be honest the aggregators always have some sting in their tail – whether it is pricing only the cheapest night in the date range, forgetting about the taxes and fees or worst still having the links swapped in bait & switch fashion.

I’m familiar the “Golden Triangle” and Bit Bintang so that’s where I focussed attention.

My Hotels.com Search was delivering a good mix of results, and in the end after a lot of reading I settled on a choice between 3 places, chosen for their price, the reviews on Hotels.com and on TripAdvisor and the pictures.

The finalists were;

Hotel Al Jafs which offers a great price and fair reviews. The advantage here was being basically a hundred or so metres from where we’d stayed previously in Kuala Lumpur, within stumbling distance of Paper + Toast for the morning brew and great light meals.
Sky Hotel Bukit Bintang, again the price was great, moreso for the stated size of the rooms and there were some stunning discounts on offer. Location wise it’s basically on the same block as the Low Yat Plaza of electronics and gadgets – a plus – but also a wallet risking minus.
Victory Exclusive, buried in the Fahrenheit88 complex the key attributes are location nestled amongst malls and food courts and price that approached the upper end of my budget (I needed a good discount to get over the line).

I’ve made my booking – missing out on some of the deeper discounting – and choosing a room spec which will hopefully offer a little more comfort than the base level.

I killed my budget though. AUD652.50 spent.

For now I won’t say where – you can do the reading about each of the three candidates and when I check-in I’ll put up some reviews of the space then.

In my next post I’ll write a bit about all the things I’m going to do in the 7 days I won’t be at Sepang Circuit!