Hi up from the North!

[TheFinn]

Hello all fellow Meganistes!

My name's Juha aka TheFinn and I come from Finland as the name suggests. Not the Finland station (spelling?) as in the Pet Shop Boys song, but the country Finland. A small(ish) town 'bout a 100 km north of Helsinki is where I dominate the streets.

I'm slowly but sadly approaching my mid-30s and haven't had the pleasure of owning anything but Renaults so far. Even my parents always used to have Renaults although now they've bought a Peugeot 407. So the 'sickness' runs in the family...

My car history so far: Renault 12 L ´79 - Renault 9 GTL ´82 - Renault 9 TC ´83 - Renault 19 GTS '90 - Twingo ´00 - and...

Mégane 2,0 16V Confort Expression 5dr ´03!

Bought it about a month ago (25.5.2007) with 66,000 km on the odo, I'm the second owner. The Twingo was a great little car with character to spare, but for longer journeys I finally wanted something quieter and 'a bit' more powerful. Mind you, the Twingo put out a respectacle 58 bhp...

Some facts about the car:
First registered 4/2003
Type BM0U
1998 cm³ / F4R / 99 kW
6-speed manual (ND0)
ASR+ESP+CSV
Confort option package
Expression styling package
Manual A/C
Cruise control
Tuner List CD
17" Nervasport

Here are some photos from the second day of my ownership snapped at the French Visit '07, the annual season opener for the French car nutters here in Finland.







I modded my Twingo to a certain degree and the Mégane will follow the same route. So far I've only fitted an aftermarket HID kit (yes it's strictly speaking illegal in Finland, too) and ordered a new Pioneer DEH-P55BT headunit + iPod adapter to replace the original Tuner List and its pathetic FM reception. Lowering, bigger wheels and possibly an RS replica front will follow next year, but I intend to keep my mods as 'elegant' as possible, as I'm past those wild teen years when extreme is everything.

I've already found useful info on this site eg on ice installs, and will probably be a regular visitor. Thanks for a great forum!

[robznet]

Hi Juha aka TheFinn!!!

Welcome to the club

Nice looking Meg, hope you enjoy it!

Regards

Rob

[TJM]

Kiva saada lisää suomalaisia joukkoon

[Basenji]

Nice to click you.
zdrówko

[navid.v]

Hi and welcome to the club

[m.bedforth]

Welcome Juha. What a nice shiny car. Can we all come and see you - it looks cool up there. Good luck with all your mods.

[m.bedforth]

sorry pressed button twice.

[andspenka]

Hello welcome along

[Stranger]

Hello Juha and welcome along

[TheFinn]

UPDATE:

Tuner List out, Pioneer in:










Everything back together and fired up:





I still have to do something about the antenna though as the radio reception is still very poor even with the new Pioneer! My guess is that either 1) there's no power coming to the antenna amplifier, 2) the power connectors have been corroded or 3) the antenna connector has corroded. Either way, it's a roof lining out job which is a real pain in the sitting down department... I checked the thread on the roof aerial base outside but there was no corrosion whatsoever.

[funkythumbs42]

wow that looks awesome really nice!!

would that head unit work with a connects2 ipod adapter which i have connected to my standard renault tuner list?

greg

[Jonault]

Have you had any extra sound insulation fitted to counter-act the road/tyre noise and wind noise.

[TheFinn]

wow that looks awesome really nice!!

would that head unit work with a connects2 ipod adapter which i have connected to my standard renault tuner list?

greg

Thanks!

Sorry don't have any experience about connects2 products so can't say.

Have you had any extra sound insulation fitted to counter-act the road/tyre noise and wind noise.

Not yet, but am going to fit some myself. I'm thinking maybe Dynamat Extreme for the doors, doorcards and rear wheelwells (vertical surfaces), and 4 mm bitume mat for boot and rear passenger floors (horizontal surfaces).

[TheFinn]

I just realised I haven't posted any updates of the progress on my car in this thread for over a year! That's going to be corrected now....

First of all: Pioneer is out, Tunerlist is in! I wasn't happy with how the steering wheel control adapter behaved (it was extremely sluggish) so I swapped back to the standard headunit. With the addition of the Renault Tunepoint that adds aux/usb/iPod connectivity. Here's the Tunepoint box fitted inside the glovebox:



The Tunerlist has a very poor radio reception even with the standard long aerial, so I thought I'd finish off the misery with an even worse aerial:



Who gives an F about the quality of reception as long as it looks good....

Next on the agenda was installing chrystal clear rear lights, genuine Renault aftermarket thingies. Unfortunately(?) no pics of fitting them, but you'll see them in the pictures that follow a little further down. I modified them a little by swapping the orange indicator bulbs for Philips Silvervision ones and the red foglight bulb for a generic Chinese chrome coated one.

The original halogen headlights were then swapped for original xenon headlights. It isn't a straight swap and required quite a lot of research, trial and even error before everything functioned satisfactory. It all started by sourcing a pair of brand new Valeo headlights:



I also needed a pair of xenon ballast / beam aim control boxes that bolt the the bottom of the headlights. These were sourced as second hand through eBay, they were affordable but the other one turned out to be of an older model and not having the aim control feature! Oh well, you live and learn... I've just managed to source an unused, original Megane 2 control box however, so everything should be hunky-dory now. Here are the boxes I originally got:



Even the headlight electrical connectors are different for halogen and xenon equipped Meganes, so those had to be changed as well. Renault naturally doesn't sell the connectors separately, only as part of an extortionately priced front wiring loom. Luckily similar connectors can be bought from Saab:



Then it was just a matter of slightly modifying the existing wire loom:



I also added height sensors for the front and rear axles, plus a new rheostat unit for the dashboard. The latter hasn't got a thumbwheel for manually adjusting the headlight aim as this function is taken over by the control boxes.



I then fitted the coilover kit:



Here the car is pictured early in the spring, freshly lowered and still with the original 17" Nervasport alloys:







Then, late in April, a much anticipated delivery from Belgium was received:



Some fresh alloys and Continental ContiSportContact3 tyres:



After carefully protecting the wheels with some wax it was time to put them on the car, in the first picture you can also spot the new xenon headlights:





Then drove to a local marina to snap some pics in the setting sunlight:









Last winter I had bought some LED daytime running lights through eBay, in July I finally got round to installing them. I removed the quite useless original foglights and put the DRLs in their place. I wanted to fit the DRLs using the original foglight fitting points on the bumper so I fashioned some adapter plates from a 3mm aluminium plate:



















I've also added some wheel spacers to bring out the wheels closer to the arches:

[wanda]

Should have told me you changed it. I was looking for your car in finland

Very nice