Buying a Twingo GT

[Didge3]

Hi, I'm looking at buying a Twingo GT because they're ridiculously cheap for what you get and even cheaper to insure.
I just need a cheapish runabout car that isn't too boring (hence getting a GT model).
However the one I'm looking to buy has 100,000 miles on it although a full Renault service history.
Is there anything major that goes wrong with these cars at high millage or are they pretty safe, I would normally rule out buying a car with more than about 70k miles on it unless it has good service history which this one does.

Also is there anything specific I should check before buying?
Thanks,
Dom

 

[LC]

Not many of us here have gone that high in our twingos so we wouldn't know , that's the highest mileage I've seen on one tbf

 

[LC]

Just remember it's a 1.2 basically, not designed for going over 110,000 miles which is the sort of mileage that problems start happening on most small engined petrol cars, also turbos, gearboxes and clutches do not last forever, which are your major costs aside from the head gasket

 

[Didge3]

Just remember it's a 1.2 basically, not designed for going over 110,000 miles which is the sort of mileage that problems start happening on most small engined petrol cars, also turbos, gearboxes and clutches do not last forever, which are your major costs aside from the head gasket

Thanks for the reply
I don't think small engine = won't do many miles is true.
I am concerned about head gasket and clutch, I doubt the gearbox will have any issues unless Renault made them from wool, gearboxes on low powered cars generally last a very long time. Its just had cambelt etc changed at its last service, all done at Renault again.
I'm not sure on lifespan of turbos since I've never owned anything with a turbo but I'd assume a low boost one fitted to a Twingo is slightly less likely to go wrong than a crazy high boosting setup.

I've never owned a Renault, I've had 3 Fiats, all of which have done me surprisingly well, only now is my £800 Panda starting to go wrong and that has 98,000miles and is 21 years old. Its gearbox and clutch are still fine, head gasket was done at about 80k miles. I would expect a much newer car than my 1992 Panda to last longer, the Panda is still going to be honest, little things just keep breaking and I'm a bit fed up with it.

 

[LC]

Just remember it's a 1.2 basically, not designed for going over 110,000 miles which is the sort of mileage that problems start happening on most small engined petrol cars, also turbos, gearboxes and clutches do not last forever, which are your major costs aside from the head gasket

Thanks for the reply
I don't think small engine = won't do many miles is true.
I am concerned about head gasket and clutch, I doubt the gearbox will have any issues unless Renault made them from wool, gearboxes on low powered cars generally last a very long time. Its just had cambelt etc changed at its last service, all done at Renault again.
I'm not sure on lifespan of turbos since I've never owned anything with a turbo but I'd assume a low boost one fitted to a Twingo is slightly less likely to go wrong than a crazy high boosting setup.

I've never owned a Renault, I've had 3 Fiats, all of which have done me surprisingly well, only now is my £800 Panda starting to go wrong and that has 98,000miles and is 21 years old. Its gearbox and clutch are still fine, head gasket was done at about 80k miles. I would expect a much newer car than my 1992 Panda to last longer, the Panda is still going to be honest, little things just keep breaking and I'm a bit fed up with it.

How old is the car? The oldest 57 would have done about 17,000 miles per year since the date it was purchased, so I would imagine the owner would be commuting 47 miles per day, so I'd guess most it's miles would be on the motorway I'd imagine so that's 35,000 rpm for about an hour a day, now some people say short journeys kill a car which I doubt the owner was doing I doubt the turbo was used massively with that said too, with a full service history and synthetic oil, cars can generally go into the 200,000 and onwards in factory simulated conditions without wearing the main engine components on a newish car, it's a risk but if you can't afford one with better mileage it's not a definite no no, older cars within the same budget will come with their problems too.

Full Renault service history = no expense spared and I can imagine none on parts on repair.

 

[oscar]

hi dom, hope you had a good christmas and welcome! 100,000 miles is nothing nowadays with the new oil compounds available. if the car has had it's oil changed at every interval or better then you're onto a winner there. in terms of the turbo, remember that the 'boost' capability has absolutely nothing to do with the wear rate of the internals as a larger turbo can spin more than a smaller turbo. on average, a turbo will spin at around 70-150,000 rpm ... so you can see that oil changes will be essential, but at the worst case scenario you can have the turbo rebuilt for 150-250 pounds at a turbo specialist and it will be as if it's brand new. this will surely beat having to pay a grand or more for a new turbo or 150 for an ebay turbo that may or may not work!

there are a few thing's i'd recommend that you look out for on such an high mileage engine. firstly, the big end bearings and shells on the crankshaft and conrods may become excessively worn, you'd notice this by a low end vibration on power but if the engine has been serviced regularly i'd rule this one out completely.
as it is a boosted engine regardless of power it's a general rule of thumb that the piston rings in a forged induction engine will fail earlier but this isn't always true dom. this can be sussed out by a pressure test (you could buy a pressure tester kit for not much money on ebay for example) take the spark plug out of one cylinder and insert the pressure tester in place of the spark plug > remove the fuel relay and crank the engine over and make sure all four cylinders are approximately the same. if one is slightly down on compression, insert a few dribbles of oil into the suspect cylinder and crank it over again. should the pressure hold, this would indicate worn piston rings as the oil has created a temporary seal ... this will mean parting with at least 700-1,000 quid for new piston rings with the labour involved! if you were to notice air coming out the exhaust in small quantities, or the inlet manifold this would indicate worn exhaust / inlet valves

on the head gasket front, if it were to fail between the cylinder and water jacket you will noticed the combustion gasses in the coolant expansion tank. take the car out for a test drive and wait fifteen minutes for it to cool down, open the coolant expansion tank and if you smell petrol / exhaust gasses in it then the cylinder head is no doubt gone. hopefuly that didn't confuse you too much, but it is quite simple really and could save you a lot of money in the future when buying or running high mileage cars

 

[Didge3]

Thanks for the replies guys!
The car is an 08 plate, with exactly 100,400miles on it so I suspect you're right in it doing a lot of motorway commuting in its life with minimal wear on gearbox and clutch hopefully.
The car has a full Renault service history so it should have been given the correct oil and looked after well.
I'm hopefully going to look at the car on Monday so I'll make sure to check for petroly smelling coolant and that low end vibration. Fingers crossed though that it should be a good one

 

[oscar]

Thanks for the replies guys!
The car is an 08 plate, with exactly 100,400miles on it so I suspect you're right in it doing a lot of motorway commuting in its life with minimal wear on gearbox and clutch hopefully.
The car has a full Renault service history so it should have been given the correct oil and looked after well.
I'm hopefully going to look at the car on Monday so I'll make sure to check for petroly smelling coolant and that low end vibration. Fingers crossed though that it should be a good one

best of luck mate, not that you'll need it. these 'FT engines have proven to be very reliable. i'm on an 08 GT also, only a wheel bearing has went shot in it's time and that's down to my spirited driving! you should get a nice surprise when you drive it. feels a lot faster than it is, when the turbo kicks in at 2.5k rpm you'll be left thinking ... yes!!!

all the best dom.

 

[Didge3]

best of luck mate, not that you'll need it. these 'FT engines have proven to be very reliable. i'm on an 08 GT also, only a wheel bearing has went shot in it's time and that's down to my spirited driving! you should get a nice surprise when you drive it. feels a lot faster than it is, when the turbo kicks in at 2.5k rpm you'll be left thinking ... yes!!!

all the best dom.

Thanks, if I go look on Monday I'll post my findings on here

 

[waitey]

Thanks for the replies guys!
The car is an 08 plate, with exactly 100,400miles on it so I suspect you're right in it doing a lot of motorway commuting in its life with minimal wear on gearbox and clutch hopefully.
The car has a full Renault service history so it should have been given the correct oil and looked after well.
I'm hopefully going to look at the car on Monday so I'll make sure to check for petroly smelling coolant and that low end vibration. Fingers crossed though that it should be a good one

best of luck mate, not that you'll need it. these 'FT engines have proven to be very reliable. i'm on an 08 GT also, only a wheel bearing has went shot in it's time and that's down to my spirited driving! you should get a nice surprise when you drive it. feels a lot faster than it is, when the turbo kicks in at 2.5k rpm you'll be left thinking ... yes!!!

all the best dom.

I never felt the turbo "kick in" on my old one and that was running just shy of 20psi apparently

Did feel the clutch "kick in" though :lol:

 

[Didge3]

I never felt the turbo "kick in" on my old one and that was running just shy of 20psi apparently

Did feel the clutch "kick in" though :lol:

That's something I was going to ask actually, what is the standard waste gate pressure, what are these little things actually boosted to?

 

[oscar]

I never felt the turbo "kick in" on my old one and that was running just shy of 20psi apparently

Did feel the clutch "kick in" though :lol:

That's something I was going to ask actually, what is the standard waste gate pressure, what are these little things actually boosted to?

edit - .7 bar!

 

[Didge3]

Well I viewed the car today. It looked good, condition is very good, minor scrape on the bumper by the fog light its so tiny you'd never notice. The interior is pretty good, the paint is starting to come off the buttons on the radio a tad but I'll probably be replacing the head unit anyway. Also the steering wheel is peeling very slightly but nothing major.
The car in question is silver which I wouldn't usually go for but it suits the Twingo quite well, especially with the rear tinted windows I really quite like the look of it.

Onto driving, I gave it a test drive of course, well, this made me about 80% sure I wanted it then and there. It really does go quite well, the turbo, although doesn't really 'kick in' you can certainly feel it pick up suddenly. The clutch feels a little too light and it was quite hard to get a smooth set off at first but started to get used to it. The steering is also a touch too light and therefore not a huge amount of feel for the road at lower speeds but nothing too dramatic.
However the car is still a delight to drive, engine noise is a bit weird, sort of sounds electric as you accelerate which is a touch confusing but it doesn't sound broken. Nothing odd about oil or coolant so pretty sure HG is fine.
Brakes etc work as you'd expect, no knocking or pulling to one side.
After my somewhat spirited test drive I decided I wanted 'A' Twingo GT, but would it be this one?

Spoke to the dealer, it's actually had 2 owners, one from 2008 to 2011 and then the second until now, surprisingly even after passing owners it was still serviced at the same Renault garage, including cambelt, tensioner and water pump at the last service.
In the end the dealer said he'd put 12 months MOT on it (has 3 months left currently), 6 months TAX and include a 3 month warranty. The warranty made the decision for me because it means the dealer is confident that its not going to go wrong suddenly.
So hopefully this Friday I will be a proud owner of a Twingo GT

Sorry for the really long post, my questions are,
1. Is the weirdly high pithed almost electric sounding engine note normal?
2. Whats the sound system like, anything special because its a GT or just standard boggo stuff?
3. It put out quite a lot of white spoke on acceleration on the test drive until it had started to warm up, after which this cleared, the smoke didn't have a blue tinge or anything like that to it, there was just quite a bit under hard acceleration, this nothing to worry about?

...I think that's it for now, uhm... Thanks

 

[oscar]

Sorry for the really long post, my questions are,
1. Is the weirdly high pithed almost electric sounding engine note normal?
2. Whats the sound system like, anything special because its a GT or just standard boggo stuff?
3. It put out quite a lot of white spoke on acceleration on the test drive until it had started to warm up, after which this cleared, the smoke didn't have a blue tinge or anything like that to it, there was just quite a bit under hard acceleration, this nothing to worry about?

...I think that's it for now, uhm... Thanks [/quote]

that's awesome mate, welcome to the dark side! lol.
with the strange electric engine sound as you described it, that will be the EPAS (electrical power assisted steering) i t sounds like an electrical grinding gear noise which comes from the steering column where the electric epas motor is. you will get used to this, although if you have the car stationary just turn the wheels fast and you'll hear it straight away.

from what i remember, the car has absolutely no engine noise, not that it's expected to have any noise being a turbocharged 1.2 litre engine. the turbo dampens out noise naturally and then the massive baffles in the OEM exhaust just crucify any form of engine note. i suppose if you get up close you could hear a faint burble. makes me think it's been so long since my cars been standard!
don't worry about the white smoke. the cars been sitting for a small period of time and has allowed condensation to build up inside the exhaust and baffles. this will merely be the car blowing it back out! the audios crap, but i'm not an audio guy though so if it plays a few cd's or my ipod im cool with it!

 

[Didge3]

Thanks again for the quick reply.
The engine is completely silent at idle, thought I'd stalled it at one point (which would have been very embarrassing) but nope it's just literally silent at idle. It idles about 600 - 700rpm too which is a bit strange for me, it doesn't hunt or shudder or anything so I'm assuming that's normal.
The dealer did mention it had been sitting since just before Christmas actually and my starting it was the first time since then, so the exhaust smoke does make sense from it being sat.

Think eventually I'll want a new exhaust, nothing loud but one with a nice note (I'll miss my Panda's exhaust note so much until I do so).
Quite like to put a temp and maybe a boost gauge in. Nothing chavy, just like gauges

 

[oscar]

nice one, boost guages are always handy. better to see what your turbo's doing than it is to just assume it's making the same amount of boost everytime and is a good way of indicating any possible manifold problems before they get catastrophic!

in terms of exhaust, my advice would be to get yourself down to a local custom exhaust shop. explain to them what you want in terms of sound, and what kind of exhaust tip you want coming out the rear and they will build it for you and make it sound exactly how you want it to sound, instead of settling for what certain other people have with the ''ktec'' exhaust systems etc. see at 5 years old, the OEM exhaust will be pretty rotten by now or at least will be closing in on it's last days. a brand new stainless system should cost you 200-300 fitted or about that, but offcourse that's a ''when the time comes'' thing and the best thing is that it will never rust!

there are some digital guages you can buy which are OBD2 connectors and work by reading live ECU data. you can select between boost, water temp, oil temp, idle mixes, fuel economy etc and the best thing is that you can then use this again on any other cars you may own

https://www.plxdevices.com/product_info.php?id=MULTDM100OBDII

 

[Didge3]

nice one, boost guages are always handy. better to see what your turbo's doing than it is to just assume it's making the same amount of boost everytime and is a good way of indicating any possible manifold problems before they get catastrophic!

in terms of exhaust, my advice would be to get yourself down to a local custom exhaust shop. explain to them what you want in terms of sound, and what kind of exhaust tip you want coming out the rear and they will build it for you and make it sound exactly how you want it to sound, instead of settling for what certain other people have with the ''ktec'' exhaust systems etc. see at 5 years old, the OEM exhaust will be pretty rotten by now or at least will be closing in on it's last days. a brand new stainless system should cost you 200-300 fitted or about that, but offcourse that's a ''when the time comes'' thing and the best thing is that it will never rust!

there are some digital guages you can buy which are OBD2 connectors and work by reading live ECU data. you can select between boost, water temp, oil temp, idle mixes, fuel economy etc and the best thing is that you can then use this again on any other cars you may own

https://www.plxdevices.com/product_info.php?id=MULTDM100OBDII

Thanks again, this forum has proven useful already. The plan will be to sell my old Panda around March which coincidentally is when the Twingo is due its next service, in which case the money from the Panda will go on a decent service (although not at Renault anymore, sorry Twingo!) and quite possibly a stainless exhaust system.

As for gauges I hadn't thought about going down the OBD route, heard things about only some cars actually working with a lot of these OBD outputs. If the Twingo is up for it though it'll certainly make that job easier

Couple of things I forgot to mention before, seems to have had a sub installed at some point, wires coming out from underneath drives side rear seat, positive, negative and a blue wire (probably remote) that are just hanging around, not sure if they're connected to the stock head unit still or not.
Another thing, whilst I was looking around the engine bay (certainly is pokey in there) I was actually trying to hunt for that tiny turbo, just couldn't spot it. Doesn't really matter but I'd be quite interested to see it (I assume its probably under some sort of annoying plastic cover though)

 

[LC]

My car shoots out tons of smoke if it's been sitting and obviously cold in this weather, it is silent too when it idles and the radio buttons show the same wear so it's nothing specific you'd probably want to swap that stereo out anyway I think people swap out their speakers for pioneer ones too, the electric noise is common whilst going slow too, same on similar cars the steering is ridiculously light but your confidence will grow at speed I used to think mine was bad at first but eventually grown into it

 

[LC]

Oh and I have those wires under my seat don't have a clue what they are for? Maybe someone here could tell is

 

[oscar]

nice one, boost guages are always handy. better to see what your turbo's doing than it is to just assume it's making the same amount of boost everytime and is a good way of indicating any possible manifold problems before they get catastrophic!

in terms of exhaust, my advice would be to get yourself down to a local custom exhaust shop. explain to them what you want in terms of sound, and what kind of exhaust tip you want coming out the rear and they will build it for you and make it sound exactly how you want it to sound, instead of settling for what certain other people have with the ''ktec'' exhaust systems etc. see at 5 years old, the OEM exhaust will be pretty rotten by now or at least will be closing in on it's last days. a brand new stainless system should cost you 200-300 fitted or about that, but offcourse that's a ''when the time comes'' thing and the best thing is that it will never rust!

there are some digital guages you can buy which are OBD2 connectors and work by reading live ECU data. you can select between boost, water temp, oil temp, idle mixes, fuel economy etc and the best thing is that you can then use this again on any other cars you may own

https://www.plxdevices.com/product_info.php?id=MULTDM100OBDII

Thanks again, this forum has proven useful already. The plan will be to sell my old Panda around March which coincidentally is when the Twingo is due its next service, in which case the money from the Panda will go on a decent service (although not at Renault anymore, sorry Twingo!) and quite possibly a stainless exhaust system.

As for gauges I hadn't thought about going down the OBD route, heard things about only some cars actually working with a lot of these OBD outputs. If the Twingo is up for it though it'll certainly make that job easier

Couple of things I forgot to mention before, seems to have had a sub installed at some point, wires coming out from underneath drives side rear seat, positive, negative and a blue wire (probably remote) that are just hanging around, not sure if they're connected to the stock head unit still or not.
Another thing, whilst I was looking around the engine bay (certainly is pokey in there) I was actually trying to hunt for that tiny turbo, just couldn't spot it. Doesn't really matter but I'd be quite interested to see it (I assume its probably under some sort of annoying plastic cover though)

on the turbo front dom, any work that will require the turbo to be removed is an engine out job. the turbo is located
at the rear of the engine (resting on the bulkhead almost) as per seen in this image below dom. it works on small wastegate pressures and isn't designed for power due to its size. being small, it spools up very quickly at around 2,300rpm which makes it very responsive and fun to drive. if you need any help or advice even if it's a silly question you're embarassed to ask anyone.. just PM!
this should also help you out. it's the renault workshop manual. your car will be referenced as ''D4F-T'',
https://www.mediafire.com/download/88pvx18nbrhipxy/Twingo+RS+Service+Manual.zip