98 Renault megan 1.4 56K miles - should I buy this car - parts difficult to get?

worded

Offered a car and I know the two previous owners,

Renault megan 1.4 - 98: Green

Good boot:
56K
Allright drive:
Asking 2K

> Are parts easily available for it?

BrianD3

Parts are easily available and not too expensive if you get "spurious" ones. The car is relatively simple with an 8 valve engine, the timing belt is easy to do etc. But beware of timing belts on low mileage cars, the timing belt on that car may not ever have been done.

skibum

BrianD3 wrote:

Parts are easily available and not too expensive if you get "spurious" ones. The car is relatively simple with an 8 valve engine, the timing belt is easy to do etc.

??

The timing belt on a 1.4 megan is not either easy or cheap to do. Part of the engine needs to be removed, the amount of labour involved is huge. If you go to a non franchised garage they need specific tools for the job. The parts are expensive, don't fool your self by getting "spurious" parts, if the timing belt goes, so does your engine.

We have a 1.4 scenic as the family car and when the timing belt was due to be changed I rang a renault dealer to price the job, it was around €1100 including a service :rolleyes: . Needless to say I started shopping around other dealers, they all came back with roughly the same price, I them tried a few of the local independant mechanics around, some wouldn't do the job, but I got a guy in Bray to do it for I think just less than €800.
While the car was in I dropped by to see how was it going, I could see the amount of work required for the job, a mate did the timing belt on my old MK2 golf and that was a very easy / quick job compared to the renault.

Apart from that the car has never given us any of the major headaches that other renaults appera to suffer from. (touches the nearest piece of wood )

BrianD3

A 98 Megane 1.4 is the E7J engine which has an uncomplicated timing belt setup. Later 1.4s are 16v and there is a bit more work involved. There may be more dismantling needed for a Scenic than for a Megane hatch.

I have just gotten a new timing belt kit + water pump fitted on my 1.6 Laguna 16v (very similar engine to the 1.4 16v in the Megane) at a main dealer, 4 hours labour it took. I'd have no qualms about fitting "spurious" parts though.

skibum

Fair enough, I didn't realise the difference, thought they were all 16v .

Blazer

Be aware...the timing belts for 98 Renault megane were downgraded from 70k to 40k. My first car was a 98 Megane and I was unaware of Renault changing the timing belt requirements. My one went at 52.4k miles and I ended up having to buy a new engine for it. Luckily enough I had a friend of a mate who replaced the engine for €800 from a crashed megane..engine was perfect after being rebuilt...
If you do buy this car insist on the timing belt being changed before you purchase it.

r0nn13

I had a 1.6e 8v Megane. Lovely car but the head gasket blew and was almost the price of a refurbished engine after it was skimmed and other parts replaced. Read that the 8v engines were "soft" and unofficially just used to keep sales going until the 16v cars came out. Wish I bought a 16v as i would prob still have it now, but that experience has put me off Renault for the foreseeable future...

Defo get the timing belt changed sooner than is recommended if you are keeping it for a good few years. Like the previous poster said it is now every 40k, i would do it every 35k just to be safe. Not sure if the water pump needs to be changed this often too though, but it is usually done at the same time as the belf.

worded

had a look at the car and on starting the car there was a squeal for a few seconds ...

The owner said that was normal, but sounded like a belt slipping to me.

Does this spell trouble?

Quigs Snr

The squeal is likely a fan belt. Not serious if so, but still its work that needs to be done....

Ceb

t-belt, 47 euro, if you have a mechanic friend theyll do this job for 100 to 150, the meg 1.4 shares the same engine as the renault 19 ph2 1.4 which i have several of, i got my head gasket and t-belt done for e150 on that one, parts are very readily available and are cheap as chips as they are still being used in many renault related engines, i say buy it as long as its not the megane 'classic' which just cant be forgiven for its looks.
in short
its very easy to work on these engines
parts are very cheap and will be available for a very very long time

t-belt e47, job 100 give or take, skim it 60 euro, they are just the prices i have paid obviously however this may vary, do not, DO NOT get it done in a main street garage as they will pretty much charge you more than your life, let alone the car is worth

2k is much too high a price for a 98 megane, the car is ten years old, offer 1300 or so for it