Bladder Transplant (Part One)

Mileage: 96,000KM
Do It Yourself: Yes
Difficulty: Average and time consuming

Salam Ramadhan. Well it almost a month and two weeks without any entry. Kinda busy a bit with daily tasks. My Pug still roar with RON95, but since first Ramadhan, it becomes official car for my wifey as the main transport to work daily.

Although I'm stuck with daily tasks but my weekend still free from anything apart from household chores. Moreover, the Pug has no problems so far (touchwood), and it also has another 6K KM to go before my next service. Emmm... why not doing another DIY project...

Today, the patient is my other car, my "First French Mistress"; well the Pug is the second and it kinda petite. Remind me of "Gabrielle Solis"; the first is like "Bree Van de Kamp" classy, perfectionist, cold but full of hidden agendas.

My first french car is Renault Laguna, Quasar (the first distributor was Federal Auto, then Quasar and currently TC Euro) imported around 200 units. Out of these only 20 units are V6 and I'm owning one of them (used unit, registered in 1996. I can't afford to buy this car "new" anyway, the price tag was around RM200K that time). So far I've only saw three units of the same model running around Klang Valley.

Enough for the introduction, lets start with the project. The Laguna has digital auto climate aircond. A year ago, I had coolant leaking somewhere in the engine bay. Sent to workshop and they told me it was the connector for the heater matrix. They said they could not get the part and bypass was the only solution.

"Kawan.... U bukan duduk Genting atau Cameron... kasi buang laa itu heater. Nanti aircond lagi sejuk wooo tarak heater..."

Decision made and I need to use the car at the moment (mind you, I did not have Pug at that time :)).

Well, what they said is true. The aircond is much colder than before but too cold that make my climate controller haywire. Too cold that I seldom use the aircond at night especially in heavy rain else mist will appear at windscreen. After much of study of the system, now I knew that auto climate AC need heater to regulate the temperature according to the setting.

Arrghhhh, need to get the replacement. So... the journey begins. Sorry guys, no step by step instructions because if I'm doing that, it will be another Haynes manual for you guys hahahaha.

Got the original replacement unit from France (bought it thru my agent) for RM1,600 (The original quoted price from "ehemmmm" was around RM3+++. Waited for almost 4 weeks to arrive. Amongst all the French cars in Malaysia, Renault hold the record for the most expensive parts price. You need to do some legwork to find a good bargain.

Another tip, French cars are the worst car when it comes to aircond design. Too many hidden screws and to access it, you must be flexible enough. Being a left hand drive car originally, the right hand drive suffers a lot of weird under dash design. A simple heater change, for example my car, requires a dash out job. It will cost me another at least RM500 in labor. Might as well do it myself.

Enough talks.... where are the pictures?.... Ok... here are they.....

This is driver side, the protruding bar is the steering shaft. Everything else, I threw in the bonnet

This is passenger side, messy wires need to rearrange after this. On the left most of the black plastic casing is the blower area. The middle boxy is the aircond evaporator sometimes called cooling coil

This is the centre console (used to be), the missing part will be the air distribution unit that comes together with the heater unit

This is the air distribution unit, the heater matrix is at the bottom (slightly ajar from it position)

So... I've spent almost the half day just to get this damn unit out of the dashboard. The heater matrix can't be removed because it was blocked by the aircond evaporator unit (it was my earlier attempt to get it out without the dash out job). A dash out job is necessary to get this thing out. I've to remove everything start from the centre running console, audio equipments, steering wheel and airbag etc.

My lovely dashboard, resting on the rear seat, bonnet filled with other things

This is the the heater matrix

Another view of the heater matrix

The heater comes together in one set of three pieces.

1. the matrix
2. the aluminum pipes
3. the heater connector

My problem was the hairline cracks found at the engine side of the connector (marked by red box), but I have to buy everything as they did not sell that part only. Bugger!!

This is how my car looks like (sorry for the quality, zoomed from second floor apartment). The white Kancil is now retired from daily tasks and it role was taken over by my Pug

That is all from now, to be continued insyallah next weekend for the fixing... Now I'm cleaning out the air distribution unit, it so dirty and need new sponge linings to fill up the joint gaps.