Mend > Cars

Renault Clio 1994 Starting Problem?

My wife has a beautiful Renault Clio, 1.4 Auto, It has ONLY done 27 K miles.
There is a niggling problem, when we start it from cold, ie after a night in the garage, it starts ie fires, But Will not run, after repeating this a few times it will run OK, everything is fine,and throughout the day you can drive it as far as you like, and you can turn it off as many times as you wish and it ALWAYS starts first turn, put it away in the garage again at night , and in the morning it is back to square one ! Has anyone come across this before? and is there a Renalt Genius out their who can give me a clue? The local repair man has tried, but to no avail !

Rod Slade
January 2008

Renault Renault Clio Vehicles, Cars Starting Cold Miles

i have a 52 plate dynamique1.2 petrol, same problem. the problem lies in the rainduct that runds down onto lead 1 (yet another design fault of the clio) do not use WD40 as it is inflamable use either holts 'damp start' or any other dampstart product as these offer a protective layer which wont catch fire, they dispearse the damp and dry out the conections.
the damp gets onto the leads and into the coil pack which will affect the transmition. i was also advised to smother the pack in white greace to dispearse the water. other wise its about £140 to change plugs, leads and coil pack. try the grease and the 'damp start' cost of around £1.50 from Carparts Direct or Central Auto Spares

Good Luck

skid mark
October 2008

Is your garage damp by any chance? Don't know what kind of ignition system is in a 94 Clio but if it has a distributor rather than electronic ignition, it could be dampness. Try spraying some Holts "Damp Start" - or similar aerosol - on the distributor (if it has one!). If this starts it straight away then thats probably the problem. (Or you could heat it with a hairdryer (don't laugh - it works)). I had this problem with a Micra - which had a distributor. This was always a problem after a night of rain as the ground underneath the car would be wet. Once the engine had been running for a while, heat from the engine would dry out the distributor.

JD
January 2008