The Safrane.Info Forum!

As mentioned, you can use a leather dye which will vastly improve the look of the wheel. A little preparation before dyeing and then a good sealer (usually supplied with the dye) will do a very good and relatively cheap job. It would cost a lot more to re-cover the wheel but that is the other option. Of course, the steering wheel gets a lot of use so it's a solution that may have to be repeated every couple of years.

Well re-covering the wheel in the same quality leather and OEM look costs about £200 over here (which is about 1/3 of my salary). It can ofcourse be done cheaper, for about £50-70, in lower quality leather or faux leather with questionable stitching, but I don't want to pay for something I wouldn't be satisfied with. Dying the wheel costs about £25-30 at leather specialist. I'm not wearing any rings on my fingers, which is the things that damages steering wheel the most I think.

Steering wheels are out there for sale e-bay etc.
Renault clios really suffer from the steering wheels melting and its been put down to aftershave or handcream!
That wheel is the same as a phase 1 with airbag so there should be a good one out there somewhere?

I think there is, you just have to look in the right places and be patient as safranes are becoming very rare now. As V6RXE says... ebay... scrap yards... more and more safranes are going off the road now which means more parts - and they aren't worth much now.

I have two pretty good steering wheels in my own spares... but i won't send one to another country because it may get lost. Are you coming to the UK at any time? - I could help you then.

most of safranes have 300+ thousand kilometers here and steering wheels in those cars are worn out. good examples are not being broken apart. if you see some on ebay for reasonable price let me know, but I guess shipping would be too expensive. I'm not coming to UK anytime soon I guess... I would be happy if I manage to travel anywhere out of Croatia anytime soon.



anyway, I finally picked up my car. bill was not so high, about £350. they didn't change everything I planned to because there was no need (spark plugs, oil, filters, engine mounts). water pump, belts, tensioners, dash bulbs, broken door handle, heater have been replaced. they also found the problem with rear suspension that caused pulling to the side - one adjusting rod is bent, so they have temporarily adjusted the tracking to eliminate it, until I source the replacement.



they also mounted the rear spoiler which improved the looks of rear end. alloy "steel" wheels from laguna II were mounted with winter tires, although they needed to drill out the holes from M12 to M14 to suit. since the tires were really bad (fronts Starfire??? and rears worn out protected (is this right expression?) tires), I treated myself to new Michelin Alpin 5 195/65/15 for £200 altogether.

it turns out my car has heated windscreen which is connected and half of it is not working (left hand side), but I don't have button to turn it on, I guess climate control panel has been changed at some point. does anyone know if new heated windscreen is still available somewhere? I could buy used ph1 climate control panel with heated windscreen button from scrapyard, but I'm not sure if it fits.

one water hose exploded on test drive, I guess because now the pressure in the system is finally right with no leaks, and hoses are old and fragile. that was temporarily fixed, I will change them all when the car is LPG converted.

with all the work done and most things functioning right, the car is finally real joy to drive, it pulls about 30% percent better then when I bought it. I thought about converting to 17", but now I've given up, I think it would compromise the ride quality too much. 15" for winter set and 16" for summer with factory tires is just about right.

Careful with that rear tracking rod... if it's one of the removable parts you'll be fine... but if it is the part nearest the centre of the car the entire subframe will need to be removed (and you'll likely need new brake lines at that point). I've just had to do this myself. The track rod can only be unbolted with the frame down as the petrol tank blocks the nuts / bolts.

From what I saw it should be the outermost part and I could change the threaded part also.

In other news yesterday it was -12°C here, everything is covered in snow.



I would normally avoid using the car in such bad conditions, but I had to pick up some parts for my friends peugeot 504. On the way back I noticed strong smell of petrol in cabin. I have read that some owners had this problem, but no solutions, except the one that was written by Saffles (leaky rubber-steel pipe join). How do you take the engine cover off?

If you have the heated screen under the scuttle trim there is a large wiring connector in the middle of the lower screen,and on both very bottom corners there are earth straps,small ones with a 10mm bolt that attaches near the bonnet hinges,make sure these are all fine,also is it a heated screen for sure,can you see the heating elements in the actual windscreen.
Not sure if you can use a Phase 1 panel in a phase 2,i know the buttons and symbols are slightly different to look at.
If you can,t get on let me know as i think i have a spare or Saffles might but a heated Phase2 screen in the UK was rare as it was standard on a Phase 1 V6.

I can see the heating elements and it is connected up like it should be. The screen itself has partially de-laminated so half of it is not working, and also white mist can be seen around the edges of this half, I guess it's the water trapped between the layers.



I'm not sure what is the function of the button that has sun symbol on it? ph1 doesn't have it. Also I have noticed that ph2 panel self diagnostic has few more error checks than ph1.

You should... they are terrible on ice. They have a seriously heavy engine and gearbox but that makes absolutely no difference on black ice - trust me.. i have first hand experience of loosing control of a safrane on ice... and it then smacked into a volvo 740 estate. It got rebuilt (took me 4 days) but I would avoid driving on snow / ice again at all costs - I'd rather use the bus!



The engine cover (2.5 volvo unit) has 4 torx screws holding it on... i think they're T15 or T20 size... but you need a long stem on the screwdriver to reach down to them:



Once you've got those undone it just lifts off - no fiddly clips etc.

This is where you will find the fuel pipes - underneath the cover:



There are two... one is incoming fuel, the other is the return pipe. From memory, the incoming fuel is slightly higher than the return pipe:




Check both for any signs of cracking - do it when the engine is running and the fuel pump is active - if you see the slightest sign of damp, that is petrol leaking out (it evaporates in seconds so you need the pump running):



If you do find it is leaking (even a tiny leak will stink in the cabin) then remove it, cut off the bad bit (about 1 cm should do it) and put it back on again.



The sun button is for very sunny days when it is hotter than normal - it is supposed to make the air conditioning work a bit harder but in honesty, i never noticed any real difference! It might have a better effect if you're sitting in traffic but i never bothered using it.