The 15/17 Register - My R15 Story so far.....

1973 Renault 15 TS "Covert" Ebony Phase III Story so far........

Ebony, The Metallic Grey 1973 R15TS has had a pretty exciting life to get to the stage she is at today. l bought the car around 1991, it had been sitting under a tree for two years and l bought her for the whole sum of $400 dollars, well including the grass growing in the roof gutters. At this stage l was driving my 1968 R16TS so there was no rush to finish her off, but over the next one and a half years l striped the car down to the ground and rebuilt it up for the road.

At this stage which was Phase 1, the engine was only mildly modified. She had a R18 bottom end, 1647cc with a standard cross flow 15TS head, but it had been shaved considerably to raise the compression. The distributor and cam were also installed, gordini spec of course. It was still running the standard single, dual throat Weber down draught carburettor but we had mucked around with increasing the jet sizes which worked out OK.

Now l started to enter a few club events, at this stage l still had a four speed gearbox so at high speed things were always revving up towards the red zone of the tacho for just that bit more speed. Ebony at that stage was running in various sprints at Calder and Phillip Island. My main competition at Phillip Island was a Alfa Spider, which with it's 5 speed box would pull away on the straight but on the corners, well l would catch up and manage to pass it due to the great handling of the Renault 15. Of course during this time l also had my father to contend with, he would drive in a different group, but also use the R15. By this stage with all the Club days, Hill Climbs between myself and my dad, Ebony was getting quite a work out. l was now learning the tracks and their lines, but one thing was starting to frustrate me, the lack of speed and power, l needed more and wanted more.

Anyway around this time l was unlucky to hit the back of another car driving to a friends house wiping out the front right side. It happened when the morning sun, directly in my face hit the windscreen blinding out all vision, when a shodow from a tree relealled a car right in front of me, by this time it was to late and Bang, the damage was done. This meant Phase 2 of the rebuilding stage would begin. During my last year of doing club events, during one event at Calder my whole left inner guard in the engine bay decided to split open. There was a one inch gap where you could look through, running from the top of the suspension tower to the chassis rail. This problem was one of the major things that had to be fixed.

With these past experiences, in Phase 2 of the rebuild l had decided to totally strengthen the front by seam welding the inner guards, and putting in some shocker tower to inner guard bracing. Also at this stage l put in a 5 speed gearbox and the engine got a set of 45DCOE twin Webers and a set of four into two exhaust extractors.

This made quite a bit of a difference as now this made quite a bit of difference because of the power increase. One time at Phillip Island l managed to spin Ebony 3 times as l came over a rise at 140kmph, l put my foot on the brakes to slow her down for the tight right hand corner just over the rise, but because the weight shifted in the car and as the pressure limiting valve came opened up, well all l can say was that the rear wheels locked up solid and all of a sudden there was a massive cloud of blue tire smoke as the Yokohama A008's proceeded to flat spot. Also at this stage l had included full koni suspension, progressively stiffened 25mm sway bars and 14x195, 60 Yokahama A008 tyres on Widened R16 steel wheels. So the handling was good, it now showed up how poor the brakes were and they would be the next thing l would look at.

So by this stage l had Ebony on the road for 5 years, She had been through many experiences and many a story had been told. Ebony had become as fast as a 17G and would was now able to give allot of cars a hard time. For instance on the track once she handled so good against a Holden Commodore V8, l could catch up on the corners and pass it but on the straight, well the power of the V8 just left me standing, but this racing was close as you always caught up with them on the next twisty bit. By this stage the engine was becoming very Smoky, well the oil was starting to come up through the oil dip stick tube, the bottom end was pressurising and there was tons of smoke for the front as well as the back of the car. So Phase 3 rebuild was in need, with various things needing to be upgrading again.

Phase 3 for Ebony was the most radical stage so far, this stage bloody hurt my wallet allot. This rebuild was to take 8 months in which in would have to have the car ready for the 1996 Grand Prix Rally and after that the car was to be written off in and accident where a car running a red light, drove through an intersection and wiped out the whole front. But due to a very skilled craftsman and another 3 months Ebony was back on the road from the dead where she sits under a car cover protected from the bad world.

But in this current Phase 3 Configuration allot has been done. To the engine l put in a totally balanced and blue printed 1605cc Gordini bottom end, Total seal gapless racing rings have been used to replace the standard rings on the gordini pistons.. The head was replaced with a Gordini head rebuilt totally with stiffer valve springs for higher revving. A new set of Extractors 4 into 1 tuned length and a new exhaust to a 3 inch PECO big bore silencer was put on. A oil cooler off a 17 TS was added with the fabrication of a oil surge pick up in the sump was made. The 5 Speed remained the same but l moved the battery to the boot and it now has a 14 plate 680 cold crank start Truck and tractor battery, for the extra starting power. The weber fuel lines are now all Earl's Aluminium braided lines and metal connections. The water hoses have been replaced with custom bent Stainless steel tubes and have Samco Silicon Hose ends to connect them to the radiator and engine.

The Koni's on the front are now fully adjustable with the spring seats now on a thread that can go up or down 3 inches. The body was totally rebuilt from the ground up again so now a full alloy six point roll cage has been added with the addition of the alloy strut brace between the suspension towers. Full harnesses and sports seats were added with the rear seat removed and replace with a alloy sheet to cover the back.

The dash is custom made out of aluminum and houses a 5 inch Autometer tach, terratrip digital speedo, Amps and Fuel gauges and various warning lights. There is another custom pod that has the VDO Oil and Temperature guages in it, this sits where the speaker grill use to be. The terratrip digital speedo runs of the probe that runs the terratrip 404 rally trip computer and by dialling in the speedo it should give me pin point accuracy, as the police and their laser traps are everywhere here now in the police state of Victoria. The version of the Autometer tach l have also has a fully adjustable Shift light that allows me to dial in when the light will come on, perfect for changing gears at the right rev range. l also have a Armtech Speedshift, this looks after the engine revs as a soft rev limiter, but it also allows you to, via a clutch sensor to keep your foot flat on the accelerator. It will then limit the revs to your dialled in limit, thus allowing you to shift you gears up or down without taking your foot of the accelerator, strange but it really works.

Now that the car was getting faster the brake area had to be looked at. A brake bias valve was fitter getting rid of the rear standard valve, a R17TS brake booster was fitted as well as a full disc rear end from a 17TS which helps allot as well. One other measure was the making up of front brake ducts and venting the air through large hoses to the brakes, Black Flash race pads have also been added to the front vented discs.

On the outside of the car l have removed the front over rider bars on the bumper and l have replaced the inner high beam lights with cibie oscar spots that help out alot, and you can't tell the difference from the outside. l now run Alpine A310 polished alloy wheels. Being three stud helps but you have to machine the front wheels to clear the hub bolts on the front and run spacers so the callipers will miss the inner fins on the wheels. But l also had custom made wheels nuts as there was some hassle with the studs being to short, the rubber is Yokahama A008 RS's 205 60 13inch tyres and they are really sticky.

Another improvement that made a big difference was to the engine bay ventilation. l first added a series 1 Cosworth Bonnet vent above the exhaust extractors, this made a huge difference to the under bonnet temperature and in the hot weather of Australia you need all the help you can get. l have also designed and built a duct for the twin webers that hopefully help with the cold air, it uses an NACA duct that scoops the air in where the design of the cosworth duct sucks it out, so we'll see how things go in the future with these additions.

So as you can see Ebony has been on one huge road of trials and testing, upgrading parts and finding out if different things might work on our older Renaults here. One of the next changes will be a totally new gear linkage and from there, well 2 or three large changes in the pipe line for the future. Hopefully soon l will have finished this stage and Ebony will return to do some sprint racing and hillclimbs. In the 1998 F1 Grand Prix Duttons Rally in Melbourne we managed to come a very creditable 3rd place in our class, many of the competitors did not even notice us, but after winning the award, they soon took another closer look. I think it was good for a 1605cc engined car in the under 2 litres pre 1980 class.

So now you can see what sort of life Ebony has had, in recent years it has felt like she has been in the garage more than on the road, but hopefully that will change very soon. You may wonder why do all this work to a 1973 Renault 15, and not a Alpine which has been the comments lately, and yes I own an A310 V6, but it's only an Alpine. Well it's mainly to show everyone what can be done to a 15/17, and to show people at these cars are hugely underrated and that hopefully Ebony will raise some peoples eye brows into having another look at the 15/17. l feel that these forgotten Coupes deserve some recognition, wether they be totally standard or modified like mine, l hope people will start to remember them and start to recognise them for the great little coupes they are. You may dismiss them but once you have driven one, you'll never forget them.

Bye

Volker and Ebony

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		`1973 Renault 15 TS "Covert" Ebony Phase III Story so far........`
Ebony, The Metallic Grey 1973 R15TS has had a pretty exciting life to get to the stage she is at today. l bought the car around 1991, it had been sitting under a tree for two years and l bought her for the whole sum of $400 dollars, well including the grass growing in the roof gutters. At this stage l was driving my 1968 R16TS so there was no rush to finish her off, but over the next one and a half years l striped the car down to the ground and rebuilt it up for the road. At this stage which was Phase 1, the engine was only mildly modified. She had a R18 bottom end, 1647cc with a standard cross flow 15TS head, but it had been shaved considerably to raise the compression. The distributor and cam were also installed, gordini spec of course. It was still running the standard single, dual throat Weber down draught carburettor but we had mucked around with increasing the jet sizes which worked out OK. Now l started to enter a few club events, at this stage l still had a four speed gearbox so at high speed things were always revving up towards the red zone of the tacho for just that bit more speed. Ebony at that stage was running in various sprints at Calder and Phillip Island. My main competition at Phillip Island was a Alfa Spider, which with it's 5 speed box would pull away on the straight but on the corners, well l would catch up and manage to pass it due to the great handling of the Renault 15. Of course during this time l also had my father to contend with, he would drive in a different group, but also use the R15. By this stage with all the Club days, Hill Climbs between myself and my dad, Ebony was getting quite a work out. l was now learning the tracks and their lines, but one thing was starting to frustrate me, the lack of speed and power, l needed more and wanted more. Anyway around this time l was unlucky to hit the back of another car driving to a friends house wiping out the front right side. It happened when the morning sun, directly in my face hit the windscreen blinding out all vision, when a shodow from a tree relealled a car right in front of me, by this time it was to late and Bang, the damage was done. This meant Phase 2 of the rebuilding stage would begin. During my last year of doing club events, during one event at Calder my whole left inner guard in the engine bay decided to split open. There was a one inch gap where you could look through, running from the top of the suspension tower to the chassis rail. This problem was one of the major things that had to be fixed. With these past experiences, in Phase 2 of the rebuild l had decided to totally strengthen the front by seam welding the inner guards, and putting in some shocker tower to inner guard bracing. Also at this stage l put in a 5 speed gearbox and the engine got a set of 45DCOE twin Webers and a set of four into two exhaust extractors. This made quite a bit of a difference as now this made quite a bit of difference because of the power increase. One time at Phillip Island l managed to spin Ebony 3 times as l came over a rise at 140kmph, l put my foot on the brakes to slow her down for the tight right hand corner just over the rise, but because the weight shifted in the car and as the pressure limiting valve came opened up, well all l can say was that the rear wheels locked up solid and all of a sudden there was a massive cloud of blue tire smoke as the Yokohama A008's proceeded to flat spot. Also at this stage l had included full koni suspension, progressively stiffened 25mm sway bars and 14x195, 60 Yokahama A008 tyres on Widened R16 steel wheels. So the handling was good, it now showed up how poor the brakes were and they would be the next thing l would look at. So by this stage l had Ebony on the road for 5 years, She had been through many experiences and many a story had been told. Ebony had become as fast as a 17G and would was now able to give allot of cars a hard time. For instance on the track once she handled so good against a Holden Commodore V8, l could catch up on the corners and pass it but on the straight, well the power of the V8 just left me standing, but this racing was close as you always caught up with them on the next twisty bit. By this stage the engine was becoming very Smoky, well the oil was starting to come up through the oil dip stick tube, the bottom end was pressurising and there was tons of smoke for the front as well as the back of the car. So Phase 3 rebuild was in need, with various things needing to be upgrading again. Phase 3 for Ebony was the most radical stage so far, this stage bloody hurt my wallet allot. This rebuild was to take 8 months in which in would have to have the car ready for the 1996 Grand Prix Rally and after that the car was to be written off in and accident where a car running a red light, drove through an intersection and wiped out the whole front. But due to a very skilled craftsman and another 3 months Ebony was back on the road from the dead where she sits under a car cover protected from the bad world. But in this current Phase 3 Configuration allot has been done. To the engine l put in a totally balanced and blue printed 1605cc Gordini bottom end, Total seal gapless racing rings have been used to replace the standard rings on the gordini pistons.. The head was replaced with a Gordini head rebuilt totally with stiffer valve springs for higher revving. A new set of Extractors 4 into 1 tuned length and a new exhaust to a 3 inch PECO big bore silencer was put on. A oil cooler off a 17 TS was added with the fabrication of a oil surge pick up in the sump was made. The 5 Speed remained the same but l moved the battery to the boot and it now has a 14 plate 680 cold crank start Truck and tractor battery, for the extra starting power. The weber fuel lines are now all Earl's Aluminium braided lines and metal connections. The water hoses have been replaced with custom bent Stainless steel tubes and have Samco Silicon Hose ends to connect them to the radiator and engine. The Koni's on the front are now fully adjustable with the spring seats now on a thread that can go up or down 3 inches. The body was totally rebuilt from the ground up again so now a full alloy six point roll cage has been added with the addition of the alloy strut brace between the suspension towers. Full harnesses and sports seats were added with the rear seat removed and replace with a alloy sheet to cover the back. The dash is custom made out of aluminum and houses a 5 inch Autometer tach, terratrip digital speedo, Amps and Fuel gauges and various warning lights. There is another custom pod that has the VDO Oil and Temperature guages in it, this sits where the speaker grill use to be. The terratrip digital speedo runs of the probe that runs the terratrip 404 rally trip computer and by dialling in the speedo it should give me pin point accuracy, as the police and their laser traps are everywhere here now in the police state of Victoria. The version of the Autometer tach l have also has a fully adjustable Shift light that allows me to dial in when the light will come on, perfect for changing gears at the right rev range. l also have a Armtech Speedshift, this looks after the engine revs as a soft rev limiter, but it also allows you to, via a clutch sensor to keep your foot flat on the accelerator. It will then limit the revs to your dialled in limit, thus allowing you to shift you gears up or down without taking your foot of the accelerator, strange but it really works. Now that the car was getting faster the brake area had to be looked at. A brake bias valve was fitter getting rid of the rear standard valve, a R17TS brake booster was fitted as well as a full disc rear end from a 17TS which helps allot as well. One other measure was the making up of front brake ducts and venting the air through large hoses to the brakes, Black Flash race pads have also been added to the front vented discs. On the outside of the car l have removed the front over rider bars on the bumper and l have replaced the inner high beam lights with cibie oscar spots that help out alot, and you can't tell the difference from the outside. l now run Alpine A310 polished alloy wheels. Being three stud helps but you have to machine the front wheels to clear the hub bolts on the front and run spacers so the callipers will miss the inner fins on the wheels. But l also had custom made wheels nuts as there was some hassle with the studs being to short, the rubber is Yokahama A008 RS's 205 60 13inch tyres and they are really sticky. Another improvement that made a big difference was to the engine bay ventilation. l first added a series 1 Cosworth Bonnet vent above the exhaust extractors, this made a huge difference to the under bonnet temperature and in the hot weather of Australia you need all the help you can get. l have also designed and built a duct for the twin webers that hopefully help with the cold air, it uses an NACA duct that scoops the air in where the design of the cosworth duct sucks it out, so we'll see how things go in the future with these additions. So as you can see Ebony has been on one huge road of trials and testing, upgrading parts and finding out if different things might work on our older Renaults here. One of the next changes will be a totally new gear linkage and from there, well 2 or three large changes in the pipe line for the future. Hopefully soon l will have finished this stage and Ebony will return to do some sprint racing and hillclimbs. In the 1998 F1 Grand Prix Duttons Rally in Melbourne we managed to come a very creditable 3rd place in our class, many of the competitors did not even notice us, but after winning the award, they soon took another closer look. I think it was good for a 1605cc engined car in the under 2 litres pre 1980 class. So now you can see what sort of life Ebony has had, in recent years it has felt like she has been in the garage more than on the road, but hopefully that will change very soon. You may wonder why do all this work to a 1973 Renault 15, and not a Alpine which has been the comments lately, and yes I own an A310 V6, but it's only an Alpine. Well it's mainly to show everyone what can be done to a 15/17, and to show people at these cars are hugely underrated and that hopefully Ebony will raise some peoples eye brows into having another look at the 15/17. l feel that these forgotten Coupes deserve some recognition, wether they be totally standard or modified like mine, l hope people will start to remember them and start to recognise them for the great little coupes they are. You may dismiss them but once you have driven one, you'll never forget them.






















Bye Volker and Ebony