2001 Renault Clio Pricing and Specs

This is a more common problem than you might imagine. Because air has to escape the fuel tank to allow the fuel in, you can sometimes achieve what is pretty much an air lock when the nozzle prevents the air getting out fast enough. Either that, or the fuel filler neck is shaped so that it splashes the fuel back against the pump nozzle, making the sensor in the nozzle think the tank is full.

Some cars will be fine on some pumps and not others, while some cars are just generally a pain to fill. Yet other cars will be fine on a flat surface, but won’t fill properly on any sort of an angle or slope.

The best trick to try is to insert the nozzle into the filler neck and then turn it 90 degrees. This has the effect of directing the fuel spray somewhere other than straight back up the nozzle’s spout and triggering the pump’s shut-off mechanism. The other thing to try is to pull the trigger on the nozzle, but not all the way. That can sometimes slow the flow enough to prevent the shut-off. If that doesn’t work, you’re stuck with trickling the fuel in very slowly to avoid the pump shutting off.

A: The whole dual-clutch transmission in the Clio RS is made by Getrag, so I’m not sure what the Renault dealer you contacted is talking about. Perhaps the actual clutch plates are made by one of Getrag’s suppliers, but fundamentally, this was a Getrag designed and built transmission. Renault Australia did, indeed, slice the warranty on its Sport models from five to three years effective May 1, 2018, and I agree that that would have sent alarm bells ringing for existing owners of these cars.

What really sends shivers up the spine is that the six-speed DCT in the Clio Sport is closely related to the unit Ford used in its Fiestas and Focusses. And that transmission, known as the Powershift, was a total abomination, leaving Ford customers high and dry with broken gearboxes and Ford Australia with millions in fines and being labelled by the ACCC as conducting itself in an `unconscionable’ manner after Ford tried to blame owners for the failures. Eventually, Ford Australia was forced to offer owners of these vehicles a very sweet trade-in deal on the new model Focus and Fiesta, effectively buying back the appalling DCT-equipped models.

One of the major causes of transmission failure was the dry-clutch engineering which saw the clutch-packs wear very prematurely. Renault Clio Sport transmission failures don’t seem as common as those in the similarly equipped Fords, but that’s possibly a simple matter of there being so few Clio Sports on the road here. Perhaps the Renault version of the transmission is built to a different level of quality and materials (the same transmission is built in factories in different parts of the world, so that’s possible) but we’d potentially be doing you a disservice by not highlighting the problems with this transmission. Some owners have reported trouble-free runs, but others have experienced gearbox faults and failures at low kilometres. It does seem a bit of a lucky-dip. For the record, Getrag’s wet-clutch seven-speed transmission was a markedly better unit, but that’s not what’s fitted to the car in question.

If you do go through with the purchase, demand a full service history to prove that all the maintenance and factory software upgrades have been applied to the car and then take it for a proper test drive that includes urban and highway driving. If the transmission displays any shuddering when taking off, any slipping between gears, takes a long time to select each gear or switches to limp-home mode, there’s good cause to suspect a worn or faulty transmission.

In terms of life expectancy and durability I would expect both to be about the same, but I would expect the Polo to have slightly better resale value than the Clio. Both are good cars, but I would choose the Renault because of its longer warranty.