Ring Run #3: My £1,600 Nürburgring Car Is Already Leaking Oil

The £1,600 Peugeot RCZ Nürburgring project hits its first real crisis.

What starts as a simple warning light quickly turns into a dashboard Christmas tree with faults ranging from turbo pressure issues and camshaft timing errors to a completely unrelated driver’s door control panel that has apparently decided it’s also involved.

After clearing the codes and enjoying a few weeks of false confidence, the car suddenly throws itself into limp mode thanks to a front wheel speed sensor fault, taking ABS and traction control with it.

But the real problem appears when the car goes on the lift.

Fresh oil.

And lots of it.

The culprit looks like a rear main seal leak - one of the most awkward and expensive repairs on the engine, potentially costing half the value of the car.

So now the Ring Run faces its first real dilemma.

Do you spend £800 fixing a £1,600 car…
or gamble and drive it across Europe anyway?

Because the last thing anyone wants is to drive all the way to Germany…

only to spill oil all over the Nürburgring.

Transcript

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I lifted the car expecting to find a small oil leak. What I actually found might kill the Nurbergering trip. Because when the rear main seal fails, you don't just fix a gasket, you remove the gearbox. And I'm staring at a 600 pound repair bill on a 1600 pound car. And this isn't even the worst thing the car has done. And somewhere inside the electronic system, the driver's door control panel has fucked itself. Welcome back to Cheap Thrills, the podcast about affordable performance cars, questionable decisions, and discovering exactly how brave you are once the warranty has expired. This series is the Ring Run. The mission is simple buy a cheap sports car, drive it across Europe, take it to the Nurberg Ring, and prove you don't need a supercar or a really expensive performance car to have a proper driving adventure. Which is how I ended up with a 1600 pound Peugeot RCZ. On paper, it's perfect. Turbocharged, manual gearbox, good looking, cheap enough that if something explodes you can call it content. Except the car immediately started giving me signs. Not when I was looking at it to buy it, but the second I paid the guy the money. Electrical signs, mechanical signs, dashboard signs, well lots of dashboard signs. And it didn't just start with one light. That would be too easy. It started with a collection. Engine management line. Fine, normal. That's basically standard equipment on older French cars. And then we scan it. And suddenly we've got variable valve lift system fault, exhaust camshaft rephasing fault, turbocharging air circuit fault, fuel level signal fault, driver's door control panel fault. Which is an incredible range of issues. That's engine timing, turbo boost, fuel system, and the fucking door. Why is the door involved? The engine is clearly having a crisis and the door has decided to emotionally support it. At this point, the dashboard isn't diagnostics, it's having a full group chat. Now here's something important about cheap cars. When multiple faults appear at once, it doesn't always mean something is broken. Modern cars are incredibly dramatic. One dodgy sensor, one weak battery, one confused module, and suddenly the car thinks seven things are wrong instead of one. The RCZ shares its engine family with a Mini Cooper S, the Prince engine. Fantastic engine when healthy. But when it isn't, you start seeing things like timing change stretch, valve timing faults, and turbo pressure sensor errors. But all experienced cheap car owners know the trick. Take your Amazon CoClearer, clear the codes, drive it, see what comes back. Because sometimes the car just needed a little electronic downtime. So we clear everything. Battery checked, connections cleaned, take it for a drive. Nothing, no light. Smooth boost, it pulls properly. For three glorious weeks the car behaves. But this is the most dangerous moment in cheap car ownership. Not when the car is broken, but when the car is fine, because that's when you start believing. You start browsing tires, looking at brake upgrades, looking at tuner boxes, watching Nerbogring on board laps thinking, yeah, I'm gonna be doing this, this is this actually might work. And then you say the sentence that curses every cheap car owner in history. Honestly, these RCZs are underrated. And then three weeks later, the car hears that and it responds. Driving along, everything normal, then suddenly, ABS, traction control light, and the car drops into limp mode like it's just realized a nerb ring idea is fucking stupid. Power disappears, throttle responses out of the window, you press the accelerator, and the door reacts like you've just asked it a favour. You scan it again, front wheel speed sensor fault, which sounds tiny, but that feeds ABS, traction, stability, wheel speed data across the entire car. So when it fails, the car is basically saying, Yeah, I don't trust my own feet, and disables half of its safety systems, which is slightly concerning when the end goal is the Nurberg ring. Well, actually the end goal is getting back from going all the way to the Nurburg Ring and doing a lap. But remember, this trip isn't a local drive. It's Devon to Dover, the ferry, France, Belgium, Germany, and all the way back. That's oh got to be a thousand motorway miles from here. And then the Nurberg ring. 20 kilometers of blind corners, brutal compressions, and armco barriers that cost considerably more than the car, as well as other race traffic. And I'm planning to tackle it in a vehicle that occasionally forgets how fast its wheels are spinning. Now, my confidence is mixed, and at this point I'm thinking, fine, wheel speed sensor, 40 quid, fix it, move on. Germany is still possible. And then I lift the car. Just to, you know, just to have a little quick look underneath, and that's when I see it. Oil. Fresh oil. Not a gentle miss you might expect from an aging engine, but a proper leak. Oil in exactly the place you don't want to find it. The RMS, the rear main seal, which sits between the engine and the gearbox. Which means to fix it, you need to remove the gearbox. On a car worth£1,600. Now, I'm sure 30 years ago, that was a very quick and cheap job for most mechanics. But on a car that's worth£1,600, the math suddenly becomes really uncomfortable because that repair is easily£600 to£800, half the value of the entire car. And that's the exact moment you look at the car and think, for fuck's sake. And somewhere deep in that electrical system, I guarantee the driver's door control panel is still sitting there going, fuck you. So now I have a dilemma. Do I spend£800 fixing a£1,600 car? Financially, that makes absolutely no sense. But emotionally, I've already started the project. I've already told everyone about that I'm going to the Nurberg Ring. I've imagined my lap. But that's how the cheap cars get you. They hook you in with the story. Because there is another option. Don't fix it. Send it anyway. Let's hope the leak is slow. I mean, it isn't, but you know, let's hope it is. Hope the clutch can stay dry. Hope the engine keeps its oil inside long enough to reach Germany. And hope the engine can hold itself together for the trip. But then I imagine the worst case scenario. I'm on the ring, obviously I'm going to go flat out, there's oil leaking from the rear main seal, and suddenly I'm the reason the track gets closed. Because nothing ruins a Nureberg ring track day faster than someone spilling all their oil. And the last thing I want to be is the guy who drove across Europe just to spill oil all over the most famous track in the world. So now the ring run has a real question. Do we fix it or do we gamble it? In my next episode, I'll have decided whether the RCZ deserves its Nurberg Ring adventure or whether the ring run ends before it even leaves Devon. I'm Rob Hartman. Thanks for listening. Give us a follow, and we'll see you next week.