Zel's Eclectic Fleet Blog (Volvo, Rover, Trabant, Invacar & Occasional Distractions)

[Zelandeth]

End of play today we had this on the odometer...



That's another five miles covered for those playing along at home. Would probably have been more actually as mechanically things were going just fine - however the indicator stalk decided to part company with the handlebars.

One of the screws landed in my lap, the other however ended up on the floor and was long gone by the time I got home, probably escaping via the gaping chasm at the bottom of the doors. So had to go digging in the drawer of random fasteners to find a replacement and put it back together...



...This time sticking a load of threadlock on the screws. If it comes off again I'm resorting to the epoxy.

I'm kind of amused that the first thing to actually fall off is something that had nothing to do with my improvisation, but is a Lucas parts bin item fastened to the car as the designer intended!

I'd hoped to give the brake adjustment another poke today again but ran out of time. Things are definitely settling in in that department now as she rolls so much easier than this time last week, so expecting to need to fiddle around with that for a while until the shoes are all fully bedded in.

I think all being well tomorrow might be the first time we actually go *to* somewhere all being well. Probably Halfords...about 3/4 of a mile away. Does involve a bit of 60mph road though, let's see if 50mph happens again.

I've got some more foamed PVC board on the way (once Yodel find it or actually admit they've lost it so a replacement order can be shipped) which will help me rebuild the rear valance in a slightly less dodgy looking way.

Here's a bit of a general overview of how she's looking now.







Amusingly, I got back from the last run out just as our local police foot patrol wandered round the corner. Gave me a good opportunity to deal with my first "What even *is* it?" question, and see if they had any issue with the current state. They both said they couldn't see anything which would have had them calling in the traffic guys. Lights all working, nothing hanging off, no pointy bits of bodywork and the brand new tyres are obviously a sign it's being looked after, and "There's a lot more dodgy handiwork in the Halfords car park!" That makes me feel a bit more comfortable doing my road testing.

Hoping to get a proper walkround and intro video put together shortly, especially as I should be able to get to somewhere that's not right in front of my front door so can actually not have to keep things unlisted on YouTube.

[Zelandeth]

My initial plan for today was basically to go drive around in the Invacar for a bit and see if anything else fell off after finishing reassembling the indicator stalk.

That bit was done in short order.



While I was doing that I rerouted the throttle cable a bit so that it was less in the way of the indicators. That proved to be a bit of a problem before, especially once the stalk got slightly loose and started wobbling around.

I made an executive decision though and forced myself to do some actually useful work with regards to doing a bit more of a permenant repair to the largely missing bits of body.

Off with multiple layers of duct tape and a large chunk of the metal frame which I deemed to be overkill.



Interesting that it looks like the nearside of the exhaust has been running cooler, I'll make a point at doing an actual measurement of the cylinder head temperatures after a run to see if there's an obvious disparity between the two.

I've just left the one band along the lower edge to help the resulting panel retain a decent degree of rigidity. The original panel would have had a lip moulded into it to help with that, but that's kinda hard to do by hand...so a bit of metal strapped to the back will do.

I then got the foam core board out and set about fabricating a new rear bumper. I love this stuff...It's got way more strength to it than cardboard, doesn't go soggy if it gets wet, but you can easily cut it with a sharp knife and bend it by hand.

Of course I ran out of daylight halfway through this, but this was the end result of the construction of the base framework. Trying to get photos of a semi-matt black surface with little ambient light was a bit tricky, but hopefully you can see that there is something like the shape of an actual lip below the engine cover and a bumper here now.





While I was rapidly running out of time by this point I was determined to get at least some fibreglass laid down over this. I only had a couple of small bits left from the current pack of matting anyway, so figured I'd just use that and then call it a day. This is where we left things.





Don't worry about the bits dangling down under it, that will get a nice clean edge cut in due course. I've realised quite a few errors in my workflow working with the fibreglass here, and that one of the key things to make your life easier (especially when working on vertical surfaces like this) is to work with small pieces of mat at a time, or you end up with finely atomised bits of glass fibre stuck to everything except the surface you're trying to stick it to.

Once I've got a few layers on here though, a skim of filler and some paint on it I reckon we should be able to get a result which should be good enough. I'm not worried about a perfect factory finish here, "presentable from ten paces" will do just fine. A slightly junior level looking bit of fibreglass fabrication is less likely to get me pulled over by a grumpy traffic cop I reckon than having half of the rear of the car made of duct tape.

The only other thing I immediately need to get the fibreglass on will be the mounting points for the front cover hinges, as the cable ties can't stay there long term...

[Zelandeth]

Let's have a quick recap...

Here's how TP was looking from the rear when she arrived in my driveway (more or less)...



Fast forward to a week or two back...



Bringing us up to date, here's how things were looking as of close of play today.







Now this isn't exactly a work of art, but I think I'm within my rights to declare this to be a big improvement.

Obviously there's a load of filler and sanding to be done yet. The very quick blast of paint over the surface was purely to allow me to see properly how close or not I'd got to the contours I was aiming for. It was quite hard to tell in bare fibreglass.

I forgot to take a photo of it, but I've also filled the holes in the front panel. My solution to this was to stick a duct tape patch loosely to the underside of the panel, creating a pocket into which I could pour some resin - filling up the pocket, and then used some glass fibre tissue to patch the outside. This won't be as strong as it would have been using actual matting, but it's not subject to any real load so should be fine. I reckon the only reason the hinges have been ripped out here is that the lock had seized and someone decided they wanted into the hatch, so they used brute force.

I've also reattached the lower door seal on the nearside which will hopefully slightly reduce the draught level in the cabin.

Bodywork wise I think the next thing I'm going to do is a slightly better securing solution for the transmission access hatch, as it has vibrated itself completely loose again during the last trip. I don't like the little springy clips they've used there - they're fine for securing bits of trim, but something that big and heavy is less than ideal. I'm going to get a few bits of steel bar, rivet them in place over each hole through the panel, then drill and tap a hole through that - I can then use M5 machine screws to secure it - and bolts for the bottom ones which are awkward to get a screwdriver at becaues of the driver's seat being in the way. Will take a couple of hours to do, but should save me a lot of faff long term.

I think it's when you start thinking about that sort of detail that you realise that you've pretty much comitted yourself to a car being a keeper...

[Zelandeth]

I had been hoping to actually get out in the Invacar today, but by the time I'd got enough of the day to day jobs out of the way it became obvious that wasn't happening - well, unless I wanted to be out doing test runs at rush hour in the middle of a busy city - which just sounds like a recipe for disaster. Hopefully tomorrow...

With the car mostly fundamentally working now my attention is starting to shift to the list of far more minor bits and pieces which have been patiently waiting for some attention while I dragged the car back into the land of the living.

A couple of these items had just been waiting for me to make a quick run out to grab an assorted box of circlips to replace two which had vanished in the past.

Number one went on this end of the gear selector rod to stop it from falling out of the bracket.



There's also been another attached just behind that bracket to prevent the whole lot from being able to wobble from side to side - important as the handle is really quite close to the seat frame and I don't want to have it touching the frame and causing yet another rattle or buzz in the cabin.



I'll take it out at some point and bend the handle away from the seat very slightly, but that's very much on the "it would be nice to do some day" list rather than anything which needs immediate attention.

The second missing circlip has been added to the seat belt buckle to stop the bar in the middle of it from being able to fall out.



This was never a problem when the belt was actually in use as the tension on everything held it in place - At least I don't need to remember which way to hold it when taking it off now though.

Only other task which has been done was to reattach the front cover. This had previously been held on with cable ties through the bolt holes, but is now properly attached.





Not really much to be said about that! It is nice to have it done though, as I think having eliminated the cable ties - much like the rear valance - helps make the car look more like a car that's actively being restored rather than a wreck beyond all hope.

[Zelandeth]

Continuing with the general theme of ticking one little task at a time off, I attacked the door runners and latches with grease.



Main hope there had been that it might help the offside door slide properly as it has a tendency to stick on the runners. Sadly it still does, though not quite as badly.

While I was there I securely reattached the door seals at the bottom of that door.



Though I always feel that I should use quotation marks around "seal" when referring to those around the doors of an Invacar given the degree of daylight that you can see around them. Reminds me of a Series Land Rover...



I reckon that if I find myself using the car I may well look to install a slightly wider seal as these are pretty useless.

The heater during the first couple of runs out (despite my efforts to clean it out) had thrown finely atomised rust all over the cabin, so it was time to hit it with the vacuum cleaner again.



Much better. I suspect this will be a regular task for a while.

Enough of this faffing around though...a car is meant to be driven, and I'd been trying to kick myself into taking a brave pill and actually taking TP out of our neighborhood and going somewhere...

It's funny...I really don't remember the parking spaces in Sainsbury's being so huge...



Then on the way home, our GP surgery.



Back home, another five miles covered.



Oh, and some groceries retrieved...wonder how many years it is since she last actually did useful work...



Glad to report that she didn't miss a beat. Only gripes were the rear service hatch coming loose (again - hence my plans to improve the securing arrangements), and that there really is far too much free travel in the brakes. Think for the sake of £50 odd I'm just going to pick up a new master cylinder. This one came with my original Invacar and was "NOS" - but looked to have spent quite a bit of time stored in poor conditions, and has never felt quite right, and as such I don't think I'm ever going to fully trust it. Not as though I'm driving around with no brakes mind, she's more than capable of locking all three wheels up, and the handbrake is also more than capable of stopping the car quite rapidly. I'm just not keen on the size of the dead zone before braking starts to happen.

[Zelandeth]

Annoyingly no photos to show for it as I forgot to take my phone with me, but she's been out to the pharmacy again and stopped at Aldi on the way back (to grab a hole saw to allow me to refit the number plate light) without any issues.

When I got back, before putting her back in the garage I hooked TP up to the exhaust gas tester. Before the actual test drives started, she was pegging the thing off scale high at idle for the CO % reading.

Today?



Pretty good indication right there of just how much better an engine can run after doing a bit of actual work.

If all goes to plan tomorrow I will be able to get her out for a bit again, and I think the plan will be for a few high speed runs to confirm that nothing will fall off. If all goes well there, I think I can start considering actually making runs out to a few places around town beyond my local supermarket.

Looking forward to having a few tens of miles covered as that will do a lot for my confidence I'm sure. I would just go out and drive if it wasn't for MK being such an aggressively unfriendly place to break down at the side of the road due to there being so few places to pull over on any distributor roads.

[Zelandeth]

Not sure where time went today, so no road testing I'm afraid.

One area where the Invacar is plainly lacking is sound insulation. The fact that with it idling there is no notable difference noticeable when you close the door tends to suggest it's lacking in that department.

I'm not about to go plastering the whole car in Dynamat, but there are a couple of obvious areas where it could be easily improved. The huge bass drum that passes as a cover for the transmission service hatch for one.



The original seal had decomposed as well which wasn't helping any, so that has been replaced too.

No work of art, but it should do the job. Definitely has helped, as the noise level at idle is now noticeably lower inside the car than outside. Not going for Rolls-Royce refinement levels, but if we can shave a couple of decibels off the noise levels that can only be a good thing.

Only other areas I might look at would be the front bulkhead (again because itsi a large flat area which seems prone to drumming), the inside of the doors, and the roof. I think what I attacked today though should help a lot.

Definitely hope to keep track of time a bit better tomorrow and get it out for another run. Target? Ten miles in one session I think...

[Zelandeth]

Had her out for a run to the shops today and can confirm that the sound deadening has made a huge difference. It's still loud in the cabin obviously, but far less uncomfortably so...and it's much more honestly mechanical noise, was largely just white noise before.

Today we confirmed two things. 50mph is definitely achievable, alarmingly easily actually. Secondly, she can outrun an ADL Enviro-200 up to 30mph, much to the embarrassment of the driver!

[Zelandeth]

Encouraged by the difference that my sound damping has made to the noise levels I figured I would add to it a bit but not by actually adding more sound insulation as such - but just improving on the frankly laughable sealing arrangements around the doors.

It was really obvious that a significant chunk of the ambient background noise from outside was coming in through the gaps around the doors - especially at the base. The amount of daylight visible makes it obvious - and results in draughts blowing up your trouser legs above 30mph or so.

Nearside Front:


Offiside Front:


I do have some new seals, but the ones on here while looking somewhat dog eared in a few places are actually in decent condition and replacing them wouldn't really achieve much I reckon. What would would be getting the base of the door to sit closer to the body - but I dontd really see any way to do that which wouldn't make the door foul on the body when opening. The top bit just seems to be an afterthought - relying on the gutters to keep rain out for the most part.

What I did think might help though would be the nice thick weatherstripping I had on hand, which while quite thick when in open air squashes down to pretty thin, and is sort of like memory foam so good at dealing with irregular gaps.

My plan was basically to go over the edges of the doors where it contacts the main door seal, helping to make a better contact with it.

Like so.


The results tell the story I think...

Nearside front:

(I need to fasten the main seal to the door rail cover at the front properly, hence the bit of daylight still visible there)

Offside Front:


Nearside Rear:


Offside Rear:


Offside upper rear - used to be about a 1/4" gap here.


It is really noticeable now that closing the doors results in a very noticeable drop in the ambient noise level from outside now, so it must have improved things to some extent. The other thing it's helped with a lot is reducing the amount to which the doors wobble and rattle.

While I had the weatherstripping out I also put a couple of bits under the front service hatch to stop it rattling, likewise the engine cover. The car is always going to rattle like a cement mixer full of ball bearings, but I may as well do what I can to help.

We had our six monthly dentist appointment this morning which meant a run up to Leicester, Activa was of course the vehicle of choice for that - no surprises that all three passengers dozed off en route both ways!

Did notice that something had failed on the way home though...



Annoying...those lamps only went in in October. Will need to get another set of H1s ordered in. I do have a couple of spares but always try to change them in sets, will see if I still have the receipt (was part of the last service, so should have) and see if Osram will stand by the warranty.

Headlight bulbs are at least only "awkward" to change on the Activa rather than needing half the car dismantled before you can get at things.

[Zelandeth]

This afternoon I mostly invented several new expletives while referring to whoever designed the doors of an Invacar.

Given I had been improving the weather and soundproofing it seemed silly not to try to do something about the doors.

Namely the gaping hole underneath the window runner.

Exhibit A:


Having got the actual door seals into a state vaguely resembling useful was to be utterly pointless unless I were to do something about that - which is actually more important as water pours in through that gap whenever it rains.

Roughly two hours later, this is the same area as in the photo above.


For completeness, the front of the same door.


Originally the window rail was held onto the top of the door by (tiny) self tapping screws. Straight into the fibreglass. These screws, predictably, had next to no purchase - which allowed the rail to lift away from the door. This also allows the inner and outer door skins to move relative to each other.

My solution was to do away with the self tappers and replace them with M5 bolts. Simple enough - though INCREDIBLY awkward where actually threading the nuts onto the bolts was concerned. Hence the fact that the job wound up taking me a couple of hours of swearing to get completed.

The result though is a door which is now mostly weather proof and where the window frame is far more firmly attached to the base than it originally was, plus a door which now doesn't rattle half as much as it used to.

...On the plus side I now have the technique down so hopefully the offside won't take quite as long to sort out. Still no doubt will scrape my arm to bits and give myself as much of a glass fibre rash doing it.