The AC sounds fantastic in the clip, the CVT is clearly working well. Even though the current crop of CVTs are ever more durable than the earliest of the "CVT in a box" types such as that brave attempt found in the Panda Selecta and Fiesta MK2, the fact remains that the expanding & contracting pulleys with belts, as found in so many Dafs, small Volvos, Microcar, Ligier and Aixam products and of course your AC, is one of the most efficient types of CVT out there. My old Volvo 345 was capable of out accelerating a great many performance oriented cars down motorway slip roads and up to the point where the more powerful machinery simply left it standing, as the pulleys required to allow it any further increase in gearing to keep the engine in the power band would have had to be the size of bin lids, but the idea was, like all of the finest inventions, so simple and suffered none of the faults that were known to affect the ferrofluid clutch types of CVT from the earliest of the more modern units. My 345 was noisy, since its belts were aftermarket heavy duty, steel reinforced ones and not the very much quieter Kevlar, but that whining was reassuring in its way! The steel reinforced belts did a great job of keeping the pulleys' contact faces smooth and clean and with a good mate who knows these older, Van Doorne style CVTs inside and out, I'd have another in a heartbeat, preferably a DAF 44 whose twin belts meant that the only gears in the whole transmission were those that made reverse work, no differential was required since the pulleys did their thing in corners and as neither side could be completely static when the car was moving, these not only had a clever CVT, but also the world's most durable limited slip diff.
I wonder whether any parts from a MIcro car's CVT could be adapted to keep an Invacar on the road? MIcros of the various brands were horribly unreliable in many fundamental ways, yet that CVT seems to survive in most cases.
I'm having another look at the video clip, that engine has a great sound, it clearly has plenty of grunt left to give as you're being very kind to it in your driving style yet the car gets along just fine. Darn it, you're making me want one even more.. Again!
Hoping that your trip in the van goes well, it's looking lovely inside now, the shower room being especially pleasant as a result of the hard work you did in there. I could give up bricks & mortar for a van of that quality, but then I have spent time living in an old Thames Trader horsebox in the past
and survived that so anything as plush as that Benz cannot fail to look like home to me.Take it easy and above all else; enjoy the experience.
