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

[rich.]

That's a shame, i do come back to blighty twice a year, so odd parts can mysteriously end up in the UK..
Have you tried oscaro.fr? They're pretty good.. although I prefer to go to my local motor factors as all my vehicles seem to be built in the year they changed the model...

[Zelandeth]

That's a shame, i do come back to blighty twice a year, so odd parts can mysteriously end up in the UK..
Have you tried oscaro.fr? They're pretty good.. although I prefer to go to my local motor factors as all my vehicles seem to be built in the year they changed the model...

Sadly it looks like their catalogues are using the same back office dataset as most of the others as it's listing the same droplinks for my car as Autodoc etc which I know full well are completely wrong (I think we eventually figured out they were the ones for the V6 from memory - anyway they're a good inch too long and have a kink in the middle and the ends rotated 90 degrees to each other, unlike the ones on the car). So not likely to be much more useful. It also seems to just offer the entire model run rather than being able to narrow it down by year, which isn't helpful as quite a few bits changed with the facelift.

-- -- --

This afternoon I wanted to try to knock at least some of the worst of the tree gunk off the Trabant.

Initially I took the car to the jet wash at one of our nearby filling stations - first place it's actually gone since the engine change. Only a mile or so, but it feels like progress. Immediate observations are that it feels like the car gets up to 40 or so far, far more quickly even with my being pretty gentle on it at the moment compared to flat out beforehand. Not really surprising given that all the evidence suggests that the old engine was probably missing a few of the original 26 horsepower even before whatever actually failed let go. The engine itself is also far quieter - one thing which isn't though is the exhaust - the buzzy raspy noise from the tailpipe now when you're on the throttle is WAY louder than it used to be.

I had seriously forgotten how pointless a lot of those jet washes are. I honestly could have got better pressure just using the hosepipe at home, and our water pressure isn't great to start with. So dragged out my own pressure washer and got that involved. Hey look, this one actually does something!



Some of the really ingrained stuff (and the plethora of oily hand prints on the front panel and bonnet) will need some more elbow grease to shift, but on the whole the car looks far better for a quick hose down.



As predicted, this has turned the whole area around the car into a complete swamp... I'm really looking forward to having actual driveway to park it on - hopefully by the end of the week that will be a luxury available to me!

Will see how brave I'm feeling tomorrow, might actually use the car for normal car type things again.

[rich.]

Does the car need an MOT or is it exempt? I'm not sure what happens now it's looking tidy..
What year and spec is the Renault, if you post a few pics of the links & chassis no I'll ask in my local motor factors.. I must admit the french really do love to complicate things

[rich.]

https://images.app.goo.gl/5Fb3GtRjbXjufugx5

[Zelandeth]

Does the car need an MOT or is it exempt? I'm not sure what happens now it's looking tidy..
What year and spec is the Renault, if you post a few pics of the links & chassis no I'll ask in my local motor factors.. I must admit the french really do love to complicate things

Technically it's exempt I believe as of this year. I'll still be getting it done though as I think it's just sensible. There's one spot of corrosion that wants addressing but then there's no reason it shouldn't go through pending simple sanity checks like making sure all the lights are working properly.

The photo linked to on Google images there is completely wrong. I had to dig back through my archives a bit to find a photo and it turns out I did remember the layout slightly wrong as the two ends are rotated 90 degrees to each other - but it does lack the (often barely visible in photos) "kink" towards one end that is present on everything that seems to be listed online.



We did eventually track down the correct part number a while back (which I now appear to have lost the note of), but they were NLA everywhere from what I could find. I think we found that one from a VW T4 were close enough that they should work - diameter and arrangement of both of the bushed ends was identical, it was just a smidge shorter but small enough a change that it was unlikely to affect anything aside from possibly wearing itself out a bit quicker. It's just one example though, and for far more generic things the changes with EU shipping have just made things annoyingly difficult. Like I need a new driver's door latch really - readily available for less than 20 euros from a bunch of breakers in France and Lithuania, but none of them I could find would ship to the UK any more. I'm sure there are a couple of old school breakers in the UK which still have something sitting in the back of the yard which is old enough to still use the same locks (they were used on basically their entire range at the time), but none of them deem it to be worth their time going and digging for me. Sadly the big dismantle it yourself breaker up by Huntly I spent many hours clambering around in while my father dug out parts to keep his old sheds running which did have half a dozen 25s parked up in the one corner for decades closed down about five years ago.

It's all a bit academic really though. Fact of the matter is that I've got too many cars as it is, and need to prune the fleet to actually get it fitting on the driveway. I don't have the time or energy to look after five cars anyway - four is already a stretch so something needs to go, and it's the obvious choice.

-- -- --

I didn't actually end up using the car for today's errands on account of the fact that during that portion of the day it was tipping it down with rain. So I took the actually weather tight, air conditioned car with windscreen wipers which actually clear more than 50% of the windscreen. I really need to figure out what's up with that as I'm sure the driver's side wiper should swing far further than it does. It's way, way better than when I got the car, but I do wonder if I've got two right hand side linkages fitted or something like that as it barely manages 90 degrees of sweep.

Nevertheless it did dry out at least for a couple of hours this afternoon so I made time to get her out for a 20 minute or so wander. Primarily to grab some fresh fuel to dilute the nine month old stuff that's in the tank as I'm sure that's very much past its prime at this point. Stopped to grab a couple of photos on the way home in celebration of the car being back in action again.

I never actually made it quite the full way round the car last year with the polish, and looking at the photos now I'm actually really surprised how well it's held the finish where I did go over it. I figured it would have done the Skoda Estelle thing of just immediately turning straight to chalk as soon as I took my eyes off it for two seconds, but it really hasn't and it's really obvious which panels have and haven't been done.







It really is such a strangely proportioned little car.

Definitely feels a LOT zippier. Hard to say how much of that is just the engine being new vs how much different the extra specified four horsepower really makes, but pulling out of junctions now feels much more like a normal car rather than really having to make conscious allowances for the amount of time you needed to get moving, and that's with me still being pretty gentle.

[rich.]

The trabant has scrubbed up rather well!
I've found a couple of bar stabs similar to the one posted, but for some reason the phone won't let me share..
I'll try again tomorrow

[rich.]

https://epa30.fr/catalogue/voitures/ren ... t-r25.html

[Zelandeth]

So what is travelling in the Trabant like?

Frenetic, bouncy, and so noisy that it makes your brain vibrate.

https://youtu.be/8SKvUxt5BjA

Not great I know, but I just zip tied my phone to the passenger headrest to try to get some video.

The horrible noise when I turned round was coming from the nearside rear wheel. The hub nut needed to be tightened up a bit so there was a bit of play in there. Seems to now have stopped. I am braced for having to take that all apart soon anyway - I've had to change one rear wheel bearing, so am expecting to change that one most likely at some point as well.

[Zelandeth]

Have done a little bit of tinkering this afternoon.

First up was the violently rough idle.

I wanted to double check my timing there as it just didn't sound quite right to me. Not sure if I just fouled up setting things last time round or if the plate moved slightly while I was tightening things up, but sure enough it was quite a way off. The way timing it set in these engines is a bit odd compared to a normal four stroke, in that it's nothing to do with timing lights or marks. The timing is set to fire when the *piston* is 2mm before top dead centre. There seems to be a bit of debate as to whether 2 or 3 is the best number, but I've gone with 2. It was nearer 5 before. This is actually set by setting the piston to where you want it to be, then slowly rotating the board the pickup is on until you hear the plugs fire. This is probably a bit more fiddly on the older setup with dual points, but with the electronic ignition (84 onwards) it's dead simple.

This is what the plugs look like after the ~100 miles or so the engine has now done.



This has definitely helped, though I think I'd still like to bump the idle speed up a touch - probably only needs a hundred RPM or so, just want to reduce the amount of vibration a bit. I was loathe to mess with things too much until everything had had a chance to bed in a bit though.

Speaking of bedding in, now things have settled in a bit the bite point on the clutch was very low, so I tweaked the cable adjustment. Very easy to get to.



Just make sure to leave a bit of free play or you'll cook the release bearing. This has vastly improved gear selection (you can see me missing second at least once in the video in the last post). Synchro on second is still a bit weak, but that's what rev matching is for. One day we might look at a gearbox refurb as it really is quite noisy it feels like - but I really need to compare to another car in person to see if they're just like that. Really wasn't obvious until I swapped the engine!

Oh. I definitely hadn't forgotten to tighten the lock nut on the clutch cable when I installed everything. Oops. This is why we go back and check things after a while!

Other than that have just been using the car for local bumbling about.





The camera on this phone really is pathetic compared to my old one.



That's what happens when you lean heavily on software to try to obfuscate how mediocre your hardware actually is, and it doesn't work. I am seriously giving consideration to binning this thing off and just fitting a fresh battery and reverting back to my Huawei - sod the fact that the Android version is a bit behind the times. It's just better at basically everything I actually use it for...especially the camera. Oh, and actually being a phone. I've discovered a whole bunch of signal blackspots with this my old one never had any issues with.

Definitely have a bit of noise coming from the nearside rear wheel. You can hear something lightly squeaking if you're driving at low speed and there's a wall etc bouncing the sound back to you. I'll have a closer poke around at the weekend, but most likely it wants the bearings changed as I did on the other side. Actually I reckon the bearing probably would have been fine if thoroughly cleaned and re-greased, but given there's no way to do that without dismantling the hub, which involves removing the suspension arm it's a bit daft to not just replace everything while you're in there anyway by that point. I will just make sure it's not just the nut needing tightened up though as if it's loose that will allow there to be play where there shouldn't be. I'm not actually too worried immediately, having seen how hugely chunky the bearings etc are compared to the car! If they were about to come apart you'd know about it - what I'm actually hearing is the brake shoes just lightly touching the drum most likely.

In other news, I do have a correct set of bumpers and the missing front lower air dam on the way - and one of the annoyingly hard to find green fog light switches, which in my case I'll probably actually be using for a reversing light...I just wanted a green switch because being able to have red, yellow and green all lined up on the dash would please my OCD far more than one odd black switch I currently have in there.

I do want to do a test with a rev counter at some point just to see what it is rpm the engine is actually turning at 50mph - just to convince myself it's not immediately about to explode just based on how hard it sounds like it's revving...just because two stroke things mean it sounds basically like it's running twice as fast as it really is compared to a four stroke.

It really is a ridiculous car to drive. It's ridiculously noisy, the ride is hilariously bouncy, it's silly cramped, but somehow I just cannot help but smiling every time I'm behind the wheel of it. Makes no sense, but I just enjoy it.

In other vaguely car related exciting news...look at what's nearly finished!



Useful space on the right used to finish roughly where the shadow of the second car starts.

Hopefully will be able to start using it in the next day or two - one more round with the vibrating plate tomorrow hopefully should be it I believe. Pretty sure that there will be room to get the car behind there in/out without the forward one having to move. Have never actually had room to get a car in there - while the hard standing actually extended in there further than we realised, it has always been overgrown and there was a fence in the way as for some unknown reason it used to kick out towards us right where the driveway starts. Was a useless space on both sides. So this will finally get me to a point where I'm only one car short of actually having everything on the driveway properly.

[Zelandeth]

Something which made itself known at the end of last week on the Trabant was an absolutely horrendous rattle from somewhere up front. This was plainly a "something external touching something it shouldn't" rather than anything that was actually a sign of impending failure. So annoying rather than worrying.

Sure enough a bit of poking round found the culprit.



The metal adjuster collar on the throttle cable had come into contact with the heater box. Being a pretty lightly built tin box with nothing but a flap in this did a great job of amplifying this into an extremely annoying din.

This has now been rerouted to keep it well clear - though I did scratch my head a bit as to how to keep it there as there wasn't really anything obvious to tether it to. Eventually I figured out I could trap it under the sound deadening jacket and that keeps it exactly where it needs to be.





If it does it again I'll mount an eyelet on side of the heater box to properly anchor the cable to. If time permits I may well do that anyway as it's a much more elegant solution.

She has also had a bit of a facelift.





It's purely a matter of personal taste, but I just think these bumpers suit the car and the utilitarian, no nonsense approach to things. The fact that these have pretty much exactly the same level of patina to them as the car is just a bonus.

One of the things I'd been missing before was the air dam which sits below the front bumper which basically helps shield the carb and alternator from road spray and debris as they sit down really low as you can see below.



These areas are rather better protected now.



I had always thought that panel was plastic until it arrived, nope it's actually metal.

The rear one took about ten minutes to swap.



Front one on the other hand was rather more of a fight. I'm not sure whether it dates back to when the car obviously had a bit of a knock on the nose or when the bumper was changed, but every single one of the retaining bolts had been snapped. Both ends of the bumper instead of using the original bolt holes, were attached using a couple of Z shaped brackets bolted into the sheet metal on little bridge between the bottom of the wheel arch and front panel.



That would indeed explain why it wobbled so much.

As there is enough room to do so, I decided that just re-drilling the mounting holes a touch further back was the best approach. I've only done one so far as my drill bits are apparently incredibly blunt and it took me about half an hour of fighting to get two drilled. It's a thousand times more secure than at any time in the last year or so anyway.

I'll grab a couple of appropriately sized cobalt bits this week and get the additional fixings in place - it's a hundred times more solid now than it was. The bottom of the right hand wing definitely will want some attention with a welder at some point as it's distinctly crusty.

One surprising bit of good fortune however came when I went to fit the number plate. I'd drilled a couple of holes in that basically using Mark I Eyeball as a measuring device when the sticky pads holding it on to the bumper started to fail.

Two unexpected things happened here. First was that the machine screws I used were exactly the right type for the metal threaded inserts on the bumper - second was that I had by total chance put the holes in such a place that they *exactly* lined up with the holes in the new bumper.



Complete and total luck...but just like when playing pool, keep a straight face and make everyone believe you meant that shot to play out that way and no, it of course wasn't a total fluke...



Hopefully I can find a new home for these that have come off.



Shouldn't be a problem though - just like on Minis where everyone wants chrome, there seem to be a lot of people who want to put the older style kit on their Trabants so I doubt it will be hard to find a good home for those bumpers.

Of course the universe being what it is, I'm never allowed to actually reduce the number of things on the to do list am I? While crawling around under the front of the car I noticed something else needing attention.



Crack and a couple of pinholes in the centre exhaust section just back from the joint to the heat exchanger. Now this isn't the end of the world...but it would have really been nice to find this BEFORE having a couple of hundred Euros worth of boxes shipped over from Germany, as including a system in there (I'd probably have taken the opportunity to upgrade to the 45mm version to get the most out of the upgraded engine) wouldn't have made much odds to the shipping bill there...on its own, the shipping near enough doubles the price.

I'll need to have a closer look and see what shape the rest of the system is in before I decide what to do there. Obviously if there's any questions over the condition of the heat exchanger that will definitely be changed given the safety implications of it failing. I suspect if we end up looking at replacing more than that one bit of pipe I'd *probably* look at getting a 45mm heat exchanger (there is a version which includes a larger and much more classically designed two stroke expansion chamber but also maintains the heating function) and having the rest of the system made up in stainless locally. At this point I've spent so bloody much on shiny bits the car is obviously sticking around so I may just as well make it as good as I can and this is the sort of thing I'll probably thank myself for long term.