Oooohkay...I have a lot of updates to catch up on. This is going to involve a fair bit of copy/pasting - so apologies if it's a little disjointed.
[] March 15th.
I did decide to lift the carb needle by another notch. This seems to have got us to the point where you can see a slight bit of smoke from the exhaust if you're hanging your head out the door and really looking for it. Based on my limited knowledge of two strokes, I think that's a pretty good indicator that we're where we want to be. I will also read the plugs after a hundred miles or so.
I *definitely* didn't launch the circlip off the needle when I took it off.
Thankfully it didn't go all that far and I saw where it landed so no harm done.
Today the Trabant has gone away for a little holiday with a friend down by Dunstable who is going to address this bit of rust on the offside front...sill? Chassis rail? Chassill? I never know quite how you'd describe it on this car...base frames are weird.
They also spotted another bit by one of the front subframe mounts which will also be attended to while they're in there. We aren't worrying about the bit on the boot floor for now as there's not much point until the leak around the rear screen is sorted, it's miles away from a prescribed area right at the back corner, and isn't doing any harm.
This car is never going to be pretty, but my intention is to get it otherwise as well sorted as we can and knowing things like this have been properly attended to will be nice for peace of mind.
This trip was a little nail biting though in that it was the first time I'd taken the car out of town on a fast road for the first time since I'd changed the engine. Glad to report that aside from a slightly biblical smoke show after five minutes or so because we had clearly wet stacked the exhaust a bit with the local bumbling (and probably with how much oil I chucked into the new engine when I first started it) and it took a bit of time for that to burn off. The difference when buzzing down the A5 now though is like night and day, both in terms of how easily the car will maintain a ~55mph cruise and the noise levels while doing so. It's still by no means a relaxed way of covering distance on main roads, but it feels immeasurably less like it's about to spontaneously disintegrate than it used to.
While the Trabant is away I have been given this to bumble around in.
Because it's traditional for anything which visits overnight, here's a dash-at-night photo.
Occurred to me as I was setting out on the way home that despite having been messing around with classic cars since pretty much since I could walk, that I don't think I had ever actually even sat in an ADO16 until today.
Aside from an incredibly dim witted automatic gearbox it really is quite a charming little thing. It's a LONG time since I was in a car with hydrolastic suspension and I really had forgotten how well it works when it's set up properly. It's not going to beat something like a Citroen CX or DS, but she floats down the road just ironing out undulations and bumps in a way that absolutely nothing modern does.
I know quite a lot of people like to deride BMC products from this era, but it's roomy for the size of car it is, rides lovely, and with an A series up front was all tried and tested mechanical bits. I can see why they're popular in the classic scene and have quite a loyal following. Just a shame they didn't do a better job of corrosion protection of the subframes from the factory - though equally you could make similar accusations of just about any mass market car from the 60s in my experience. As was often the way with BMC though, it never really had the updates during its life span it probably should have had, and was hopelessly outdated by the time it was eventually retired.
It is kind of amusing to see the degree of badge engineering that went on with it though, and the lengths that they went to to try to make the dash in this Vanden Plas badged version look like it's a scaled down version of the one in a Rolls, even down to the black panel over to the right with most of the switchgear on it.
Quite looking forward to getting to know it a bit better over the next week or so. It's always fun getting to spend a bit of proper time with a car you'd never have gone out and bought yourself.
-- -- --
March 20th.
Nothing arrives on my driveway without some tinkering going on - or at the very least curious nosing around. This was of course going to be no different.
The owner had made me aware that this car was leaking a bit of oil. Turns out that it was leaking rather a LOT of oil. The whole front of the car was covered, it was literally dripping off the front valance, and had gone from just over max to well below minimum on the hour or so it had taken me to drive home.
The resulting drippage didn't just leave a puddle under the car, it left enough of a puddle that it ran clean out from under the car and off the side of the driveway. Not ideal!
The owner had had some issues with getting the oil filter housing to seal properly when they had changed the filter as the new O-ring was slightly too big. They were pretty sure they had mostly resolved this though, or so they thought. Turns out they had, the filter body to base join looked pretty dry - oil however had found the next weakest point and was basically peeing out between the filter housing and retaining bolt.
The oil was then dripping off there, being finely atomised by the air stream from the adjacent cooling fan and literally spread over the whole front end of the car.
This also turned out to be due to O-ring issues - the one which sat between the body and the washer the bolt sits against and the filter body was clearly too small to be doing anything. Swapping that for a thicker one got that oil tight again.
However I then spotted another substantial leak.
It was weeping pretty freely from around the union for the feed to the oil pressure gauge. This had somehow both managed to almost completely unscrew itself from the reducer boss it was fitted to, AND said boss had mostly unscrewed itself from the block. Simply tightening these both up sorted it. OR SO THOUGHT...
After a run today the nearside of the engine bay was nice and dry. After the car had been left sitting for half an hour or so there was a tiny drip there which I think is due to a slight weep from the crank pulley seal. It's well within the "just keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't get worse" range on something this old. However we did have quite a good puddle on the offside...which turned out to be that the oil pressure gauge union was loose again. Turns out if I'd taken it apart last time I would have spotted the cause. Originally the reducing boss was sealed against the block by a fibre washer. Said fibre washer had completely disintegrated, allowing both oil to leak out and the boss to back itself out. I didn't have any fibre washers in that sort of size in stock, but I did have copper ones - so have stuck one of those in there.
Only been on a brief run so far, but it's looking dry so far. I will keep an eye on that just in case it backs off again but I reckon it will be fine.
Something which I had noticed is that the oil pressure in this car is astonishingly consistent.
Though I did notice something which piqued my interest - that when you go from neutral into drive or reverse that the pressure dropped by about 25psi until the relevant solenoid actually engaged. Had they tapped off the engine oil feed to run the gearbox? Surely not...
It's stranger than that...no, they have run the *engine* lubrication off a relatively low pressure tap from the *gearbox* oil pump. This also explains why the oil filter housing leaked so much from what I would normally have expected to cause a pretty minor weep - that's because the filter is immediately upstream of the oil pump and before it gets to the pressure regulator which brings it down to ~100psi for the gearbox valve body (or 150psi if you select reverse). I hadn't noticed it at the time, but yes - the filter housing is way heavier than you'd normally expect, which makes sense now knowing that.
It's all in all a very strange setup, and very complicated for something intended for a mass market car like this. Surprises me as well that they went to the lengths of making it a four speed unit - a huge chunk of the market made do with three for another twenty years or so.
Stumbled across this in the glove box this afternoon.
Which I recognised from a distant memory as being the lamp holder for the heater control illumination - something I had noticed wasn't working. Which it wouldn't if the lamp holder was in the glovebox.
The fitted lamp was actually physically too large to allow it to be installed, so I went and had a rummage through my stash and found a more suitable candidate.
It is pretty dim, but the controls are so simple that all you really need is something to help you find where they are.
Isn't that just so much more welcoming than any modern car?
She is a bit tired here and there. The gearbox really does want the governor adjusted a bit, as it just bangs straight through the gears so you're in top by about 25mph irrespective of throttle position. The interior has about a thousand rattles and squeaks, and we're not convinced that the nearside front suspension displacer is long for this world, but it really is quite a charming little car.
The ADO16 is a car I'd never really given much thought to before, but it's definitely one I'd consider purely based on the strength of my time with this one.
Just hoping it stays oil tight now!
-- -- --
March 22nd.
I figured that it was about time I started actually making some progress on getting the Renault ready to move on. Having ignored it for a year hasn't miraculously made all the faults resolve themselves and gain an MOT, funnily enough. Why does that never work?
Step one was to stick the battery on to charge as unsurprisingly it was stone flat. It's entirely likely dead-dead given how long I reckon it's been flat, but we'll see. If I need to replace the battery it's not the end of the world.
Oil and water levels were both still exactly where I left them. With the charger hooked up, the expected background things like interior lights and the clock sprang to life.
I then made about an hour's work for myself. I couldn't remember exactly what worked and what didn't on the driver's door lock (it has the latch from the rear door on that side fitted as that kept jamming) - turns out the one thing which doesn't work is the key. The linkage however was quite happy to drop into such a place when I tried it and jammed the lock barrel - meaning I couldn't remove the key from the lock. Oops.
No amount of wiggling the key, bashing the door or swearing at it worked. I had to strip down and remove the fluffing door card to reach in and push the offending bit of linkage out the way...which took 5 seconds.
Note to self: Don't do that again.
Next thing I planned to do was replace the bit of fuel line which had decomposed by the pump. However I bought that hose the best part of a year ago, and I'll be damned if I can find it. Have now ordered some more... that's a sure fire way to make it immediately reappear I'm sure. Once that's fitted the car will hopefully be back into a state where it can actually run and drive. My *hope* is that I can find someone to then take it on as it stands. However if that fails I'll jump through the necessary hoops of getting it an MOT first - though if you want it stupidly cheap as it stands (well, once it's running again anyway), I'm open to insulting offers at the moment.
I know it needs three fairly small bits of welding (one bit on a chassis outrigger where someone jacked the car in the wrong place god knows how long ago, and two bits on the inner wings where the seam sealant has failed and the seam has been attacked), a door latch so the rear driver's side door can be opened without having to body slam it from inside while someone holds the handle outside, and a pair of drop links fitted - though I can probably do that given the only tool needed is a pair of circlip pliers and I now have a pair that I *think* will fit.
Rusty bits, photos taken a couple of days ago.
This is an older photo, though given the car hasn't seen any salt, or indeed many miles at all since it was found I don't imagine it's much worse now.
I'll be crawling around on that side when I fit the fuel line so will grab an updated photo then.
The other thing the car really needs is a head gasket. There's some oil contamination in the cooling system, though it's never pressurised it, and the oil has always stayed clean - so it's not failed catastrophically. The car has also never to my knowledge overheated.
It was finding this contamination that had me stop using the car as I didn't want to have it fail catastrophically and cause major damage - so hopefully should just be a case of remove head, clean everything up, have the head checked and cleaned, then reassemble.
Gasket, head bolts, camshaft seals, I think valve stem seals, timing belt etc has already been sourced (I just need to sift it out from this box full of Trabant and Rover bits!).
The radiator also looks pretty tired though is leak free - so when I came across someone who actually had a new Nissens one in stock I grabbed that - that will also come with the car.
It's a really rare car now, and is a lovely thing to drive (or even just sit in!), but I just don't have the time or patience that it really deserves - especially as finding parts is now quite a headache as so many of the breakers overseas I used to use now refuse to ship to the UK. So time for someone else to have a bash at it before it decays any more just sitting on my drive. If nobody will take it on as a project as it stands I will get enough work done to get it mobile with a fresh MOT on it - but I'd really rather not have to invest the time and energy that I really don't have to spare for it to get that done if I can avoid it.
Additional report on VP oil tightness. Definitely improved.
We do still have a bit of a drip for a couple of minutes after parking up on the offside, but orders of magnitude less than it was. I'd say based on that it seems like there's a fair bit of oil in the bell housing that we could be looking at a tired crank seal on this side as well. At least that's what I'd guess without digging any further. It's masses better than it was though, I really wasn't comfortable using the car as it was when it arrived out of concern for other road users.
It seems to be a car which everyone just likes out and about - well, except for the impatient guy in the Tesla who spent ten miles so close to me on the way back from Buckingham that I couldn't even see the front of their car in my mirrors, and eventually overtook me via a gap which really wasn't big enough. He really wasn't amused when ten minutes later I ended up pulling up next to him at the Stoney Stratford A5 roundabout and waved cheerfully to him as I went past and he had to wait in the queued traffic waiting to go down the A508 which was backed up for some reason. It's the little things in life that you have to enjoy...
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March 30th.
Well this isn't ideal.
My camera has got hopelessly confused with the colour balance here (I did spend several minutes fighting with it before giving up). The offside headlight is actually a normal neutral 4000K-ish white. The nearside one however has turned a distinctly orangish-pink colour.
Good side:
Bad side:
This is a pretty standard failure mode of any metal halide discharge lamp, automotive or otherwise. Basically as the lamp ages the halide salts are used up, until eventually the balance is thrown off - or blackening of the arc tube causes is to start overheating, which also throws things off and will usually manifest as a colour shift. It's pretty important that as soon as a halide lamp starts to show any change in characteristics that it's replaced then - don't just leave it until it stops working. For a very simple reason, it might explode! The halide salts are actually corrosive and over the life of the lamp do eat away at the envelope, so if operated until the very end they can (and in some cases do) go pop. Especially keeping in mind that the atmosphere in ones like this is somewhere in the region of 7 bar when operating, so there's quite a bit of pressure in that tiny little quartz capsule.
New ground for me as this is the first car I've ever owned with HID headlights (which in this case also swivel to look round corners), but something I figured I'd need to do battle with at some point, especially as the lights on this car are always on when the engine is running.
Surprisingly there is actually provision for replacement of the lamps here and it's not too bad to get to them. Though on the nearside the air cleaner/one of the ECUs is just close enough to the back of the headlight to be REALLY ANNOYING.
The connector just pulls off the bottom, then twisting the big black tab you can see at about 10 o'clock anticlockwise releases the lamp from the housing.
The silver boxes attached to the lamps contains the high voltage igniter - these require a pulse somewhere in the region of 20-30kV to provide the ability for hot restrike (as waiting several minutes to relight a lamp in an automotive application is a big no no). This arrangement with the igniter integrated into the lamp base vastly simplifies the wiring arrangements as the line between the ballast and lamp only has to deal with ~100V rather than the starting pulse. It's also the most likely component to fail, so having a new one fitted with each lamp isn't the worst idea.
A new pair of lamps are on the way and hopefully will be here tomorrow. At which point I'll find out precisely how much more annoying the proximity of the air cleaner housing is going to be in getting the new lamp into place.
-- -- --
March 31st.
Replacements arrived today. Shown here during the standard customs inspection.
Failed inspection on account of being too boring and not edible. Better put them in the car then if they're not allowed in the house!
Shiny.
Part number for those of you playing along at home.
The driver's side is really easy. You can clearly see where the access cover is off below. This took roughly 30 seconds to install.
Passenger side, not so much.
Of course this one was the side which refused to just slot in wasn't it. Cue escalation.
Eventually I figured out why it was refusing to seat. Around the perimeter there are a bunch of springy copper "fingers" which grip the metal housing of the igniter, presumably for RFI suppression. Two of these had been bent over so were getting in the way. Just to the right of 6 o'clock in the photo below.
Given how ridiculously tight the locking ring was when I tried to remove the lamp from this side and scratches in that area on the lamp i removed I reckon these have been bent out of shape for a long time. With them bent back out of the way the lamp just slotted in and locked into place without needing to use unreasonable force. Which given the whole thing you're locking it to sits on a gimbal arrangement which can move in all directions is nice as you really don't want to break it as then it would be new headlight time.
Much better.
Both lights are now the same colour. Definitely better than they were - definitely had a distinctly greenish tint before.
Be curious to take the car out after dark to see if they're noticeably brighter - kind of hard to tell just sitting in the driveway. Really do need to get the lenses properly polished up though as they no doubt aren't helping, and do let down the look of the car a bit. Job done for now though.
Now just to wait a couple of weeks for the skin on my right wrist to grow back!
-- -- --
April 2nd.
Had a brief it turned out totally unnecessary panic this afternoon when I came back out of a shop to find a large puddle of very rusty coolant under the VP.
This puzzled me on closer inspection. For one, it didn't feel excessively hot. Certainly not to the point I'd have expected it to barf large quantities of coolant. It's hard to put numbers on it or anything, but you kind of get a feel for what feels "too hot" and know when an engine smells too hot. This wasn't ringing any alarm bells. Secondly the coolant level actually seemed to be fine on investigation. The thing which really made me go "hmmmm..." though was that the coolant in the car was lovely and clean...not rusty Radweldy goop like was on the ground...Yeah, you guessed it. It seems I'd parked over a puddle left by the car which pulled out of the space right before I parked. I didn't notice because I walked away to the rear of the car.
I think one of the jobs for this weekend really needs to be to give the Rover a good clean. It's filthy from a combination of just winter grime and from dust kicked up while the landscaping was underway. I moved it this afternoon when getting some awkward furniture through the gate and could barely see out the thing reversing back onto the driveway.
I have fixed one fault on that car though (or at least I hope I have), which was tightening up the securing screw on the driver's wing mirror - so hopefully it will now stay where it's put rather than ending up pointing at the rear wheel after you hit the first bump. It's a tiny thing, but was a *really annoying* tiny thing when driving it. Especially as the driver's window really doesn't like opening or closing. That's probably going to be near the top of the list to investigate as again - it's really fluffing annoying and the sort of silly thing which leads to me just not wanting to drive the car. It actually works just fine but is really stiff so hopefully just needs cleaning up and the relevant parts lubricating.
Reckon with that and the front camber sorted properly so it tracks right I might actually be inclined to get some more miles covered and maybe actually start developing a bit of confidence in it.
Oh...and sorting at least the trip/odometer (they packed in last time I had it out) so in the absence of a working fuel gauge that I have *some* way to keep tabs on the fuel situation...That should also be near the top of the list I guess. Or try to sort the gauge - though that involves draining and pulling the tank, which quite simply put I really don't want to do, so yes I am indeed putting that off! On the plus side, I am pretty good at removing and installing the instrument cluster by now, so that bit shouldn't take me too long! I only had it out about 150 miles ago to attempt to sort the ammeter and replace several dead illumination lamps (one of which has already gone out again anyway).
Would you believe it, the Volvo is demanding yet more attention now!
Bloomin' needy modern cars!
-- -- --
April 4th.
Finally got around to dealing with the small mountain of cardboard which we had ended up with in the conservatory. A lot of this originated from the engine and associated bits for the Trabant as there was a LOT of packaging involved in that. Plus we struggle with bin capacity for paper and cardboard at the best of times. That combined with a few kitchen appliances recently being bought meant it had just snowballed a bit.
The big boxes there are all full of collapsed other boxes and packing materials as well.
Obviously it wasn't just cardboard I took with me, there were a bunch of old batteries, a couple of dead power supplies, some dead light bulbs and such as well. While at the recycling centre I found something downright unexpected in the lamp bin. Even better, there was nobody on that side of the yard, so it got liberated.
Yes, that is a CO2 laser tube.
I realise it's most likely dead, and I'm about 20kV short of having anything on hand to run it with anyway. Nevertheless it's still a fascinating bit of glassware to take a look at.
Not something I've ever had a chance to look at in person before. I'll give it a clean at the weekend and get some better close up photos when I can.
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April 9th.
Generally been pretty quiet over the last week or so here. Have found myself pretty much exclusively using the VP for local running around.
Couple of hundred miles have been done since the major oil leaks were sorted and the oil was last topped up. Still showing max on the stick (ignore it reading a bit high - that's mainly because of the slope of our drive).
She definitely is still leaking a bit from the flywheel side of the engine, but it's reduced enough that it's not actually using an appreciable amount, just marking it's territory a bit when you park up. That's waaaay beyond any tinkering I'm getting involved in though. Changing a crank seal on that end of an A series is a non trivial task - especially on the auto as I'm pretty sure there's a special puller needed to remove the torque converter.
Ticked over 83K on the clock yesterday.
I'm very much having to sit on my hands to not pull the speedometer out to lube up the trip/odometer gear train - that's 90% likely to be responsible for the speedometer essentially showing a +/- 20mph moving average at any moment. I haven't looked at how much of a pain it would be to get out to work on, as I know if I do that I'll end up doing it. Then I'll also end up trying to hunt down all the rattles and buzzes behind the dash, and that way lays madness.
Mostly though I've just been enjoying it.
Something I don't think I'd mentioned before as one of my favourite things about the car (aside from the suspension's ability to smooth out the horrendous roads around MK) is the view out over the wings and bonnet.
That really doesn't get old.
It really is quite a cheerful little car and I definitely could see me with an ADO16 in the future one day. I really can see why they were so popular cars in their time. Feel kind of bad for having so completely overlooked them until now.
Today however the Volvo was back on duty as I had to make a run southwards to go and grab a little stash of parts. This involved entirely too much of the M25, but was otherwise uneventful and definitely worth it.
The gent in question is mainly into the Steyr-Puch side of things, but had ended up with a few Invacar bits and pieces, and having stumbled across my website reached out to see if I wanted to offer these bits a home.
Big thanks to them if they're reading this as there's some quite useful stuff in there. Exhaust has some surface rust from storage but appears absolutely sound. The guy has said he'll keep an eye out for any more bits that might surface in the future.
The thing I'm most interested in is the carb. The one I have on TPA currently has quite a lot of wear in the throttle shaft, and even though it generally runs the engine well I know it's a problem waiting to happen at some point. This one seems to be in far better shape, so hopefully with a good service will be ready to go.
The coil is in far better shape than mine too which honestly looks like it was pulled off the bottom of the ocean. I'll be grabbing the support rod which sits between the intake manifold and air cleaner as well as I've currently got a home made one there.
-- -- --
April 16th.
Today the time came to drop the VP back off with its owner and collect the Trabant.
I've very much enjoyed my time with the VP and on the strength of that I could absolutely see me owning one in the future.
The reason the Trabant was away was to have this crispy bit of sill looked at.
As is always the case what you can see is only the tip of the iceberg, and this was no exception as we fully expected. Some photos were provided while the work was underway.
Some grot was also spotted on the front cross member as well - including going behind the subframe mounting reinforcement plates. This definitely isn't ideal given that basically the whole front of the car is hanging off these two points.
Let the chopping commence.
This also revealed a historic repair on the wheel tub - which most likely explains why this corner seemed so much worse than the rest of the car.
Some nice replacement panels were fabricated.
Then was zapped in.
Attention was then moved to the cross member. This was done in two halves to deal with each subframe mounting point.
Then same on the other side.
Followed by some underbody sealant.
Just a shame that nobody besides me and the MOT tester will ever see it!
There are a few other areas which will want further attention in the future, but all well clear of prescribed areas and nothing that I'm imminently concerned about. However I knew this was seriously important structurally (especially given that basically the whole front of the car hangs off those two big mounting points to the cross member) so needed sorting sooner than later.
While I have very much enjoyed my time with the VP, I am very happy to have this little buzz box back.
I do need to do a bit of clean up where the VP was parked prior to dealing with the oil leak issues...
Finally did get the car transferred over to the historic tax class yesterday and logged as MOT exempt (despite that, it's still going in for a test next week) as I ran into issues last time I attempted to do that. The MOT exemption I'm not particularly worried about other than it making the logistics of getting it back a bit simpler, but I'll definitely take the £18 or whatever it is a month saving on road tax costs.
With around 100 miles covered since I last tweaked the carb, looking at the plugs I think I'm maybe a little too far on the rich side now.
Which is good - I was aiming to go a bit too far that way then back off a notch on the slide setting in the carb to find what's probably the safest setting for the engine. With two strokes being what they are I'd always rather err on the side of rich than lean. A fouled plug is far easier to deal with than a melted piston.
Shortly after the engine swap was done I found this crack on the front exhaust section.
This was looked at while the car was being worked on, but was deemed too far gone to do anything with - pretty much as I expected given that the pipe was paper thin around that join. I did speak to a couple of places locally about having a system made up in stainless but they really weren't interested. Did consider just buying the middle section that's gone as the rest of the system does still have at least a bit of life left in it yet - but instead just pushed the button on a new 38mm system. Which should help get the most out of the better carb and overbore on the engine itself. I also don't like messing with exhaust systems at the best of times so don't want to be replacing one pipe now and having another bit go six months or a year down the line - hopefully this will be something that won't need to be touched for a good few years once it's all on there. Given we've got a fair few uprated parts on this car, it just seems a bit silly not to add the last bit to get the most out of everything. 38mm doesn't *sound* like a big exhaust bore - but the stock one is 35mm...This is a really small engine! Should make a noticeable difference at the top end I expect - apparently the baffling arrangement in the heat exchanger/expansion box up front is quite different to the stock one as well so flows considerably better.
Really happy to have the car back. This is always one of those areas where there's going to be a huge amount of placebo effect, but it seems to *feel* more solid and planted on the road. I guess this could have made a noticeable difference though given that we found that the rot had got into areas next to the subframe mounts off which the whole engine and front suspension setup is hanging - wouldn't take much movement there to be perceptible from the driver's seat. I'm pretty sure though it's entirely in my head and just knowing that there's not a big hole in structural areas any more is making my brain think the car feels more solid.
-- -- --
April 18th.
Had planned to go tweak the carb on the Trabant today (going to knock it back one notch), but as soon as I went to get the tools out the weather laughed at me.
So I changed tack and went looking for a job I could do at least mostly inside. Of course it then never actually started raining properly. Ended up going for one job which functionally is minor but will be a huge quality of life improvement.
This was my chosen target.
The front window seals are utterly knackered.
This resulted in two issues. One being that the glass could wobble around a bunch and it rattled incessantly. The second was that because it could wobble around so much that while you could open the window just fine while driving, if you tried to close it in motion the glass would do this and jam.
I actually bought a full set of window seals only a week or so after I got the car (this includes windscreen, rear windscreen and boot lid as well) however I've been largely ignoring them.
Have been putting this off as every time I've changed window seals before it's generally been an utter pig of a job.
Let's get into it.
Spot the difference?
Should have known the Trabant would be different.
Time taken: About 30 minutes. Tools required: One flat blade screwdriver (to help push the wiper strip at the bottom of the window into it's channel). Technically you don't even need to take door door card off.
I've only done the outside wiper so far as I want to attack the top of the inside of the door top with some cutting paste to try to remove some of the black grime from there and I know it will end up all over that, so doing it AFTER that cleaning makes more sense. The actual window seal just slides into the channel and can just be pushed from one side to the other.
I did take the door card off as I thought I'd need to (that again only needs one flat blade screwdriver and about 5 minutes work). That gave me a good opportunity to clean and lubricate the winder mech and hoover all the accumulated gunk out of the bottom of the door.
The difference when closing the door is ridiculously obvious, it really shuts with a solid thump now rather than rattling. It's a minor thing but not having the door continually rattling right in my ear will be a big quality of life improvement.
Also noticed that the passenger side wiper arm was closed to making a bid for freedom - the grub screw was loose, so that's been tightened up. Will get the passenger door window done tomorrow.
It will be strange driving the car without the doors rattling so much. The interior itself is actually surprisingly rattle free to be totally honest so it will make a lot of difference. Replacing the broken clip on the ashtray will get shot of the next most obvious one.
-- -- --
April 20th.
Carb tweaking was first on today's to do list.
Previously I had the needle set here, on the centre notch.
I've now moved it up one to here.
I'll take it for a run tomorrow afternoon then read the plugs again.
It is a good thing that this carb isn't any bigger!
Looks hard to get to but the fastening screw on the fitting boss is actually easily accessible from the right hand side, and the carb sits conveniently on top of the alternator while you remove the lid and mess with the innards. Takes all of about a minute.
Passenger door was attacked like the driver's one yesterday. You can see here how slack the glass was in the old seals.
Just like yesterday everything was pulled apart.
New seals in.
The wiper seals at the base of the window on this side are in good shape so I left them alone.
I also took the opportunity to hoover all the detritus out of the bottom of the door.
Which somewhat surprisingly included three usable trim clips.
There has been a horrible smear of paint or something on the top of the inside of the driver's door since I got the car.
This has defied all efforts to remove it with normal cleaning products, so today I hit it with some cutting paste to see if that would do anything - it finally did but took a fair bit of scrubbing.
Have also replaced the torn wiper seal on that window now. This was far more of a fight than the outside one as there was a window in the way which was now fairly firmly held in place because everything else had been replaced.
Minor details seem to be the order of the day this weekend. Like the holes in the bumpers which originally held additional lights or something like that.
Much tidier.
Same deal up front where I was missing two blanking plugs.
Oh, and finally wiped that oily handprint off the front panel and bonnet.
Final quick job was dealing with a bright red cable tie in the engine bay of the Volvo which has been bugging me for at least the last six months.
The solenoid which controls the vacuum supply to on the engine mounts (yes really) has a broken clip and was zip tied to its bracket. Fair enough but it was squint and had a red zip tie holding it on. Lined it up better and swapped for a black one so it doesn't stick out like such a sore thumb.
Has only taken me six months to sort that...
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April 22nd.
Hard to believe it's been a year again already, but once more I found myself here with the Trabant.
Which shortly later resulted in this being issued.
Which the car doesn't actually need - but I don't have a four post lift or a set of brake rollers at home. Plus I reckon the MOT represents excellent value in having a second pair of eyes look over the car. I'm only human and can and do miss things and make mistakes. Plus in the event anything did happen it's one less thing for insurers to quibble over. It will continue to be tested yearly. Fingers crossed I get to cover a few more miles between now and the next test...given the car was parked up for about ten months of the last test period after the engine went bang.
Had a look at the plugs when I got back from today's driving and this is what they have to say.
One downside that was apparent with having knocked the mixture by a notch though was once again having to poke the cold start lever a couple of times before I got onto the main road and the engine started to do meaningful work and get some heat into it. I think this however is largely down the the supposedly smart choke as Mikuni call it trying to be too smart for it's own good. I'm sure the warmup profile they have works fine for a bike. The cylinder on a bike engine will heat up really pretty quick when you're stationary given there's virtually no airflow over it. This is a bit different though in that there's a great big (really quite powerful!) fan blasting cool air at the engine as soon as it's started - so I imagine it takes a good deal longer to get up to temperature than a similar capacity bike engine would. I'd really prefer to just have a cable attached to the choke control on the carb that I could set where I wanted it. Something I might have to look into at some point in the future. It's not a problem really rather just an annoyance.
I really do need to kick the idle speed up a touch as well as it is idling too slow currently - and being a two cylinder two stroke it makes it very well known that it's a bit too slow! Quite a contrast actually as as soon as you're off idle it really is a heck of a lot smoother than you'd expect. That is a moderate faff to adjust though as that screw is right on the back of the carb so is completely inaccessible with it attached to the intake boss...which given I imagine is going to require a few trips backwards and forwards dialling it in will get old in a hurry. Which is why I've been putting off dealing with that. I did see if I could cheat by tweaking the throttle cable adjustment (the idle speed adjustment is basically just a set screw which sets the resting position of the throttle slide), but that just makes the throttle hang 50% of the time...so no, I'm just going to have to do it properly, being lazy isn't an option. I did discover that I had at least 1/4" of slack in the throttle cable though, so it was worth messing with anyway as there's no way I'd have been able to get full throttle with it like that.
