Practically Classics Forum

https://www.diy.com/departments/blyss-c ... 959_BQ.prd

Is this any good for you?

Dick wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2024 6:21 pm I might borrow your idea for the parts washer, only when my better half is at work and the wash will finish before she gets home
Could you spray some stone chip paint on the floor to hide the damage and help with sound proofing?

Just don't use too hot a wash (for plastic items anyway) and avoid aluminium, as the detergent (or rather the rinse aid I believe) will oxidise the surface badly. I've still done it on a few occasions where stuff was bad enough that "clean and tarnished" was preferable. Quite a few things have been through ours without any Ill effects. I always run a thorough cleaning cycle with a proper dishwasher cleaner if it's anything that's been in contact with vehicle fluids that's been in there before it's used for normal duties again. Though given how aggressive a degreaser the usual detergent is it's probably not really necessary.

The other thing which quite regularly goes through there (and breaks people's brains the most I think) is bits of old tech. PC motherboards and the like which are covered in 30 years of grime and leaked capacitor goo generally are chucked straight in there before I even start trying to repair them. People throw their hands up in horror, but the last step on most production lines was essentially an industrial sized dishwasher to get rid of all the solder/flux residue etc. so long as everything is thoroughly dry (compressed air and a couple of days in the airing cupboard or on the pool table in the conservatory in the summer see to that) before it's powered back up it'll be fine. Obviously use common sense...stuff like fans need to be removed, if it's a board that deals with higher voltages you need to be doubly careful etc...but as a rule it's a perfectly valid way of cleaning and degreasing all sorts of things.

I will probably be using a rubberised textured finish on the floor once I've put down a couple of coats of this stuff, as you say might help a bit with sound deadening too - not exactly expecting miracles there though!

Dick wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2024 6:52 pm https://www.diy.com/departments/blyss-c ... 959_BQ.prd

Is this any good for you?

To be honest beyond helping in a slightly musty wardrobe or the like those things are pretty pointless. They can't remove particularly large volumes of water, and really rely on there being natural airflow to do anything useless. The salt solution which ends up in the tray is quite caustic as well and can make quite a mess of surfaces. I discovered that when one I used in the van as an experiment once leaked. I never did fully get the mark on the work surface off. I'd really not rate them as useful in a car.

An actual powered dehumidifier deployed a couple of times during the winter is likely to be far more useful.

-- -- --

Time to look at getting that smashed rear light surround changed.

It looked like it should be as simple as removing the lens from the light, unplugging the wires, removing two nuts from inside the boot and the whole lot just lifting off the back of the car.



I'm not new to this game though, so was prepared for this seemingly simple task to turn into a headache. However it actually was exactly as simple as it looked.



Here's where the wires go in case you somehow find yourself doing this job and forgot to take note.



Red and black one goes to the terminal on the back for the brake light.

All back together in less than ten minutes, including transferring the seal from the old backing plate to the new one.

Before:



After:



Yes the paint match is a bit off, but I think it's fine - especially if I match both of the surrounds and maybe the bumpers to be the same it will look far less unintentional. The steel and plastic panels have faded to notably different shades anyway so things are never going to be perfect no matter what I do unless I respray the whole car. A bit outside our scope at this stage.



Looks far less scruffy than having a chunk missing out of the corner anyway.



Anything else involving paint is going to have to wait a while anyway as it's going to be too cold this week it looks like for anything to cure properly.

Again impressed by what should be a ten minute job actually being a ten minute job. It's kind of refreshing.

Had another quick win in terms of ticking something else off the to do list this afternoon as this little (surprisingly heavy) box arrived this morning, vastly overpacked in a container the size of a large shoebox.



This is the dip/main beam toggle relay for the Trabant. The one on the car was dead meaning that the headlights only worked on dipped beam.

Simple matter of undoing the two 8mm mounting bolts, unplugging the wires and then reversing the process. I did remove the one bolt that holds the fuse box in to hinge it out of the way just to make access a bit easier. You can absolutely do it without this step but as it takes about 20 seconds I figured being able to see what I was doing was worth that.

The old relay has been unbolted below and was just waiting for me to swap the wiring over - I did this one connector at a time to ensure I didn't get anything crossed over.



Here's what was left of the old one...Not surprising it didn't work.



Quite why someone had dismantled it and completely removed the actuator arm from the solenoid I'll never know.

New one was connected up, bolted in place and the fusebox was re-secured in its correct location.



I can confirm that the headlights now work correctly, toggling between dip and main beam with a very satisfying mechanical "Ka-clack!" noise from the relay when you tap the indicator stalk towards you.



Once the beam height adjustment has been fine tuned and I've swapped out a few blackened looking lamps in the tail lights I think we can tick the lighting systems off the list as done.

Another really quick and simple job which was as simple as it should be. Really helpful that there's such a following for these little cars though that oddball components like this are still readily available. This is obviously at least a somewhat specialised part and while I am sure there's a more modern solution which could be engineered to work, just being able to drop in an original spec part is far easier.

Do you want to paint the whole car at some stage? Would it be possible to refresh it with rattle cans?

Dick wrote: Tue Jan 16, 2024 8:36 pm Do you want to paint the whole car at some stage? Would it be possible to refresh it with rattle cans?

Realistically the whole thing could ideally do with painting. There are scratches right down into the plastic on every panel I think. Not really unsurprising for a 39 year old car which likely didn't live an easy life in it's early years and has 80K miles on the clock. I'd not expect an unrestored Mini, 2CV or Beetle to be any better.

To be honest though I'm inclined not to worry too much about it. My target is to get the car looking in a state that it's obviously cared for but maybe has stories to tell. Concourse standard absolutely isn't my target. There are plenty of cars out there in that state, I'd much rather keep the character the car has than over-restore it. Aside from anything else, it would just make no sense...if I decided that I really wanted a far tidier Trabant I honestly would just go and buy one, given their relatively low values doing an in depth restoration, full respray etc just wouldn't make financial sense as you'd wind up spending probably double the car's value without really trying.

You can see it's quite rough if you look closely. The longer distance photos flatter the car quite a bit.



Fully expecting there to be a bit of metalwork needed to sort that rear screen surround. Plus realistically given the amount of surface rust on them it's near miraculous that I've not poked any holes in the floor pans. So long term it would absolutely make sense to budget replacing those.

I need to ask some serious questions though before I get too deeply involved in things. This car really was intended to be a little bit of fun for a few months then to be moved on as I'm well and truly over-capacity. I guess it's a case of watch this space there. I've been far more impressed with this little car than I was expecting, and have been really surprised how well suited it actually is to being a day to day runaround - hence having already chucked probably somewhere around £750 of bits at it. We'll see how things go, but I suspect I may well find myself talking me out of moving it on...I need a bigger driveway.

Cosmetically though I think aside from the metal bits which need protection, the bonnet (which really wants replacing as there's a stinking great crack in it), and matching up the bits of trim we'll likely just be leaving things be. Will be curious to see what colour the car looks once it's had a polish, I suspect it will substantially change colour.

Keep it, you know you want to... do any of your neighbours want to rent a parking space to you or could you find a lock up or something similar

Dick wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2024 1:06 pm Keep it, you know you want to... do any of your neighbours want to rent a parking space to you or could you find a lock up or something similar

I think most of our neighbours would rather murder me with dull spoons than rent me driveway space. We get along okay in passing at least with the couple across the road, but most around here pretty much try to make me phase out of existence with the power of their minds whenever they see me. I don't think I fit in with their pairs of 1-2 year old Audi/Mercedes/Tesla view of suburban living. Lockups round here that are available are unheard of, and I've heard of people paying more rent for them than I paid for my first flat.

-- -- --

Didn't get as far as dealing with the battery today, but did get the new wipers fitted.



I hate seeing this style of blades on older cars, but really don't object to them on vehicles like this where they absolutely could have been original spec - and I do have to confess that they do work better.

I noted that the pivots on both of the arms on the Partner were very stiff, which I'm sure wasn't helping the performance of the system, so they were thoroughly lubricated. Streak and screech free windscreen clearing has been restored. I'm sure for about three months given the rate modern wipers degrade, but I've tried! We've got a drive up to Glasgow coming up in a couple of weeks and I really wanted it sorted in advance of that as squeaky wipers is one of those things I have absolutely zero patience for - and if it was raining during that trip that would have driven me insane.

The wipers on this thing are subject to a distinct irritation of mine with the design - in that the passenger side really needs another 4" or so of sweep so it ends within the field of the drivers side wiper. As it is the tip stops several inches short and results in any time you're travelling less than about 30mph, water from the top of the passenger side wiper sweep dribbling down pretty much straight across your field of vision. It's really annoying. I don't know if this is something they all suffer from or if there's a bit of lazy LHD to RHD design going on here. The unswept triangle is large enough to land a small aircraft in though, and I think is definitely among the worst I've been aware of on any modern car.

The speed sensitive intermittent setting is also exceptionally annoying - above 50mph it wipes so frequently that you may as well not even have an intermittent setting. I get the feeling that it's really intended to have an adjustable delay, but that's not something fitted to my car sadly. Kinda feels that they should have defaulted it to the long rather than short end of the scale on cars without the adjustment.

I *think* I have found a suitable COM2000 unit to get me (in conjunction with a Diagbox session) working cruise control. Fingers crossed anyway! That would also be nice to have for the trip north.

This afternoon I added roughly 4.5kg to the weight of the Trabant in the form of rust proofing added to the floors.





Will need to touch in a few areas with a smaller brush, but most of it is now protected at least. Feel better about that than bare surface rust covering about 80% of the surface. Two coats of rust converter did go on there before the sealant today so I've done what I can.

Telling my OCD that I *really* don't need to apply something near to body colour over that once it has dried as 100% of this will be hidden under the carpets so nobody will ever see it...Well aside from the bottom of the B pillar just ahead of the doors, that will need to be painted because it's visible. The floor though really doesn't matter visually...nobody will ever know. Except for me. I hate my brain sometimes (read: nearly all the time).

Curious to see if that makes any difference to the noise levels, not really expecting so.

Oh... you have my sympathy... in the last place I lived in the uk the neighbours used to call me ncp.. they couldn't understand why someone would want to drive a van let alone restore an old car.. house prices tripled when I left

Armed with information from the internet I was able to release this battery clamp.



Yes, you do just lift the red tab up. Though precisely why is still beyond me if you're not going to equip both terminals with that facility as it doesn't actually save you having to get the tools out.

Anyhow, as mentioned the old battery was both struggling in the cold and had previously been identified as undersized anyway. Here's the old and new for comparison.



Ten minutes, job done.



I really do need to sort that power feed to the horn, it is bugging the heck out of me.

Engine spins over WAY faster on the starter now, so yeah I think the old one was actually struggling even when it wasn't so cold - it was just more obvious then.


In other news, some fancy Western luxury has now been fully installed in the Trabant.





Will have to see how accurately it tracks.

Also found enough of the little plastic clips to properly resecure the little rubber shield over the cooling fan so it doesn't rattle any more.