Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[mickthemaverick]

I can advise that the Ferry oosts for the forthcoming Hamburg Hop are £157.60 return. Assuming fuel costs will be circa £200 depending on where you have to go, I'd go for the shipping!

[xantia_v6]

For those who might miss the spectacle of Zel rebuilding his engine, someone has done it for you.

[Zelandeth]

A good, if unhappy read Zel... Maybe a nice little road trip to Germany to get a new engine?

I've been pretty lucky to be honest, this is the first time I've really had a mechanical failure where the only real solution is spending a bunch of money.

Sadly it's a bit distant for a road trip, Zwickau is kind of on the wrong side of Germany for a nice quick road trip. Think we'd be talking about 750 miles each way. In a country I can just about ask for directions to the library in. That sounds like a recipe for disaster if my body decided to energy crash halfway there.

The £250 or so in fuel costs probably don't stack up too well to postage either.

-- -- --

For those who might miss the spectacle of Zel rebuilding his engine, someone has done it for you.

Watching this myself. Had in my head that I'd found him really irritating in something in the past, but think I was remembering someone else now.

First thing I spotted during the dismantling: I'm pretty sure the flywheel securing nut/washer is the same as the one used for the rear hubs.

Given the damage to the rotary valve port faces in my crank case I'm leaning towards ordering a full engine. That's pretty much going to be game over for this case...and given that I now need a set of pistons, cylinders, crankshaft assembly, set of rotary valves, and a whole crankcase...Um...yeah that's basically aside from a handful of hardware and external accessories that's a whole engine! Trying to buy all those bits separately sounds like a recipe for madness. Especially when I can just buy an engine off the shelf, with a warranty.

The case could be repaired in theory. The loss of a bit of material there isn't a huge issue provided we're not talking about massive amounts of material as the valve discs are spring loaded. However getting this surface polished is quite a specialised job given it's...you know...in the middle of a crankcase. Well, half a crankcase. Oh, and the machining work on the two halves has to line up perfectly, so a polishing disc on an angle grinder and eyeballing it isn't going to cut it.

While the "horizontal" play in the con rod bearings apparently is normal according to those who know the engines, there is noticeably more vertical play in the one than the other. I think cylinder 1 is okay, but 2 feels excessive. There definitely are bearing issues in the bottom end as well. I was previously still spinning the fan and alternator, but even with that now removed there is still a lot of drag, and it's still grumbly. Additionally there is a distinct "tight" spot every few revolutions. Which actually does tie in with the noises it's always made when running - there has always been a noise somewhat like a dodgy bearing in a fan or similar, engine speed related but not every revolution. Feeling that tight spot in the bearings tells me that this has always been coming from the bottom end.

It does feel like giving up a bit, but I think it's just the most sensible course of action here unless another engine pops up on these shores that's cheap enough to take a punt on. However given the cost of the most likely needed bits for a rebuild being what they are, it's going to have to be pretty cheap for that to be the case. If it was an engine to be in known good health, I doubt someone would be willing to sell it to me for £100 or so...no, they're going to price it accordingly or keep it as a spare for their own car.

I haven't made a final decision yet, and I am poking around to see if I can find an engine "locally" still, but the above summarises my thoughts at the moment.

[bobins]

If I was in your shoes, I'd go for the rebuilt engine. Yes, it's more expensive, but it might add a bit of resale value to the Trabby if you ever sell it, and if anyone should know how to put one of the engines together properly - TrabantWorld should know
The sooner you get it ordered - the sooner you'll be buzzing around in it again
As for going to pick it up - yep, that's a long way to go for just one thing. I've been in the Zwickau area numerous times before, but a 'there and back' trip from over here is a little extreme

[Gibbo2286]

I wonder if some company like this one might be the way to go.
https://www.rhrmotorcycles.co.uk/2-stro ... restoratio

[Zelandeth]

From what I've heard from a couple of folks who have had experience trying to get other two stroke engines rebuilt (albeit Saab rather than Trabant), the general consensus seems to be that getting this done in the UK nowadays is just a nightmare. The go to solution seems to be to send things to either Sweden or Germany.

Having looked at things a bit more closely, I think we're going to be looking at a complete replacement engine - whether that be second hand or a rebuild from Trabantwelt remains to be seen. The big issue preventing me from just chucking some new bits into this one is the damage to the faces of the rotary valve port faces. They really have been pretty well chewed up and there really is no easy way to repair this, so the crankcase is basically scrap. Which leaves me with...well basically just the external components that are suitable for reuse. Most likely we'll be looking at a "new" one.


Yesterday I made myself some unnecessary work and swore a lot.

Yesterday I went to have a look into seeing if we could do something about the oil leak on the Rover. It's kind of hard to tell exactly where it's coming from but all evidence suggests the join between the oil pump body and filter housing. The vast majority of the oil seeming to run down and drip off the bottom of the filter itself and the cap over the pressure relief valve. Or it might be the filter bypass valve looking at the location...It's clearly a piston/spring type pressure regulating valve of some description.



This would be a lot less of a pain to deal with if Rover hadn't put this...thing...right in front of the oil filter.



Yes. That gets in the way *exactly* as much when you're trying to change the oil filter as it looks like. I've threatened it with the angle grinder more than once.

Hard to see in the photo, but the bolt layout can be seen from the replacement gasket.



I eventually figured out that a 3/8" wrench was a perfect fit on those bolts - after spending a good 20 minutes digging through toolboxes while cursing the fact that Rover hadn't discovered the joys of the metric system in the early 70s. Unfortunately that's about where the good news ended. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get a wrench on the "back" two bolts. On in particular I can barely even touch between the amount of structural metalwork in the way and the oil pressure switch boss being in about the most unhelpful place imaginable in terms of trying to remove this assembly.



It doesn't look like removing the filter will actually help the bolts that it looks like it interferes with in the photos are actually accessible - and the filter itself actually gives me something to hold on to while I'm trying to remove the thing from the car.

I did notice though that - even using a pretty stubby wrench as I was - that at least four of the bolts were not all that tight at all. So nipped those up a little and ran the car for a while to see if it helped. After 20 minutes or so (however long it took me to go over the seats with leather conditioner again), evidence suggested that it maybe had helped...We definitely didn't seem to have the regular drip or two every second off the bottom of the filter anyway. We did still have a drip every ten seconds still coming off the bottom of the oil pressure relief valve housing. Which when spraying the area down with brake clean (which was then immediately blown in my face courtesy of the cooling fan), looked like it might be seeping out around the cap over the valve - the copper washer there looking a bit mangled where I could see it. So I figured I'd pull that and swap the copper washer and see if that improved things.

Rookie mistake.

Of course if you look at those photos you can see that said valve is basically the lowest point in the housing. So yes, as soon as the piston was removed all of the oil that was in the oil pump immediately exited the oil pump (and ran straight up my right arm).

While annoying for me, I immediately realised I had made a mistake there. Something the Rover V8s are renowned for is that the oil pumps can be an absolute git to get to prime themselves if they are drained. Especially if they've got a few miles on, where they can completely refuse to prime unless you physically dismantle the pump and pack it full of petroleum jelly. Which given that I haven't figured out how to remove said pump yet isn't great.

If I'd been smart I would have checked beforehand that I had a suitable washer to replace the one I was looking at. If I was smart. I'm not. I didn't. It's also captive on the cap (not sure if by design or if it's just become somewhat oval) so I couldn't just pull it off to anneal it. Nevertheless I did clean it up a bit before putting it back together.

Which took well over an hour of swearing. The spring is really strong, everything is covered in oil, the cap has a tapered seat, a really fine thread, and you're working at a really odd angle, one handed while blind. I managed to launch the thing into my face at least half a dozen times.

I just had to walk away at that point yesterday.

Fast forward to today and I made myself an oil pump priming tool.



It's just a rod with a flattened end which engages with the drive dog on the top of the oil pump (like a really big slotted head screw). This is accessed simply by unbolting and pulling the distributor out.

Said rod is then used to drive the oil pump (clockwise) using a drill. I'm glad I decided to be cautious and do this rather than just starting the engine and crossing my fingers. I must have had the drill running at high speed for well over a minute before the pump finally drew prime and started generating pressure. That would have definitely taken an extremely uncomfortably long time with the engine running, and likely would have taken way more than the battery would have had to give to do it just cranking.

Then put everything back together - after spending way too long trying to get the drive coupling on the bottom of the distributor drive to line up and engage with the oil pump drive. That was really fiddly.

Somewhat apprehensively I went for a start, and immediately realised I'd not done as good a job of keeping the timing lined up as I thought I had as the engine tried to spin itself backwards, fighting against the starter. So I went back and rotated the distributor "just enough" and tried again. Much better. Engine started up and sounded normal - and even better we had oil pressure shown.



I'll need to get the timing light out as I've set it entirely by ear for now. Have been meaning to check it anyway as the starting behaviour has always made me think it's a little on the advanced side anyway.

Having checked we didn't have any catastrophic leak I had a quick bumble around the neighborhood to get everything up to temperature. While the leak hasn't been fully fixed it has been *vastly* decreased.

Given how awkward this is to get to, this is one of those jobs that if I can find one willing to touch it, I may get a garage to do. It's just going to be so much less painful working on a proper lift and with a decent set of offset spanners and such. However as it's not routine servicing on a less than ten years old car I'll probably not be able to get anyone to touch it...but I'll give it a try.

Of course it wouldn't be this car without *something* breaking during the test drive.

Outside:



Inside:



Left hand indicator light on the dash has failed. Percussive maintenance failed to resolve this, so looks like I'll need to pull the panel apart to either sort the contact or change the lamp. I have been wanting to investigate the totally non functional ammeter for a while now as well so not maybe the worst thing if I can do both of those things at the same time.

At least I've got back to where I was before I started messing with things yesterday now - and with at least an improvement to the oil leak situation.

[Michel]

It's a shame you're a stickler for originality, a 600cc 4-pot motorbike engine and box would fit nicely in there, can be had cheaply and adaptors for output shafts and bell housings aren't hard or expensive to have made, or weren't when I looked at putting a bike engine in the DRK.

[Zelandeth]

Feels a bit strange this...feels like I'm actually bringing a bit of class to the car parks of the area using the Rover rather than dragging the tone down as often seems to be the case with my fleet!



While it's still there the oil leak is a thousand times better. Like one or sometimes two small drips a minute. Still needs sorting, but at least the car is driveable now. I'll see if I can get it booked in somewhere soon. Had another look at it today and I just can't see how you'd get to it. Maybe if you jack the engine up a bit or maybe pull the radiator and grill and go in from the front? Nah, someone with better tools and a proper lift can have the fun of this one.

Really do need to address the issue of the square tyres as well as they currently pretty much preclude exceeding about 50mph due to the amount of wobble that then starts happening. That may have to wait until after we've sorted the Trabant's current engine issues though.

[CitroJim]

Very good to see the Rover out and about again Zel

It's a shame you're a stickler for originality, a 600cc 4-pot motorbike engine and box would fit nicely in there, can be had cheaply and adaptors for output shafts and bell housings aren't hard or expensive to have made, or weren't when I looked at putting a bike engine in the DRK.

Ohh, now there's a nice thought... A Trabant 'Sleeper'... How about a Hyabusa engine

That could be huge fun

[Zelandeth]

Fact is that I just need to get some actual miles covered in the Rover and try to develop a bit of trust in it. I know there will end up still being a snagging list, but if we could get to a stage where I'm not permanently terrified that the fuel system or cooling system are about to imminently fail catastrophically and strand me in the middle of H5 with nowhere to escape to that would be great. Only way I'm going to prove that is by actually driving it.

[CitroJim]

Indeed, very true... I'm always happy to come to the rescue if necessary Zel

[bobins]

Very good to see the Rover out and about again Zel

It's a shame you're a stickler for originality, a 600cc 4-pot motorbike engine and box would fit nicely in there, can be had cheaply and adaptors for output shafts and bell housings aren't hard or expensive to have made, or weren't when I looked at putting a bike engine in the DRK.

Ohh, now there's a nice thought... A Trabant 'Sleeper'... How about a Hyabusa engine

That could be huge fun

I was thinking more - let Allen Millyard re-engine it. He'd either weld two Trabant engines together to make it a 4 pot, or hacksaw something like an L60 engine in half and put that in. Whatever you ended up with, you could be sure it'd be...... interesting

[CitroJim]

Very good to see the Rover out and about again Zel

It's a shame you're a stickler for originality, a 600cc 4-pot motorbike engine and box would fit nicely in there, can be had cheaply and adaptors for output shafts and bell housings aren't hard or expensive to have made, or weren't when I looked at putting a bike engine in the DRK.

Ohh, now there's a nice thought... A Trabant 'Sleeper'... How about a Hyabusa engine

That could be huge fun

I was thinking more - let Allen Millyard re-engine it. He'd either weld two Trabant engines together to make it a 4 pot, or hacksaw something like an L60 engine in half and put that in. Whatever you ended up with, you could be sure it'd be...... interesting

This is getting good

[Zelandeth]

6V92TA transversely mounted behind the front seats?

[bobins]

I could be wrong, but you might need to fettle the suspension if you go down that route