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

[mickthemaverick]

Indeed and here's one from my own dash cam collection:

[myglaren]

I presume they think that they are scoring points somehow but it all seems to be so very 'pointless'.

[Zelandeth]

It really is so pointless. It costs nothing to just be nice to one another.

Guess I'm a bit grumpy today as it is because I'm distinctly under the weather. Unsurprisingly, stuffing several hundred people together into a hotel for a weekend leads to a tendency for a whole host of coughs, colds etc from all over the world to blend together and results in a fair few people getting sick. The catch all term for this is Con Crud. I've managed to dodge it myself since 2017*, but this year it has absolutely got me.

It's just a cold or similar, still testing negative for COVID, but I still feel miserable! Spent all day yesterday just wanting to sleep, yet haven't actually managed to get TO sleep yet.

This is exactly why I always make a point of not meeting up with anyone for a week or so after getting back though, it's all too easy to bring back unintended "gifts" like this and I'd rather keep those to myself. Especially given that pretty much all of my friends locally have underlying health issues at the best of times.

* Another family member managed to catch COVID in 2022 at ConFuzzled and then gave it to the rest of us the following week - but that wasn't actually caught by me at the event so I'm not counting it.

[Zelandeth]

Feeling awful or not I was determined to actually get something done today. To this end I attacked the boot in the Trabant. Actually the first time since I picked the car up that it's been completely emptied. It was precisely as gross in there as I was expecting.



As with the carpets in the cabin, they just lift out once you figure out what bits you need to pull in which direction and which order. Much the same picture underneath them as elsewhere in the car with plenty of evidence of long, long term water ingress.



The square hole roughly in the centre of the photo is there to allow access to the top leaf spring retaining bolts. I drowned the whole area in Vactan just as I did elsewhere in the cabin.



Unlike on the floors inside the cabin I did find one bit of rust that will need to be sorted though right at the right hand rear corner where the floor meets the rear panel.



I don't *think* this will be an MOT issue as I think it's well clear of any prescribed areas (it's even outboard of the reinforcement bar which forms the rear crash structure), but obviously will want to be properly fixed. Not the easiest to deal with there to be honest as it's butted right up against the Duroplast rear quarter panel, and one of the downsides of that material is that it's very fond of (reports vary on whether more or less so than fibreglass) catching fire. Guessing wet rags, heat blocking compound and a vigilant spotter are what's needed. The way the Duroplast panels are bonded in place means that they're not exactly easily removed. Not in one piece anyway. Here's hoping it's not an MOT issue anyway as I'd really rather deal with it at my leisure rather than needing to try to find some way to get it done within the next 4 weeks.

Unlike the rest of the carpets, the one from the boot floor could easily fit in the washing machine. It's still damp but is already looking a lot more healthy.



The side/back trim will need to get the detergent & pressure washer treatment when I've got a bit more free time as it won't fit in the machine and I'd be more worried about it losing its shape anyway.

[Zelandeth]

Been a bit quiet last few days, but simply because I've had little to report.

I did try to replace the missing little bit of ducting between the fan cowl and exhaust manifold outer (which I know now to be a secondary pre-heated air supply for the heater). Sadly none of the hose or duct I had in stock was quite the right size. I do now have a bit wedged in there, but it's not properly located on the fitting. This has resulted in probably double the output from the heater - to the extent that I've actually had to close the heater down on the control a bit even with a window cracked as I was getting baked. The proper bit of hose that should be in there has now been ordered anyway - it's like £3 so just added it to the basket along with some other things. It's a fiddly part to fit as it is, so having something the right size will make it a lot less painful. I'm sure wrestling this bit of pipe back out of here won't be at all awkward.



Did have some fun and games yesterday though which turned out to be another great example of why I tend to treat anything that's been done on a car by pretty much anyone else with suspicion until proven innocent.

I noticed while creeping in traffic that I could hear a very slight rubbing noise associated with the rotation of a wheel, like brake shoe dragging ever so slightly, seeming to be from the nearside rear. Not a sort of noise which I'd usually consider to be anything of concern, but something I deemed to be worthy of immediate investigation simply because it was a NEW noise that I'd not been aware of before.

Upon closer inspection I found the centre hub nut to be hanging on the end of the spindle by about half a thread. This is after I'd spun it back up hand tight.



Well that could have been exciting! Consulting the internet I've ascertained that this nut should very, very much NOT be hand tight...The spec calls for a whopping 196Nm torque to be applied to that nut (my torque wrench only goes up to 110). So I simply went with "really fluffing tight" by hand, and then folded over the locking washer under the nut to make absolutely sure that there was no way that it could work itself loose again in future. The other side hadn't actually worked itself loose, but it was locked in place as well to be sure.

This prompted me to look back at the photos I got of the front hubs when the tyres were changed to check whether the hub retaining nuts there had been staked to lock them...the answer was of course "no." So I went back out this afternoon and did that on both sides as well.



I will be making a point now of having a good crawl around underneath and check every single fastener I can find, as I know that the entire rear end was apart not all that long ago to install the camber correction kit, and I now trust absolutely nothing to have been torqued up properly. Even without being locked in place, there's absolutely no way on earth that hub nut would have backed itself off if it had been tightened up properly. Worth noting that due to the hub design on these cars the hub nut has no direct part in setting the preload on the wheel bearing - that's handled by a spring, you just tighten the bolt to the specified torque. Diagram of how the hub fits together is on LDM Tuning's site over here.

Glad to report that the rubbing noise has now gone, so I'm guessing things had backed off enough that the brake drum had shifted enough that it was running out of the usual wear patch. I do have to wonder if this was responsible for the MOT advisory last year for there being some play in the wheel bearing...

We all know that cars are grateful things which reward you in nice ways for averting potential disaster don't we? Of course not...it rewarded me by blowing a head gasket this afternoon, or at least that's my going theory at the moment. A chuffing noise has appeared which is connected to the fan-side cylinder firing. Initially I thought this was an exhaust leak from the driver's seat, but closer inspection reveals the noise to be coming from nowhere near the exhaust itself or the manifold. Though the heat exchanger to front pipe clamp was barely finger tight (this really is a running theme...) so that was nipped up.



I've also confirmed that said cylinder is contributing far, far less to power delivery than the other one by experimenting with disconnecting the plugs in turn. So it does look like we're losing compression there.

This is far from the end of the world, gaskets are £5 each and available from sellers in the UK. I'd also been wanting to get the cowling properly apart for a while anyway to check how clean (or not) things in there are, to try to get it lined up properly again so the fan to cowl gasket will actually stay in its groove, and to inspect the cooling fan bearings for play. It's not impossible that the gasket is actually perfectly fine and the head bolts have just backed themselves off, though I very much doubt it. I wasn't getting involved in starting to pull the tinware off this afternoon in the rain though, that's a job for some point in the near future. Having the heads off gives me a good opportunity to properly inspect the condition of the bores as well which can't be a bad thing. Not as though it's a major operation on an air cooled two stroke!

[CitroJim]

Oh dear Zel, she does like to keep you amused... At least a head gasket on an air-cooled two-stroke is a lot easier than on the usual sorts of car engines...

That was lucky with the hub!!!

[Michel]

Oh dear Zel, she does like to keep you amused... At least a head gasket on an air-cooled two-stroke is a lot easier than on the usual sorts of car engines...

That was lucky with the hub!!!

I remember being gassed as I drove by a leaky head gasket on a 2CV. That's wasn't particularly hard to fix either. More of a copper ring..

[Zelandeth]

Decided to get torn into the Trabant troubleshooting today as the weather was decent.

Even before I'd really done much I had evidence suggesting that I did indeed have a leaky head gasket on cylinder number 1. Firstly was the wheezing noise coming from that general area when turning the engine by hand, the second was the not insignificant amount of oily slime that had run down the back of that cylinder - the one on the right in the photo below.



The amount of gunge there suggests to me that it's probably been weeping for a while before the gasket actually let go completely.

Few minutes later and we had rather better access. Seriously, this was about ten or fifteen minutes after I picked up the first tool.



The last time I removed a head from an engine which I suspected of having head gasket issues I never really found a smoking gun, so was left guessing what had happened. This time however there really wasn't any doubt about the cause of our issues.



Yep, that would do it!

Here's the head in question.



Think we can fairly safely say that gasket had had it. Re-torquing the head nuts wasn't going to do us any good here. The rear two were definitely a lot looser than the front - all of the exhaust manifold nuts were also loose (this really is becoming a running theme).

Judging from the condition of the plug (couldn't find my large plug socket so it stayed where it was) looks to be running pretty happily.

The bore looks healthy enough to my admittedly not particularly well trained eyes. There are a couple of small score marks but nothing I can feel, and this isn't a brand new engine and there's nothing here which seems like cause for alarm. No gouges around the transfer ports or any other particular horrors.



My intention is to replace both head gaskets, give the engine a good external clean once everything is back together to try to get rid of some of the oily slime coating it, then to just put it back together and resume driving.

I'd expected the fan shroud to basically just be a tin box to capture the air from the fan and divert it through 90 degrees towards the engine. However - and this probably shouldn't have surprised me by this point - it turns out to be quite a bit more clever than that.



I'll get a better photo tomorrow, the lighting makes it really hard to see what's going on there. There's a baffle that completely separates the air flow to the heads and the jugs, with it split between the two heads to ensure the bulk of the air goes where the bulk of the heat is. The cowling at the lower edges is formed to ensure that as much cooling as possible as close to the exhaust ports as possible. Sure just a tin box would have been "good enough" for such a basic car, but no. They clearly did actually put a decent amount of thought into optimising the cooling arrangements.

That's about as far as I can go with this until the new gaskets arrive. I'll change both gaskets while I'm in here as I might as well. Be good to get an assessment of the condition of the bore on that cylinder as well anyway.

Also on the way is a bottle of TFR concentrate as my plan once everything is back together to basically drown it in that, let it sit for a few minutes then go to town with the pressure washer. Hopefully that will shift at least most of that caked on oily slime. I know it probably won't actually make any real world difference to the cooling performance, but I'll feel better knowing it's been done. Also will help stop more dust sticking to it and over time gumming things up.

Picking up tools to having the head off can't have been more than 20 minutes.

[CitroJim]

Excellent Zel Apart from the gasket, all looks very healthy and it's running a good mixture too, going by the plug appearance..

If you can feel no ridge at the top of the bore, there will be no significant wear.

[Zelandeth]

Who apparently disturbed a fuel line yesterday on which the hose clip had bound up rather than tighten properly on the Rover? Not even one I was working on, this was a while ago.

That would be me. Resulting in it dumping an unknown but not insubstantial amount of fuel onto the driveway overnight. Our driveway slopes towards the house. The result of this is now that the entire house absolutely reeks of petrol. Have done what I can to clean everything up outside, but it's one of those situations where there's really not much you can do beyond that and waiting for the smell to dissipate of its own accord now.

Really irked I missed something really simple like that, especially on such a safety critical component like the fuel system.

[Hell Razor5543]

If you can stand it I would use a citrus based cleaning fluid on the driveway and porch. It may have the advantage of replacing the smell of petrol with a citrus smell (which, I hope, you would consider an improvement). I use a citrus hand cleaner when I have got diesel onto my hands, and it smells a LOT nicer!

[myglaren]

Set fire to it, gone in a flash

[CitroJim]

Lots of through ventilation Zel, it's a lovely day for it It'll do the house good too!

Works for me when I get a houseful of Bluebell's exhaust fumes when I fire her up in the garage. Amazing how those fumes seep in if I leave my French Window open!

Set fire to it, gone in a flash

That's an extreme remedy Steve!

[Michel]

Who apparently disturbed a fuel line yesterday on which the hose clip had bound up rather than tighten properly on the Rover?

Have you been letting Jim near jubilee clips again?

[CitroJim]

Who apparently disturbed a fuel line yesterday on which the hose clip had bound up rather than tighten properly on the Rover?

Have you been letting Jim near jubilee clips again?

Cheeky bugger