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

[CitroJim]

Going on those figures, I just looked at how my AX10E compares... 45bhp and a weight of 640Kg . How much did the base Metro weigh?

[Zelandeth]

That is light - the Trabant is 600! Not really surprising though given that lightness was one of the goals in the design of both the AX and BX. Why even a 1.0 AX and a 1.4 BX feel so nippy. Only other one I recall being comparable weight wise was the original Panda, which didn't feel sluggish even in 750cc form.

Metro according to the datasheet in front of me is 750-850kg depending on spec.

[mickthemaverick]

Reliant Kitten 533kg 41hp

My Rialto GLS was a mere 436kg 39hp, but we all know why!!

[CitroJim]

Metro according to the datasheet in front of me is 750-850kg depending on spec.

Gosh! The old Metro was quite a porker That will be partly down to the massive lump of heavy cast-iron under the bonnet

I jest but it has to be said, by the 80s, the old A-Series was showing its age compared to what was fitted in other contemporary small cars. That's said, it could still hold its own and showed that fundamentally, it was a sound design... I know, I had enough of them

The little TU engine in the AX and many other small PSA cars is so light I can lift and carry one single-handed

[Zelandeth]

Metro according to the datasheet in front of me is 750-850kg depending on spec.

Gosh! The old Metro was quite a porker That will be partly down to the massive lump of heavy cast-iron under the bonnet

I jest but it has to be said, by the 80s, the old A-Series was showing its age compared to what was fitted in other contemporary small cars. That's said, it could still hold its own and showed that fundamentally, it was a sound design... I know, I had enough of them

The little TU engine in the AX and many other small PSA cars is so light I can lift and carry one single-handed

I think most of the competition were similar, I think the AX was the outlier being so light.

-- -- --

So what is travelling in the Trabant like?

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



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.

[CitroJim]

I'm liking the driveway Zel Reminds me, I must make arrangements to get mine done soon...

On the phone camera side of things, I've heard - but have no direct experience of - of a third-party camera app. called 'Open Camera'. Allegedly, it can help get the best out of what you have... I believe it allows images to be saved in RAW and then you can use something like DarkTable or RawThreapee to get something more or less decent.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... n_GB&pli=1

There are other similar apps. available. I was told of how brilliant Open Camera is during a long trail run a while back when a rather photogenic church came into view.

Timing: have you tried doing it 'by ear'? Amazingly good results can be obtained that way although, having said that, my old Suzuki Triples were quite fussy and careful timing with a DTI was the way to go.

[Gibbo2286]

I've just started to scrub the moss off my paved area.

[Zelandeth]

These issues are all still present even shooting in RAW - the image processing nonsense all appears to actually be going on at the sensor level. In fact what came out of OpenCamera looked even worse as in addition to all of that nonsense everything was as grainy as if I'd been shooting on ISO1600 film. I did successfully use it for a few things on my old phone (it gave the option for looooong exposures at low ISO numbers that the stock setup wouldn't), but seldom found the need to as 99.9% of the times the results with everything just left set to auto were 99.9% as good as I'd be able to get things manually anyway, which for daily snap purposes is absolutely fine. The only "quirk" with that I ever really found was that in some very specific lighting conditions the auto focus could get hopelessly confused - but that was something I remember having to take manual control of maybe half a dozen times in five years, so hardly the end of the world.

Whereas the results that come out of this day to day are barely better than the £60 point and shoot camera I bought in 2006. Which for a late 2024 product with a four figure price tag and where the maker is lauding all the clever AI nonsense they've crammed into the camera and how wonderful it is, is just flat out disappointing.

Yeah, without getting political I still maintain that there's more to the US having shoved Huawei out of the Western markets than supposed national security concerns. Making their US based competition look bad seems to be a far more real reason based on ten years or using their products then jumping to Google in my case. Apple seem slightly further ahead of the curve based on what I've seen of Abby's iPhone, but that's nearly 50% as expensive again for an equivalent specification and has it's own annoyances because of how insanely heavily Apple lock things down. Plus there's a whole bunch of software I use on a regular basis which simply don't exist on that platform any more, and costs involved in having to re-buy a whole load of things that do. I'm not going there. She did because she was (rightly) sick of how flaky the software on her previous Samsung was and had positive experience of iPhones back when they still had single digit model numbers. Also disappointed to see that still seems to be the case with their kit - little to really complain about with the hardware, but early release Windows 98 levels of software stability still abound. Oh, and they STILL haven't fixed the alarm clock bug which has existed since at least 2012 when I got my first Galaxy S2. About 1 time in 10 the act of the phone waking itself up to sound the alarm snoozes the alarm, which just makes me want to bash my head against the nearest wall. How can one of the biggest technology companies in the world still be churning out products with such a simple and well documented issue present after this many years?!?

Timing on the Trabant is something I've been advised by several folks to just follow the guides on. It's something where the required adjustment apparently needs to be really precise. Given how close to the ragged edge of tearing themselves to pieces two strokes run at the best of times I'm inclined to just trust the advice from the owners clubs on that.

I imagine with how much the thing you're trying to adjust by fractions of a millimetre would be bouncing around with the engine running, it would be near impossible to get the necessary precision that way. If there was actually an adjustment screw maybe - but it's just a case of loosening the whole pickup assembly, rotating it to the necessary spot and then tightening the screws back up (while making sure it doesn't move). So doing that while things are wobbling around sounds like a recipe for frustration.

I've just started to scrub the moss off my paved area.

Pressure washers are your friend here!

[CitroJim]

In my experience Zel, phone cameras are going backwards. I base that on the three Samsungs I've had. The oldest still has the best camera by far.

Also, some reviews of phone cameras, ,both Apple and Android, suggest it too. I have a belief that as PooTube and SickTok is such a big thing these days, the emphasis is more on video than still photography. That seems to be the case for some high end cameras too.

For me, all my Samsungs have been excellent 'phones, both in hardware and software terms. They've never been a moment's problem for me but then again, I'm not a very demanding user of them. Maybe if I used them more intensively I might become more aware of any shortcomings.

My old original one is still in use as my 'Burner' and continues to perform well. It's got to be ten years old now.

[Zelandeth]

Couple of examples of the nonsense I get with the camera on this thing.

Aside from the obvious colour flaring (which regularly makes itself known on any highlights), note also the "steps" on that strip running left to right and on the base of the window - also the cogging along the door frame. This is no less evident even if you've got it set to 50MP rather than 10MP. It's like life with a 1MP £50 digital camera from 2001 all over again. That step about 1/3 of the way right-left along the bottom of the rear window, that's not there. That is entirely a step that has been invented by the camera.

"JPEG compression like effects" are most obvious on red objects - like the car below.

I could accept this maybe if I had the quality settings turned waaaaaaaay down. However it's saving at a quality setting of 98, and most critically even if you're saving as RAW files it looks just as bad. Whatever's going on there is going on on the sensor rather than in post processing.

I can't immediately find any examples (probably because I deleted the photos), but it regularly gets its knickers in a twist when dealing with repeating geometric patterns like brickwork as well.

Speaking of the camera...Who on earth thought THIS was a sensible design?

The thing is a decent bit chunkier than the Huawei anyway - but not so much you'd really notice if it wasn't for the stupid sticky-outy-camera at the top.

That camera though, especially once you've added a case that provides any meaningful protection results in something that's about 1/2" thick. It's not twice as thick as the Huawei, but it's close. Also means it can't lay flat on surfaces (like wireless charging pads - so that functionality is basically pointless), and means it won't fit in most windscreen mounts without removing the case. Where another annoyance becomes apparent - they've situated the buttons along the side for volume/lock screen way further down the side of the phone than I'm used to - so I have to have it dangling way over to one side in the holder or I'll keep turning the volume down or activating Google's stupid artificially insane assistant.

Just from a qualitative standpoint of the device itself though. Like they say with food, the first bite is with the eye.

Which of these immediately looks expensive, versus which looks like an overgrown TV remote with tumour in the form of a camera module growing out of it?

It's just been an very expensive brick of disappointment on every level to be honest. At least I can just pay off the remaining balance on the contract without any additional fees, and they still have a decent enough value on the used market that I could sell it on without being much out of pocket if I can summon enough enthusiasm to deal with the nonsense of trying to sell an electronic device in 2025...

[CitroJim]

Gosh Zel, the quality of those photos is horrendous for such an expensive 'phone. And that 'sticky out' bit is ridiculous

The quality is so bad, I wonder if there's a fault with it? Never seen colour flare as bad as that. I thought it was lens aberration at first but it doesn't look right for that, more like internal reflections...

On to timing. If you need one, I have a DTI or two here, complete with a 14mm spark plug adaptor.

[RichardW]

... PooTube and SickTok ...

I like that!

[Zelandeth]

Gosh Zel, the quality of those photos is horrendous for such an expensive 'phone. And that 'sticky out' bit is ridiculous

The quality is so bad, I wonder if there's a fault with it? Never seen colour flare as bad as that. I thought it was lens aberration at first but it doesn't look right for that, more like internal reflections...

On to timing. If you need one, I have a DTI or two here, complete with a 14mm spark plug adaptor.

What gets me with the design is that the overall resolution between the two is near enough the same (40/50MP - though I have *real* doubts as to whether the Pixel actually does have a 50MP sensor at this point), they both use a periscope system to achieve a 5x optical zoom, and both contain multiple cameras - though there are actually 4 in the Huawei rather than the Pixel's 3...So the additional bulk seems even more silly!

May take you up on the DTI at some point, though I made it work pretty well by just zeroing this out at TDC I think.

The base was happy enough to sit squarely on the head so it wasn't too much of a faff. Only tools you need are a spark plug spanner, a flat head screwdriver and a means to take the measurement...so pretty simple.

[CitroJim]

Excellent! That was a good plan to use a vernier caliper... As good as a DTI I reckon