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

[Zelandeth]

A package arrived early on this morning containing some more goodies.



The new indicators were the first to go on. Well...new to me, the date stamp on the lenses shows a 1990 production date.



Yes the one nearest me was a little squint there, I've tweaked it a bit since I took the photo.

The older style ones probably do suit the style of the car better, but these are streets ahead in terms of actual visibility to other traffic especially off to the sides, so will be staying. The older ones will be packed away safely with the spares in case someone wants to restore them and use them in the future.

Then I had to run around running a bunch of errands. Probably did 50 miles or so through the day, and am glad to report that *so far* the shorting issue with the offside indicator circuit hasn't reappeared.

Car is still making me smile.





Think we're up to 600 miles give or take now...wonder how much of a portion of the last year or two's motoring that would have accounted for.

Have got 50% of the other main item in that parcel fitted now as well.



Yes...BOTH dials there are cockeyed. I had totally failed to notice that until I took a photo. I'll fix that tomorrow.

Hopefully get the sender fitted tomorrow as well all being well. Gauge itself is wired up and working. I *will* have to pull the face off that though and go after the gauge with some model paint to make the colour of the pointer match the one in the speedometer though...that not matching is just going to bug the hell out of me, and makes it look so obviously aftermarket. At least if the colours matched it wouldn't jump out at you so much.

The illumination is waaaaaaaay over enthusiastic as well, so I think needs the lamp wattage reduced from the 5W that I think is in there to probably a 1W lamp which would be plenty.

Obviously I'll keep the original fuel consumption gauge with the car, but personally given I quite frequently find myself having to jump in the car and do several hours of running around without forward planning the journeys (as with today) it's nice to just be able to see how much fuel I've got!

[CitroJim]

I see where you were yesterday Zel... So near me... You really should call round and say hello

If I'm in, there's always a warm welcome and a kettle...

[Zelandeth]

I see where you were yesterday Zel... So near me... You really should call round and say hello

If I'm in, there's always a warm welcome and a kettle...

I was running around all over the shop yesterday, so it was only a flying visit to your corner, I was in Dunstable half an hour after those photos were taken!

Nothing really visible to show for today's half hour of car time.



Hard to tell, but both headlights have now been replaced with ones having a proper beam pattern for UK roads. They've been adjusted to look vaguely sensible based on the beam on the fence across the road, when I next have the Rover running I'll shuffle cars around and do a more precise job of the beam adjustment using the garage door. They do actually provide some light on the road now which is an improvement.

Something I need to test out when I get a chance is whether the bearings in either my alternator or more likely cooling fan are making a racket. It's always hard to tell from video, but there seems to be a lot more mechanical noise from mine than a lot of these cars at idle, and it sounds more like something that's belt driven than internal to the engine. Though as said, it's hard to tell from a video and it seems that there was a pretty big variation from one unit to another in terms of noise anyway even when they were new. Pulling the belt and running the engine (obviously only for a couple of tens of seconds at the most) will at least confirm if it's coming from the engine itself or an external rotating assembly - the fan is probably my favourite based on where it sounds like the noise is coming from. Easy to test at least.

[CitroJim]

I see where you were yesterday Zel... So near me... You really should call round and say hello

If I'm in, there's always a warm welcome and a kettle...

I was running around all over the shop yesterday, so it was only a flying visit to your corner, I was in Dunstable half an hour after those photos were taken!

In that case, you are forgiven

Don't be a stranger...

[Zelandeth]

I will definitely drop by again in the near future. I need an extra pair of hands/eyes to hunt down where the play in the steering on the Trabant is. I can't wiggle the wheel and crawl around at the same time!

My worry is that the issue is in the rack itself - though in the same breath, an entire steering gear assembly, ready to bolt on is €200 so hardly the end of the world even if it is that.

[CitroJim]

I will definitely drop by again in the near future. I need an extra pair of hands/eyes to hunt down where the play in the steering on the Trabant is. I can't wiggle the wheel and crawl around at the same time!

Excellent! Looking forward to seeing you and Trabby Zel

[Zelandeth]

Handful of little things today.

Added a dedicated ground to the plate holding the ignition coils in place as it's also used as a star point for the offside headlight and indicator. I wanted to actually move it to another location on the plate so you could tighten it a bit more, but clearance is an issue so I just left it be. Sure the majority of people have zero problems with it and I'm just doing the usual and creating an overkill solution.

I also did what I could to tidy the coil wiring up a bit, though it's always going to be a bit of a rat's nest I think no matter what you do.



I think part of the issue with the ground is that the original coils were plain metal rather than painted, so made a better contact between the two halves of the bracket helping to act as one big connector rather than these ones being painted.

Had a nose around underneath the dash to see if I could see any direct evidence of where the water is coming in on that side.







Will need to pull the shelf out to investigate that black paint splodge, but my money is on the seam sealer between the various panels having failed (it seems to have gone brittle in a lot of places), so that's most likely to blame. There is a water trap outside right above the wheel arch in the engine bay (I've re-sealed this area now) through which a seam does run.

Suspect some more chipping and re-sealing is in my future.

Closer inspection of the old body ground wire revealed that it had definitely got warm in the past.



It also made crunching noises if you bent it, and measured a solid 10 ohms on the meter, so was definitely stuffed. New lead is way, way too long really but is what was in the garage. I'll swap it with a shorter one at some point.



The new tail light moulding has had it's first couple of coats of paint.



Unfortunately the colour is far too bright a white so I'll need to try another option to find something that's closer. Just shows that the swatches on the cans don't mean a thing as the one on this is very distinctly cream.

I do need to actually look up what colour this is anyway - comparing notes with another owner has led us to believe it's Papyrus, Atlas white being the brighter white.

I also addressed the nearside tail light looking very cloudy compared to the other side - that was simply because the inside of the lens was filthy.



With the exception of one running light bulb in the offside rear cluster all of the lamps I've found in this car so far have been Narva branded, so either original or replacements from someone's stash of Trabant bits most likely.

Found it quite difficult to get all of the ingrained grime out of the grooves but it's a lot better now than it was. It may get stuffed through the "parts washer" in future if I find a spare half hour some day.

[Zelandeth]

Ford Ivory White looks to be a far more acceptable match to the actual colour of the car. Not absolutely perfect as it's a touch too yellow if you look closely, but I think more than adequate for this application I think.



The tail light lenses were chucked the the parts washer this afternoon while I was busy elsewhere. Any resemblance to a domestic dishwasher is entirely coincidental...



Predictably they came out looking like new. All of the ingrained grime I'd been fighting to remove by hand is long gone.



Hard to tell in a photo, but they had always looked a little cloudy on the car before due to grime on the inside but that's not the case at all now.




Another point of obvious comparison to the other Eastern Bloc cars I've had. None of the lenses have gone matt/cloudy like the old Skoda ones always did, nor have the orange pigments faded to clear as seems to happen with about 50% of Lada lenses. They also don't appear to have gone horribly brittle.

While those were being washed I was busy dumping a little over half a litre of Vactan over the floors inside the car.





This stuff is a rust converter which also seals a surface and acts as a primer that can be directly over painted.

I probably should have hoovered it out again first as there was still quite a bit of loose crud floating around that I'd dislodged over the last few days, but I'm not too worried about it. The surface finish isn't important to me as it will be under two layers of carpet, and there will be a thick protective layer (probably several) getting painted over this anyway.

Ideally I would have taken the seats out before doing this, but unsurprisingly the bolts aren't even vaguely interested in moving and I was inclined to just declare discretion to be the better part of valor there and leave them be. Either snapping a bolt head or captive nut off the seat base mountings doesn't sound like my idea of fun. Somewhere in its future this car will probably want a new set of floorpans as given the visible pitting on these they must be pretty thin in a few areas, but that's not an immediate problem so long as my MOT tester doesn't actually poke any holes in anything in April. This should be a step towards stopping it dissolving from the inside out as it's clearly slowly been doing for years anyway. Plus the ongoing efforts to try to track down and cure the actual water ingress itself.

[mickthemaverick]

Looking good Zel but I think you should consider painting the nearside light surround and then it will look more 'intended'

[Zelandeth]

Looking good Zel but I think you should consider painting the nearside light surround and then it will look more 'intended'

The nearside one is the one that's getting replaced (note the chunk out of the lower corner). Painting both though is actually a good shout. Probably do the headlight trim rings as well.

To be fair, the whole rear panel below the bootlid could probably do with painting - though that's true of basically the whole car!

[CitroJim]

It's amazing what nice clean light clusters do to make a car look so much better and loved...

Well done Zel, another day of great work! That little Trabby will be concours in a few weeks

[mickthemaverick]

Looking good Zel but I think you should consider painting the nearside light surround and then it will look more 'intended'

Probably do the headlight trim rings as well.

That's an even better shout! With all light trims and the bumpers in the Ford colour I think it will look like a very subtle 2 tone!!

[Zelandeth]

It's amazing what nice clean light clusters do to make a car look so much better and loved...

Well done Zel, another day of great work! That little Trabby will be concours in a few weeks

Bit of an optimistic view there I think Jim, I'm not that good! She's always going to be a bit of a scruffy, slightly rusty example. After going on 40 years and I'm guessing 80K miles, a fair chunk of which were likely done with rudimentary maintenance, that's not really a surprise. Though I don't see that necessarily as a bad thing as I don't really believe in having cars I'm afraid to actually use.

That's an even better shout! With all light trims and the bumpers in the Ford colour I think it will look like a very subtle 2 tone!!

Not sure if the bumpers are currently Atlas White which is the cooler tone white the Trabant came in, or if they're just supplied "white" from the factory. These bumpers were fitted by the previous owner, being a 1984 car this would originally have had the ones with more of a rectangular section and plastic end caps. I don't really mind either style, though the front one will need to come off at some point so I can coerce the bolt on the offside bracket to actually tighten up (I think it's cross threaded) so that side stops dropping and making the bumper sit squint. Their colour matching anything else on the car would definitely help make things look a lot more cohesive I think like you say.

Even from the factory the colour match between the metal, plastic and Duroplast parts wasn't exactly great so provided things match each other that's probably about the best we can ask for.

[Zelandeth]

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.

[mickthemaverick]

That looks soooo much better , well done Zel!!