Zel's Fleet Blog...Rover, Renault, Peugeot, Trabant, Invacar & Sinclair C5

[Zelandeth]

The screen on my truck has got a similar problem, I was hoping to get a new one but at 300 plus vat it can stay like that until I find a good second hand one

A few folks have told me that this is quite a common issue if the battery voltage gets a touch low on PSA vehicles. The battery IS an ECP cheapie which I trust about as far as I can throw it based on prior experience, it's a few years old too. So I'll be getting that tested and ensuring it's given a full charge before I look into it too much further.

[Dick]

Mine has been like that since I bought it sooo many years ago..ive just fitted a new new battery..still the same..

[Zelandeth]

Yesterday afternoon I had intended to give the Trabant at least a first pass exterior clean as she'll be attending a show tomorrow. Not going into full valet mode, I just wanted to get rid of all the moss and some of the ingrained grime that's clearly been there for years.

However I then ended up wasting far nearer two hours than I should have trying to get this thing started.



Which actually turned out to be completely innocent. The fuel in the can I bought around the end of September had simply ceased to be in any way flammable. With fresh fuel (not from the run down Total garage that's just round the corner from us this time) added, it fired up first pull. I know that modern fuel tends to go off relatively quickly, and I know that the shed this can had been stored in does get quite toasty when it's sunny, but it was a surprise for this to have gone off to the point that it wouldn't even try to run an engine so quickly. Lesson learned I guess.

Before I went after the car with the pressure washer today I decided to (in the middle of a downpour or course) change the door seals first. Figured as I had these on hand I may as well at least do something to minimise the amount of water to end up in the cabin.



New seals in place on the car - not that you'd really spot any difference looking at them from a distance.





The only thing to really watch out for if you've not done this before is that there's a single rivet holding the original onto the frame.



That obviously needs to be removed before the old seal can be pulled off. Ideally the aluminium kick plates also want to be removed too - however the screws holding the driver's side one in are sufficiently rusted that the only tool that will be removing those is the grinder. The passenger side one has actually corroded away to next to nothing due to the carpets being so damp for so long. So I'll probably look to get a new pair ordered at some point and replace the originals using stainless steel fasteners. I want to get the floor etc thoroughly rust proofed at some point so they'll definitely need to come off for that.

The old seals were a lip type design rather than the tube type which went on today, and had all but turned to solid plastic by this point. There was virtually no give to them whatsoever and you could see daylight around both of them in several places, like here where there used to be about a 1/8" gap.



I do have all new window channels for in the door as well, those will be replaced in due course.

The seal is now snugly up against the door and is far more likely to be doing something useful. You can really feel the difference when you close the door now as they close with more of a thump rather than rattly click. Not expecting them to be exactly hermetically sealed or anything, but this will definitely have improved their performance over the very aged stock seals.

Took a total of about 30 minutes to do both sides, about as simple a job as it gets.

So back to it with the (now working) pressure washer. Target being the well and truly ingrained dirt and moss that was in basically every single nook and cranny on the car.





I hadn't realised quite how much was just adhering to the surfaces in general until I hit the first one with the spray from the lance.



As can be seen on about the lower 1/4 of the above photo, the car immediately became several shades lighter.

We did lose some paint in a few areas but I was fully expecting that and have already got doing some touch ups on the to do list - the paint on the car as a whole to be honest is really rough so it really wasn't a concern.

Here's the top of the passenger door now with a lot less moss present.



Being a little scruffy I don't mind so much. However looking neglected I'm not willing to put up with...and having it's own ecosystem forming tends to suggest the latter more than the former!

I literally just blasted the worst off of it, no detergent was used, and I didn't go as far as doing a wash as the heavens had opened again by this point.

Not clean by any stretch of the imagination, but a lot better.









You can't tell from the photos, but there was probably a couple of kilos or so of mud blasted out from each of the wheel arches as well.

I did encounter a problem when I went to set out to go on a little drive to dry the engine bay off - I was suddenly missing wipers and indicators. Turned out to be a blown fuse.

The cause once again turned out to be because of chopped live wires that had just been abandoned in place - from the fuel consumption monitor in this case. This is becoming something of a recurring theme on this car. Despite there being female, insulated connectors on the wires about an inch from where they'd been chopped, the wires had just been cut and left floating around on the inner wing. The tails were removed from the connectors and have now been tucked safely out of harm's way.



As far as the car actually caring that I'd gone over things in the engine bay with a pressure washer was concerned, it didn't care in the slightest. Which was exactly what I expected. If the ignition components are in good condition, there's no reason a car should care about this being done. Worst you're likely to need to do is to dry off the inside of the distributor cap (where applicable) if it's a design which can allow water ingress.

Obviously a bunch more water also found it's way into the car during this procedure so the carpets are even wetter again as there's definitely a lot of leakage around the windscreen. This really needed to be done though, and hopefully the rain might actually stop for more than 30 seconds somewhere in the next 5 months so I can get it properly dried out!

Hopefully if anyone is along to the New Year's Day Stoney Stratford classic car show tomorrow they might see this little thing on show for the first time (and I suspect far from the last time) in my ownership.

[Zelandeth]

Sorry for the lack of my usual updates over the last few days. Firstly there's not been a massive amount going on. The weather being so miserable (seriously, why don't we just rename English winter "the rainy season" as it would be so much more descriptive) has obviously put a damper on doing much outside.

Plus it's been an...odd...I guess you could call the last week or so, and it's messed with my ability to portion time and resources properly as I've been playing catch up a bit. That's all massively off topic for this forum though.

The utterly soggy weather however has allowed me to further survey the water ingress issues with the Trabant.

The door seals have definitely made a huge difference. There used to always be water visibly running in around them and pooling in the front corner.



There's still a bit dripping off the actual door card on the passenger door, but I think the seal itself is doing its job. The window rubbers are absolutely shot on that door so I suspect there's an excessive amount of water getting into the door as the wiper seal basically isn't doing anything useful.

The vast majority of the water though seems to be coming from here, up above the wheel arch on the passenger side.



The run marks on the arch cover suggest this isn't a new situation.

I'm going to need to stand on my head to see if I can get a better handle on the actual source. Windscreen seal is probably still my favourite but I'm not 100% certain.

Pulling the fuel tank to make sure there's not large chunks of the bulkhead missing properly wouldn't be the worst idea though.

Looking at the weather forecast it might be a while before I actually get the car dry again though.

I did manage to get the Rover up and running for half an hour or so this afternoon (started first touch) to get everything warmed through. Proof of concept that the planned re-engineered fuel return should do what we need it to anyway, even though it was just dumped on the ground routed from one end of the car to the other as it wasn't moving today. Usually at idle with the bonnet closed it'd usually have been hearing the pump trying to pump vapour and seen a lot of bubbles through the filter by this time so it's definitely improved things. The big question will be whether I need to add a restriction to provide enough flow to the carbs to keep the bowls full under full acceleration, that will need to wait for a road test though.

At the NYD show over at Stoney Stratford I managed to again forget to take any proper photos of my own car. I have a history of doing that!





Biggest issue really is that the show has just become so popular. It was absolutely rammed, to the point that even walking around was a challenge, never mind trying to get any half decent photos or actually talk to any owners for more than 3.8 seconds. Those photos were both taken early in the day when it was still relatively quiet.

[Dick]

Do you have a wet vacuum cleaner to clean some of the water from your car?
Glad the rover is getting some love, do you use it much now?

[Zelandeth]

Do you have a wet vacuum cleaner to clean some of the water from your car?
Glad the rover is getting some love, do you use it much now?

I do, but at the moment there's not much point in using it as the water's just going to reappear as soon as it's removed. Really need to properly figure out where it's getting in! Though we have definitely removed or at least vastly, vastly reduced one of those areas.

The Rover is basically waiting for Spring. I need to properly set up the new fuel return line, and it's just too cold and too wet to be crawling around underneath the car doing that right now. I'm hoping that once that's set up it will put an end to the seemingly endless gremlins I've been arguing with in the fuel system. Would be nice to actually get it out for a run where I don't wind up limping back to home or having to stop mid-journey and bodge things together to get home!

-- -- --

I really need to pull the carpets back out of the Trabant to get them dried out again - though at least the sponge-like underlays are still folded up under the sofa in our spare room. There has been a little bit of an accumulation of water in the car again over the last few days. Can't say I'm all that surprised based on how wet I got walking the dogs yesterday!



About the best thing you can do when you've got an issue like this and you can't immediately sort the leak or put the car under covered storage while actively drying the interior is to ensure that any water that does get in can get out again rather than staying trapped in the car. Which is a bit tricky on the Trabant as there are no rubber bungs or anything you can easily just pop out in the floor pan. Solution? Drill a hole at what's the lowest point when parked facing up hill.



Ideally I'd like to stick the dehumidifier in there again, but there's little point until the weather warms up a bit as it won't do anything useful if the cabin is much below 10C. I did have a look around today but none of the units stocked by Toolstation or Screwfix seem to be desiccant based, they're all heat pump units. Need to have a shop around online.

The issue with the offside front indicator acting up has reappeared and investigation has shown the likely issue to be water ingress into the fixture. The seals are absolutely wrecked, as is the rubber boot that surrounds the whole unit at the rear and the contacts have basically rusted away to next to nothing. I do have both of the original indicator lenses from the car (someone has fitted an earlier type at some point), and one original fitting...however am missing the other. I also don't have a single boot to go on the back of them that's not perished away to nothing. A pair of new units including all of the bits is about £35, so in the interests of saving future frustration I've just ordered a set. Given the cost of shipping it doesn't make sense to put an order in to Trabantwelt less than £120 or so I reckon, so topped that up with a replacement for the cracked backing plate for the nearside tail light and the complete fuel gauge kit. I can see me using this car quite a bit so feel that's a nice quality-of-life improvement that's just worth having. I do appreciate the approach to minimalist motoring, but that to me is maybe one step TOO far towards minimalist!

[Dick]

I used to drive a few cars with the bungs removed.. works great for letting water out but driving down forest tracks mud would come up through the floor and driving through floods would result in a fountain

[Zelandeth]

Carpets were removed again a day or two ago, and today I went after the rear cabin floor with a screwdriver and the vacuum cleaner to scrape off and get rid of at least a decent chunk of the flaky paint/rust/sealant.



Will probably still go at it with a knot wheel on the grinder or at least manually with a wire brush before I drown it in Vactan. While I'm sure the metal has been thinned in places it still seems perfectly solid.

It's hard to see in the photos, but someone has bent the floorpan on the passenger side upwards at some point in the past, presumably by jacking the car in the wrong place.



I'll have a shot at seeing if I can convince that to straighten out again before the carpets and such go back in. Doesn't need to be perfect, but is quite impressively bowed up at the moment.

One of the new headlights is in.



Well, sort of. Turns out I do need to replace the H4 lamp holder as well as the factory one won't allow the rubber weather proofing boot to fit in place. It also really doesn't hold the lamp very well. Will get a pair of lamp holders in then get the other side changed too.

On the plus side, I can now confirm that if your car is late enough to come with H4 headlights from the factory that the commonly available generic 7" units will just drop in. I do NOT think this is true for the earlier cars using the R2 lamps, as I think the tabs on their headlight bowls are positioned slightly differently so the unit would be clocked wrong.

Our electrical gremlin is still in residence and I have a sneaking feeling is going to need me to have a proper dig around behind the dash.

We have a couple of issues.

The two which I think are related to each other are that the nearside indicator flash rate is somewhat erratic, and there is a back feed from that circuit into the sidelight circuit. The right hand front indicator is quite a bit dimmer than the left. I'm certain that these are both just down to a dodgy ground. I'll re-terminate those both when I swap the remaining headlight. It looks like the headlight bowl is used as a star point for grounding a few circuits, and the ones in the nearside one were quite crusty.

Fuse number 7 (2nd from right in the fuse box) blows after 5-10 minutes, when it feels like it. I'm not sure if it's happening more often when indicating, or just that I'm *noticing* it when indicating as that's one of the circuits it takes out. Which includes basically everything ignition switched aside from the engine itself.

It would be helpful to know what fuse ratings should actually be in each slot in the fuse box, as neither variant of the handbook I've found, nor in fact the repair manual I've seen actually list them! Not entirely helpful. As if it's meant to be a 16A fuse having the 8A one that's in there blowing wouldn't be particularly surprising.

The dip/main beam changeover relay doesn't work. Though the flash function still works, so the contact in the stalk must work.

I have found quite a lot of random wires floating around already, either just flapping in the breeze or at best taped up, so I think a proper rummage around under the dash to track down any remaining spaghetti and ensuring it's removed, reinstated where it should be or safely terminated is the next step there. I can't see anything that looks out of place under the bonnet or in the boot which would explain a short so I think a decent visual inspection under the dash is a good starting point.

A wiring diagram for this era of the P601 would be useful to help identify any random wiring, and is something which has so far has eluded me. I do now have an earlier version at least which is a thousand times better than flying blind at least. The wiring colours at least generally didn't change much over the years.

[Zelandeth]

Has to be said that electrical pruning in an older car can often be quite satisfying. This is what was evicted from under the dash of the Trabant this morning.



Including quality workmanship such as this discarded wiring tail that was just sitting on the dash support rail above the fuse box...note that this is the UNFUSED side of the fuse box...



Given we started with I think five complete mystery wires, I think having got it down to needing to confirm that a couple of grounds do actually still connect to anything and trace one isn't bad going for an hour or so of work.

A few matters did need a little application of brain power and standing on my head. It's actually not bad in this car to be honest, as the dash top is easily removed, and laying horizontally across the driver and passenger seats gets you reasonably comfortable access to *most* of the stuff under the dash.

One was this grey/black one which is part of the ignition switch loom.



Which a little bit of detective work found to be the feed to fuse number 5.



Makes sense where the wire is sitting. According to the wiring diagram I have that wire should be connected to terminal 30A on the ignition switch though, which is closed to the battery feed (terminal 30) only when the key is in the P position.

There was also a two core white and black wire floating around connected into the indicator switch which according to the diagram should go to the headlight switch - which is what would enable the parking lights when you turned the light switch on with the indicators set to signal left. However that's clearly been hacked about as it was nowhere near long enough to reach the switch. For now I've removed that as it's not functionality I need, noted it and can reinstate it later.

To the right of the dash we were left with two dangling wires (the Wago terminals were stuck on the end of most things I'd seen floating around a week or two back to ensure they were safely isolated).



A black and red wire was traced to a terminal on the wiper motor. Which looks like it should actually be on terminal 54 on the wiper delay switch according to the wiring diagram I have. Whatever it's meant to be doing, the wipers currently work just fine (including both intermittent delay periods) - though I can reroute that to the right location in due course. That leaves a single brown (ground) wire on the right hand side of the dash - I just need to try to figure out what's on the opposite end of that to find out if that it's meant to be grounding actually exists. Wouldn't surprise me if that turned out to be our missing ground that was causing the back feed between the headlight/indicator circuits as it *looks* like the wire is heading off in that general direction.

The remaining three I was interested in today were wrapped up in duct tape on the left of the steering column.



The grey/green wire is part of the dash lighting circuit and simply seems to be unused. The brown/white one appears to disappear into the loom running into the right hand headlight - further investigation needed there to figure out what it's story is given that all three filaments in that headlight do currently work. The thought which does spring to mind is that some H4 headlight equipped cars had an indicator light on the dash to show if the headlights were adjusted to the fully laden height adjustment (there's a lever underneath the light unit to switch between high/low beam height), which this car doesn't have the light for on the dash. As my wiring diagram is for an older model that circuit isn't shown. This leaves one remaining mystery wire which is the heavy one towards centre frame. I can't quite decide if that's a solid brown or solid grey...it's a kind of unhelpfully vague browny-grey. My gut feeling is that it's actually brown as neither of the variants of the wiring diagrams I've seen show solid grey as being used. So is most likely another ground that's been left floating. Shouldn't take long to confirm that with the meter.

I think I've found out why the dip/main beam toggle relay isn't working.



Hmm...Yes, the entire upper half of the relay and its cover being completely missing would definitely do it. A replacement has been ordered.

That's where I left it today though as I'd reached the point where I had completely lost feeling in my fingers. Will pick it up when I next get a spare 30 minutes or so. Annoyingly, this has (unsurprisingly) not resolved our fuse popping issue. Suspect that's going to be a bit more time consuming to track down. My gut feeling is that it's somewhere on the indicator circuit though based on when the fuse blows.


The day wasn't done with me though it seemed. While I was out a little later on I had to brake very enthusiastically when an idiot in an Audi decided to cut in in front of me with about 6" to spare while we were braking down for a roundabout. As I did this there was an absolutely almighty metallic screeching noise from the offside front wheel of the Peugeot. This continued after I let of the brakes as a lighter squeaking for a short time, and was definitely affected by steering input - as I was near to the garage I usually use for tyres etc these days I diverted to there. This noise was LOUD, far more so than I'd generally expect from just a bit of grit trapped in a caliper or something like that. I wanted to be sure I didn't have a wheel bearing starting to come apart, a caliper that had managed to unbolt itself or something else unpleasant like that going on.

They were good enough as to get it straight up on the lift to take a look (this was well gone 1600 by then and they're pretty busy as always so I really appreciated them finding five mins to fit me in). We couldn't find any smoking gun for what made the noise, best guess is a bit of grit or something having chosen that moment to get dragged into things. The grub screws which should secure the disc to the hub are missing on the offside, though on a car of this age that doesn't really surprise me - it's not like it can go anywhere once the wheel bolts are in anyway. That might explain the very slight brake judder I've always had on this though.

However one problem did present itself when they went to remove the nearside front wheel.



Head sheared straight off one of the wheel bolts pretty much as soon as they touched it. It's clear that it's only been hanging on by a tiny, tiny bit of metal for quite a while...though this is a pain as it means that the remainder of that bolt is now still in the hub. They did try to get it to move with a punch now there's no tension on it, but it's having none of it.

I am emphatically NOT getting dragged into fighting with trying to remove that myself with my equipment. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, and wrecked a hub trying to do it. No thanks, not doing that again.

So it's been booked back in there to be sorted out. Unfortunately that can't be accommodated until a week on Thursday...and the car's needed for a business trip to Telford THIS Thursday. Guess I'm renting a car for Abby then, as I certainly don't trust the Rover a tenth of that far yet, the Trabant currently has no indicators and only one headlight (plus I think I'd get murdered for suggesting she use it - likewise the Invacar), and the Renault hasn't been touched since a good couple of months ago and is nowhere near currently roadworthy. Suffice to say, I'm not even suggesting she makes the trip in the knowledge that there's a wheel bolt missing - and the whole set is getting replaced anyway now as a precaution in case that failure is due to them having been over-torqued in the past.

Ah, this is going to be one of THOSE weeks is it...

[Dick]

My old galaxy had wobbly calipers that would rub the wheels occasionally.. odd that the garage couldn't find anything on your car..
Have you considered a carport to keep some of the fleet dry? I've seen some with solar panels on... they have something similar where my wife works.. helps keep cars cooler in the summer, dry and less frost in the winter.. just a thought