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

[gazza82]

I take it the Trabant is negative earth? Same on my Peugeot 206 that also has a quick release tab.

BUT ... on the positive terminal. So much for all the handbooks and manuals with "disconnect the earth side of the battery first" .. maybe a quick release on both?

And then we wonder why modern electronics in cars don't last as long as we expect ..

[Zelandeth]

I take it the Trabant is negative earth? Same on my Peugeot 206 that also has a quick release tab.

BUT ... on the positive terminal. So much for all the handbooks and manuals with "disconnect the earth side of the battery first" .. maybe a quick release on both?

And then we wonder why modern electronics in cars don't last as long as we expect ..

Yep, the P601 Trabants were all negative earth, only difference was the earliest cars were 6V. Pretty sure they never changed some things after the move to 12V, look at the size of the battery to starter cables - they must be 1/2" across.

The reason it's recommended to remove the negative terminal first isn't really anything electrical, it's old fashioned, common sense safety. If you touch the body with the wrench when you're undoing the ground terminal, nothing happens. If you do the same with the positive, fireworks will ensue and you'll likely find some very spicy swear words and exit the engine bay at several times the speed of sound. There's far more grounded stuff around the car than there is live, so disconnecting the ground side first just makes sense. As far as the electrical system in the car is concerned, it can't in any way "see" which side you've disconnected.

[gazza82]

I've seen what the battery can do to a ring spanner when the earth was left connected ... and yes, the "handler" moved about ten feet backwards in one motion! (New Olympic event there? Backward long jump!)

My comment about electrics was more aimed at moderns with their chips and microprocessors. Giving the ecu an unwanted couple of jolts when the positive battery terminal was replaced and earth connected and you see the small arcing flashes. Not that different to giving the system a jolt when connecting jump leads and the donor car is running!

[Zelandeth]

I've seen what the battery can do to a ring spanner when the earth was left connected ... and yes, the "handler" moved about ten feet backwards in one motion! (New Olympic event there? Backward long jump!)

My comment about electrics was more aimed at moderns with their chips and microprocessors. Giving the ecu an unwanted couple of jolts when the positive battery terminal was replaced and earth connected and you see the small arcing flashes. Not that different to giving the system a jolt when connecting jump leads and the donor car is running!

Try dropping one across the terminals connected to a pair of Group 31 batteries for a bus...extremely loud bang, bright flash and suddenly the 1 1/2" spanner was several inches shorter.

-- -- --

While the Trabant's water ingress issues have definitely been vastly reduced since I've been fettling it, but we definitely still have quite a bit getting in on the passenger side.



Quite a bit of that seemed to be coming in actually through the passenger door. The door card was always wet and I'd noted that the door pocket would actually fill up with water when it rained.

As soon as I pulled the door card off (3 screws and about 60 seconds) a likely candidate for this became apparent sitting in the bottom of the door cavity. Which also explained why that window rattled so badly.



That thing in the bottom of the door, that's the rail that the window should be sitting on. Also acting as a gutter to direct water running down the glass to drip off at either end, away from the door card etc.

The glass was essentially just balanced on the metal rollers that the rail should run on. How it hadn't fallen off or been damaged I've no idea. The rail is in pretty rough shape, but I wouldn't have condemned it. The very ends are a bit crispy, but I've seen far worse. The biggest issue (aside from the window glass having escaped) is that it's been bent quite substantially. I've straightened it as best I can, but it's still not right. A new one is €30 from Trabantwelt, so hardly the end of the world. While the glass isn't sitting as deeply in the channel as it ideally should be, I have managed to coerce everything more or less back to where it should be.



I suspect there would have been some sort of sealant to help bond the glass to the carrier originally as well.

I will need to pull a lot of this apart when I change the window rubbers anyway so I'm not worrying too much about it right now. I've just made a mental note not to open that window again if I don't have to until I've had a chance to get things properly fastened together. There's no chance of it actually falling apart on its own now though and the door doesn't rattle anywhere near as much. Will it help keep the rain out? Remains to be seen. I did look at the driver's side one before and everything looked okay.

Another order for assorted miscellaneous parts has been made.

[] Window lifting rail as the ends have rotted off this one.
[] 20 trim clips as I'm missing all but one or two in each door.
[] Replacement for the mostly missing retaining clips for the engine jacket.
[] Cooling fan to cowl gasket.
[] Replacement for the missing rubber stoppers the bonnet should sit on.
[] New sill kick plates as these are pretty scabby and I suspect will be in several pieces once they're removed.

All small things individually, but will add up at the end of the day.

[Zelandeth]

The amount of water in our conservatory tells me that it's been raining pretty heavily on and off most of the day today. So I'd usually expect there to be a lake in the passenger foot well (random thought, does it still count as a well if the floor is actually flat?) in the Trabant.



Well that's an improvement! The dark bit near the wheel tub is just a shadow rather than a puddle. No water! A little of the Cpt. Tolley's I dribbled around the suspect seams on the bulkhead has found it's way through, but the floors (and doors) are bone dry.

That definitely feels like we've made a few steps forward there now.

Had a nice wander over Chesham way to catch up with some friends for lunch which was a nice change of pace given that I generally basically don't have a social life!

The drive there and back highlighted a couple of things on the Partner. First is that those front tyres are getting binned. Before our trip north next week if I can arrange it. They're just absolutely hopeless in the wet. I'll probably keep hold of at least the rears as they look to be a pretty aggressive winter tread and someone might want them as a part worn pair, but I personally prefer a fully matched set on the car.

Secondly is that the rear end really is getting quite crashy on poor roads. That combined with the really visible positive camber of the rear wheels I think tells me it wouldn't be the worst idea to start looking at shopping for a new (or rebuilt) rear axle. My intention is to be keeping this vehicle long term, so I don't mind spending a few quid getting things up to scratch.

The first part in the puzzle of "what will it take to get cruise working" has now arrived.



Actually attached to a whole COM2000 unit we probably don't need, but it was no more expensive than just getting the stalk. We may need a different throttle pedal assembly, possibly an additional brake pedal switch (don't *think* so on this one) We'll start with the easy version though - plug in the stalk, code it in and see if it works. Never know, we might be lucky.

Do have a job for tomorrow though before thinking about any of that.



It's always something! Guess I'll be picking up a new pair of headlight lamps tomorrow then.

[Zelandeth]

All evidence suggests that we've finally beaten the water ingress into the passenger foot well in the Trabant. I'm not totally sure exactly where the source was, but I've gone for the nuclear option and have attacked the whole suspect area with the underbody sealant.



I will be painting over this all in body colour in due course so it will look tidier. In the interest of preventing future rust I will probably go over the whole engine bay.

The remaining bolt from the bodged together bonnet latch has now been removed as it's no longer needed as it's been thoroughly glued in place now. I've filled the hole as well, hopefully once a bit of paint goes on that will be a bit less obvious.



Ideally this really does want a new (or better used) bonnet long term though.

Had the car out and about this afternoon and was glad to see I didn't end up with fuel pouring over the top of the fuel tank from the sender I fitted a few days ago.



I had a look at the headlights on the Partner to see how much of a pain it was going to be to change the bulbs. The answer is going to be "quite a bit" it looks like.

Driver's side I can turn and release the cap...however can't actually remove it as there's a wiring bundle that prevents the bottom edge from being withdrawn from the housing.



On the passenger side the engine bay fuse box is utterly in the way.



Hopefully if I remove the top mounting bolt I'll be able to tip the headlights forward enough to give me enough clearance. Thankfully this just uses H4s rather than anything awkward and expensive, and something I just had in stock. Will try to get those actually swapped tomorrow.

Or just decide it looks awkward so take the Trabant out instead like I did today!

[Zelandeth]

Turns out that removing the one visible fastener on the headlights does absolutely nothing - so swearing and scraping of knuckles was the order of the day.



I really do need to get a new front number plate...

It's absolutely possible to change the lamps without dismantling anything aside from removing the lid of the fuse box, but it's fluffing awkward. Especially trying to get the cover back onto the nearside one which must have taken me twenty minutes and a couple of dozen attempts to get both lugs to latch properly. It's not even so much being able to get your hands in there which makes it awkward in this case (though that doesn't help), so much as there being a chunk of immovable wiring loom blocking the lower inch or so of the cover on the nearside and a coolant line doing the same on the offside. If those had been routed fractionally differently it would be a 30 second a side job to change those bulbs.

Can't really complain about those lamps themselves needing replacement though, judging from the date code on them they're the ones fitted by the factory eighteen years and 121K miles ago so definitely haven't done bad.



Working on the headlights has reminded me that one of the number plate lights falls out every third time I close the tailgate because both of its clips are broken. So rather than having it randomly refuse to be shoved back in place in a couple of months when the car goes in for the MOT I figured this was a good time to order a replacement. They both are full of rust as well so clearly have long since ceased to be weather proof - they're only a few quid so I've just ordered replacements for both.

Despite having sorted the headlights on the Peugeot I still wound up leaving it on the drive and taking the Trabant out to run the day's errands. It's just such a fun thing to drive in a way that only such simple, lightweight cars can be, especially now I've got properly comfortable with driving it. On the subject of familiarity, we have now ticked over 1000km since I picked the car up. Have to wonder how many of the 500 or so that are in the UK do that much in a year...

With the weather seeming content to stay outside the car now I wanted to think about putting the carpets back in - though before doing that I wanted to clean them as they really did need it.

The front section in particular had a very distinct tide mark where the water had been running down the bulkhead. Plus it's just generally grubby.



The rear carpet wasn't quite as dirty, but has a good amount of rust staining from where there was standing water in the footwell for a long period of time.



I gave them a bit of a scrub down with a solution of hot water and washing up liquid before blasting as much of the gunk as possible out using the 20 degree nozzle on the pressure washer.



Have to see how they look once they're fully dry, but judging from the amount of gunk that came out it can't have been a bad thing to do!

[Zelandeth]

A very large box arrived this morning containing more goodies for the Trabant. Very large box filled mostly with air because some of the things were long skinny parts.



[] 2 sill kick plates.
[] OS window lifter rail.
[] Cooling fan to cowl seal.
[] 20 interior trim clips for the doors.
[] 5 rubber buffers the bonnet sits on when closed.
[] 5 engine jacket securing clips.

Looking at the engine bay now you really can't see that anything was done today.



However in replacing the missing jacket clips I had cause to look more closely at the fan shroud. I'd noted right from the start that the rearmost part looked to have been fitted crooked, though it quickly became apparent that this was because the whole lot was so loosely assembled that everything was able to move relative to everything else. It turned out that of the eight bolts (plus the one holding the fan itself in place) that five had vibrated their way to freedom in the past and that three of the remainder were less than finger tight. That definitely won't have been helping our cause - or indeed helping reduce the horrendous amount of racket this power unit produces.

Thankfully they are just normal M6 bolts rather than anything obscure so I had suitable replacements in stock.





Nice to see that the cowling is reinforced around the bolt holes on the ends where it might be prone to cracking due to vibration over time otherwise.

I also noticed a bit of ducting I'm missing while doing the above work.



Will need to get that replaced. Just looks to be a straight bit of tubing judging from the listing on LDM Tuning's Website so hopefully I've got something floating around that will do. Anything that's uncontrollably bleeding off cooling air though is a big no-no as far as I'm concerned.

The carpets are still a little damp, but I've got the underlays both back in the car now. Even if I do now realise that the front one is in upside down.





Carpets are in the spare room with a fan blowing air over them so hopefully will be fully dry and I can get them back in the car tomorrow.

[Zelandeth]

Simple but satisfying jobs today.

The carpet underlay in the front was switched round so the cutout for the pedals was in the right place. Still don't know why that didn't occur to me when I was fitting it - though having to work around school kids running around my driveway at the time probably didn't help.



The observant among you may also spot the other thing I forgot yesterday afternoon in the above photo.

The fuel switch was left on overnight. I can however now confirm that the needle and seat in this carb are decent enough to prevent the whole tank decanting itself overnight. Though it did leak by enough that I created my own little recreation of that video of them crossing the border the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall when I started the car up. Thankfully after five minutes or so of driving the biblical levels of smoke reduced to invisible again.

As I had hoped the carpets had fully dried overnight. They're not spotless by any means but I think are a hundred times better than they started out.



My suspicion was that once they were in the car that the marks would be far less apparent.

Think I was right.





Perfect? No. However it's a 39 year old car, and based on that context I think is entirely acceptable. The area by the pedals is looking in really surprisingly good shape given there's no separate heel pad or anything there.



Not sure what these carpets are made from, but it seems to be pretty hard wearing whatever it is.

Next issue I wanted to address was the door cards. Nothing says quality like trim that fits this well.



The main reason for that is that a whole bunch of these clips were missing.



Of the eighteen that should be in that door card there were three present (and four in the driver's door). With them all present and correct it looks...a bit better.



Being totally honest this card is never going to sit absolutely right as it's been quite badly water damaged and is warped as a result. It's a lot better though. Doesn't flap around a bunch when the door closes now either.

Same was done on the driver's side. That one at least has escaped any major water damage so is sitting properly.

It's actually looking like a car again!







If you're really paying attention you may have noticed that the driver's side window winder has changed from chrome to plastic. That's because I have two plastic ones but only one chrome one and then being mismatched was bugging me. Yes the metal one looks nicer, but I'll take them matching over individual visual appeal.

Really need to get the parcel shelf under the dash out to give it the same treatment as the rest of the carpets as it's absolutely filthy. That might wait till the weather is a bit warmer though so I can just leave it in the sun to dry.

The carpets will come out again at the same time as I want to get the bulkhead behind the shelf rust proofed same as the floors, and to get proper paint on the area beneath the B pillars so the current tide mark isn't so obvious. Shorter term all the carpets need to come out the boot so it can be properly dried out and rust proofed as well. That requires me to empty all the crap out first though!

While in the boot, I did spot a convenient spot to mount some concealed speakers if I did decide I wanted to fit a stereo at some point in the future, which honestly I doubt I will.



Between the carpets being back in the car (and no longer saturated) and the cooling shroud now actually being bolted together the car is waaaaay quieter to drive. Don't get me wrong, it's still ridiculously loud, but it's a thousand times better than it was. You can actually have a conversation at 50mph just by raising your voice a bit rather than actually having to shout.

Here's the obligatory before and after from the day I got the car and today inside.





Quite the difference.

Externally not much has really visibly changed though!

[Dick]

Looks much better!