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

Post pictures and stories about your cars both present and past. Also post up "blogs" on your restoration projects - the more pictures the better! Note: blog-type threads often get few replies, but are often read by many members, and provide interest and motivation to other enthusiasts so don't be disappointed if you don't get many replies.
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Zelandeth
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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#681 Post by Zelandeth » Tue Sep 01, 2020 10:14 pm

A few days ago I went through my Citroen spares stash carefully three full times checking for a lower ball joint before I admitted defeat and ordered one.

Today what did I spot sitting on the pool table...about a foot away from the P-bush which has been waiting to be dropped off at the car once the new ball joint arrives?

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I must have physically picked this up and moved it TWICE when I was digging through the boxes of parts. I really do worry about the state of my brain sometimes...

Anyhow...It has now been dropped off with the car. My friend is going to build up the control arm in the interim and we'll hopefully get it put back together on Friday which is when we're next both free. When the new ones arrive they can go back into the spares stash as ball joints are one of those things which you're always going to need at some point.


I've decided to call time on fiddling around with the paint on the Invacar for now. The finish on the engine cover isn't even close to great if you look at it up close, but given the state of the rest of the car it'll do just fine. "Obviously cared for even though rough around the edges" is the basic target we're after.

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We called it good there and I set about putting things back together again.

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While I had the painting kit out I gave the top cowling on the engine a quick sand back and a coat of paint as it was flaking off there badly in a few spots and it was bugging me.

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Something I did before putting the engine cover back on was to move the block I used to set how far forward I can pull a bit to give me more clearance at the back of the car. On three separate occasions now I have taken a chunk out of the engine cover with the latch on the garage door when turning it to lock it.

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The way the door sits means that you actually have a good six inches or so less clearance than it really looks like you should have...I really don't want to have to touch in a chunk out of the engine cover there for a fourth time.

Given the Jag is now off the road until the tyres are replaced, the Xantia is still in bits and a couple of places I needed to visit today have height barriers, she was immediately dragged out of the garage and pressed back into service.

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It's definitely one of the easiest ways of making normal sized parking spaces look comically huge.

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She's a bit tidier now than the first time I took a photo of her in that car park on her first trip out onto the road...Still held together by duct tape, cable ties and hope!

I noted that the new Dayco HP2020 belt I picked up has clear instructions on the packaging instructing a 20 mile break-in period during which you shouldn't exceed 50mph so I applied this procedure to the NOS belt which was fitted as well. You wouldn't think to look at this car that trying to keep it below 50 when on the open road would be quite so tricky...

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We're now well outside that 20 mile period though so we're able to drive normally again. The new belt is a LOT quieter at speed than the previous one was and has completely done away with the judder when taking up drive which has plagued me since the day I got the car which is nice.
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#682 Post by Zelandeth » Thu Sep 03, 2020 11:33 pm

Now the Invacar is back into regular-ish use I figured it was time to start trying to properly clean the interior a bit. I'd got the very worst of the grime off originally, but there were quite a few areas which needed more detailed attention. This is where we left off after maybe an hour or two.

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At a glance not a huge difference, but a lot of the effort has been in some of the smaller areas. Particularly the doors, both of which had quite a lot of rust staining down below where the windows had been leaking for decades.

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This one was particularly bad at the front. I'll need to put a touch of paint at the front there as it's actually stained the fibreglass below the runner, but it's a lot better. I also need to get the thinners and remove that paint drip just forward of the door handle as that's driving me crazy.

Nearside door wasn't anywhere near as grubby at least.

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The colour IS that different, I believe one of the doors is an Invacar made one, the other is AC made. I *really* need to do something more elegant by ways of a repair to that rear corner. The only reason I didn't glass it up originally was fear of getting resin into the door latch assembly. Realistically I'll need to get the latch out to do this properly (or anything vaguely resembling properly).

In addition to the doors, the area between them and the rear bulkhead is looking a lot better now.

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The access hatch really needs hitting with the power polisher and some cutting paste to try to get rid of some of the flaky paint etc on it but we're getting there.

Definitely need to look at getting the flooring sorted out because it is really letting things down - and I'm fed up of nearly faceplanting into the tarmac when climbing out.

Small stuff in the grand scheme of things, but making the car a nicer place to be is important in my book.
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#683 Post by Zelandeth » Wed Sep 09, 2020 12:40 am

Over the last couple of days my own fleet has taken a little bit of a back seat as a friend has dropped off something a little bit special for a little bit of electrical rehabilitation. The main complaint was that half of the dash lighting wasn't working. I quite enjoy little jobs like this so was happy to volunteer. It's quite a special motor though, which was another reason for jumping at the opportunity to work on it.

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Yes, that is indeed a Lancia Trevi.

The poor thing has definitely been crying out for some TLC...Not really surprising given it was basically dragged out of many years of disuse and prepped for an MOT, then driven. Plus as with many 80s Lancias, it has obviously seen a fair amount of bodgery during its years before it was parked up and forgotten about.

Couple of day's worth of updates here on this subject...Here's yesterday's first.

-- -- --

On my first wander around I came up with the following to do list.

[] Heater inoperable. Fan would run, but while it made noise there was no airflow.

[] Spurious offside tail light failure indication.

[] Offside indicators slow down when tail or brake lights are lit.

[] Several dash illumination lamps out or intermittent.

[] Switchgear illumination very dim.

[] Heater air distribution control lighting inoperable (not actually sure it's meant to be lit).

[] Dash warning lights for parking brake & rear fog lights inoperable.

[] Horrendously rough idle.

I started out intending to look at the tail lights as I reckon a dodgy ground is probably to blame. There's signs of water ingress in the clusters, probably because the lenses are quite badly crazed and there are a few actual cracks.

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Didn't actually get as far as looking at the clusters and their wiring closer as I noticed the moment that I opened the boot that there was a significant amount of water in there. This is because the rain is literally pouring into the boot through a rust hole in the surround. Did I mention that this car was very early in the days of restoration?

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Bodywork isn't really my forte and I don't want to get involved in plastering a car that's not mine with filler or anything. I did want to do something quick to keep at least some of the weather out though. So I grabbed the ally foil tape and made a temporary patch.

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It can just be peeled off and any residue removed with some solvent cleaner when a more permanent repair is done. This should keep at least most of the rain out though in the interim which was my main concern.

Seeing that I'll need to strip quite a bit of trim out of the back of the boot to get to the tail light wiring I decided to come back to that and see if I could find any obvious candidates for the lumpy idle.

Straight off the bat I found a vacuum line which had started to decompose. It didn't look too bad in situ but once looked at more closely...

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Thirty second job to replace.

Sadly it didn't sort the horrible idle. However I spotted a very likely candidate for the dead heater.

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That black cylinder is a vacuum accumulator and is part of the heating system...and one end should be connected to the inlet manifold. That vacuum line (and anywhere for it to go) was completely absent. My guess is that back when this car had twin carbs (the previous owner kept the twin carbs and associated manifold) there would have been a dedicated tap on the manifold for it. There was an additional attachment for it available though, just needed the blanking cap to be removed. I could then route a vacuum line for it.

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Once this was hooked up I was happy to see that the push buttons controlling the air distribution now work correctly, and the heater seems to be mighty effective.

The party trick of the system has to the fact that when you switch it to cooling mode (which would probably bring the A/C on if the car was so equipped) that it automatically returns the temperature control to full cold.

Very brief YouTube video

That is something which will no doubt provide plenty of entertainment when stuck in traffic in the future.

Once I had confirmed this was working I tidied up the hoses I'd just routed a bit. When I went to restart the car I was met with a single click and a complete loss of electricity.

Tracking down the cause of that took about thirty seconds...the screws in the negative battery terminal were barely finger tight and the lead was totally free to float around in the terminal.

Another brief YouTube video

The end of the cable was pretty mangled as it had obviously been getting hot for a while so I trimmed it back and remade the connection.

When I had done that, I spotted the positive terminal smoking when the engine was cranking! Turns out the starter lead was connected to the terminal by three or four strands and was ready to break away. Fine...took that apart and remade the connections too.

I tweaked the alignment a bit so that neither the main feed to the car systems or the starter were jammed against the battery itself.

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In the general neighbourhood of the battery I found this wire floating around in the nearside wing waiting to short out on something. No idea what it used to be, but it is long gone.

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The barrel connector it was connected to is still there in the loom so it can easily be reconnected if necessary in the future, but doesn't this look better?

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That's about all I had time for yesterday other than having taken five minutes to track down where the screws holding the dash together are. Looks like this shouldn't be too hard to get into to change the dash lamps...the main task I originally set out to do!

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I've got a hunch about the running issue. I note that there's a solenoid on the carb - a solenoid which is currently connected to nothing...and which appears to have an open circuit coil. If that's something to do with the idle circuit (i.e. an anti-dieselling system to cut fuel when the ignition is turned off) this could be causing all sorts of trouble.

I'm not going to waste too much time on this just now as the car is perfectly drivable. A bit of vibration through the car at idle is the only sign anything is awry really. I'm also not about to go twiddling things on the carb as I recall it being mentioned that it wasn't easy to get it set up in the first place. If I can diagnose a possible issue though I'd like to have a clear recommendation to give. I will stick it on the gas analyser tomorrow though so I can see if it's rich or lean...smells rich, but I've been wrong before.

Only other things I noted down on my notepad from today we're regarding the cooling system. The radiator is weeping from a couple of spots. One around the base of the bleed line to the header tank, the other appears to be along the actual seam between the top plastic header and the core itself.

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That connection to the expansion tank in particular makes me uneasy as it's clearly already been subjected to an epoxy or similar repair.

On the same subject, the coolant has turned to rust soup again (it spat it all out a week or so back in Tesco carpark in Buckingham).

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It doesn't smell of fuel and there isn't any in the oil, so I reckon it's still just flushing old crud from years of neglect out the system.

I wonder if the incident in Buckingham the other day where it barfed a lot of coolant out was due to a chunk of gunge getting flushed out of somewhere. We'll get a couple of flushes done on the system and see how things go.

Final task before I locked up and went to cook dinner was to reset the wonderfully 80s clock to the right time following the battery removal earlier.

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-- -- --

Fast forward to today!

Closer examination of the carburettor revealed that someone has definitely been in here before me when I removed the solenoid to see what was going on...

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There should be a pin in here with some form of fuel metering device on it! It's *possible* that it's wedged in the carb body, but I'll need a mirror on a stick to confirm that. It doesn't feel like there's anything in the hole in the carb body though.

I'll need to tweak things a bit anyway though as having now fixed a not insignificant vacuum leak the idle speed has dropped to the point that it's a 50/50 game of chance every time you stop as to whether the engine will stall.

Looking at the coolant today before the engine was started shows that it looks like there is a distinct separate concentration of sediment floating around which has settled out overnight. So hopefully a decent flush through will help things in that department.

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Will get that changed later and try to get as much flushed out as I can, hopefully befor this lovely new header tank gets any more stained.

Also noted that there is a worrying absence of hose clips on the fuel tank return line...and original fuel hose on the pump feed line.

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The return line isn't a particularly tight fit on the rigid line either... I'll get a hose clamp on there!

I don't have any line in stock the correct size to replace this or I'd do it as a matter of course (especially as it's identical to the vacuum line I found falling to bits yesterday). Definitely doesn't appear to be a fuel filter fitted either. That at least I do have the parts in stock to remedy.

A slight problem generated by having fixed the vacuum leak found yesterday was that it had dropped the idle speed a touch - which given how badly the car was missing at idle resulted in there basically being a 50/50 chance of the engine stalling every time you came off the throttle. I tweaked the idle speed up a little to compensate for this. I need to look up the details for the carb to confirm that I've done that the correct way...but either way it worked and has stopped the stalling nonsense I had yesterday.

Here's the details of the carb, courtesy of my phone as I couldn't get my head into the necessary location to read this!

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Hopefully those in the know will be able to confirm whether this is reasonably well suited to the car or not.

If that solenoid is meant to have a needle or other metering device attached to it I suspect that's going to be the source of our problem as it appears that the entire plunger assembly and whatever was once attached to it is missing. This makes sense as the main jet side of things seems to be working just fine - when you give her some beans she picks up smoothly and especially at the top end feels nicely punchy as you'd expect from a Lancia TC engine. It's just the idle that's screwed up.

I'm not going to delve too far into this issue as it's kind of beyond the scope of what I was planning on - but I'd like to be able to at least give an idea of what's going on for the final report I'll hand back with the car. One key bit of information I wanted was to see whether she was overfuelling or underfuelling at idle. Out with the gas analyser.

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Well that won't be helping matters. The red section on the gauge is the general range expected for carb fed engines...I have a sneaking feeling that the whole idle circuit is fouled up and it's running from dregs from the main jet. Especially as adjusting what appears to be the idle fuel screw has absolutely zero effect on anything - so I put it right back where it started out and left it well alone.

It's obviously a fuel mixture issue as you CAN make the car idle smoothly by manually choking the carb with your hand (carefully). She sounds really lovely then actually! Is just starving for fuel if left to its own devices.

Unless when I look up the service/adjustment guide for the carb there's some blindingly obvious adjustment that I've missed I'm leaving this well alone and simply noting down "Carb needs attention" and leaving it at that. She starts, drives, stops and doesn't stall every time you stop at a junction - basically back to how she was behaving when she arrived here. Just with all the air now entering the engine via the carb rather than sneaking in through leaks.

Right...Enough faffing around with running issues I wasn't told to look into! Onto lighting issues the car actually arrived on my drive to sort!

First one was a nice easy fix!

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Dirty lamp holder contacts. Sixty second fix.

Next up I needed to start pulling the dash to bits.

To be honest this has to be one of the easiest cars I've had to tackle a job like this on. Half a dozen easily accessible screws and the whole face just lifts off the dash.

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A further four release the panel which holds the warning lights and switchgear, likewise four release the instrument cluster.

There's even bags of slack in the wiring harness and speedometer cable so disconnecting them is a doddle, and with the steering wheel adjustment dropped down to the lowest level it just lifts out.

Before I started on the instrumentation though I wanted to take a closer look at the heater air distribution controls, which I wasn't sure if had any provision for illumination.

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Hey look a that! It even highlights which mode it's in.

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Neat. That's one more thing ticked off then.

Again just a dirty lampholder. Not even any slight blackening of the bulb so I left that be.

While peering at things back there I was able to confirm that the main swithgear was in fact lit by a single light source and fibre optics. I'll dig my way in to that tomorrow and look to replace the lamp in it to see if we can get a bit more light out of them.

On to the dash proper. Getting at a few of the lamps on that is a bit of a pain as Lancia decided that it would be smart to position the control module for the gauge pack on top of several of them.

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So you have to unscrew that to get to four of the lamps. Not the end of the world as it takes all of five minutes to remove and reattach, but it's still the sort of design decision that makes you roll your eyes a bit.

For reference, this is how the dash looked when we started.

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After an hour of cleaning contacts and testing things, this was the result.

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Doesn't that look happier? It's actually a really nicely lit instrument panel, never mind by the standards of 1983.

Couple of close ups...Just because I really enjoy photos of instrument panels in the dark.

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I did annoyingly managed to nudge the tripometer reset while I was manhandling the instruments in and out of the dash. Luckily however I had taken precautions against that and noted down the reading before that. If that reading is being used to track fuel economy, the owner will simply need to add 34.2 miles to the reading.

In addition to the illumination, the fuel warning light apparently was also out beforehand, it now lights as part of the test sequence at startup.

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What I didn't realise was that the car *knows* when there is a light out on the dash. The big red warning light which I'd assumed was simply Lancia's answer to the "stop" light on PSA cars, now lights up green when you turn the ignition on rather than red!

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Shouldn't be a problem to get this finished and back together tomorrow then tackle the remaining to do/investigation list.

[] Investigate fibre optic illumination to see if there's any improvement to be made.

[] Investigate non-functioning rear fog lights.

[] Reassemble dash.

[] Attack a few key areas with Vactan.

[] Cooling system drain, flush and refill with proper coolant (it's had water in for the last week following the coolant loss incident).

[] Get a proper photo of the dash once everything's working.

Oh...Pretty sure I found all the necessary bits in the glove box to reassemble the lower heater vents on the dash as well so will put those back together before screwing the dash back together.

Plus it will get an interior valet before it goes back to the owner...because I'm me and that's how I operate.

I've really been enjoying getting to do these little jobs on this motor, these are the sorts of things I really enjoy and find satisfying. Plus getting to work on such a rare and interesting motor is a privilege I feel.

The question I've got on my mind having had a chance to briefly drive this and having been a passenger in a Gamma Berlina...How on earth did Lancia manage to make cars ride like this with conventional springs? Both of these cars seem to hover along a few inches over the surface of the road without ever actually touching the tarmac...it's uncannily smooth, and so quiet!

Have I added another car to my wish list? Um...Yes.
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#684 Post by gazza82 » Wed Sep 09, 2020 9:17 am

Ah Lancia's ..

1) My uncle had a Monte Carlo. As he worked in Central London he rarely used it so it slowly dissolved on his driveway!
MonteCarlo.jpg
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2) In the days of Company Cars a colleague for some inexplicable reason chose a Lancia Thema. That was the one where they collaborated and built the Thema, Saab 9000, Alfa 164 and Fiat Chroma on the same floor-pan. That particular Thema ended up in a ditch, luckily at relatively slow speed and with no damage to car or occupants, when the steering column pinch bolt fell out .. yes .. fell out. It was on the floor next to the nut ..
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3) Obviously if I was daft enough to buy one, I'd go for a Stratos .. :-) But I think the closest I'll get is the Airfix kit in the garage still to be assembled!
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PS Pics are just examples I found on 'tinterweb!
"If you're driving on the edge ... you're leaving too much room!"

Retirement Project: '59 Austin A35 2-door with 1330cc Midget engine and many upgrades
Said goodbye: got '98 Alfa Romeo 156 2.0 TSpark to 210K miles before tin worm struck

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#685 Post by Atodini » Wed Sep 09, 2020 11:10 am

One suspects that it was (is) an anti-diesel valve, used to stop the engine running on when the ignition is turned off, and, rather than add a 5v supply to it, whoever fitted the carb just removed the guts.... Seen this bodge before (and it doesn't work!) as these valves are a common fitment on Webers and Dellortos of the period, both of which are popular updates for Reliants.

in fact I have a 34ich Weber on mine, except I bought a brand new one, pre jetted (from Rebels Racing) and without an anti-diesel valve.....

So if you or the owner can source the missing bits, it'll need a 5v stabilised supply to it. Wired to 12v it'll work but not for very long!

John
"I thought I was wrong once - But I was wrong"...

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#686 Post by Zelandeth » Thu Sep 10, 2020 1:09 am

Atodini wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 11:10 am
...So if you or the owner can source the missing bits, it'll need a 5v stabilised supply to it. Wired to 12v it'll work but not for very long!
That may well explain why the coil on this one is completely open circuit!

At least in these days of USB everything, 12V-5V DC convertors are far more cheaply and readily available than they were a few years ago.

-- -- --

Part ...Three...I think of the Trevi Tales.

The owner had been in touch with the garage who last did work on it and was given a pointer as to where they thought the plunger from the carb shut off solenoid was. This allowed me to find it...just!

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A few miles more I'm sure that would have vanished through that scuttle drain and never been seen again.

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With this fitted (bearing in mind that the solenoid coil is open circuit) unsurprisingly the car idles even worse. So for now it's been stashed in the bag of "leftovers" which I've removed so far (in a separate labelled bag so it doesn't get binned accidentally!).

I'm not likely to be messing around much more with the carb on this visit, though I'm not saying she won't return in future for more mechanically centred tinkering one day but that's not the main focus of this one.



The dash work was mostly done yesterday, I just needed to put it back together for the most part. I did need to replace one part though, the stripped out screw from the instrument panel. This was just a standard M6 thread so a bolt was roped in. Some folks might consider this a bodge...but I didn't have a machine screw that big to hand, and it's not as though you can see it so it's good enough for me!

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On the subject of the instrument panel etc...it's worth noting that this didn't actually end up being a bulb replacement project. None of the bulbs were in the slightest blackened, and all but one of the failures it turned out were down to dirty lamp holders (three of which I had to replace). The only blown lamp I found was in the fuel light, which was totally black and obviously dead. Given how..."variable" the quality of modern lamps can be in a case like this where they all look fine I'll stick to the originals. This usually winds up being the least hassle in the long run. This is a pretty easy dash to get in to as well.

I had a look at the light source for the fibre optics (sorry, forgot to photograph that), and it looked like new and everything in there is properly seated and perfectly clean. The switch illumination is just a bit dim when in the off position. Putting a more powerful lamp in here is a bad, bad idea as it will just A: Melt the housing and B: Burn the tips of the fibres. The only really practical way to get more light out of there is an LED conversion. Something to come back to in the future.

Before I actually started putting the dash back together there were a few more things I wanted to check:

[] The lamps in the parking brake/rear fog light indicators as they don't work (they were fine - the issue is upstream).

[] Clean everything that the dash is normally in the way of the edges of. The instrument panel in particular is awkward to clean normally as it's so deeply recessed. Out with the Autoglym Fast Glass (which despite the name is also suitable for clear plastics).

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All of the warning lights, buttons etc were also scrubbed up to get rid of the ring of decades old grime that was on them. The heater air distribution control buttons in particular were absolutely caked.

[] Lower dash heater vents. I found the vent grills for these in the glove box. Turns out that there were several broken ones, one complete and one half broken vent in there...Because the design is stupid. The whole lot hangs off a pair of spring clips which hold a LOT of tension on a tiny little plastic bridge.

The one complete vent I put on with ONE rather than two spring clips, and using a bolt rather than the plastic clip setup allowed me to space it out a good deal further to massively reduce the amount of tension on it. I would rather have used larger washers but simply don't have any in stock right now.

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This should be absolutely fine so long as you don't have a five year old trying to pull the vent out of the dash.

The second one however was already half broken so I had to improvise a bit.

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I've cable tied the "bridge" to the rod which connects the two parts of the vent direction fins together. This means the vent can't now be fully closed...but given that the opposite is a gaping hole in the dash, it seems like an improvement to me.

Given a bit of time I don't doubt for a second that I could engineer a better solution than this...but this was the best I could come up with in half an hour and the fact of the matter is that it does the job. It's a really poorly thought out design.

Before I started to reassemble it, I absolutely drowned the dash moulding in Autoglym's Plastic & Rubber Care spray and just left it soak for half an hour or so.

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[] This means we can get onto the fun bit...Reassembly!

I think the first picture here speaks for itself...you can almost hear the dash surface screaming the thanks for seeing some care products for the first time in probably a couple of decades.

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Sadly the effect is slightly spoiled by my dusty hand prints down by the heater outlets from putting stuff back together!

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The vent which can't be closed is the one on the passenger side - I figured giving the driver full control over the ventilation was the most important.

The rev counter in particular used to be quite cloudy before it was cleaned. Looks rather better now.

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Oh, and the previously distinctly crusty heater controls are a bit less of a biohazard now.

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Much better.

You can see the difference in the surface compared to the glove compartment lid. The glove compartment isn't fully closed there by the way, that's why the lid is sitting at an angle.

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Have another gratuitous Trevi dash warning light photo just because the design is so unique.

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These are actually frosted plastic lenses rather than the silk screened plastic film that is normally used on instrument panels etc.

They're all completely separate with the exception of the sidelights/main beam indicator which has two butted up next to each other using half of a circle (because what other shape would it be in this interior?!).

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Of course the real question was whether once I had bolted and screwed everything back together all the lights would still work.

Drumroll please...

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I'll take that!

Here's a wider shot with the ignition on so you can get the clock in shot as well.

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Really need to have a play around with the camera settings to see if I can get things like warnings lights to stop washing out so much. Also obviously still need to address the bulb failure warning which also brings on the Big Red Light of Doom.

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That's probably the most accurate representation of how brightly the gauges are lit and the colour at least.

Would be rude not to get some close ups wouldn't it?

Right to left...

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Sorry this one is a bit out of focus.

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Even the power window switches are properly lit now...I've not dared try the actual windows though. That has the potential for letting myself into a world of pain I can do without.

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It really bugs me these are lit white when everything else in the car is green.

Tomorrow's to do list.

[] Tail light bulb replacement & ground chasing.

[] Vactan.

[] Coolant flush. Looks like we may need to re-seal the neck on the expansion bottle too - though given the state of the radiator I'm tempted to leave this be for now. I'd rather have the system bleeding a bit of pressure off here than blowing the equalising line stub out of the radiator...

[] See if I can figure out why the rear fog lights don't work...Obvious candidate is the fuse box, given I've had to poke things in it half a dozen times so far. Including to get the indicator on the dash for the sidelights to work...After I'd had the bulb out and checked it three times.

[] Interior cleanup.
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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Zelandeth
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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#687 Post by Zelandeth » Thu Sep 10, 2020 11:26 pm

Yesterday I had forgotten to mention it, but the Invacar ticked over a bit of a milestone.

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That's the first time the thousands indicator has moved in my ownership, and means that somewhere in the region of 700 miles covered. The rate of which has definitely increased in the last month...won't be long until I've covered the big 1K.

Seems to be a week for it as the van also rolled over a thousand less than 24 hours later.

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Though that's less of a major deal as it's in regular use! Just amused me to see them both tick over a thousand so close together.


While I didn't want to get too find myself vanishing too deeply down the rabbit hole of poking the carb on the Lancia, as we had some idea what was going on now it would be nice to see if we could get it to run a bit better. There were a couple of things worth checking at least.

Firstly was seeing if we could make the solenoid stay retracted despite the coil being dead.

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That'll work! Yes...That is an old hard drive head actuator magnet stuck to the back of the case. As a new solenoid is £50 odd, we wanted to do a bit of proving to find if the carb was totally shot before throwing more money at it. To make it a bit less unwieldy I snipped the electrical connector off...The coil is dead so there's no reason to keep it around.

With this reinstalled (you can clearly hear the solenoid clicking when the magnet is placed or removed so we know it is in the open position)...It made absolutely zero difference. Still no fuel getting through the idle circuit. This can be confirmed as when you fully seat the idle fuel screw (which under normal circumstances would stall the engine), absolutely nothing happens. So the engine is obviously managing to just about run on the dregs it's pulling through from the main jet(s).

The drilling this solenoid closes off has a reputation for getting clogged on these carbs. It's a completely blind passage so there's no way to physically rod out any debris and as it's actually the lowest point in the entire casting gunge tends to want to accumulate there. In the absence of compressed air (and having the jets out so I'm not just shuffling gunk around in the carb), I took the solenoid back out and absolutely blasted it with carb cleaner. I wasn't really expecting this to do anything - and absolutely not expecting any change there was to last as and crud is still in there somewhere.

https://youtu.be/4dUe5fRBeDU

Still a bit lumpy on natural idle - but things had been set up very quickly here (as all the carb adjustments were unsurprisingly COMPLETELY out of place), and I still couldn't get the idle mixture to anywhere near as rich as it should be...but that's hugely better. For reference, this is what we started with.

https://youtu.be/mknuRd2Tmuc

I went for a very brief test run...Oh my word...What a transformation. She pulled smoothly and strongly right through the rev band, though really coming alive at the top end as you'd expect for a Lancia Twin Cam. Suddenly the highly scruffy appearance felt totally at odds with how the car felt. She's smooth, she's quiet and while I only went round a couple of roundabouts, feels really nimble. The only issue I noted was that the speedometer was clicking...have to guess I've not seated the cable quite right. Giving it a bit of a wiggle from the engine bay side I heard a "clunk" and next time out it was no longer working. That will have been the cable dropping off then. Not the end of the world as it's only ten minutes work to get the dash back out, and that's why I hadn't refitted any of the blanking plugs over the screws yet. I'm not a complete rookie!

Unfortunately before I got the camera set up for a recorded test run (as I'd loved to have been able to show the owner the difference) the idle circuit clogged back up again.

I had a think at this point and a look at it. The only hassle about getting the carb off generally would be the need to break into the cooling system due to the automatic choke...but I want to flush the cooling system anyway so that's a non issue. Beyond that it's four nuts and a clip for the throttle linkage, and I've already got fluid in the ultrasonic cleaner for another job.

Fine...I'll pull the carb tomorrow, strip it down and leave it to stew in the ultrasonic cleaner for a while. It's a bit more work...but if I could hand the car back actually running nicely it would be a huge boost for us both I think.

Speaking of the ultrasonic cleaner, that currently has another Invacar carb stewing in it as the initial clean we did on that didn't seem to fully clear the idle circuit...Given the amount of crud we found packed into the idle jet this isn't a huge surprise as we reckon a bunch more scale came off within the passages after we cleaned the first lot out.

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I decided that I couldn't in good conscience leave the manky looking bit of original fuel line and the missing fuel hose clips on the return line as they were. Just too big a safety issue, so I popped out and picked up some 8mm fuel hose and some hose clips. I needed to disturb this line anyway to install a fuel filter so it would have been plain idiotic not to replace it.

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Much better. The old hose was...shall we say, "past its best."

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It basically just fell off once I had taken about a quarter of a turn off the hose clips. One of which wasn't a proper fuel hose fitting either. It's a bit disappointing that the garage who did a fair bit of the recommissioning work on this car felt it was appropriate to leave that hose in place - especially as the replaced the one on the other side of the pump! I know they wouldn't be wanting to look for more jobs to do...but an additional ten minutes of work wouldn't really have been the end of the world after a bunch of welding, rebuilding 3/4 of the braking system etc...Granted this is the same garage who fitted this carb, so make of that what you will.

The last thing I wanted to check (this has been written a bit out of order - the fuel hose change was actually the first job I tackled today) while I had the engine running was running temperature as I didn't like the way that the fan kicked in after about 15 minutes and then stays running until a couple of minutes after the engine stops. The gauge sits just north of 1/2, showing about 80C...a look at the metal line running to the top radiator hose however shows things to be a bit warmer...

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That's not quite in the red...but is pretty much sitting on the boundary of it. Definitely a good 3/4 on the gauge and is a lot warmer than I'd like to see. It doesn't feel like the radiator is rejecting a huge amount of heat either, so this will be a good baseline to compare to after I've given everything a really good flush tomorrow - though the radiator will be getting replaced as a matter of some urgency once a replacement has been sourced. I know a load of scale and gunk has probably just been released into the system as of yesterday anyway as the heater circuit was dead until then as the heater valve is vacuum operated, and the control system didn't have a vacuum supply until I reconnected it...so all the more reason to flush it.

This job has grown arms and legs a bit...but it will be worth it in the end I think, especially having had a brief glimpse of what a lovely driving car this has the potential to be.

It's not hard to see why despite their tendency to be somewhat fragile that Lancias do have such a loyal following. Just a shame the Trevi was always seen as something of an ugly duckling in the range and as such so few have survived. So many died an early death as cheap donors of a 2 litre Lancia TC engine for kit cars, Fiat/Lada upgrades and the like in the 90s.

That five minute drive today has definitely made me have one of those "Oh, *that's* what people meant when they said they feel special..." moments.
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#688 Post by Zelandeth » Sat Sep 12, 2020 12:10 am

First task for today was to reassemble the Invacar carb which has been in for a second cleaning session so it can be returned to its home tomorrow.

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I can't seem to shift a lot of the discolouration. I know that this car was parked right next to a shed that burned down, so I'm not sure if some of it is something to do with that. Internally though it wasn't bad. The main difference between this and last time I rebuilt it though was that this time around I was able to utilise a serviceable secondhand gasket rather than having to make my own. Some of the passages in this gasket are tiny so I'm not 100% certain my one was up to the job really.

Fingers crossed once this is refitted it will get that car back up and running properly.


Back in the world of Trevi the first thing I wanted to do today was to pull the carb and dump it in the ultrasonic cleaner. While dismantling it became apparent that the line from the carb to the distributor advance unit was just starting to perish so I put a new hose on there in the interests of long term reliability.

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For the sake of the cost of a tiny bit of hose it just seemed silly not to change it while I was in the area.

The solenoid was something I had a bit of a think about. The magnet was fine for a test, but I had visions of it falling off while driving so would rather come up with a less precarious solution to tide us over until a replacement solenoid could be sourced. My eventual solution? Wedge a bit of card down beside the armature so it stays retracted on its own. It can still be removed with a good pull but hopefully will stay put for now.

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Once the carb was off it became immediately apparent that dumping it in the ultrasonic cleaner really wasn't going to be necessary. While the outside is a bit grubby everything inside was spotless. So I settled for removing all the jets/emulsion tubes and the idle fuel screw and blowing all the passages through and reassembling. Someone has obviously been in here before as the gasket appears to be made of something halfway between card and newspaper...So a new gasket definitely wouldn't go amiss as air leaks around the top plate definitely could be an issue.

That's an easy job to do later with the carb in situ though, so it was put back together for now.

Next up was a coolant flush which I knew was rather urgently needed. Quite HOW desperately needed became apparent once I started draining the coolant. Rust soup anyone?

Yes, this is completely opaque and as neon orange as it looks.

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I've split the bottom hose from where it attaches to the thermostat housing as the actual bottom hose connection on the radiator is almost entirely inaccessible without removing it from the car. Given we know the radiator is clinging to life by pretty much entirely by willpower alone at this point I wasn't going to go to lengths like that nor get too aggressive with it.

Given the poor access and the sheer number of things the water was bouncing off on the way out of the engine bay (the hose being directly above the front crossmember doesn't help for one things) it was no huge surprise that my attempts to capture the escaping coolant were about as successful as expected.

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That hose shifted about ten seconds later when I wasn't looking and dumped an order of magnitude more water everywhere. This better shows how opaque the coolant was!

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It's almost entirely just rust and water though, there's no sign of any antifreeze I can detect, so I sighed, shrugged and just made a point of thoroughly rinsing down the area afterwards to ensure that anything was sufficiently diluted to eliminate any risks to cats etc. This doesn't smell sweet like older antifreeze though - no, think "rank, stagnant pond water" in this case.

This is what was left in the (couple of week old) expansion tank after it was drained.

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Yes that is about 1/8" of rusty slime.

After about an hour of hosing, poking, shaking, spraying myself in the face etc, we did get clean water running through everywhere.

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Things were put back together...

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The system refilled...

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Then started up - and I spent five minutes simultaneously juggling getting the carb dialled in and feeding coolant in as the air burped its way out of the system. No prizes for guessing what the coolant looked like after about 30 seconds.

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This cooling system is going to need some real time spent on it to flush all this gunk out. That's definitely a task for *after* there is a new radiator sitting next to the car waiting to be fitted though. I suspect if you flush all the crud out of this one it would probably disappear. Given the sheer amount of it in here I'd probably go for the dishwasher tab route here...but absolutely not until we've got a new radiator on standby!

To give some idea how much sediment I flushed out, here's the drive before I went after it with the hose to rinse it down - The water has all gone by this point. It's about 1/4" deep at the left hand side of the frame by the garage door. That's a lot of slime.

Oh, my OCD wouldn't let me leave the fuel lines as they were routed yesterday once I spotted where it looked like the little rubber bracket/guide seems like it's meant to live so I went back in and tidied that up. Gave me an opportunity to sort the alternator belt tension as well as that was really loose.

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This little car really must not know what's happening to it right now!

Just hoping she's grateful for the attention rather than spiteful to have had the quiet slumber where she was slowly dissolving back to nature disturbed...

Either way I've enjoyed doing this work immensely (even if I was swearing at whoever decided where to position the thermostat and radiator bottom hose this afternoon!).
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

Dick
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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#689 Post by Dick » Sun Sep 13, 2020 6:46 pm

I've been following this thread for a while and im amazed at the work you're doing.. i can only assume that you have won the lottery and don't need a job as you spend all your time on the spanners! I have to book time for a fiddle with my fleet :lol:
Keep up the good work im loving the latest project! :thumbs:

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#690 Post by Zelandeth » Mon Sep 14, 2020 12:18 am

Yesterday I actually managed to make a decent bit of headway through the to do list on the Trevi.

Initially it was refusing to idle again. Though I've definitely pinned down where it's getting clogged up, and it's in between the solenoid and the idle screw...so took them both out and blasted that through yet again...and so far it's behaved since so I might have got rid of the crud this time. Hopefully. Maybe.

On to the tail lights.

Getting into the nearside one was slightly awkward on account of the antenna being in the way, especially as the ground wire from it was strung right over the tail light lamp holder assembly so I had to disconnect that first.

Once we got the lamp holder assembly out...it was obvious it was a miracle the lights were working to start with.

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That's just nasty...Though given that we knew that there had been a pretty major water ingress issue into the boot for goodness only knows how long not terribly surprising.

I could have spent half an afternoon messing with sandpaper etc...Or I could actually just use the power tools I bought for exactly this sort of job.

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Not perfect, but an awful lot better than they were, and I reckon the should be fine, the lamp holders are a reasonably snug fit.

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A full new set of GE lamps went in (what came out was as as rusty as the lamp holders, getting the indicator lamp out required pliers).

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Despite the rusty lamp holders there was nothing wrong with the ground connections, I gave them a quick clean anyway but everything tested fine.

Now the offside was rather more of a headache to get in to...which was annoying as that's the side we had strangeness reported by the lamp failure display. Problem was that this thumbscrew that holds the trim that holds the carpet over the lamp holder assembly was stuck.

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It's sufficiently stuck that the plastic top wound up spinning on the metal inner. So I had to spend a bit of time trying to detach the carpet up under the trim as carefully as I could...Which someone had already done on the *other* side where the trim came off perfectly fine! Ah the joys of working Lancias I guess.

This side wasn't quite as bad but was given the same treatment. This has sorted the problem with the interaction between the separate lamps...but hasn't had any effect on the report of a faulty lamp on this corner.

I have a sneaking feeling that this may be down to an issue with the module in the dash, especially as the LED for that lamp glows dimly as soon as the ignition is turned on. Taking the bulb out of the other tail light puts out the warning on the offside rear corner...but puts one shown on the nearside headlight. It seems to have some issues.

There is a spare (no idea of the condition) one in the boot. Annoyingly I didn't spot that until this afternoon or I'd have tried it out *before* I put the dash back together.

That's a job for another day I think...I get the impression that I might see this car again and don't mind that at all. She's going to want a radiator fitted soon at the very least...

Also found a bit of ducting that I know is meant to live in the engine bay based on some photos I've seen of these cars, I assume to help to direct cool air to where it's more useful. Figured it wasn't doing any good in the boot so put it back where it lives.

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Aside from properly itemising what I've done and what's still to be done I think I'm pretty much at s point where she can return to her owner so the usefulness of my work can be assessed!

One very important job was still pending though! Cleaning! I'm not too worried about disturbing well earned patina here as I know from the auction photos from back in 2017 that she was valeted before that sale...so is just grubby! The outside I'm leaving be (not least because of not wanting to accidentally remove any of the structural duct tape) for now, but I'd like to spruce up the interior a bit. That's the bit you spend the most time with after all.

Firstly I went through the car with a fine tooth comb, gathering all the parts, nuts, bolts, screws, washers...and a tiny stubby ratcheting spanner...into a box in the boot so I didn't end up accidentally vacuuming up something important. Especially given how many of the interior fittings and bits of trim on these cars are made of purest unobtanium. Then we got to work.

Starting point in the rear:

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After a vacuuming (carefully as I had no idea how fragile the seat cloth was - turned out to be fine in general) it looked a bit better.

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The amount of spiders evicted was biblical. Plastics still need gone over back here.

Up front was even grubbier. Sadly there's a little bit of water staining on the passenger seat presumably due to a leak from the sunroof somewhere in the distant past.

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Another half hour made quite the difference.

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While the rear still was waiting for the plastics to be wiped down when we called it a day yesterday, she was looking like quite a different car!

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That's where we left things yesterday...Fast forward to this morning...

-- -- --

Yesterday the Trevi was started up four times and driven three. It behaved on all of them. This morning, as I was planning to head back to its home with it...refused to idle again. Bother.

I've now established that the issue is definitely in the drilling between the solenoid and the idle screw. So they were both removed and large quantities of carb cleaner were sprayed through. If my compressor wasn't currently dead I'd have blasted the hell of of it with compressed air.

After a clean out again today it returned to being willing to idle. Still not running quite as well as yesterday it feels like, but perfectly drivable.

I went around the car to attack a few key areas with Vactan, and to apply a temporary patch to the rust spot on the roof.

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I noted when applying the Vactan that this had made a couple of pin holes into the roof space and figured as this is definitely right up there in the list of places you don't want the rain getting into that a patch was needed.

Then we finished off the basic clean of the cabin...I could have spent days on it to be honest, but it's looking a LOT better I think.

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I really like how they've made the dash moulding wrap so cleanly round onto the doors on this, it really helps make the design look clean.

After that she was returned to her owner. Reckon she'll make another appearance on here once we've got hold of a carb overhaul kit and a new radiator for her.

Also realised when I got home that my camera mount is still stuck in the rear window. Oops. Will grab that next time I'm over that way.

Realising when I'd got there that I really hadn't thought about how I'd get home, we arranged for me to take another motor back home. While we're not aware of any immediately required mechanical work, she is in need of some cosmetic TLC as she's turned rather completely matt as light coloured cars tend to.

I don't usually and really don't like doing the whole blanking number plate thing out, but given that I'm well aware that these cars are being targeted a bit more these days I felt it was a reasonable precaution as this isn't my car. Was a bit pointless on the Trevi given there are only two of them on the road!

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An interior which despite being as basic as they come, is surprisingly comfortable.

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The windows desperately need cleaning...discovered that the first time I tried to turn out of a junction with the sun in my face.

I've heard a lot of people say that driving a 2CV is like riding a bike in terms of you remembering things quickly, and once the one inevitable "Is that 2nd?...No, that's 4th..." Moment had passed the rest of the trip passed uneventfully with me wearing s huge grin. I'd forgotten what fun cars these are. This is dangerous has it's definitely got me pondering one again!... Exactly as I feared!

No issues with the dashboard illumination in this car at least!

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So we'll see how I get along with it for the next couple of days...Am I going to end up with a 2CV on my shopping list? I am aren't I...
My website - aka. My *other* waste of time
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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