Fabergé Greggs

Brilliant!
Delighted that it’s made its way closer to me- DIBS! 

You what now? How fucked is it please? 

You what now? How fucked is it please? 

Loving this thread, it’s always great to see you get on top of all the bits and bobs  
You really can’t beat the sound and smell of a 2 stroke and if you fancied turning the volume up a bit higher, there’s always these…  

Time for another thrilling installment of:

I checked the plugs a bit more closely, they all look good TBH and not fake. All a similar sort of colour and not oily or fuely which must be a good sign. 




Another suggestion from the S3 group was the coil pack wiring loom, I opened it up and couldn't see anything amiss. 
I started trying to compression test but it was a bit inconclusive as the battery wasn't turning it over fast enough. 
On a first pass I got 135psi on cyl 1 and 150-160 on the others but then another try on 1 got me 145. 
I've put the battery on charge to have another go tomorrow. Lightening started happening which stopped me doing anything else tonight.

At this rate you'll be divorcing us for Pistonheads. 

Clock was losing time and sounding a little rough, so it arrived on my bench.

Oiled the pinions up, that helped a lot.

Then I set about adjusting the hairspring balance.

Yup, I set my clocks up with an oscilloscope. Don't you? Nice even pulses now, means the balance wheel is moving evenly.

So, back into the dash it goes with a note in pencil on the case that it was serviced today.
Phil

Loving this thread, it’s always great to see you get on top of all the bits and bobs  
You really can’t beat the sound and smell of a 2 stroke and if you fancied turning the volume up a bit higher, there’s always these…  

Loving this thread, it’s always great to see you get on top of all the bits and bobs  
You really can’t beat the sound and smell of a 2 stroke and if you fancied turning the volume up a bit higher, there’s always these…  

Incredible. This is exactly the future we were promised but never got. 

Incredible. This is exactly the future we were promised but never got. 

Incredible. This is exactly the future we were promised but never got. 

Incredible. This is exactly the future we were promised but never got. 

Incredible. This is exactly the future we were promised but never got. 

Incredible. This is exactly the future we were promised but never got. 

Incredible. This is exactly the future we were promised but never got. 

Incredible. This is exactly the future we were promised but never got. 

This morning I got an email informing me that my parcel from Trabantwelt had arrived at my local Parcel Force depot and would be released for delivery once the customs charge had been paid, which I could do through their online portal.  Details on that charge would be sent to me...in a posted letter.  All I needed to pay the charge was a reference number...which was not in the email.  Why send me an email telling me you're sending a letter?!?  Either include the reference number I need in the email, or just send the letter.  
I figured I'd nothing to lose so set off to the depot with my ID and reference numbers to see if it could be dealt with in person rather than waiting for the letter, which I doubt I'd be seeing this side of January.  
Thankfully the gent there (who also agreed it's a daft way of doing things in this day and age) was able to look everything up and we were able to get it paid up so the parcel could be released.  Even better, they were happy to just hand it over to me rather than having to wait for delivery.

So a happy resolution at least.  Even if paying £70 in customs charges on top of a £250 order that I'd already paid £35 shipping on did sting a little.  
Oooh, goodies.

The vast bulk of what's in here is door and window seals.  I'll maybe get a chance to go after the door seals at the weekend, but the window ones will need to wait a while.  There were some smaller bits and pieces though which I could put into play in a matter of a few minutes.
First up being dealing with this aftermarket switch on the dash.

This was for a fog light which looks to have long since vanished, so it's basically just acting as a safe termination block for the wiring at present.
It's now been replaced with something which actually fits in the dash properly.

That is a switch for a later model hence the symbol being in the wrong place, but I think you'll agree it's an improvement.  Hoping down the line I'll be able to get hold of one that's actually the exact correct type for the car.
I'm unlikely to ever really have a use for a stereo in this car as it's just too noisy.  So I had ordered up the factory blanking plate which fills the gap it otherwise leaves in the dash.

I think we're starting to get somewhere now, if we compare to the day the car was collected.


A brand correct keyring is always a must, where I can find one anyway.

The car has also now regained it's missing badge too.

Which tidies things up from the front far more than you'd expect.  Though I still need to remove and fill the hole left by that one bolt.  Now the adhesive holding the bonnet latch assembly to the panel has fully cured it's redundant.

She's also been out and about today quite a bit.

Have to say that for such a small and light car she seems far less phased by the wind than I expected, It's been quite breezy here today.

You definitely know it's a breezy day, but I was expecting such a small car to get blown around on the road a lot more than this seems to.

Incredible. This is exactly the future we were promised but never got. 

Incredible. This is exactly the future we were promised but never got. 

Incredible. This is exactly the future we were promised but never got. 

Had very little time available today but still managed to get something ticked off.
If you look at the front of the Trabant it's obviously taken a minor knock to the front at some point.  Nothing major, I'm talking a parking mishap rather than a crash.  The visible evidence of that is a crack in the bonnet and a ding in the front panel (aka radiator grill which isn't actually a grill).


I'm guessing the badge pinged off into oblivion at the same time.
Underneath the bonnet there was some further damage in that the catch assembly which is normally bonded to the underneath of the bonnet moulding had come adrift.  
That had sort of been "fixed" with a bolt at the leading edge - and a bundle of tiny zip ties through one the badge mounting holes.
I've reverted this to a more similar arrangement to what the factory would have used, "gluing" the latch assembly back to the underside of the bonnet using PU adhesive.

Reckon this should be more than strong enough for this, I made sure the surfaces were clean beforehand and roughed up so it should have a plenty strong bond.  Better than the 1/32" of the edge of the washer on that one bolt that was basically holding it together before that's for sure.  That bolt (and a larger washer so it actually does something) has been put back in for now, keeping things squeezed together while the adhesive sets.  After that I'll remove it and fill in the holes that shouldn't be there.  I do have a replacement badge on the way.  I have picked up some paint which may or may not be a vaguely close match, I've not checked yet.
While I had the adhesive out I took the opportunity to fill in the 3/4" gap in the top of the windscreen seal.  I know I've got a replacement on the way but I don't know when I'll have the opportunity to actually fit that, and a gap that big definitely wouldn't be doing us any favours.

It was dark by the time it had set up so I could remove the tape, so no photo of that.  At least there's not a visible gap to the outside world behind the rear view mirror now.
So nothing ground breaking, but one more thing ticked off hopefully.
Next up is hopefully fixing some of the slop in the wiper mechanism.  Apparently I'm blind as it took me until day before yesterday to realise that the wiper motor was staring me in the face under the bonnet.

Which is wobbling around comically.  I'm guessing it's meant to be sitting on rubber bushings which have disintegrated.  Hopefully will get a chance to look into that tomorrow.

Some progress.


The £12 blast gun was, probably predictably, shite. It did blast stuff out but the size of the thing meant I couldn't point it where I wanted to.
I bought a Draper kit which is pretty much a plastic bucket with a hose attached to the bottom and this was much better. It still wasn't amazingly powerful but it shifted the majority of the build-up. I got round the lack of oomph by scraping, then blasting, then pouring carb cleaner down and scrubbing with a little brass brush on a drill, then repeating, Sounds long but was about 30min per cylinder. 
Injectors came back with a clean bill of health, they apparently passed the flow test before cleaning but have had new filters and seals and a good clean anyway for £80 all in from Bob Beck Fuel Injection on ebay.
Got to pick up some gaskets and stuff tomorrow then throw it all back together.

This has KE-Jetronic, that’s good ol’ K-Jet with modern fripperies like an ECU but unencumbered by modern nonsense like fault codes. It’s really quite simple, if you look at the following diagram of how it works:

 
…and from what I read, it’s super simple to figure out faults except for the fact that every one of the components appears to cause every conceivable symptom an engine can suffer from.