Zelandeth

Finally, after months and months, managed to actually speak to my GP today.

I was in there for a grand total of three minutes and then seconds.  During which I think I managed to say about ten words.  Five of which were my greeting when I walked in.

Have we achieved anything?  No.  I've been referred for a group session cognitive behavioural therapy pain management course.

You know, maybe investigating the potential cause of the debilitating headaches might be more useful?   Or maybe prescribing something to offer at least some sort of relief for times when it becomes too much to put up with?  No?  However this gets me out their door and kicks the problem down the road for a year, so I guess ticks their boxes.  *Sigh.*

5 minutes ago, quicksilver said:

Sounds like this one:

P133 XCN, owned by Commercial Transport Training from Leighton Buzzard way and still going strong if rather scruffy now.

That will be the one.

Obviously an ex Stagecoach bus from the plate...One which I quite possibly even travelled on, I know we had a few P---XCN examples in Aberdeen at some point.  Sadly don't seem to have ever managed to snap one of that lot.  This would be the closest.

I'm pretty sure that I must have a bunch of photos hiding somewhere on this computer as I'm pretty bloody sure that I took more than one photo of a PS while I was still up in Aberdeen.

Still irked that despite them being bloody everywhere at the time that a PS is one of the bread and butter buses which eluded my attempts to drive.

1 hour ago, Tommyboy12 said:

Those Courier tyres look nearly as bad as the set I took off the Montego.

If youre feeling flush with cash you can still buy new Camac tyres that used to feature on every 10" wheel Mini back in the day!

That's what I've got on TPA.  Mainly because they were readily available, cheap and looked appropriate.  Sure they're not the best thing out there but they're entirely adequate for a small and light car.  

I do have some concerns about there being any solid structure left to this to anchor repairs to, and I'm generally all for giving it a go.  It just looks precariously close to snapping in half from the state of the sills.

Those rear springs look suspiciously similar to the ones from an Estelle too...which I remember thinking looked absolutely absurdly long the first time I crawled under the back of one.

One I've not spotted before spotted today.  Old Alexander PS bodied bus, guessing from a combination of statistical likelihood and noise that it's a B10M underneath.  White over yellow livery, and I think it was on an M plate, but didn't get a proper look.

If I hadn't been driving someone to an appointment I'd have followed it to try to get a better look and possibly a photo.  I know Bill's coach hire have a couple of S plate Volvo Olympian deckers, but I've not been aware of seeing a PS any time vaguely recently.

I've noticed that the AC in the Partner has started to get a little noisy.  It's still functioning, but sounds to me like the expansion valve is feeding vapour which would suggest we're low on charge.

Let's see what the gauges say.  Disclaimer here: I used to help out a HVAC technician looking after a bunch of gear on and around the farm I used to live next door to - but I've zero formal training in the field, and what I have learned I'm rusty on to the tune of probably more than 20 years at this point!  I can usually look at things and figure out roughly what's going on though.

I do keep half pondering looking at getting certification in that field, as if you like hands on stuff it's great as it involves a bit of everything.  Though sadly as with just about everything in life I find interesting or have an aptitude for I think I'm probably about 30 years late for the technology I'm happiest working on to be in mainstream use.

Back on topic...Standing pressures first.

Smidge under 60psi.  Definitely a smidge on the low side, I'd be expecting to be seeing nearer 70-80 with the car being warm.

Running (and stabilised).

We're definitely short on gas.  Low side isn't really too bad, but with an expansion valve throttling things that's kind of to be expected until the charge gets critically low.  High side though tells the story, I'd be looking for probably somewhere in the region of 150psi even with how cool it is today.  I was able to get the head pressure up a tiny bit by applying an artificial load by putting the system into recirculation mode with the heater on full, but it's definitely short on gas.

You can't really fully diagnose a system like this purely with a simple set of gauges like this, even with a full set of temperature probes etc you're never going to be charging this by pressures.  Correct procedure is to recover the charge then weigh the proper charge in (assuming it passes a vacuum test - ideally you'd pressurise the system with dry nitrogen and do a *proper* leak down test, but that takes time and I wish you luck finding a garage that will).  

So I'll be getting her in this week to get the system recharged.  

Surely the bloody aero wipers should have been spotted by someone!

1 hour ago, vulgalour said:

Slight fright today, although I was half expecting it since things have been going so well.  Yesterday the clutch pedal felt 'off', but I couldn't figure out if it was just me being tired, or the car being cold or what, so just had to wait and see.  Today on trying to reverse out of a parking bay I couldn't actually get reverse.  Now, the Princess has done this to me before a couple of times, I know the drill.  If the gear change is notchy, that usually means the oil is getting low so I check that and it wasn't as low as it would have been to affect the gear change. Dropped a tiny bit of oil in anyway to bring it to almost the full line and it made no difference.  That means it's clutch cylinder related.  It's not the clutch, it's not slipping, I'm just not getting full travel of the arm in relation to the pedal.  That is usually failed seals in the clutch cylinder or a collapsed clutch hose.  Checked those out and both are dry and don't show signs of damage.  Checked the fluid level in the clutch reservoir and it was actually very low.  It's been a while since I've checked this and the car had been sat around doing nothing for a while, it made sense that it might have disappeared a bit like brake fluid does sometimes.  Topped it up, still no change, opened the bleed nipple to check the hose wasn't restricted and found that there was air in the system, probably because the fluid had dropped a bit too low.  Once bled, all gears back to normal and reverse considerably better than it's been for a couple of weeks.

We'll see if normal service continues, it might, or I might need another clutch hose (there's at least three different lengths, which I found out last time I tried to get one) or to rebuild the clutch cylinder again.  Time will tell.  It's a bit of a relief something went wrong to be honest, it's been a bit overdue.

If it's just a hose you need and it's a pig to get could you not just take the original to a hydraulics specialist and have them replicate it?

Last time I did this was a transmission oil cooler line on a Saab 900, and the cost was considerably less than NOS parts went for.

3 hours ago, rattlecan said:

So the rear panel isn’t Duraplast like the other panels then?

1 hour ago, captain_70s said:

I believe the main body shell is steel with a skim of Duraplast over the top.

If you strip a Trabant of the Duroplast bits what you're left with looks remarkably like a miniature version of the base frame skeleton the Rover P6 is built around.  Front and rear panels are non structural steel, I'm guessing simply because the moulding would be excessively complex to make in Duroplast with the various cutouts and such.  

The inner structure is a (surprisingly rigid) framework including the sills, floorplans, roof frame, window surrounds, front and rear wheel tubs, door apertures, front bulkhead, and boot floor.  Everything else is then attached to that.

P6: 

Source: http://www.roverp6parts.com/history.html

Trabant: 

No idea where I originally found that one.  Here's a (crap) photograph of one stripped to the shell which original surfaced on Pinterest somewhere.

For such vastly different cars it's almost uncanny how similarly the very basics of the inner structure have been penned.  P6 is obviously vastly more substantial, but you get the idea of what I'm saying.

Renewal offer has just landed from Hagerty for the Invacar, Rover P6 and Trabant.  £244.  Which I think is +/-50 of what it's always been for this policy irrespective of what vehicles are involved - the exception being the briefly present Merc W123 which brought with it a massive price hike.

In contrast, the Partner is currently costing roughly £700 a year.  Historically I've been the only user, though due to management nonsense one of my housemates now needs to do a 5 hour round trip to their Telford office once every three weeks to sit at a computer on a teams call to the same co-workers who are based at the opposite end of the country they do every other day from home every three weeks.

Adding them as a named driver doesn't make a massive difference to the price, however 1st Central can only offer her business & commuting cover if I also add it for myself, then also adding them.  Resulting quote? £2754 please.

Haven't been able to find anything much cheaper elsewhere - so she's just buying short term insurance a day at a time for £15-30 a go as it works out considerably cheaper, which seems like madness.

On 15/04/2024 at 10:49, GlenAnderson said:

I was told when I had my Trabbie that “you can keep them clean, but you can’t keep them from leaking…”

🤣

Given they do have a bit of a reputation in that regard I'm under no illusions of things staying all that clean, but I'd like to scrub at least the worst of it off just so I can see if any new leaks do appear.  The 'box just sweating a bit from seals and such that's deemed to be normal I don't have a problem with.  For all it looks a right state I don't think I've ever been aware of this car leaving a drip of anything where it's parked (aside from water dripping out the interior before I sorted the bulkhead seal anyway), so it obviously isn't losing much.

We did suffer a major technical failure today.

Okay, that might be slightly overselling a blown tail light bulb.  Needless to say this was a five minute fix.

Really do need to get some paint on that rear panel.

Also, aren't Nissan Qashqais huge?

This car is still very much making me smile every time I see it.

5 minutes ago, Rust Collector said:

I needed an HD bulb for my Disco 3 whilst on a journey a while back. I bought one in Crawley Halfords, and it was a bit of a faff - I had to take a card hanger to the till, and the girl had to rummage through a random box of bulbs. Then I got shafted for £31.

I've since seen that the Range do the same bulb for about £9, and it's even left out on the shelf for you to shoplift if you like. I will give them a try next time I need one.

Yeah, ours have done the same for years with the more expensive ones which I could kind of understand.  Fact that the entire damned lighting section is behind the tills now just seems like total madness.  How many hours of staff time does that waste them in a week?

I really feel for the folks behind the tills too, they have a crap enough job as it is having to deal with the public, nevertheless now needing to find 3/4 of what they're asking for.  Especially as a bunch of folks - like me - are probably already hacked off from having spent ten minutes walking round the store becoming increasingly convinced they're going blind as they can't find any of the general purpose spares anywhere now.

5 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

Grump because my wife phoned and said that some cunt had bumped the A4 in Tesco car park this morning and fucked off.

Not anything like as bad as I was expecting, barely noticeable on fact and it's certainly not the first time this bumper has been bumped anyway. Just as well its an old car.

All sorted:

Still looks decent:

The reason she knew someone had bumped the car is because someone else left a note on the windscreen giving the make, model, colour and reg plate of the car that bumped into mine, which was very good of them. I was going to call the police and leave it at that but considering there's no damage done then I'm just going to forget about it.

Don't just forget it.  It's not beyond the realms of possibility that the other party may turn round and claim you scraped their car.  It's worth reporting and getting the reference number in case someone pulls nonsense like that.

My grump?  Our local Halfords has always been a bit of a disaster.  Nevertheless it is useful for random nonsense like bulbs that it's not worth making a 50 mile round trip to the decent motor factor I usually use down in Luton.

They've just done a refit.  Now *all* the bulbs, wipers, batteries, basically everything I'd be likely to go in for, is behind the counter.

Which means you need to try to convey to whoever's behind the till exactly what you need.  It took me a full ten minutes (much to the annoyance of the ever growing queue behind me) to get a couple of bloody tail light bulbs just now.  Yes, I know a 10W festoon (265) bulb isn't a massively common one, but argh...it would have taken me 30 seconds to pick it out myself.  Wasted a load of my time and theirs.  

Unsurprisingly, the queue at the tills has pretty much quadrupled since they changed things a couple of weeks ago.  Used to usually off peak be a case of going in, grabbing what you needed and being out the door in less than five mins - which was basically the one redeeming feature.  Not a chance now

Oh well, their loss is Mileham's gain!  Even if it will add to my fuel bill.

2 hours ago, TrabbieRonnie said:

Thank you for the offer Zel, sharing postage costs might be a good idea...

I'll have a check of which carb I've actually got, I used to know but it's gone.

I changed my gear oil a few weeks back as it started leaking from the shaft seals, and there's no way to know how much had gone without taking it out anyway.  It hadn't lost much, but with fresh stuff in the leakage stopped immediately, and smoother (relatively) quieter operation has resulted here too.

Yes, knowing there was enough in there was one reason I really wanted to change mine given this mess.

Though having said that, it's never left a single drop where I park.  Given the state of what came out though I'm very glad I did it anyway for the sake of the freewheel mechanism if nothing else.

I do really want to get that cleaned up though just so I spot any future leaks if they do appear.

2 hours ago, TrabbieRonnie said:

I feel your pain with the carb, I'm considering a service kit for mine.  I'm pretty sure my idle circuit isn't working, have it idling well, but reliant on the throttle cable adjustment (which is cheating!).  

I've never experienced bogging in the Trabbi, did once have hot start issues, which was crud in the float bowl.  A long cranking time followed by an explosive (read gunshot!) start up was quite fun... unless at a petrol station.

It's probably something worth having on the shelf anyway.  I'll probably grab one when I next put an order through to Trabantwelt.  Let me know if you'd like me to grab one for you as well given the postage costs.  I do need to have a dig through the parts stash as well as I know there are at least *some* carb bits in there.

Had the car out today and the carb definitely seems to be doing the job properly again.  Gear change is definitely improved when fully up to temperature it feels like, and I think it may well be quieter at speed, though very hard to tell given how much noise there is from everything in general!

Happy to bring the petrol pressure washer along to a future FoD gathering (or on request) if it's useful.  

On 12/04/2024 at 22:01, SiC said:

Just had a letter from the current owner of my P4 after finding my name in the history. Has given me a load of questions to answer 😂

I'm most glad it's gone to an owner who is going to restore it!

Ah ha, you too then!

Surprised and pleased really.  It always felt like it was pretty much a collection of spares flying in close formation given it would never make any logical sense to restore given the value of P4s and the price of spares.  Especially cosmetic stuff and trim, which that car really wanted a lot of, before even factoring in paint.  Shame to lose the genuine patina, but it really did want the paint sorting to ensure the car didn't just decay rapidly if being used regularly.  At the end of the day if it helps make sure it lives on it's all a good thing.  Better this than stripped for parts or taking a quick trip round an oval.

On 05/04/2024 at 06:55, MarinaJosh said:

The original Trico washer pumps can often be resurrected by running some WD40 through them. I have got quite a few going by using that trick. I guess it does 'something' to the impeller. They're rare/expensive these days, so definitely don't bin it. If the impeller has had it, but the motor is good, one good one can be made out of two (done that plenty of times as well!). Also fitted to Stags, some series Landies and early Marinas.

Will give that a try.  I definitely wouldn't be throwing the original one out anyway given I know a lot of people are very particular about originality on these cars, so it would always have been kept in a box in case someone wanted to use it for something later.  

Actually had a bit of a hiccup in the Trabant couple of days back.  Was about a mile from home, came to a stop at a junction and found it bogged down when I applied throttle.  Was able to coax things back into motion by adding choke, suggesting to me a fuelling issue.  I immediately headed for home (which thankfully was mostly downhill so little engine power was needed) keeping the revs kept as low as possible.  Knowing how quickly a lean condition can become catastrophic in an air cooled two stroke, this wasn't something I was taking chances with.  Car was parked up and I grabbed the Partner to continue the tasks I was heading out for.  I was working around other appointments at the time so didn't have time to immediately investigate.

Later on I checked the screen in the fuel outlet at the tank (pretty clean), and confirmed there was good fuel flow to the carb.  Next step was to pull the cover off the float bowl (which you can *just* do in situ), to confirm the needle and seat were working properly and to see if there was any crud in there.  

There was a little bit of sediment in the bottom of the bowl but nothing particularly major.  What I don't know (and this does make me kind of wish I'd pulled the carb) was whether there was possibly a bit of water in there as that could definitely have explained it prior to me cleaning it out.

With everything put back together normal service appears to have been resumed.  I do need to actually look up a proper diagram for this carb anyway as I'd really like to turn the idle speed up a touch, it  has always felt like it's a little on the slow side.  Especially if you've got the lights on.

Today I had another crack at changing the gearbox oil.  I jacked the car up a bit this time to give me better access to the drain plug, and was successful in getting it removed this time.

What came out both looked and smelled like absolutely ancient EP90.  Which given that the correct HLP68 fluid is a light golden colour isn't great.  Definitely well overdue a change either way.  A little bit of swarf on the drain plug magnet, but nothing I'd not expect and certainly no chunks.

Area around the filler was cleaned up to ensure no chunks of anything fell in during refilling.

I really do need to go to town on this thing with the degreaser and pressure washer one day as the entire power plant of this car is a greasy slime ball at the moment.  This is pretty common for these cars, but I'd like to get it all clean at least once so I've got half a chance to see where any new leaks are coming from in case they do need attention.

Getting to the gearbox filler required me to remove both the hot and cold air ducts for the heater to make access easy as it's otherwise a bit buried.

Have only been fora brief run out today, but it definitely feels like the gear change is cleaner, changing down into second in particular it feels like the sycro is having an easier time of things.  Is it any quieter?  Maybe?  Still sounds like a tumble drier full of marbles at idle, but I get the impression that's not exactly unexpected.

I do love the instrument panel on the pre facelift Sierras.  With the gigantic legends for the warning lights, not actually where the lights are...really not quite sure what they were thinking with that, but it was definitely distinctive.  Aside from the seatbelt light as I recall...that is actually where the legend is isn't it?

2 hours ago, wesacosa said:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/motors/27165634/cheap-skoda-1000-mile-road-trip/

I took a £150 Favorit 2000 miles across Europe. If only I was a YouTuber I too might have made it onto the pages of The Sun !

 

What bloody drivel.  It's a run from one end of the UK and back.  Any reasonably roadworthy car should be capable of handling that.  Trust the Sun to make 1000 miles sound like it's fully circumnavigating the earth!

Of course I approve, both because Saab and also become I'm all for there being more two stroke madness on here!

Dentist checkup.

Oh look, I need yet another three fillings, and one of them is bloody huge.  That will be two further visits and £400 please.

Oh joy.

Ah, this again.  

Managed to end up with two cars with their MOT due within a couple of weeks.  Not the best planning on my part.  

I need not have worried.

Advisory for some rust on the offside sill, which is fair.

It looks worse than it is.  I think there's one nick in the stone chip that the water has got in through and has lifted it.  No actual rot there yet as far as I can tell having poked it, but it will be stripped back, cleaned and re-painted, hopefully get that sorted for a while.

I've also made the front end look at least 50% less shabby.

Before:

After:

That delaminated and rust stained number plate had been bugging me since the day I bought the car.  The rear one will involve taking the tailgate interior trim off to secure properly so that will wait till tomorrow.  Said trim also rattles so I want to pull it anyway.

Other small and utterly pointless job which will make it look massively disproportionately better will be cleaning up and re-painting the light guards, though I don't think they look as rough in photos as they do in person.

Original plate of course didn't get binned.

From that angle my garage almost doesn't look like a *total* disaster!

The Rover's new washer pump arrived today and was fitted.  Not exactly a difficult or exciting job.

Which has restored a reliable washing function every time the knob is pressed.

Actually gives a really decent mist across the screen, far better than on a bunch of far newer cars I've driven.  Also for Dollywobbler's reference, yes the P6 has really good wiper overlap.  

Have also go hopefully everything I need to make one good mechanical fuel pump out of one and 3/4 bad ones now.  Let's see how that goes.

8 hours ago, PhilA said:

Went put fuel.

Tonight there are flies.

 

Arse.

I never quite understood why having the facilities to clean your windscreen was so common at fuel pumps in the US - right up until the first time I drove at night in the Mid West!  

Ah, so THAT is why it's so common.  So...many...bugs...

1 hour ago, quicksilver said:

I know where that came from, and I know the guy who transported it. Just went past on the bus, noticed it wasn't there and wondered where it had gone, then logged on here and got the answer.

It's a small world sometimes isn't it!