Zel's Motoring Adventures...Peugeot, Renault, Rover, Trabant, Invacar, Volvo & A Sinclair C5 - Updated 12/11.

[TrabbieRonnie]

2 hours ago, beko1987 said:

I wouldn't call a reliable and trustworthy fuel gauge a frivolity tbh... Especially if your actually driving it about which for central mk it seems well suited for! 

(I went to coffee hall on new years day to buy a fucked kirby g4 and really didn't need a big diesel) 

You get a warning cough from the engine when the tank gets down to 6 litres remaining...  You  switch to 'Reserve' on the fuel tap at that point, and get fuel next time you're passing! 

[beko1987]

Just now, TrabbieRonnie said:

You get a warning cough from the engine when the tank gets down to 6 litres remaining...  You  switch to 'Reserve' on the fuel tap at that point, and get fuel next time you're passing! 

Love it 😂

I had a zx td once and after a while under 1/4 a tank if I took big left turns quickly and sloshed rhe fuel across the tank the needle would drop and put the light on. Once it did that 3 times it put the light on properly. It mainly did it as I join the m40 on the way to work so I got used to being able to get 2 1/2 more round trips in before I really needed fuel (always fill up as soon as the light comes on, I don't trust the Xsara to be accurate for shit it's all so heavily dampened. 😂

Plus it helped the zx ran veg, I remember putting 5l in  the boot whilst testing the 2 1/2 trips theory. Got home on trip 3 and it cut out as I was parking up 👌

[Zelandeth]

I couldn't live like that, my blood pressure would be so high I'd probably give myself a stroke.  I start getting twitchy if the gauge is anywhere south of 1/4 a tank!

New dehumidifier has been ordered.  Just too useful a tool that you get used to having around.  Even once the carpets are dried outside the car it's astonishing how much moisture things like the seats will hold on to.  Wouldn't hurt for the Rover and Renault to have a day or three with it in at this time of year as well even though they're not showing any signs of water ingress (which is kinda surprising in the case of the Rover).

[beko1987]

Luckily nowadays the Xsara is deadly accurate on the last 1/4 of a tank it's 1/2 to 1/4 it bounces around a bit but that's fine. 

My commute's 25 miles round trip so I never bothered to risk more than a drive home. And I drive so little now it's even less of a fuck about even if I do have to divert for fuel especially. Never ever run out of fuel unless I was planning to for testing reasons yet 😂👌

I keep looking at dehumidifiers, there's a damp patch forming in the top corner of the bedrooms... And the inside windows of the Xsara are always soaking wet when it's cold... I've got scratches on the inside of the windscreen from scraping it before... 

[LightBulbFun]

On 04/01/2024 at 17:27, Zelandeth said:

I do appreciate the approach to minimalist motoring, but that to me is maybe one step TOO far towards minimalist!

7 hours ago, beko1987 said:

I wouldn't call a reliable and trustworthy fuel gauge a frivolity tbh... Especially if your actually driving it about which for central mk it seems well suited for! 

im glad im not alone there! when I was working on getting a fuel tank sorted for REV there was a couple ideas floated about that I vetoed as it would of meant losing the fuel gauge and that was something I just did not want to be without

especially in London Traffic where I dont think you can really track your fuel usage by the odometer since you spend half the time sitting idling away in traffic jams and traffic is otherwise so erratic 

[Zelandeth]

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

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

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

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

One of the new headlights is in.

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

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

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

We have a couple of issues.

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

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

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

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

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

A wiring diagram would be useful to help identify and random wiring, and so far has eluded me.

Edited January 7 by Zelandeth
Typo

[SiC]

I have no idea why this is the sole Trabant thing I have saved but it is. Not sure what years this wiring diagram applies to but at least better than nowt. 

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2gfdl8wdrjt2ahayv1vyg/601circuit.pdf?rlkey=bnhdypphnnwg0b5omsdahns4o&dl=0

 

[kevins]

If you know what the fuse fuses it shouldn't be too difficult to add them all together and add 10% and work out what the rating should be.

[Zelandeth]

24 minutes ago, SiC said:

I have no idea why this is the sole Trabant thing I have saved but it is. Not sure what years this wiring diagram applies to but at least better than nowt. 

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2gfdl8wdrjt2ahayv1vyg/601circuit.pdf?rlkey=bnhdypphnnwg0b5omsdahns4o&dl=0

 

Old enough still to be 6V, but still really useful.  I'd be surprised if the wiring colours had changed much, and trying to identify random stuff that's been fiddled with before that's often one of the most useful things to help figure out at least what system was involved!

[Zelandeth]

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

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

We're now down to two mystery wires rather than I think five that we started with.

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

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

Which apparently is for the front left parking light circuit.  That wire SHOULD be connected to terminal 30A on the ignition switch though, which is closed to the battery feed (terminal 30) only when the key is in the P position.  There was also a two core white and black wire floating around connected into the indicator switch which according to the diagram should go to the headlight switch - which is what would enable the parking lights when you turned the light switch on with the indicators set to signal left.  However that's clearly been hacked about as it was nowhere near long enough to reach to where it should go.  For now I've removed that as it's not functionality I need, noted it and can reinstate it later.

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

Now onto the remaining trio on the left of the steering column.

The grey/green wire is part of the dash lighting circuit, and simply appears to be unused here.  The brown and white I have traced out as winding its way over to the loom running into the right hand headlight (on which all three filaments work) so I need to investigate that. 

EDIT: The thought which does spring to mind is that some H4 headlight equipped cars had an indicator light on the dash to show if the headlights were adjusted to the fully laden height adjustment (there's a lever underneath the light unit to switch between high/low beam height), which this car doesn't have the light for on the dash. As my wiring diagram is for an older model that circuit isn't shown.

This leaves one remaining mystery wire which is the heavy one towards centre frame.  I can't quite decide if that's a solid brown or solid grey...it's a kind of browny-grey.  My gut feeling is that it's actually brown as neither of the variants of the wiring diagrams I've seen show solid grey as being used.  So is most likely another ground that's been left floating.  Shouldn't take long to confirm that with the meter.

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

Yeah, the entire moving component of the relay being completely missing would definitely do it.  I didn't remove the cover either, it was just sitting like this.  Replacement has been ordered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited January 8 by Zelandeth
Added additional thoughts on the brown/white mystery wire

[mat_the_cat]

I should have a set of wheel bolts to suit, as they look very like BX steel wheel bolts to me. If you can confirm the dimensions you are welcome, for the cost of postage .

[LightBulbFun]

19 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

likewise the Invacar

How about the-, oh, but its an Automatic! its literally the KISS principal on not even 4 wheels LOL

 

autoshite hot take, if you cant drive a Model 70 then I dont think you should be on the road

 

on a slightly more serious note that has got me wondering, has anyone in the family had a drive of TPA?

 

@Six-cylinder whats the most unsuitable vehicle you can lend to Zel, my default is of course the JCB, but perhaps you have a better* idea?  

 

[Six-cylinder]

19 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

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

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

@Andyrew is happy we help you out with the black Astra if that is any good?

[Zelandeth]

14 hours ago, mat_the_cat said:

I should have a set of wheel bolts to suit, as they look very like BX steel wheel bolts to me. If you can confirm the dimensions you are welcome, for the cost of postage .

Thanks for the offer, but I should be okay.  Pretty sure I've got some in stock anyway.  The issue here is not being able to get the old one out far more than sourcing a replacement.

4 hours ago, LightBulbFun said:

How about the-, oh, but its an Automatic! its literally the KISS principal on not even 4 wheels LOL

autoshite hot take, if you cant drive a Model 70 then I dont think you should be on the road

on a slightly more serious note that has got me wondering, has anyone in the family had a drive of TPA?

 

She absolutely COULD drive TPA, however for a 200+ mile round trip which can if the traffic decides to be an ass can take 3+ hours each way, it's not exactly the ideal car.  Bear in mind we're not talking about a car enthusiast here, rather someone who wants to get to and from the office in as easy and low stress a way as possible. 

2 hours ago, Six-cylinder said:

@Andyrew is happy we help you out with the black Astra if that is any good?

That's really generous - I'll check in and see what she thinks.  We're actually kind of hoping that this is a good excuse to dodge the run into the office anyway as it's one of those stupid situations where they're insisting they go in for a 30 minute meeting which could absolutely be done remotely.

-- -- --

So...where were we?  Oh yes...

It feels like it's been a reasonably productive afternoon at least.

While digging around today I did discover some "quality bodywork repair" hidden behind the battery, visible from inside here...

I'll need to pull the battery in due course and get a better look at that.  I don't *think * it's within a prescribed area (N/S steering rack mount would be the biggest worry I'd think), but obviously wants properly fixing either way.  I'm assuming there's a hole that's been splodged over with sealant or filler on the other side of that mesh anyway.

Probably the largest single time sink today was spent going over basically every millimetre of the offside indicator wiring that I could access with a microscope (okay, not literally but you get the idea).  While tracing that I had to get up close and personal with the wiper motor, especially as the wiring had all come adrift of the clips which should keep it clear of the linkage (so it was a prime suspect area for my short - no dice there sadly as that would have been too easy).  This meant that it was really clear why I had miles and miles of play in the wiper linkage.  Take a look at the photo below of where the linkage attaches to the motor and see if you can spot anything amiss.

The 1/4" void which clearly should contain a bush of some description seems like a likely candidate...not to mention all of the mounting bolts being less than finger tight.

Helpfully the box of random Trabant bits did contain a little bag of assorted bits of wiper mechanism, which very quickly allowed me to find exactly what I appeared to be missing.

Motor arm off the car is on the right, one out of the spares box is on the left.

With that arm fitted, a spring washer to keep things together and the original locking washer (which was precisely as fiddly to refit through that gap as I expected) there is now a vastly, vastly reduced amount of play in the linkage and it's nearly silent rather than clanking loudly every time the wipers change direction.  I'll fine tune the wiper position on the screen somewhere down the road.  Apparently I failed to take a photo of the reassembled contraption so you'll just need to take my word for it that it did go back together.

The two mystery wires I was left with yesterday were identified with a bit of meter probing.  The one which I thought was a solid brown wire to the left of the steering column on closer inspection actually turned out to be a brown and white wire.

Which as far as I can tell is a wiring colour that was only used for the beam height adjustment warning light.  I do now have a wiring diagram for a later car, and that's the only circuit on which brown/white appears.

Which is indeed where we have continuity to.  Why it's a far heavier gauge wire than the other one I've no idea.  Anyway, it's now just been safely terminated and zip tied well out of the way.  The other one was confirmed to actually be a simple ground (I do confess to not being 100% certain to WHAT it is supposed to be a ground as I can't see where the wire goes once it vanishes into the loom), but at least the wiring colours are consistent so it's just been tied to ground using a bolt into the dash support.  I suspect it may have been something to do with the economy meter wiring.  I may spend a bit of time trying to more thoroughly research that one at a later date as I would like to know where the other end is, but that's a job for when it's not 1C outside.

Tracking down likely sources for the intermittent short I was seeing on the offside indicator circuit was next up (having initially been sidetracked by the wiper linkage), which I spent quite a long time on.  The wiring all looked to be in good condition, and I couldn't find any traces of chafing or anything anywhere which would likely result in a short.  Inspecting the tail lights was quite a surprise...and I think shows another big difference to Lada etc where the tail light innards are about the cheapest things imaginable and are an endless source of frustration.  The reflectors could do with a clean and the brake light bulb could probably do with changing as it's a bit blackened, but otherwise this looks absolutely fine.  No reason to expect it to cause problems otherwise given how solidly built it is.

I basically spent about an hour and a half poking and prodding things with the meter, wiggling wires, connecting and disconnecting things to see if I could pin down where it was.  I never really did find a smoking gun to be honest, but after I disconnected the front light assembly the short disappeared and I wasn't able to provoke it into returning.  That's the light which I was already suspicious of as it was badly corroded internally.  My decision to swap it out was then accelerated by the positive connection breaking off.  I guess if it had bent prior to it actually snapping off that could have been causing a short...hard to say for certain.  However with the one spare I have fitted I've not been able to make that problem reappear, nor during a half hour test drive.

Car does look a bit silly with mis-matched indicators...but at least they're working again!

That spare is a bit crusty inside as well so they'll both be swapped out when the new ones arrive.

I did note that while the short had gone that we still had a somewhat erratic flash rate, and definite interaction between the indicator and the headlight circuit.  That to me just screamed "dodgy ground" based on prior experience.  Sure enough, when I checked the ground point in the middle of this photo, it was floating at nearly 2V when the indicator was lit.

Cleaning up everything and putting it back together did away with that stray voltage, - but am still not a fan of the arrangement.  As that bolt is also holding down the coil bracket, you can't crank it down massively tightly as you'll crush the coils.  I had a hunch this probably was the location of the grounding problem given that that fault according to the previous owner only appeared after the electronic ignition was fitted.  As that grounding point is shared between the headlights, indicator and ignition circuits, it had to be prime suspect.

I'm going to drill an additional hole in that plate to mount the grounding lugs to, then run a jumper to the inner wing.  Those brown wires aren't long enough to just re-route to somewhere more sensible.  I also want to replace that horrible looking taped together mess in the coil feeds, so I'll be revisiting that probably tomorrow.

Now the indicators are exactly as bright as each other, flash at the same rate and don't interact with the headlights any more at least.

The body to battery ground strap is also getting changed tomorrow as I noted when connecting it back up today that there's evidence of it having got quite warm in a couple of places.  While I appreciate there's not a huge amount of electrical equipment on this car, it still looks a bit on the thin side to me anyway.

Cheap and easy thing to upgrade anyway and I've already got a suitable one in stock.

The pile of removed wiring as of today amounts to this much.

Which given how basic a car this is, is pretty impressive!

I'm not saying for certain that we've fixed the short given the intermittent nature of it making it hard to say for definite without having found an obvious smoking gun, however so far it's looking at least hopeful.

Definitely have deleted a bit of spaghetti in the cabin over the last couple of days.

Not having to fish my way around it when reaching for the choke and fuel valve will be a nice change.

Tomorrow's tasks:

[] Fit remaining new headlight, replace H4 lamp holders, & adjust them to something vaguely sensible in terms of beam pattern.

[] Replace body to battery earth lead.

[] Improve grounding arrangement to ignition coil bracket.

[] Adjust windscreen wipers.

If I get time anyway!  Was quite lucky to get a few hours this afternoon I was able to just claim for car things. 

[High Jetter]

Great detective work there. Electrical beam height adjustment is decadent, would never have expected them to have that.

[Zelandeth]

9 hours ago, High Jetter said:

Great detective work there. Electrical beam height adjustment is decadent, would never have expected them to have that.

Yeah, I was quite surprised to find it handled electronically rather than just having a detent on the stalk.  Though the first time you go looking for it you're likely to scare the living daylights out of yourself as pushing the stalk away from you, where it seems intuitive that the latching position for main beam would be is how you sound the horn.  It's quite a smart move to be honest as it means the combination indicator switch assembly doesn't need to carry the full current for both main/dip beam when the headlights are on.  As I keep finding with this car, it's basic, but not stingy.  The digging I've been doing over the last couple of days has confirmed that, the wiring loom is of massively better quality than anything I've come across on a Lada or Skoda of this period.  

-- -- --

A package arrived early on this morning containing some more goodies.

New indicators were the first to go on.

Yes the one nearest me was a little squint there, I've tweaked it a bit since I took the photo.

The older style ones probably do suit the style of the car better, but these are streets ahead in terms of actual visibility to other traffic especially off to the sides, so will be staying.  The older ones will be packed away safely with the spares in case someone wants to restore them and use them in the future.

Then I had to run around running a bunch of errands.  Probably did 50 miles or so through the day, and am glad to report that *so far* the shorting issue with the offside indicator circuit hasn't reappeared.

Still making me smile.

Think we're up to 600 miles give or take now...wonder how much of a portion of the last year or two's motoring that would have accounted for.

Have got 50% of the other main item in that parcel fitted now as well.

Yes...BOTH dials there are cockeyed.  I had totally failed to notice that until I took a photo.  I'll fix that tomorrow.

Hopefully get the sender fitted tomorrow as well all being well.  Gauge itself is wired up and working.  I *will* have to pull the face off that though and go after the gauge with some model paint to make the colour of the pointer match the one in the speedometer though...that not matching is just going to bug the hell out of me, and makes it look so obviously aftermarket.  At least if the colours matched it wouldn't jump out at you so much.

The illumination is waaaaaaaay over enthusiastic as well, so I think needs the lamp wattage reduced from the 5W that I think is in there to probably a 1W lamp which would be plenty.

Obviously I'll keep the original fuel consumption gauge with the car, but personally given I quite frequently find myself having to jump in the car and do several hours of running around without forward planning the journeys it's nice to just be able to see how much fuel I've got!

[Zelandeth]

Nothing really visible to show for today's half hour of car time.

Hard to tell, but both headlights have now been replaced with ones having a proper beam pattern for UK roads.  They've been adjusted to look vaguely sensible based on the beam on the fence across the road, when I next have the Rover running I'll shuffle cars around and do a more precise job of the beam adjustment using the garage door.  They do actually provide some light on the road now which is an improvement.  The amount of light actually output has probably doubled as well given the bowls of the old lights were absolutely wrecked.

Still surprises me that given the car's been in the UK since 1999 that nobody bothered to put RHD headlights on it till now.

Something I need to investigate when I get a chance is whether the bearings in either my alternator or more likely cooling fan are making a racket.  It's always hard to tell from video, but there seems to be a lot more mechanical noise from mine than a lot of these cars at idle, and it sounds more like something that's belt driven than internal to the engine.  Though as said, it's hard to tell from a video and it seems that there was a pretty big variation from one unit to another in terms of noise anyway even when they were new.  Pulling the belt and running the engine (obviously only for a couple of tens of seconds at the most) will at least confirm if it's coming from the engine itself or an external rotating assembly - the fan is probably my favourite based on where it sounds like the noise is coming from.  Easy to test at least.

[Zelandeth]

Couple of little things today.

Added a dedicated ground to the plate holding the ignition coils in place as it's also used as a star point for the offside headlight and indicator.  I wanted to actually move it to another location on the plate so you could tighten it a bit more, but clearance is an issue so I just left it be.  Sure the majority of people have zero problems with it and I'm just doing the usual and creating an overkill solution.

I also did what I could to tidy the coil wiring up a bit, though it's always going to be a bit of a rat's nest I think.

I think part of the issue with the ground is that the original coils were plain metal rather than painted, so made a better contact between the two halves of the bracket helping to act as one big connector rather than these ones being painted.

Had a nose around underneath the dash to see if I could see any direct evidence of where the water is coming in on that side.

Will need to pull the shelf out to investigate that black paint splodge, but my money is on the seam sealer between the various panels having failed (it seems to have gone brittle in a lot of places), so that's most likely to blame.  There is a water trap outside right above the wheel arch in the engine bay (I've re-sealed this area now) through which a seam does run.

Suspect some more chipping and re-sealing is in my future.

Closer inspection of the old body ground wire revealed that it had definitely got warm in the past.

It also made crunching noises if you bent it, and measured a solid 10 ohms on the meter, so was definitely stuffed.  New lead is way, way too long really but is what was in the garage.  I'll swap it with a shorter one at some point.

The new tail light moulding has had it's first couple of coats of paint.

Unfortunately the colour is far too bright a white so I'll need to try another option to find something that's closer.  Just shows that the swatches on the cans don't mean a thing as the one on this is very distinctly cream.

I do need to actually look up what colour this is anyway - pretty sure it's Atlas white, Papyrus is a deeper beige.

I also addressed the nearside tail light looking very cloudy compared to the other side - that was simply because the inside of the lens was filthy.

With the exception of one running light bulb in the offside rear cluster all of the lamps I've found in this car so far have been Narva branded, so either original or replacements from someone's stash of Trabant bits most likely.

Found it quite difficult to get all of the ingrained grime out of the grooves but it's a lot better now than it was.

[rattlecan]

Dishwasher on not too hotter wash works mega on stuff like those lenses

[TrabbieRonnie]

Rosie's definitely Papyrus Weis (I bought some rattle cans years ago from TrabantWelt that were a good match), and looks the same colour as yours?

Mind you, who's to say how consistent the paint was over the years anyway?!  Mine has faded since 2009 when I bought the beast, which won't help with colour matching either.

Great work with the wiring, and the headlights.  I'm one of those people who's just been running around with my LHD lamps I'm afraid, changing the beam adapter stickers every ten years or so!

[Zelandeth]

35 minutes ago, TrabbieRonnie said:

Rosie's definitely Papyrus Weis (I bought some rattle cans years ago from TrabantWelt that were a good match), and looks the same colour as yours?

Mind you, who's to say how consistent the paint was over the years anyway?!  Mine has faded since 2009 when I bought the beast, which won't help with colour matching either.

Great work with the wiring, and the headlights.  I'm one of those people who's just been running around with my LHD lamps I'm afraid, changing the beam adapter stickers every ten years or so!

Interesting, the comparison swatches on Trabantwelt make Papyrus look much darker, but that definitely looks to be the same colour as mine.

No real problem using the stick on beam deflectors, I just know it's the sort of thing that would bug me on my own car.  

Is that photo up Aviemore way?  If so I think I know exactly which car park it is.

[TrabbieRonnie]

Roseisle Forest, just along from Burghead 👍

[bobdisk]

14 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Found it quite difficult to get all of the ingrained grime out of the grooves but it's a lot better now than it was.

Leave it (and the other one) soak in a bucket of warm, to start with, water, with washing up liquid for a couple of days. They should easily clean up then in a fresh bucket of water using a paint brush.

[Zelandeth]

Ford Ivory White looks a much more acceptable match.

It's not absolutely spot on, but I think is close enough for the intended application.

I'll probably repaint both rear light surrounds so they at least match each other, probably the headlight trim rings as well (one of those is a bit scruffy), so even if it's not a perfect match it should at least make the car look consistent.  The factory match between plastic/Duroplast/metal parts wasn't exactly great from new anyway.

[Zelandeth]

Bit of additional afternoon tinkering - albeit brief.  Apparently I slept funny last night and have royally pissed off my neck and left shoulder, and have been slowly seizing up more as the day has gone on.

The tail light lenses were chucked in the parts washer.  Any resemblance to a domestic dishwasher is entirely coincidental.

Predictably they came out looking like new.

Hard to tell in a photo, but they had always looked a little cloudy on the car before but that's not the case at all now.

Another point of obvious comparison to the other Eastern Bloc cars I've had.  None of the lenses have gone matt/cloudy like the old Skoda ones always did, nor have the orange pigments faded to clear as seems to happen with about 50% of Lada lenses.  They also don't appear to have gone horribly brittle.

While those were being washed I was busy dumping a little over half a litre of Vactan over the floor.

I probably should have hoovered it out again first as there was still quite a bit of loose crud floating around that I'd dislodged over the last few days, but I'm not too worried about it.  The surface finish isn't important to me as it will be under two layers of carpet, and there will be a thick protective layer (probably several) getting painted over this anyway.

Ideally I would have taken the seats out before doing this, but unsurprisingly the bolts aren't even vaguely interested in moving and I was inclined to just declare discretion to be the better part of valor there and leave them be.  Either snapping a bolt head or captive nut off the seat base mountings doesn't sound like my idea of fun.  Somewhere in its future this car will probably want a new set of floorpans as given the visible pitting on these they must be pretty thin in a few areas, but that's not an immediate problem so long as my MOT tester doesn't actually poke any holes in anything in April.  This should be a step towards stopping it dissolving from the inside out as it's clearly slowly been doing for years anyway.  Plus the ongoing efforts to try to track down and cure the actual water ingress itself.

[Zelandeth]

Let's look at getting that smashed rear light surround changed.  It looked like it should be as simple as removing the lens from the light, unplugging the wires, removing two nuts from inside the boot and the whole lot coming off.

We all know jobs like this are rarely as simple as they look though...

Oh.  Maybe in this case they are!

Here's where the wires go in case you're doing this job and forgot to take note.

Red and black one goes to the terminal on the back for the brake light.

Back together in less than ten minutes.

Before:

After:

Yes the paint match is a bit off, but I think it's fine - especially if I match both of the surrounds and maybe the bumpers to be the same it will look far less unintentional.  The steel and plastic panels have faded to notably different shades anyway so things are never going to be perfect no matter what I do unless I respray the whole car.  A bit outside our scope at this stage.

Looks far less scruffy than having a chunk missing out of the corner anyway.

Anything else involving paint is going to have to wait a while anyway as it's going to be too cold this week it looks like for anything to cure properly.

Again impressed by what should be a ten minute job actually being a ten minute job. It's kind of refreshing.

[beko1987]

By the time you've re-painted all the trim in that colour and buffed the paint in the spring it won't look so bad! Doesn't look awful now. Or a panel by panel respray in the same colour paint 🤣

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, beko1987 said:

By the time you've re-painted all the trim in that colour and buffed the paint in the spring it won't look so bad! Doesn't look awful now. Or a panel by panel respray in the same colour paint 🤣

Given they tended to have a bit of variation between the different materials, I think the entire car being perfectly matched would have a bit of an uncanny valley look to it.  The slightly two tone thing going on helps avoid that, though having all of the bits of trim matching each other should help make it look more deliberate and less scruffy.  

I will see about getting some actual matched paint at some point though as some larger areas - notably the bonnet, rear screen surround and rear panel are all going to want paint at some point as well.

The paint is ridiculously heavily oxidised on most of the car as well, so goodness knows what colour it will turn when actually cleaned up properly anyway.

[LightBulbFun]

14 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

I think the entire car being perfectly matched would have a bit of an uncanny valley look to it

Uncanny Valley did you say?

[PhilA]

More decadence, can almost guarantee those lenses are likely self colored pmma; the skoda ones will be unstabilized polystyrene and the lada ones pmma with cheap lacquer sprayed on.

Fun with plastics