Zel's Motoring Adventures...Volvo, Renault, Rover, Trabant, Invacar & A Sinclair C5 - Updated 19/03

[TrabbieRonnie]

And here's my eldest having a go...

 

 

[rusty_vw_man]

I love this - I’m a big fan of anything with a slightly* left field engine. The picture of the bare engine back in the bay reminded me of something, took me a while but I think it’s got model rc nitro engine vibes:

I’ve only ever seen a trabant once, it was giving it some along a main road in Chester making the most amazing noise and smell. Feels like something I should have a go at owning at some point, if only to balance out the number of smug electric car drivers that live round me now!! 

[Bear]

What a fantastic build up and result, I'm (word that is like jealous but positive/happy for your successes but would also enjoy doing such a thing myself - there'll be a German word for it) and it looks really satisfying to put together.

[Bear]

  On 24/02/2025 at 09:10, rusty_vw_man said:

I love this - I’m a big fan of anything with a slightly* left field engine. The picture of the bare engine back in the bay reminded me of something, took me a while but I think it’s got model rc nitro engine vibes:

I’ve only ever seen a trabant once, it was giving it some along a main road in Chester making the most amazing noise and smell. Feels like something I should have a go at owning at some point, if only to balance out the number of smug electric car drivers that live round me now!! 

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Now I really want a 1/8 RC Tabbie with a two-cylinder nitro engine and accurate recreation chassis...

[Zelandeth]

  On 24/02/2025 at 09:34, RichardK said:

Now I really want a 1/8 RC Tabbie with a two-cylinder nitro engine and accurate recreation chassis...

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That would be a lot of fun!  Quite a project to build though!

Today I fixed the issue with the fan belt rubbing on the heater feed duct.  Made massively easier by discovering I could do this.

Yes, after you loosen the fan belt you can just pull the fan out without disturbing the cowling.  I really wish I had realised that about a year ago.  

Gives you a glimpse into how the cowl routes the air over the cylinders and heads there.  It's not just an open tin box that the fan blows into.

[LightBulbFun]

  On 23/02/2025 at 21:19, Zelandeth said:

The big news however is that she's moved!

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Woo! glad to see the Trabant is back in action, its been very satisfying watching you give this one the methodical no nonsense Zel Treatment, and then likewise again with the replacement engine and the fitting of it  I am very much looking forward to hearing how the performance/handling/tractability etc is like once things are run in and you can give it some beans  

[Zelandeth]

  On 24/02/2025 at 21:57, LightBulbFun said:

Woo! glad to see the Trabant is back in action, its been very satisfying watching you give this one the methodical no nonsense Zel Treatment, and then likewise again with the replacement engine and the fitting of it  I am very much looking forward to hearing how the performance/handling/tractability etc is like once things are run in and you can give it some beans  

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Wouldn't say it's been that methodically done.  Mostly just been fixing broken things as they're found.  

It's been a thoroughly Illogical process.  What I should have done with this car if I had even a shred of common sense would have been to just buy a tidier example and transfer over the nice upgraded parts that have been fitted to this one to a better car and kept the surprisingly tidy interior bits as spares.  Spending this much on a new power unit for it was nothing short of absolute and total *madness* financially.   Eh, life's too short for that nonsense and these cars are only going to get rarer.

Still need to decide if I'm going to try a take two of the trip over to Birmingham in May or if I should just consider the first failure to be an omen and that discretion is the better part of valour!

That's a ways off yet though.  There are two months (and an MOT) between us and that happening yet.

[Zelandeth]

That time of year again for the Volvo.

Was pretty confident this would be fine given the general condition of it and given it's clearly been so well maintained historically.  Still always a bit nerve wracking putting a car in for its first test in your ownership though.

Need not have worried.

That's this one out the way for another year.  Always nice to get a clean sheet.

Next up is the Trabant, though there are a couple of things I want to address on that first (most notably the one crusty bit of sill).

[LightBulbFun]

  On 25/02/2025 at 12:36, Zelandeth said:

Next up is the Trabant, though there are a couple of things I want to address on that first (most notably the one crusty bit of sill).

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thats exempt from MOT's now as its over 40 years old and will be eligible for the Historic Vehicle Taxation class on the 1st of April, where you should be able to get a refund for any remaining tax  (the MOT exemption kicks in the moment a vehicle turns 40 years old and the tax exemption from the next April after it turns 40)

[ruffgeezer]

  On 25/02/2025 at 12:36, Zelandeth said:

That time of year again for the Volvo.

Was pretty confident this would be fine given the general condition of it and given it's clearly been so well maintained historically.  Still always a bit nerve wracking putting a car in for its first test in your ownership though.

Need not have worried.

That's this one out the way for another year.  Always nice to get a clean sheet.

Next up is the Trabant, though there are a couple of things I want to address on that first (most notably the one crusty bit of sill).

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Glad to see it's in such good hands. That's probably the last decent Volvo they made.

[Zelandeth]

  On 25/02/2025 at 13:55, LightBulbFun said:

thats exempt from MOT's now as its over 40 years old and will be eligible for the Historic Vehicle Taxation class on the 1st of April, where you should be able to get a refund for any remaining tax  (the MOT exemption kicks in the moment a vehicle turns 40 years old and the tax exemption from the next April after it turns 40)

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This involves wrangling with the DVLA because it's an import.  The computer sees the date of first registration (1999) rather than the date of manufacture (which is listed under the notes on the front of the V5).  Getting that sorted involves having to mess around getting dating certificates from the owners club and having to apply in writing to have it changed.

[LightBulbFun]

  On 25/02/2025 at 14:36, Zelandeth said:

This involves wrangling with the DVLA because it's an import.  The computer sees the date of first registration (1999) rather than the date of manufacture (which is listed under the notes on the front of the V5).  Getting that sorted involves having to mess around getting dating certificates from the owners club and having to apply in writing to have it changed.

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the issue you had trying to do it back in 2024 was because it was not the next April after the vehicle had turned 40,, the vehicle was over 40 years old, but it was not yet the next April afterwards, if you look at the Trabant's V5 it will have in its special notes "Declared Manufactured 1984" and that is what the DVLA use in cases like this for Historic vehicle eligibility etc 

currently the historic vehicle exemption is for vehicles from *before* 1984 which excludes the Trabant, after the 1st of April it will then roll forward to vehicles from before 1985, which includes your Trabant  

https://www.gov.uk/historic-vehicles

(if the DVLA did not know what year the Trabant was made, it would be on a Q plate, by the time the Trabant was registered it would of *had* to have had a dating letter/proof of age of some kind to be registered on the age related plate it was on before the private plate was put on it)

as an aside to this if you have an online account with the DVLA and view the vehicle record they will tell you exactly what date of manufacture they have the vehicle down as, and because the recording of exact date of manufactuer was only something that happened fairly recently, for most older vehicles they will assume the end of the year, again hence why the computer said no when you tried to do the trabant last year  

(I just noticed they spelled "Chassis" wrong LOL) 

 

 

The MOT exemption is also completely separate from the Historic Vehicle taxation class, which is why if you look at the V112 form you will see its a *declaration* that you make when it comes to tax the vehicle, of you saying "this vehicle is over 40 years old and not substantially modified, and thus exempt under Catagory R, so I dont need to produce a current MOT certificate to tax this vehicle"

you can for example have a vehicle that your still paying tax on but is MOT exempt, and likewise you can have a vehicle that historic vehicle exempt, but not MOT exempt 

[Zelandeth]

  On 25/02/2025 at 15:04, LightBulbFun said:

the issue you had trying to do it back in 2024 was because it was not the next April after the vehicle had turned 40,, the vehicle was over 40 years old, but it was not yet the next April afterwards, if you look at the Trabant's V5 it will have in its special notes "Declared Manufactured 1984" and that is what the DVLA use in cases like this for Historic vehicle eligibility etc 

currently the historic vehicle exemption is for vehicles from *before* 1984 which excludes the Trabant, after the 1st of April it will then roll forward to vehicles from before 1985, which includes your Trabant  

https://www.gov.uk/historic-vehicles

(if the DVLA did not know what year the Trabant was made, it would be on a Q plate, by the time the Trabant was registered it would of *had* to have had a dating letter/proof of age of some kind to be registered on the age related plate it was on before the private plate was put on it)

as an aside to this if you have an online account with the DVLA and view the vehicle record they will tell you exactly what date of manufacture they have the vehicle down as, and because the recording of exact date of manufactuer was only something that happened fairly recently, for most older vehicles they will assume the end of the year, again hence why the computer said no when you tried to do the trabant last year  

(I just noticed they spelled "Chassis" wrong LOL) 

 

 

The MOT exemption is also completely separate from the Historic Vehicle taxation class, which is why if you look at the V112 form you will see its a *declaration* that you make when it comes to tax the vehicle, of you saying "this vehicle is over 40 years old and not substantially modified, and thus exempt under Catagory R, so I dont need to produce a current MOT certificate to tax this vehicle"

you can for example have a vehicle that your still paying tax on but is MOT exempt, and likewise you can have a vehicle that historic vehicle exempt, but not MOT exempt 

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Noted.  I'll have another bash at dealing with the tax again at some point this year.  I'm not too bothered about the MOT side of it as there's really no reason that it shouldn't pass a test once I've got the one bit of rust sorted out and I think that's a sensible thing to have done for a car that's in regular use anyway.  I'd really like to get TPA through one to be honest but have struggled to find somewhere that does class 3 tests that hasn't pissed me around, I'm zero for three on having actually tried to get the car tested so far so just kind of gave up!

This afternoon I wanted to try to knock at least some of the worst of the tree gunk off the Trabant.

Initially I took the car to the jet wash at one of our nearby filling stations - first place it's actually gone since the engine change.  Only a mile or so, but it feels like progress.  Immediate observations are that it feels like the car gets up to 40 or so far, far more quickly even with my being pretty gentle on it at the moment compared to flat out beforehand.  Not really surprising given that all the evidence suggests that the old engine was probably missing a few of the original 26 horsepower even before whatever actually failed let go.  The engine itself is also far quieter - one thing which isn't though is the exhaust - the buzzy raspy noise from the tailpipe now when you're on the throttle is WAY louder than it used to be.

I had seriously forgotten how pointless a lot of those jet washes are.  I honestly could have got better pressure just using the hosepipe at home, and our water pressure isn't great to start with.  So dragged out my own pressure washer and got that involved.  Hey look, this one actually does something!

Some of the really ingrained stuff (and the plethora of oily hand prints on the front panel and bonnet) will need some more elbow grease to shift, but on the whole the car looks far better for a quick hose down.

Will see how brave I'm feeling tomorrow, might actually use the car for normal car type things again.

[Zelandeth]

  On 25/02/2025 at 14:34, ruffgeezer said:

...That's probably the last decent Volvo they made.

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Funnily enough, that's pretty much exactly what my MOT tester said when we were talking about the car a while ago.

[Mac69400]

  On 25/02/2025 at 15:04, LightBulbFun said:

(I just noticed they spelled "Chassis" wrong LOL) 

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No offence, I know you do a sterling job for many shiters, but for someone that always uses "of" instead of "have", and "where" instead of "were" that's a bit rich. 

[plasticvandan]

The exhaust probably isn't that much louder,it's just now you can hear it over the engine!

[High Jetter]

  On 25/02/2025 at 19:07, Mac69400 said:

No offence, I know you do a sterling job for many shiters, but for someone that always uses "of" instead of "have", and "where" instead of "were" that's a bit rich. 

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Yup. Language does evolve though, thou knowest. Sire, I bow to thee. 😀

(Don't mention 'actually', 'obviously' and 'what I'm going to do now is ..')

 

[Mac69400]

  On 25/02/2025 at 22:46, High Jetter said:

Yup. Language does evolve though, thou knowest. Sire, I bow to thee. 😀

(Don't mention 'actually', 'obviously' and 'what I'm going to do now is ..')

 

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Yeah, but that's just plain wrong. "I of had a lovely day." Anyway, it's not really relevant to the thread, and I've got it off my chest at last. 

As-salamu alaykum, as they say over here. 

[Zelandeth]

  On 25/02/2025 at 19:07, Mac69400 said:

No offence, I know you do a sterling job for many shiters, but for someone that always uses "of" instead of "have", and "where" instead of "were" that's a bit rich. 

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There's a hell of a big difference between someone typing something on a random car forum on the internet and what's published on public facing pages by a government organisation.  When I was working in local government one of the absolute hard and fast rules was that anything you were writing that was going to be in any way, shape or form in the public domain was proof-read multiple times over, ideally by more than one person.  There's only so much you can do for getting all the details spot on when you're dealing with complex matters, but silly typos like that just Shouldn't Happen.  If I had been responsible for coding the form above and discovered that typo hadn't been caught during testing I'd be bloody mortified.

Back on the subject of the Trabant, I didn't actually end up using the car for today's errands on account of the fact that it's been tipping it down with rain for most of the day.  So I took the actually weather tight, air conditioned car with windscreen wipers which actually clear more than 50% of the windscreen.  I really need to figure out what's up with that as I'm sure the driver's side wiper should swing far further than it does.  It's way, way better than when I got the car, but I do wonder if I've got two right hand side linkages fitted or something like that.

Nevertheless it did dry out at least for a couple of hours this afternoon so I made time to get her out for a 20 minute or so wander.  Primarily to grab some fresh fuel to dilute the nine month old stuff that's in the tank as I'm sure that's very much past its prime at this point.  Stopped to grab a couple of photos on the way home in celebration of the car being back in action again. 

I never actually made it quite the full way round the car last year with the polish, and looking at the photos now I'm actually really surprised how well it's held the finish where I did go over it.  I figured it would have done the Skoda Estelle thing of just immediately turning straight to chalk as soon as I took my eyes off it for two seconds, but it really hasn't and it's really obvious which panels have and haven't been done.

It really is such a strangely proportioned little car.

Definitely feels a LOT zippier.  Hard to say how much of that is just the engine being new vs how much different the extra specified four horsepower really makes, but pulling out of junctions now feels much more like a normal car rather than really having to make conscious allowances for the amount of time you needed to get moving, and that's with me still being pretty gentle. 

[Zelandeth]

What is traveling in the Trabant like?

Frenetic, bouncy and so noisy that it makes your brain vibrate.

Not great, but I just zip tied my phone to the passenger headrest to try to get some video.

The horrible noise when I turned round was coming from the nearside rear wheel.  The hub nut needed to be tightened up a bit so there was a bit of play in there.  Seems to now have stopped.  I am braced for having to take that all apart soon anyway - I've had to change one rear wheel bearing, so am expecting to change that one most likely at some point as well.  

[Zelandeth]

Few minor things have been tended to.

Firstly was the violently rough idle.  Double checking my timing setting has helped there.  Not sure if I just fouled up measurements the first time or if the plate the ignition pickup sits on just moved as I tightened the screws up, but we were sitting at nearly 5mm BTDC rather than 2.  Seems to be some disagreement as to whether 2 or 3 is best...though it was 2 someone mentioned on here so that's what I've gone with.  

Still feels a bit of an odd way to set it, but honestly it's really simple and takes all of a couple of minutes so no complaints.  Probably a bit more of a faff on the older setup with dual points, but with the electronic system it's simple.  Just get the piston set to where it needs to be, loosen the backing plate screws and rotate it to where you hear the plugs fire, then lock it down.

This has definitely helped, though I do think I might still want to bring the idle speed up just a touch.  I wanted to let everything settle a bit before I started messing with anything though.  Probably only needs to come up a hundred RPM or so, just to stop the whole car shaking.

Here's what the plugs look like after ~100 miles.

Plug gaps are actually identical, the one looking tighter is just an optical illusion because of the angle.

Now things have settled in a bit the clutch adjustment wanted a small tweak to bring the bite point up a little.

Really easy to do, takes all of a minute.  Important to make sure that there is some free play in there or you'll cook the release bearing.  This has vastly improved gear selection.  Synchro on second is still a bit weak, but that's what rev matching is for.  One day we might look at a gearbox refurb as it really is quite noisy it feels like - but I really need to compare to another car in person to see if they're just like that.  Really wasn't obvious until I swapped the engine!

Oh.  I definitely hadn't forgotten to tighten the lock nut on the clutch cable when I installed everything.  Oops.  This is why we go back and check things after a while!

Other than that have just been using the car for local bumbling about.

God this camera is crap compared to the one on my old phone.

That's what happens when you lean on software to try to obfuscate how mediocre your hardware actually is, and it doesn't work.  I am seriously giving consideration to binning this thing off and just fitting a fresh battery and reverting back to my Huawei - sod the fact that the Android version is a bit behind the times.  It's just better at basically everything I actually use it for...especially the camera.

Definitely have a bit of noise coming from the nearside rear wheel.  You can hear something lightly squeaking if you're driving at low speed and there's a wall etc bouncing the sound back to you.  I'll have a closer poke around at the weekend, but most likely it wants the bearings changed as I did on the other side.  Actually I reckon the bearing probably would have been fine if thoroughly cleaned and re-greased, but given there's no way to do that without dismantling the hub, which involves removing the suspension arm it's a bit daft to not just replace everything while you're in there anyway by that point.  I will just make sure it's not just the nut needing tightened up though as if it's loose that will allow there to be play where there shouldn't be.  I'm not actually too worried immediately, having seen how hugely chunky the bearings etc are compared to the car!  If they were about to come apart you'd know about it - what I'm actually hearing is the brake shoes just lightly touching the drum most likely.

In other news, I do have a correct set of bumpers and the missing front lower air dam on the way - and one of the annoyingly hard to find green fog light switches, which in my case I'll probably actually be using for a reversing light...I just wanted a green switch because being able to have red, yellow and green all lined up on the dash would please my OCD far more than one odd black switch.

I do want to do a test with a rev counter at some point just to see what it is actually turning at 50mph - just to convince myself it's not immediately about to explode just based on how hard it sounds like it's revving...just because two stroke things mean it sounds basically like it's running twice as fast as it really is compared to a four stroke.

It really is a ridiculous car to drive.  It's ridiculously noisy, the ride is hilariously bouncy, it's silly cramped, but somehow I just cannot help but smiling every time I'm behind the wheel of it.  Makes no sense, but I just enjoy it.

In other exciting news...look at what's basically finished!

This used to finish roughly where the shadow of the second car starts.

Hopefully will be able to start using it in the next day or two - one more round with the vibrating plate tomorrow hopefully should be it I believe.  Pretty sure that there will be room to get the car behind there in/out without the forward one having to move.  Have never actually had room to get a car in there - while the hard standing actually extended in there further than we realised, it has always been overgrown and there was a fence in the way as for some unknown reason it used to kick out towards us right where the driveway starts.  Was a useless space on both sides.

No wonder the ride is worse than I remembered.  I'd completely forgotten that when the car was clearly going to be laid up for some period of time I'd pumped the tyres up to 40psi to prevent them getting flat spotted...yeah, let's put those back to mid 20s and see how we go.  Oops.

[PhilA]

Just put plywood down. Park the Trabant on it and rev the engine a few times. All bricks settled 

[Zelandeth]

  On 06/03/2025 at 13:19, PhilA said:

Just put plywood down. Park the Trabant on it and rev the engine a few times. All bricks settled 

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That made me laugh far more than it probably should have. 

You just want to leave it idling though for maximum effect.  Off idle it's actually astonishing how smooth it is for an inline twin.  Idle however, not so much!

[wesacosa]

No pictures unfortunately but your old Estelle getting a mention in the Skoda Owners club magazine 

 

[Zelandeth]

  On 07/03/2025 at 12:21, wesacosa said:

No pictures unfortunately but your old Estelle getting a mention in the Skoda Owners club magazine 

 

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Glad it's still about and that the arches are finally being properly sorted - that area wasn't pretty when I had the car!

I do wonder what the eventual cause for the random overheating issue which had me tearing my hair out turned out to be.

[Zelandeth]

Something which made itself known at the end of last week on the Trabant was an absolutely bloody horrendous rattle from somewhere up front.  This was plainly a "something external touching something it shouldn't" rather than anything that was actually a sign of impending failure.

Sure enough a bit of poking round today found the culprit.

The metal adjuster collar on the throttle cable had come into contact with the heater box.  Being a pretty lightly built tin box this did a great job of amplifying this into an extremely annoying din.

This has now been rerouted to keep it well clear - though I did scratch my head a bit as to how to keep it there as there wasn't really anything obvious to tether it to.  Eventually I figured out I could trap it under the sound deadening jacket and that keeps it exactly where it needs to be.

Hopefully that will be the end of that as it didn't half make a bloody racket.

She has also had a bit of a facelift.

It's purely a matter of personal taste, but I just think these bumpers suit the car and the utilitarian, no nonsense approach to things.  The fact that these have pretty much exactly the same level of patina to them as the car is just a bonus.  

One of the things I'd been missing before was the air dam which sits below the front bumper which basically helps shield the carb and alternator from road spray and debris as they sit down really low as you can see below.

Now rather better protected.

I had always thought that panel was plastic until it arrived, nope it's actually metal.

The rear one took about ten minutes to swap.

Front one on the other hand was rather more of a fight.  I'm not sure whether it dates back to when the car obviously had a bit of a knock on the nose or when the bumper was changed, but every single one of the retaining bolts had been snapped.  Both ends of the bumper instead of using the original bolt holes, were attached using a couple of Z shaped brackets bolted into the sheet metal on little bridge between the bottom of the wheel arch and front panel.

This is why it wobbled so much I suspect.

I've basically decided as there is enough room to do so, that I'm just re-drilling the mounting holes a touch further back.  I've only done one so far as my drill bits are apparently incredibly blunt and it took me about half an hour of fighting to get two drilled.  

I'll grab a couple of appropriately sized cobalt bits this week and get the additional fixings in place - it's a hundred times more solid now than it was.  The bottom of the right hand wing definitely will want some attention with a welder at some point as it's distinctly crusty.

One surprising bit of good fortune however came when I went to fit the number plate.  I'd drilled a couple of holes in that basically using Mark I Eyeball as a measuring device when the sticky pads holding it on to the bumper started to fail.  

Two unexpected things happened here.  First was that the machine screws I used were exactly the right type for the metal threaded inserts on the bumper - second was that I had by total chance put the holes in such a place that they *exactly* lined up with the holes in the new bumper.

Not going to complain about that little fluke!

Hopefully I can find a new home for these that have come off.

Of course though it's not allowed to actually reduce the size of the to do list.  I spotted something else needing attention while fighting with the driver's side front bumper mount.

That would have been really nice to have spotted BEFORE I had the last big parcel posted from Germany...oh well!

I'll need to take a closer look at the overall condition of the whole system before I decide exactly what I'm going to do there.  It's such a simple system that given shipping costs for something that bulky it may actually just make more sense to get a new setup made locally (obviously aside from the heat exchanger).  We'll see.

[plasticvandan]

Stick those bumpers on the ifa FB group,for some reason they are always after them to make their car look older,they will go quick

[Weird Car]

On the topic of de aging it, have some pictures of it from before it was  aged, also pre DDR plate too 

[MorrisItalSLX]

Definitely looks better with the standard bumpers, even more so with the bumpers body coloured rather than black.

[Zelandeth]

  On 10/03/2025 at 07:12, Weird Car said:

On the topic of de aging it, have some pictures of it from before it was  aged, also pre DDR plate too 

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It does look really odd with the bumpers in black!  

Done a bit of bodging today to help stabilise that pinholed and cracked bit of exhaust until I come up with a proper solution.

I'd rather have used jubilee clips to get uniform clamping force round the whole thing, but Halfords didn't have any.  Like none, zip, nadda.  By that point I couldn't be bothered making an hour's round trip to the factors I usually use, so made do with this.  I did think "I'll just grab one from Toolstation" as well but couldn't even get into the car park as the industrial park was swamped by people getting to Subway and KFC for lunch on the other side of the car park.

You can see where this is going from those components, can't you?

Slathered it all in exhaust goop then clamped it together.

I need to take a closer look at the condition of the silencer before I make a call on what the next step will be.  If it's just this mid pipe that's a bit crusty I'll see if I can track down a replacement somewhere in the UK.  They're not actually expensive to buy, just for a single bit of pipe you're going to more than double the price by the time you've shipped it from Germany.

If more of the system looks crusty I'll need to have more of a think about what's the most sensible way forward...if I'd noticed this sooner I'd probably have just ordered a new system along with the engine (and probably been tempted by upgrading to a 45mm system given it probably makes the most of the extra displacement).  Component I'll be looking most closely at is of course the heat exchanger given the safety aspects of any potential failure there.