Zel's Motoring Adventures...Volvo, Renault, Rover, Trabant, Invacar & A Sinclair C5 - Updated 21/02.

[Zelandeth]

2 minutes ago, Verysleepyboy said:

Have you contacted the IFA club to see if they have found a way of managing this "challenge" with TrabantWelt?

Given that a lot of these rules only went into force at the end of January it's likely it just hasn't come up yet.  

It's definitely something I'll be getting in touch with them about though as I definitely won't be the only one getting caught out by this.

[Verysleepyboy]

3 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Given that a lot of these rules only went into force at the end of January it's likely it just hasn't come up yet.  

It's definitely something I'll be getting in touch with them about though as I definitely won't be the only one getting caught out by this.

Are you on their FB page? If you have a presence on there, I can send you an invite

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, Verysleepyboy said:

Are you on their FB page? If you have a presence on there, I can send you an invite

I am, though I very very rarely use Facebook.  I have asked a couple of questions on there and got very little response.  To be honest the only reason I'm really on the platform at all is because one of my local car clubs insist on using it as the sole means of sharing information on when their events take place - which I rarely see anyway because "the algorithm" thinks I'm far more interested in seeing what it's showing me rather than a feed of posts from groups I'm actually subscribed to.  I will share my experiences there though in due course to hopefully help anyone in future manage their expectations accordingly.

[plasticvandan]

Though he may well not do those engines (but could prob get them) a chap in Germany called Martin Heinz I believe is the go to guy for spares for UK club members,be worth a shout out on the FB group

[Yoss]

I wasn't aware of this either. Luckily I had half a Škoda engine arrive from Plzeň on Christmas eve. The people I use are set up for UK VAT so they add the 20% and show it on the invoice. Hopefully with smaller packages, as you suggest, they can just use normal courier companies. I'm sure I will have to use them again at some point. I guess we'll find out. 

[Zelandeth]

18 hours ago, plasticvandan said:

Though he may well not do those engines (but could prob get them) a chap in Germany called Martin Heinz I believe is the go to guy for spares for UK club members,be worth a shout out on the FB group

I did put a post out on the group when my engine originally went pop.  Had a total of two responses, both of whom just vanished into the aether when I asked for further info.  Which basically mirrors every single attempt I've made to try to buy or sell anything on that platform.  Of course as there's no meaningful search function I can't even find said post now to see if there have been any responses since then.

[Verysleepyboy]

35 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

I did put a post out on the group when my engine originally went pop.  Had a total of two responses, both of whom just vanished into the aether when I asked for further info.  Which basically mirrors every single attempt I've made to try to buy or sell anything on that platform.  Of course as there's no meaningful search function I can't even find said post now to see if there have been any responses since then.

No you haven't - one person offering a complete engine gearbox that you replied to and another offering to import a recon unit at the end of June.

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, Yoss said:

I wasn't aware of this either. Luckily I had half a Škoda engine arrive from Plzeň on Christmas eve. The people I use are set up for UK VAT so they add the 20% and show it on the invoice. Hopefully with smaller packages, as you suggest, they can just use normal courier companies. I'm sure I will have to use them again at some point. I guess we'll find out. 

Yeah, apparently we were still operating under "a transitionary arrangement" until 31st January.  I don't really know exactly what has changed as the documentation on the .gov.uk website is both about as clear as mud as you'd expect and even in the limited time I spent trying to decrypt it I found at least two contradictory statements.  The advice to companies shipping into the UK basically seems to be "You should employ a separate specialist to handle this side of shipping for you."

[plasticvandan]

Fair enough, I did find them an odd mix,to be expected I guess.the demise of trabi UK was a shame. I got stung on import duty on mz spares a few years ago,and in future split it into several orders to reduce the total value,though that wouldn't be possible with an engine.does sound like there's been more meddling in the system recently. 

[Zelandeth]

25 minutes ago, plasticvandan said:

Fair enough, I did find them an odd mix,to be expected I guess.the demise of trabi UK was a shame. I got stung on import duty on mz spares a few years ago,and in future split it into several orders to reduce the total value,though that wouldn't be possible with an engine.does sound like there's been more meddling in the system recently. 

From TW I've definitely played that game a few times - large enough order it's worth the minimum postage charge but low enough to not get absolutely hammered by import duties!

This one being a high value order right from the get go though was just a "grin and bear it" situation from the start.

[plasticvandan]

It used to be common back in the early-mid 2000s before all this Brexit stuff to add an exhaust silencer or something to an mz parts order to sell on again in the UK,which would usually cover the cost of the other stuff you had bought for yourself as parts weren't that easy to get over here then. A bit costly but I always added on extra gaskets,service items etc that I would use at some point to an order to bulk it out of only getting a few items 

[Zelandeth]

300 mile drive up to Glasgow tomorrow.  I really don't like setting off on long runs with a filthy car.

It was also getting kind of hard to see out of anything behind me.

Time for a quick clean.

Hey look I can see out now!

Quite looking forward to it the drive to be honest.  This car really is wonderfully good at wafting away miles on the motorway.  

So we'll be off warbling our way north in the morning.  Hopefully when we get back I'll have a big box of bits for the Trabant waiting for me.

[beko1987]

Once you get north of the m6 and sit with the cruise on with an empty/quieter motorway (hopefully) it'll be bliss! 

Enjoy fighting onto the M1 then across first 😬

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, beko1987 said:

Once you get north of the m6 and sit with the cruise on with an empty/quieter motorway (hopefully) it'll be bliss! 

Enjoy fighting onto the M1 then across first 😬

Biggest thing I need to do is to keep reminding myself that I'm not going to Aberdeen.  I came far closer to doing that on autopilot last year than really should have been possible.

So long as the traffic plays nice it shouldn't be a bad trip.  I just need to be bloody careful when we come off the motorway as I'll be running about 100m away from their low emission zone, and I could do without a £60 fine for accidentally passing into that because I miss a turning or something daft.

[LightBulbFun]

4 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Biggest thing I need to do is to keep reminding myself that I'm not going to Aberdeen.  I came far closer to doing that on autopilot last year than really should have been possible.

So long as the traffic plays nice it shouldn't be a bad trip.  I just need to be bloody careful when we come off the motorway as I'll be running about 100m away from their low emission zone, and I could do without a £60 fine for accidentally passing into that because I miss a turning or something daft.

TPA is exempt from all that bollocks just saying.

so is the Rover P6 *and* the Trabant (because i think in Scotland the historic LEZ exemptions start at 30 years IIRC) for that matter now I think about it  

[Zelandeth]

Having followed the tracking numbers for the packages from Trabantwelt, I knew they arrived at my local Parcel Force depot a week ago.  Waiting to be dispatched to me once the customs charges were paid...which they insist on sending a physical letter to you containing the reference number that you need to use to pay said charge through their website.  Why they couldn't email that number to you with the rest of the tracking information, or indeed let you use one of the two tracking numbers provided to pay the charges I don't know.  The last couple of times this had happened I just went to the depot in person with all the details, paid and collected my item then - last time the letter arrived a full 10 days later!  No dice when I tried this at the end of last week though, they weren't willing to do anything without the letter.  Today I had a parcel to drop off there anyway so asked again as it was someone different on the desk.  Result?

A pocket £400 lighter for customs charges and a boot full of boxes.  I was sure I was going to have to fold the seats down when I was walking up to the car, but they just vanished into the boot with room to spare.  The amount of stuff you can get in the boot of this car is just silly.

Everything was very well packed and double boxed.

This is just the order I randomly found things when I checked out what was in the boxes.

First item I fished out was the new clutch friction disc.

Which is definitely the smallest I've seen on a car.  Hand for scale.

New contact breaker point box.

Clutch release bearing.

Clutch pressure plate, fittings and instructions.

Head gasket set & spark plugs (handy as the new pair of plugs I originally picked up were the wrong sort and I'd forgotten to order more).

New jugs, heads and pistons.  Seeing things like this that are well...new...is kind of strange.  Never mind for something that's not been in production for going on 35 years.

New air guide plate for between the cylinders.  Didn't know this was included.

Next box.

Firstly involved extracting an unfeasible seeming amount of padding before extracting any actual parts.

New exhaust manifold.  This is one which has had the air jacket modified to provide the additional clearance needed to accommodate the larger (in particular taller) carb.  Usually fitting that means losing the preheater duct for the cabin heater.  This allows that to be retained and the heater to work as designed.  This does actually make a huge difference to how effective the heater is.

New fan belt - a slightly different length to the stock one.  A modified alternator bracket is another part of the Mikuni carb upgrade, and necessitates a slightly different belt length (longer I think).

The aforementioned alternator bracket is on the left, full set of engine/gearbox mounts and their associated hardware on the right.

One shiny flat slide Mikuni carb and the required larger bore air filter duct.  This has already been jetted and tuned for this engine which should save me a fair bit of time.

Random bottle of two stroke oil which seems to ship with all their engines and rebuild kits.

Finally the main event.

One shiny new engine core.

Normally this would have been shipped with the cylinders already fitted, they had to be split to get the weight of the packages down to a point where they could be shipped via their usual DHL setup rather than having to resort to freight which would have been a major headache as far as customs arrangements would have been concerned due to changes which came in at the end of January.

This crankcase also has the necessary adapter to accept the Mikuni carb already installed.

So with this lot all here we can start getting the car back on the road now.  Hopefully get the old unit pulled out shortly and get the necessary bits transferred over.  

More bits in these boxes than I'd remembered there!  Be good to actually have some meaningful updates to put on here for a change!

[Zelandeth]

Where were we with this again?

After a brief bit of reminding myself what was and wasn't removed/disconnected we got stuck back in.

Alternator was detached and tucked out of the way - the main terminal was threatening to pull the post out rather than unbolt do I just left it connected - there's plenty of slack to do this once the wiring is unclipped from the guides on the bell housing and crankcase.

Carb was next.  Not 100% sure this technically had to come off, but for the sake of removing two nuts and disconnecting a couple of cables it would remove a fair bit of bulk from the unit.  As the carb is being changed the cables all need to be unhooked anyway.

The ignition pickup was disconnected (made easier by the connector I added a while back) and the old fan belt were then pulled.  This has reduced the amount of "stuff" we need to contend with quite a lot and made the already small unit look far smaller still.

Starter motor then had to join the alternator as its retaining bolts double as retaining bolts for the bell housing.  This probably cost me the most time as I had to track down a set of hex bits for the bolts. 

The cover on the points box was also removed to give a bit of extra clearance at that end of the engine.  Then the one engine mount directly under it was unbolted followed by the remaining bell housing bolts.  Only a small amount of swearing later while I figured out exactly which direction things needed to be twisted to fit through the available space, the engine was out.

It is indeed quite a tight fit to get it out between the inner wing and the gearbox in situ but it's entirely doable, contrary to what a couple of things I've read suggested.  Which I'm pleased about as anything which saves me from having to mess about with CV joints can only be a good thing.

Ignition pickup bits have been removed and safely stashed for transfer to the new unit.

Pulling the clutch off I think has indeed revealed why we had some impressive judder when taking up drive.

There are more ripples in both the pressure plate and flywheel than the surface of the North Sea and there's evidence of a *little* bit of a hot spot.  No huge loss as neither of these components are being reused, was nice to see a reason for the symptom though.  Surprisingly the release bearing looks almost new.

We have a new one in hand though so it'll be changed before things are put back together.

Probably 45 minutes or so (and a decent chunk of that was me finding a hex bit to undo the starter motor bolts) to get from where we started to having it out and the bits I need to transfer removed.  Tools used:

Really do wish all cars were this simple to work on!

[SiC]

22 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

North Sea

I think there is more oil in that bell housing than there is in the North Sea!

Interesting to see a graphite release bearing. While cheaper to produce, I'd thought it would be a roller bearing to give a bit more durability. I guess not that much stationary traffic in the USSR to worry about people sitting on clutch pedals at traffic lights.

[SiC]

I wonder if a leaking rear main seal would have caused a leaner mixture and helped contribute to the engines demise?

Or it's just blow-by from failing cylinder/piston sealing that caused a positive pressure in the crankcase and forced partially burnt oil/fuel mixture through the RMS?

[Zelandeth]

Pretty sure the rear main had been dribbling when the engine was stopped for a while.  You can't have crankcase pressure in a two stroke really - if there was that much blowby it just wouldn't run as it would just choke itself.  I imagine it did play a role to some extent, but I think the bottom line is that the old engine was just very, very tired.  I think someone has chucked a set of new cylinders on it at some point in the not massively distant past when what it really wanted was a full rebuild.  I'm pretty sure the seizure marks on the pistons weren't something that had happened in my ownership, though I've no real way to prove that other than that there weren't any corresponding marks in the cylinders.  

The box of bits from yesterday...

Has had the ignition pickup fitted.  I need to read up on how to time this as there's no actual mark on the trigger wheel to show where the firing point is.  I'm sure it's obvious once you've read the instructions, I've just not got that far yet - that's this evening's task.

Then I spent an hour or so building it up.

Flywheel looks considerably more healthy than the one on the old engine (as you'd hope being new, but still interesting to compare to the old one).

Shiny new pistons.

Which all went together pretty painlessly.  Note that it's very important to ensure the rings are clocked correctly on these engines as there's a little pin which keeps the ring gap clear of the cylinder ports.  If you don't line it up right you'll break things.

I didn't even launch any of the wrist pin circlips into my face.  

It's almost looking like an engine now!

Yes, I did stuff a rag in that intake immediately after the photo.

Tomorrow I will hopefully get the timing set, attach the clutch and the lower engine mount then it should be ready to go in the car.  Head bolts still need to be torqued down, but that will be orders of magnitude easier when it's actually in the car and held in place.

Edited Wednesday at 21:45 by Zelandeth
Correcting a typo

[Mrs6C]

1 hour ago, Zelandeth said:

 

Y tho'?

[Zelandeth]

I do note that we appear to have one stud which has taken a whack during shipping.

Well done whoever managed that as this stuff was well packed.   That's where the alternator bracket attaches.  

I'll pull the stud from the original engine and just transfer it over.  Just glad I spotted that now rather than after it was back in the car.

[plasticvandan]

The pins on the pistons are to stop the rings from rotating and catching on the ports,not an issue on 4 stroke engines of course. 

[Zelandeth]

Nothing to report on Trabant progress today as by the time I got back from running various errands and had got everything I needed to for the day done I was out of time.

I did however add another entry onto the "things which easily fit into the back of a Volvo V70 which look like they won't" list.

Which in hindsight we should have loaded the opposite side up as it barfed a significant amount of the oil out of its crankcase breather.  Oops.  On the plus side I do have a plastic load by liner in there so no huge disaster, I'll give it a scrub tomorrow.  Compressor is probably overkill for my needs but the price was right and it was local.  I figure compressed air in the garage is one of those fields where it's always better to be over specified than under.  I currently have a 25 litre receiver up at ceiling height and a (tiny) remote compressor which really wasn't designed for garage applications.  The existing receiver I'll probably just leave where it is and pipe this up to feed into the system where the current compressor is - The fact that I don't want to have to mess about replacing a whole load of pipework may have a lot to do with that.   A bit of extra capacity isn't going to do any harm either.

I do however need to make a space for it to sit properly in, which is a task for the weekend I think.  Today was a case of "wedge it in far enough I can get the garage door closed and call it good."

Hoping I'll get a little bit of time for Trabant stuff tomorrow, though it looks like I've got a pretty full calendar so looking like it might be the weekend before I have a chance to get back to it.

[Verysleepyboy]

Looks a nice compressor - I have been looking out for one similar for a while but nothing coming up local/priced right.

[Zelandeth]

Couple of bits I need off here.

Yes there is actually an engine in there somewhere.

One alternator bracket and one of its mounting studs.

I needed one of the studs because one of the new ones on the engine had taken a knock during transit.  Thankfully it unscrewed without protesting.

Chased the threads on the old one before fitting just to make sure there was no gunk in them, though it unscrewed no bother (almost as if it had spent the last 20 years soaking in oil...) so was probably fine.

Alternator bracket and new engine mount attached to the new engine.

Clutch also assembled.

I do appreciate that this engine appears to have come with a complete set of new hardware.  Aside from the one stud I've transferred from the old engine because it was damaged I've not needed anything in terms of nuts, bolts etc.  I thought I was going to need to reuse the bell housing and starter motor bolts, but just found new ones in a bag hiding in the bottom of one of the boxes.  Definitely makes this job easier.  Even though the Trabant does get points for being a car which doesn't just use twenty different sizes of fastener for the hell of it.  In fact, I have a sneaking feeling having looked at them that the flywheel retaining nut is the same one that's used on the rear hubs...

I know it looks shabby, but the shipping box is actually at just the right height for me to work on the engine while sitting on the floor of the conservatory, and it deforms just enough that the engine stays wherever I put it, so it's actually working surprisingly well as a workbench.

*Hoping* that we'll get this in the car over the weekend.  I want to change the two remaining engine/gearbox mounts on the car (just makes sense to do while I'm in here).  I also want to clean up the bell housing a bit and swap over the clutch release bearing for the new one.

As far as the engine goes, I think once the timing is set it should be ready to go in.  I just figure doing that out the car is going to be easier as access is a touch awkward in the car (especially with building supplies making access to that side of the car a bit awkward right now).  Likewise the alternator bracket needs to be fitted, but that's one more sticky-outy-bit to get in the way while fitting, so it can be added once the engine is in place I think.

Then I just need to try to remember how all the cowling etc came apart...though it was pretty self explanatory as I recall.  Should hopefully have a running car again this weekend.  Well...tomorrow.  Given that the forecast is for rain all sodding day on Sunday - of course it is!