Zel's Motoring Adventures...Volvo, Renault, Rover, Trabant, Invacar & A Sinclair C5 - Updated 03/04...

[GlenAnderson]

That’s an early style P4 radio panel, I was under the impression that they were for the cars with the wooden dash capping.
 

There is also the possibility of fitting the later P4 radio/speaker panel that was designed for the more modern style of radio that mounts with the tuning/volume switches. They’re easily modified to accept a single DIN stereo. That’s what I did with mine, along with replacing the speaker grille with a panel that held some auxiliary gauges, and speakers under the front bench seat. 
 

Personally, I think I’d hide a modern double-DIN unit behind the wooden door if I were doing the job again today. 

[Zelandeth]

The Trabant has water ingress issues. 

The windscreen does leak a bit as the seal has shrunk, but only when driving.  The rear windscreen on the other hand absolutely pees water into the offside of the boot.

The cause of this is rot in the screen surround.  This will be Fun to sort.  Hopefully get it done this year though.

Annoyingly I don't believe repair sections for this area are available so we'll need to do some fabrication.  I won't be doing this.  I don't have anywhere near the required skills or tools to do a good job of it.

Once the screen surround is sorted I'll also get the corrosion in the boot floor sorted - though at the moment it's providing a way for a fair chunk of the water that gets in a way to get back out again.  This is why I just slathered the area in rust converter and protection and left it be otherwise for the time being.  I had checked with my MOT tester beforehand and they confirmed that it wasn't anywhere near any prescribed areas so wasn't urgent.  Unlike the wonderful reconstructive work that was done on the front chassis/subframe mounts earlier last year.

This has resulted in the car being unpleasantly damp in the winter.

I had been working with a couple of these packs - which definitely helps a lot.

However they very much have their limits and needed to be dried out roughly weekly at this time of the year.  Time for something a bit more heavy duty.

A proper dehumidifier.  Which definitely seems to be doing it's job as in a couple of hours it had already collected this much water.

It's important to know that there are two types of dehumidifiers.  Heat pump and dessicant based.

I hope you were looking forward to a brief rambling Segway into dehumidifier technologies, because there's one coming right up.

Heat pump units are the most common and generally the cheapest.  They way that they work is really simple - they are basically just a tiny fridge or air conditioner - in that they chill a metal coil to below dew point which the air you want to dry is then passed over.  Exactly the same as how condensation forms on the outside of a glass of a cold drink, it forms on the coil and is then directed into a drip tray.

Under ideal circumstances these are more efficient.  

They do have a big shortcoming though - and that's that they don't work well at low temperatures.  They rely on there being a temperature gradient between the surrounding air and the cold coils, and of course you can only make that so cold or the whole lot will just freeze up.  Even if it doesn't freeze up though, their performance drops like a stone once the ambient temperature drops far below around 10C.

Dessicant dehumidifiers are a bit more complicated.  They take advantage of the properties of certain materials which very readily absorb moisture at normal temperatures but will then very readily release it again when heated.

The airflow path through these things is quite convoluted.

Air is drawn in and passed through a slowly rotating disc/drum shaped honeycomb of dessicant material.  This draws the moisture out of the air.  That air is then exhausted back into the room, now dry.  As the wheel rotates, the now moisture charged dessicant moves into another air stream.

A separate fan directs some additional air through a heating element and then through the moisture charged dessicant wheel.  This causes the dessicant material to give up its gathered moisture.  This air (which is now essentially now at 100% relative humidity) is then directed into a condenser.  This is nothing special, just a plastic radiator essentially.  This is actually cooled by the air being drawn into the unit - as the air passing through it is so humid that tiny temperature drop causes the water to precipitate out of the air.  This is then channeled into a drip tray for collection.  

These units have shortcomings.  The elephant in the room is efficiency.  Dessicant units quite simply are not as efficient as heat pump ones.  By quite a substantial margin.  

They also have quite a lot of moving parts so long term may well not prove as reliable.  Though aside from the dessicant wheel itself most of the innards are likely to mostly be commodity parts at the end of the day so provided you know one end of a screwdriver from the other and have a bit of patience they probably are repairable so long as it's not something like the controller PCB that fails (and in this day and age that's exactly as big a risk on anything of any type).

Cost.  Generally dessicant units are more expensive.  I think rather than a reflection of the actual cost of making one unit over the other, the reason heat pump units are cheaper is simply that so many millions more of them are made every year so economy of scale wins out.

On the other hand they do have some advantages - a few of which are of particular interest for the likes of us wanting to use them for things like drying out a car.

Low temperature performance.  These things really don't care about the cold - right down to the point at which it ceases to be practical to collect liquid water, a dessicant dehumidifier will quite happily keep pulling moisture out of the air.  In fact as the condenser works at its best when it has the most cooling, they will tend to get slightly more efficient as the temperature drops.

Size/weight.  They are generally far smaller and a fair bit lighter than heat pump units.  Which makes sense when you realise that there's not a whole fridge packed into them.  This makes it far more practical to stand them up in a car foot well etc without having to mess about removing seats etc.

Heat output.  Dessicant units chuck out quite a lot of heat.  The heater is usually in the order of 300W to 800W, and most of that heat is chucked straight out of the unit more or less.  If you're trying to dry a car out in this winter having a dehumidifier that essentially doubles as a low power fan heater can be a real bonus as warming the car up will really help to draw moisture out of soft surfaces like seats and carpets.  It also will go a pretty good way to meaning that things won't freeze up even if the ambient temperature outside does dip a bit below freezing.

 

For indoor use in a domestic setting a heat pump unit really does make the most sense most likely if you're talking about normal ambient temperatures as they are just so much more efficient. I think you're talking something like 5 times as efficient when you boil it down (pun intended) to raw ml/kWh of water extraction.  For use in awkwardly shaped and often very cold spaces like a leaky car though, dessicant units are the obvious winner.

So ends my ramble for the evening.  Yes I am still full of the flu and can't sleep because I keep coughing my spleen up every ten minutes...so you got lumbered with my drivel for a while instead as a distraction!

I may make some edits when I'm at an actual PC tomorrow though and can read through what I've written on a proper screen and hopefully with a few more working brain cells than I have right now.

[TrabbieRonnie]

Must check my Trabbi this weekend...  She has been neglected due to the more demanding P4.

Excellent ramble, cheers!

[Zelandeth]

I do wonder how many forums you're likely to find two members chatting who both own a Trabant AND a Rover P4... can't be many!

I've always had a fascination for refrigeration and associated technologies, so the opportunity to ramble about it isn't generally going to be missed.

There is one other type of electrically powered dehumidifier - peltier (or thermoelectric).  These basically seem to exist for the sole purpose of having something to appear at the bottom of the list on Amazon/eBay etc if you're searching by price.  They're no better than a toy.  They do *work* strictly speaking but you're going to be talking in the context of maybe extracting 10ml or 20ml in a day under ideal conditions.  They also work on the basis of making something cold to encourage condensation, so aren't going to work well in situations where you might be seeing low ambient temperatures.

This one had roughly half filled the container overnight, and had cycled off on the humidistat (which is set to cut off at 40%rh on the highest setting).  I do have a 60W tubular heater somewhere which if I can track down I may well stick in the boot and whip out the parcel shelf.  I have actually stuck a bucket under the area where the leak is now...not sure why it didn't occur to me to do that until for now.  That would help encourage moisture to depart far more quickly.

That is if I can find it.  Last time I saw it was probably 10 years ago.  If not I'll just leave it be, we'll get there in time now the moisture is being pulled out anyway.

Real advantage of this thing though from a practical perspective is that it's small and light enough (about 5kg) it just sits in the passenger footwell and I can just grab it and stuff it in the garage/Rover if I want to take the car out in all of about 20 seconds.  I did use the heat pump one I have when I first got the car and that was a major pain to get and out of the car as it only *just* could be wedged in there and weighs about 25kg.

The windscreen in the Rover leaks as well, so I will probably swap it back and forth a bit between cars anyway.  I will look into that on the Rover too, but it's item about 392 on the to do list at this point so it might be a while.

[LightBulbFun]

12 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

I do have a 60W tubular heater somewhere

Oh I have some of those too!

[Zelandeth]

Had the Trabant out today so the dehumidifier got shifted over to the Rover.

Apparently it leaks worse than I thought.  The passenger side carpet is soaking wet.  I'll try to get those pulled out in the unlikely event I get a spare five minutes at some point.

It is definitely pulling a decent amount of moisture out it seems.

"Continuous drainage" in this case being a bit of fuel hose stuck out through the door jamb.  Which is easy in this case as the bottom seal is missing.

[TrabbieRonnie]

I am jealous of your wing bottom...

[Zelandeth]

1 hour ago, TrabbieRonnie said:

I am jealous of your wing bottom...

It does seem to be a very solid car in terms of rust - one of the main reasons I jumped at it when I did.  It needs the engine, brakes, steering, fuel system, suspension and electrics sorted...but at least it's not rusty!

At least as far as I've been able to find - there is a lot of filler under the paint in some areas - but generally not where I'd be expecting it to hide rot.  Like the boot lid where it's like 1/8" thick!  I literally had to chisel some off so the latch could be fitted - it was so thick the linkage from the handle and the bolts wouldn't reach...

[Zelandeth]

I was following someone in a giant Range Rover (complete with illegally spaced private plate, blacked out everything and silly window tints) into this car park today.  I could virtually feel the hatred as they had to do a 6 point turn to even get around the corner in the carpark and I just zapped straight into this gap with zero effort.

Driving a small car does have bonuses.  Glad I wasn't in the Volvo or I'd have had to go hunting elsewhere for a space myself.

[kevins]

by modern standards the whole row is very small, any of the current electric SUV's would dwarf that lot!

[Verysleepyboy]

Done well finding a spot to park any sort of car on the market place in Olney!!!

[TrabbieRonnie]

On 24/02/2026 at 23:17, Zelandeth said:

It does seem to be a very solid car in terms of rust - one of the main reasons I jumped at it when I did.  It needs the engine, brakes, steering, fuel system, suspension and electrics sorted...but at least it's not rusty!

At least as far as I've been able to find - there is a lot of filler under the paint in some areas - but generally not where I'd be expecting it to hide rot.  Like the boot lid where it's like 1/8" thick!  I literally had to chisel some off so the latch could be fitted - it was so thick the linkage from the handle and the bolts wouldn't reach...

I've got rust along the lip of the back arches, probably where the sill meets the rear wheel well on the offside (already done the nearside, just haven't dug out the the other one for a look yet!), the aforementioned nearside front wing bottom, and around the indicators at the top of both front wings.

I have to say though, the chassis is immaculate, and even the body rust isn't that  serious.  Well built cars.

I'm ordering a wing bottom repair panel to speed up that repair, might fibreglass and filler the bit around the indicators this time round, and rub down and filler the wheelarch lips at the back.  I'm going to paint her in coach enamel as I go, I've seen it done on YouTube, wcpgw?!

I haven't found any filler yet, just good honest rust.  I think the red paint job is old, which ties in with the story of it having been painted in Malaya.

Great to see the Trabbi out and about, really useful wee cars... I shove mine about now and then just to check the brakes haven't seized on, but should use her more.

[Six-cylinder]

14 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

I was following someone in a giant Range Rover (complete with illegally spaced private plate, blacked out everything and silly window tints) into this car park today.  I could virtually feel the hatred as they had to do a 6 point turn to even get around the corner in the carpark and I just zapped straight into this gap with zero effort.

Driving a small car does have bonuses.  Glad I wasn't in the Volvo or I'd have had to go hunting elsewhere for a space myself.

The very reason I use a Fiat Seicento or Morris 1300 for local errands!

Last Saturday I went to a car meeting at the Gliding Club Dunstable, they were use to me bringing the Rolls Royce and several burst out laughing when I arrived in the Seicento!🤣

[Zelandeth]

Heard back from Headline MK today.  The Rover's head has been pressure tested (good) and the valves have been vacuum tested which shows them to be seating perfectly.  

They were a bit concerned about some of the pitting around the water ways so I've dropped off a head gasket to help them get their bearings for bits which may or may not be an issue.  If any welded repairs are needed before the lightest of light skims they will be made.  We're on the same page of "Anything it needs it gets" but equally there's no need to make work where it's unnecessary.

[Zelandeth]

They have carefully checked the head and are happy that none of the pitting in any way affects any of the sealing surfaces, so no welding required.  It's passed all the tests thrown at it and just needed the lightest of light skims to clean and true it up.

Just need to collect it and get it refitted.  Which at the rate I'm getting to things at the moment will probably be somewhere around summer 2029 it feels like.

Stopped by to speak to Volvo a couple of days ago with a view to getting this lot oil tight again.  My intention was to basically just buy every oil seal for the cam cover/inlet manifold area in general.

Guess what.  Not a single one of them is still on the parts system.  Apparently 2010 is the furthest their lookup system now goes so with a 2007 car I'm out of luck.  Wonderful.

Great.  So I'm going to have to play the fscking Autodoc parts lottery again most likely.  The motor factor I'd normally use is an hour and a half round trip away and I quite simply can't spare that time at the moment.  Guess I could try MPD or Bedford Battery again...but inclined not to given they seemed to consider retail customers with the same disdain you would something unpleasant you need to scrape off your shoe the last few times I've used either.

So am doing the right thing and ignoring that until I've an hour or two to sit down at an actual computer - god only knows when that will be.

At least the weather has dried up for 30 seconds so I've been able to enjoy not having to deal with wrangling a huge car for my daily errands again.

Both it and the Volvo also desperately need a good valet as they're both bloody filthy.

Edited March 10 by Zelandeth
Correction of autocorrect (again).

[Zelandeth]

Mmm shiny.

Hopefully will eventually find time to get it refitted.

[MrBig]

22 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Stopped by to speak to Volvo a couple of days ago with a view to getting this lot oil tight again.  My intention was to basically just buy every oil seal for the cam cover/inlet manifold area in general.

Guess what.  Not a single one of them is still on the parts system.  Apparently 2010 is the furthest their lookup system now goes so with a 2007 car I'm out of luck.  Wonderful.

Just had quick look at this, obviously I'm not sure exactly which model/engine you have, but my guess is they either couldn't find them on the system or simply couldn't be arsed. I might be able to help if you want to PM me your VIN or reg. I can see cars going back to the 740/760 so 2007 should be covered!

[Zelandeth]

57 minutes ago, MrBig said:

Just had quick look at this, obviously I'm not sure exactly which model/engine you have, but my guess is they either couldn't find them on the system or simply couldn't be arsed. I might be able to help if you want to PM me your VIN or reg. I can see cars going back to the 740/760 so 2007 should be covered!

I did get a distinct whiff of "Really can't be arsed, why are you making me put my phone down?" about the guy on the desk I have to admit.  I did wonder if I should just try going back on another day.  Last time I was there they were really helpful, even if as I expected the part itself was NLA - they got me the number which was really all I was after to keep an eye out for (the always broken bit of trim around the driver's seatbelt slot in the B pillar).

Reg on this is WU07NTJ.  I'm not absolutely 100% exactly where the oil is coming from, but mostly looks to be from around the cam cover in general - so I was intending to just go in armed with all the most likely candidates until I hopefully found something obvious or had just replaced everything.

[MrBig]

This is what I can find so far. If you need me to hunt anything specific down send me a PM and I'll have another look. The fact that they have prices listed I assume means they are available.

Main rocker cover gasket: 30713459 - £52.50
Camshaft position sensor O-ring: 30756062 - £5.60
Oil filler cap gasket: 30677740 - £8.10
Sealing ring (O/S end of the head): 8631561 - £10.80

[High Jetter]

£52.50 for a RCG? I thought, so chucked it into Google and cam up with this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/205804190702?chn=ps&_ul=GB&mkevt=1&mkcid=28&google_free_listing_action=view_item

Not guaranteeing it's right, but her does list V70 on the listing and it might have other bits you need.

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, High Jetter said:

£52.50 for a RCG? I thought, so chucked it into Google and cam up with this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/205804190702?chn=ps&_ul=GB&mkevt=1&mkcid=28&google_free_listing_action=view_item

Not guaranteeing it's right, but her does list V70 on the listing and it might have other bits you need.

Honestly if I know it's right and it'll last another 18 years, that sounds cheap to me.  I've had nothing but headaches with random no name parts over the last few years.  I'd rather pay £50 for something I change once than £25 and I have to be in there again six months later.  

Especially as I have to mess around with the fuel system to get to it, and I can't quite express enough how much I Do Not Like disturbing bits of a common rail diesel fuel system.

Useful to see though - does confirm to me that the little doodad below the oil filler vanishing into the cover does indeed have to do with the swirl flaps.  I had always assumed that to be the case, but had never got around to confirming it.

In fairness I tend to want to put my tail between my legs and run away screaming like a little girl whenever I take the cover off and see how much stuff there is covering this engine - especially as I have absolutely no idea what about half of it even does.

The XJ-S engine was probably even more busy (and was definitely less sensibly laid out) but at least I could look at (nearly) everything and tell what it did.

[High Jetter]

One bit at a time, sweet Jesus ..

[ruffgeezer]

@Zelandeth in fairness I did replace the swirlflaps when we owned it so it may just be shit aftermarket parts (or ham fisted fitment!) 

Edit:- https://ebay.us/m/NizUqK is the one I fitted in 2023

I'd certainly give it all a clean down before worrying too much about it.

[Zelandeth]

10 hours ago, ruffgeezer said:

@Zelandeth in fairness I did replace the swirlflaps when we owned it so it may just be shit aftermarket parts (or ham fisted fitment!) 

Edit:- https://ebay.us/m/NizUqK is the one I fitted in 2023

I'd certainly give it all a clean down before worrying too much about it.

Good to know the flaps have been done.  

Any things I need to be aware of pulling that lot off (aside from the bastard spline headed screws I'll need to buy bits for), or is it pretty self explanatory?

I did wash it down a month or two back and after an hour of driving there was oil all over the top end again - as best I can tell it's coming from around the cam cover but with how hard it is to actually see anything because it's all buried under itself it's hard to say.

I didn't immediately notice it was dripping on the drive as there's still a huge oil stain there from where the XJ-S used to park!

Package arrived today containing another inlet manifold gasket for the Rover so I can reunite that with the head (again).  Also grabbed a new windscreen seal while I was at it as the one on there has shrunk just enough to ensure that it's not even close to water tight.

Something I was reminded of today while out and about in the Trabant was that I still don't quite understand how it is so unbothered by strong side winds.  It's been bloody windy here today and you'd tend to expect a car that's so light and has a quite upright profile to be tossed around like a leaf.  It really isn't though.  Honestly the Volvo gets shoved around more than it does.  You're aware of the wind as you can hear it, but the car seems to track surprisingly straight despite that.  Not really useful information, but a random observation I just found surprised me a bit.

[ruffgeezer]

I seem to recall it being a bit fiddly to get the flaps back in - it was a filthy job too - but other than having to lift the injectors to do it, it must have been reasonably unremarkable as I don't remember a lot about doing it!

[Zelandeth]

On 13/03/2026 at 07:44, ruffgeezer said:

I seem to recall it being a bit fiddly to get the flaps back in - it was a filthy job too - but other than having to lift the injectors to do it, it must have been reasonably unremarkable as I don't remember a lot about doing it!

Yeah, not really remembering a job is usually a good indication it wasn't too traumatic!

Unlike whacking your head on the corner of the boot lid which I did this afternoon.  Not as painful as doing the same on the Lada where the corner was literally 90 degree folded sheet metal, but pretty close!  Had me seeing stars for a good few seconds.

I may have entered a raffle this evening which is going to lend me in a whole world of pain if I did win.  Had to do some digging to confirm I could indeed drive it without needing additional licence entitlement.  That's only half the fun though, I'd need to figure out somewhere secure to rent to store the thing and that wouldn't be cheap.  However you only live once, so sod it.  Will deal with that if we need to.  Definitely wouldn't get away with putting this one on the drive - neighbours would probably simultaneously all queue up to murder me.

Not quite sure how I'd explain that one to the rest of the family either.  It's a raffle though, so probably just forget about it now and never hear about it again.  I kinda hope!

Grabbed oil and coolant over the weekend, so a replacement for the crappy O-ring that came with the head gasket set from Wadham's and some free time are now all that's standing between me and putting the Rover back together.  I will be sending them an email about that O-ring as well as that's really not on for a part that's as much of a pain in the tail to replace as that is.  Imagine if it failed it would eject coolant pretty catastrophically rapidly too.

[Zelandeth]

...I forgot to pick up and take the fscking O-ring with me when I went out earlier didn't I.

Which I realised precisely 10 seconds after parking up at the place I had planned to grab the replacement.

Guess that'll be a job for tomorrow then. Which is annoying as the errands I need to do tomorrow are all in the exact opposite direction.

If I had any semblance of short term memory I'd be massively more productive!

[beko1987]

33 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

...I forgot to pick up and take the fscking O-ring with me when I went out earlier didn't I.

Which I realised precisely 10 seconds after parking up at the place I had planned to grab the replacement.

Guess that'll be a job for tomorrow then. Which is annoying as the errands I need to do tomorrow are all in the exact opposite direction.

If I had any semblance of short term memory I'd be massively more productive!

Feel your pain. I had to pick my daughter up and opposite there was a lady who wanted some vacuum wands, and I said I'd drop them off (sold her the hetty last year and did put shit wands on it then, fair enough).

Guess what I realised I'd forgotten when I parked up and eva jumped in 😡 Back across thame, didn't even turn the car off, ran inside, grabbed the wands, back across thame , up and down the gears as it's all tiny local roads. Probably used the fiver I'd charged her for the stuff just in diesel cos I'm an idiot and forgot to pick them up despite leaving them in the way of the front door... I just moved it out the way without a 2nd thought and into the car 😂

Go put the o ring in the car NOW . Then when you forget tomorrow you won't have done.

This plan does involve you jumping in the same car as the o ring tomorrow though 🤔

[Six-cylinder]

1 hour ago, beko1987 said:

Go put the o ring in the car NOW . Then when you forget tomorrow you won't have done.

This plan does involve you jumping in the same car as the o ring tomorrow though 🤔

Slowsilver is helping me Wednesday, today I have started colleting the things I will need in 2 days. things like a pair of old welly boots to cut up as pads for mounting the Steamer truck on the Rolls Royce.

[LightBulbFun]

3 minutes ago, Six-cylinder said:

Slowsilver is helping me Wednesday, today I have started colleting the things I will need in 2 days. things like a pair of old welly boots to cut up as pads for mounting the Steamer truck on the Rolls Royce.

a few days from now

@Mrs6C: "I am going to tend to the orchard, you seen my wellys?"

@Six-cylinder "N-No..."