1984 Trabant 601S

[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.

[igor]

"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."

How did it get an mot? Is it not a requirement to fit headlights that dip in the correct direction? Pretty sure it is here in New Zealand.

[Zelandeth]

Jan 11, 2024 20:17:32 GMT igor said:

"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."

How did it get an mot? Is it not a requirement to fit headlights that dip in the correct direction? Pretty sure it is here in New Zealand.

So long as the beam pattern doesn't kick up to the wrong side you're fine - that can be managed with a bit of black tape on the lens.

There's clear evidence of several generations of that having been applied to the lights on this.

It's a really unsightly solution though, and is wasting a chunk of light output. If lights were hard to get hold of I could understand it more, but when you can easily get a pair for around £30 delivered it really doesn't seem worth messing about with stickers or tape. I think pre-84 cars which used R2 rather than H4 headlights are trickier as the bowl mounting lugs are different and the generic 7" round lights won't just drop in.

[glenanderson]

Jan 11, 2024 18:20:15 GMT Zelandeth said:

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.

Never surprises me any more just how bone idle (or cackhanded) most people are.

[blackpopracing]

Stick a variable potentiometer in the dash lighting - adjust to suit then?

[Zelandeth]

Handful 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 no matter what you do.



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 - comparing notes with another owner has led us to believe it's Papyrus, Atlas white being the brighter white.

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. It may get stuffed through the "parts washer" in future if I find a spare half hour some day.

[glenanderson]

The wiring on mine was so poor I just stripped the whole lot out and redid it from scratch.

[PhilA]

The small brass brushes for Dremel tools, used as a toothbrush do a very good job of cleaning pmma grooves of dirt when used with watered down dish soap. Just be gentle and follow the pattern.

Phil

[Zelandeth]

Ford Ivory White looks to be a far more acceptable match to the actual colour of the car. Not absolutely perfect as it's a touch too yellow if you look closely, but I think more than adequate for this application I think.



The tail light lenses were chucked the the parts washer this afternoon while I was busy elsewhere. Any resemblance to a domestic dishwasher is entirely coincidental...



Predictably they came out looking like new. All of the ingrained grime I'd been fighting to remove by hand is long gone.



Hard to tell in a photo, but they had always looked a little cloudy on the car before due to grime on the inside 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 floors inside the car.





This stuff is a rust converter which also seals a surface and acts as a primer that can be directly over painted.

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.

[Rich]

Given the initial inspection for corrosion should be visual, if it looks neat and tidy upon inspection there should be no cause for a tester to poke holes 😂

[Zelandeth]

Jan 14, 2024 21:01:52 GMT Rich said:

Given the initial inspection for corrosion should be visual, if it looks neat and tidy upon inspection there should be no cause for a tester to poke holes 😂

The underside is all nicely painted/under sealed...it's the inside that's a mess because there's obviously been water getting in (and being trapped in the car) for some considerable amount of time. The clock was definitely ticking when I got the car.

[Zelandeth]

Time to 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 just lifting off the back of the car.



I'm not new to this game though, so was prepared for this seemingly simple task to turn into a headache. However it actually was exactly as simple as it looked.



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



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

All back together in less than ten minutes, including transferring the seal from the old backing plate to the new one.

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.

[jimi]

You could always spray it a panel at a time (once its a bit warmer), the vents on the C pillar look close to the new paint ?

[Zelandeth]

Jan 15, 2024 16:31:52 GMT jimi said:

You could always spray it a panel at a time (once its a bit warmer), the vents on the C pillar look close to the new paint ?

I hadn't noticed that - looking at a few of the photos I have here I think they may just be a neutral white like the bumpers at the moment.

EDIT: I was wrong, they're just a natural aluminium finish it looks like.


Given there tended to be a bit of a difference between the various materials on the car from the factory, if it were resprayed and everything matched perfectly I think it might look a bit odd actually. So I don't mind there being a bit of a really subtle two-tone look going on so long as all of the various parts involved match each other.

It's kind of hard to tell what colour the car will actually look after it's properly cleaned anyway as the paint is hilariously badly oxidised. I suspect it may well darken down quite a bit when polished.

I doubt I'll end up looking at painting the whole car, it's never going to be a concourse example and so long as it looks reasonably tidy and cared for rather than neglected I'll be happy.

-- -- --

Had another quick win in terms of ticking something else off the to do list this afternoon as this little (surprisingly heavy) box arrived this morning, vastly overpacked in a container the size of a large shoebox.



This is the dip/main beam toggle relay for the Trabant. The one on the car was dead meaning that the headlights only worked on dipped beam.

Simple matter of undoing the two 8mm mounting bolts, unplugging the wires and then reversing the process. I did remove the one bolt that holds the fuse box in to hinge it out of the way just to make access a bit easier. You can absolutely do it without this step but as it takes about 20 seconds I figured being able to see what I was doing was worth that.

The old relay has been unbolted below and was just waiting for me to swap the wiring over - I did this one connector at a time to ensure I didn't get anything crossed over.



Here's what was left of the old one...Not surprising it didn't work.



Quite why someone had dismantled it and completely removed the actuator arm from the solenoid I'll never know.

New one was connected up, bolted in place and the fusebox was re-secured in its correct location.



I can confirm that the headlights now work correctly, toggling between dip and main beam with a very satisfying mechanical "Ka-clack!" noise from the relay when you tap the indicator stalk towards you.



Once the beam height adjustment has been fine tuned and I've swapped out a few blackened looking lamps in the tail lights I think we can tick the lighting systems off the list as done.

Another really quick and simple job which was as simple as it should be. Really helpful that there's such a following for these little cars though that oddball components like this are still readily available. This is obviously at least a somewhat specialised part and while I am sure there's a more modern solution which could be engineered to work, just being able to drop in an original spec part is far easier.

[austinpowers]

With regards to the paint, if it is still the original paint on the car. You should find that it polishes up with out to much effort.
Even if has gone flat and the dirt has not come off with a good wash. It will come up really shiny with just some normal car polish.

[glenanderson]

I used a VW Beetle relay on my rewire, because that was the only other vehicle in my experience that used that type of dipswitch. Back in the late 90s Trabant parts were harder to source in the UK than they are now. My only “reliable” source at that time was a fantastically eccentric chap called Graham Goodall, and it would involve lengthy phone calls, the posting of cheques and a fairly long wait. 

[Zelandeth]

This afternoon I added roughly 4.5kg to the weight of the Trabant in the form of rust proofing added to the floors.





Will need to touch in a few areas with a smaller brush, but most of it is now protected at least. Feel better about that than bare surface rust covering about 80% of the surface. Two coats of rust converter did go on there before the sealant today so I've done what I can.

Telling my OCD that I *really* don't need to apply something near to body colour over that once it has dried as 100% of this will be hidden under the carpets so nobody will ever see it...Well aside from the bottom of the B pillar just ahead of the doors, that will need to be painted because it's visible. The floor though really doesn't matter visually...nobody will ever know. Except for me. I hate my brain sometimes (read: nearly all the time).

Curious to see if that makes any difference to the noise levels, not really expecting so.

[Zelandeth]

Some fancy Western luxury has now been fully installed in the Trabant.





Will have to see how accurately it tracks.

Also found enough of the little plastic clips to properly resecure the little rubber shield over the cooling fan so it doesn't rattle any more.

[teaboy]

Great progress.
I have to say how much happier I am now the floor is not red rusty.
I expect you are too.

[Zelandeth]

While the Trabant's water ingress issues have definitely been vastly reduced since I've been fettling it, but we definitely still have quite a bit getting in on the passenger side.



Quite a bit of that seemed to be coming in actually through the passenger door. The door card was always wet and I'd noted that the door pocket would actually fill up with water when it rained.

As soon as I pulled the door card off (3 screws and about 60 seconds) a likely candidate for this became apparent sitting in the bottom of the door cavity. Which also explained why that window rattled so badly.



That thing in the bottom of the door, that's the rail that the window should be sitting on. Also acting as a gutter to direct water running down the glass to drip off at either end, away from the door card etc.

The glass was essentially just balanced on the metal rollers that the rail should run on. How it hadn't fallen off or been damaged I've no idea. The rail is in pretty rough shape, but I wouldn't have condemned it. The very ends are a bit crispy, but I've seen far worse. The biggest issue (aside from the window glass having escaped) is that it's been bent quite substantially. I've straightened it as best I can, but it's still not right. A new one is €30 from Trabantwelt, so hardly the end of the world. While the glass isn't sitting as deeply in the channel as it ideally should be, I have managed to coerce everything more or less back to where it should be.



I suspect there would have been some sort of sealant to help bond the glass to the carrier originally as well.

I will need to pull a lot of this apart when I change the window rubbers anyway so I'm not worrying too much about it right now. I've just made a mental note not to open that window again if I don't have to until I've had a chance to get things properly fastened together. There's no chance of it actually falling apart on its own now though and the door doesn't rattle anywhere near as much. Will it help keep the rain out? Remains to be seen. I did look at the driver's side one before and everything looked okay.

Another order for assorted miscellaneous parts has been made.

[] Window lifting rail as the ends have rotted off this one.
[] 20 trim clips as I'm missing all but one or two in each door.
[] Replacement for the mostly missing retaining clips for the engine jacket.
[] Cooling fan to cowl gasket.
[] Replacement for the missing rubber stoppers the bonnet should sit on.
[] New sill kick plates as these are pretty scabby and I suspect will be in several pieces once they're removed.

All small things individually, but will add up at the end of the day.