Zel's Fleet Blog - Renault, Rover, Invacar, Trabant, Peugeot & Sinclair C5

[Zelandeth]

Still very short on stamina but I did manage an hour's usefulness this afternoon.

Between my knackered one, half a donated one and a service kit I had enough bits to re-re-rebuild a mechanical fuel pump for the Rover.



Still a right faff trying to get the rearmost bolt back in. Really doesn't look like it should be anywhere near as awkward to get to as it is.



Fuel filter is staying where it is for now as it does seem that there's quite a bit of sediment being pulled through from the tank and it's far easier to monitor that when the filter is horizontal.

The engine was run fully up to temperature and so far the pump seems to be behaving. I've now left everything to cool again at which point I will re-check for any leaks. How far do I trust it not to leak? About this far.



Given my history with this fuel system the answer is "Not at all." Fully expecting this to start misbehaving in some way pretty much immediately.

Having a working (for now) mechanical pump back in the Rover has allowed me to retrieve this pump though which I can now return to TPA.



Which I'll hopefully get done in the next few days, then can actually look at getting her out of the garage for the first time this year. Precisely how it's already June I've no idea.

[Zelandeth]

Some considerable number of months ago I pulled the cylinder heads off a certain Rover P6. This resulted in my garage ending up looking like even more of a disaster area once I was done than usual. TPA had been all but buried and walking past her to gain access to the rear of the garage had started to involve an ever increasing amount of mountaineering. Owning to the garage being so narrow it's just annoying enough to squeeze in past a car parked in there that instead putting things away properly to just pile items up on and around the rear end of the car that's parked there. Especially as the paint is in such a state that scratching it really isn't high on the worry list as you'd never notice anyway. The intention is always for this to be a transitionary state of things and that you'll go back later to tidy up properly...However that keeps not happening. My garage is an absolute disaster at the best of times and it makes my teeth itch every time I even think about it - but I've just never had enough time in a single block available to get a skip in and pull *everything* out to ascertain what needs to stay, what needs to go, to get a LOAD of shelving installed at the far end, then to put everything that should stay back in. This had originally been planned as the big summer project for 2020 - but then 2020 happened instead.

Knowing that relocation is something that's at least on the horizon nowadays also kind of damps the enthusiasm to make a start on the job as well, especially as the lofts are in a similar state. I'd just as soon have a skip on hand to sift the junk into between the house and the van when we're moving stuff out of the house rather than have to move it all out to just put it back in again. Especially as I'm still going to be trying to fit a quart into a pint pot at the end of the day as this house just flat out does not have enough storage for the four of us.

I wouldn't say that today I actually tidied up, but I did bring some order to the chaos and mostly unbury the car to allow for this to happen.



Which made it far less of an uncomfortable job to reinstate the fuel pump as I wasn't trying to do the job all but laying on the roof as I was when I "borrowed" it for the Rover.



I really do need to pull that top fuel tank strap and put the closed cell foam strip I bought to fill out the of a gap at the top in there, that "I'll get back to that next week" bit of cardboard has been in there for something like four years now I think. I mean, it's doing the job just fine, but it don't half look sketchy and bugs me every time I open the cover. Unfortunately every time I then close said cover I then forget about it again after about 60 seconds until the next time I go to put fuel in or do a fluids check!

Really do want to have a proper crawl over the car before she actually goes on the road this year anyway and she's due a service anyway. I'll plan on getting that foam installed as part of that set of jobs.

As she was rolled back mostly out of the garage though, it would have been rude not to at least confirm whether the battery needed to be charged and if the carb was going to protest at being ignored for the last nine months.

Of course she only started first time and idled as though she was parked yesterday. Was left running for probably half an hour or so to get everything nicely warmed through while I ferried a lot of the tools and such like that had slowly migrated out of the garage over the last few months back to where they actually live.



Hopefully actually get her out on the road again this week.

The Rover - somewhat to my surprise - hasn't yet dumped large amounts of fuel all over my driveway. Not sure if I dare let it know I've noticed...

For I think the first time in my ownership the pump looks to be completely dry after sitting overnight. Kind of at the point where I need to actually start test driving it to see if it's going to continue cooperating. Which fills me with a certain amount of dread given its record so far for appearing to work perfectly right up till the point where I start relaxing and thinking the fuel system is behaving before deciding to NOT work very suddenly. It's not going to get any more reliable just sitting on the driveway though. That said, sorting the oil leak from the filter housing absolutely needs to happen before any real distance is covered on the road. That's not a difficult job...Six (I think) bolts, remove, clean up, replace gasket, prime oil pump, reassemble.



However access looks absolutely awful so I've been putting that off as I know it's just going to be one of those jobs which ends up testing my patience. Given how critical doing the job properly is to the oil pump actually working, it's really not one that you want to be doing with a frayed temper either.

The whole car also really needs a deep clean as there's moss growing basically everywhere.



A task which I'm sure is going to do a great job of reminding me how much of a small car that a P6 is not.

Oh, and I need to finish my investigations into what was going on with the Trabant before turning this pile of bits back into an engine.



Well I can't claim I'm not spoiled for choice on what to work on this week! The Partner is due an oil & filter change too.

[Zelandeth]

Mmm...40 year old grime.



Just what you want on an air cooled engine.



Quite a few fins were plugged solid on both cylinders.

This was deployed after drowning the whole area in degreaser.



Well...Something which claimed to be degreaser. Not actually sure it made the slightest difference to be honest. It's doing jobs like this where I do miss the ability of the pressure washer we had at work to deliver hot as well as cold water. Heat really did make a massive difference when you were trying to clean up something like this.

To call it clean would be vastly over selling it, but it's a lot cleaner than it was.



I've visually confirmed that all of the fins are now clear. Hopefully the removal of the vast majority of the slimy residue will help stop dust and general grime from sticking there in the future. Pulling the shrouds and cleaning everything under them really probably should be an annual service item given how clogged things could get without any way to tell.

Pretty obvious why I wanted to give things a clean before I went unbolting anything else though I think.

[Zelandeth]

Occasional distraction time.

Those of you who have followed this blog for a while will be well aware that I have a major problem when it comes to portable Toshiba computers from the 80s and early 90s. As such I have accumulated quite a collection of them. This can all be traced back to my father, who worked in the offshore logistics and positioning sector in the very early 90s, during the heyday of radio navigation just before the arrival of GPS. Seeing these huge grey slabs with their vivid amber plasma displays back then they seemed like something straight out of a sci fi movie to 7-or-thereabouts year old me. They were singularly responsible for what has become a lifelong interest in technology from that sort of era and far older. In addition to just collecting them in general, I've long had a mission in mind to complete the lineup of the ones which my father used to bring back from work. These consisted of the T5200/200 which was the big bruiser of the bunch and was more powerful than his office machine at the time. The general do-anything machines were T3200s, which were 286 based and relatively old by the the time we were seeing them, but they were solid and reliable work horses. They also have a fantastically strange sounding hard disk drive. The smaller form factor was taken up by several T3100es, and a couple of eye-wateringly expensive T3100SX models which were noteworthy by being properly portable and capable of running on battery power.

That last model, the T3100SX was the one which I'd been stuck tracking down for a few years. They've not turned up on eBay all that regularly and when they have they've usually sold for well over £150. More than I was willing to pay for a machine I knew was always going to end up being subject to a dice roll as to whether it would be restorable. Supposedly working examples usually fetched north of £400, waaaay outside my budget.

Nevertheless I'm not one to be discouraged and this was one of those areas where I was happy to play the long game, so I left a saved search on eBay and just kept an eye on the listings when they popped up a couple of times a year.

A few months ago a rough looking machine with a broken display popped up. I was at least 85% sure that I still had a good display panel in storage from a machine I stripped for parts 20+ years ago. So I took a punt on it. Bit of a sad looking thing, but even if it only ends up being a static exhibit it's nice to have the whole lineup I remember from an enjoyable portion of my childhood together again.



Surprisingly only a couple of weeks later another another one turned up. This looked even more rough, but had an intact looking display and more importantly was up for a buy-it-now price of only £25. If I was so inclined I could sell just the keyboard on for more than that, so it was a very cheap parts machine even if it was beyond saving. Suffice to say I hammered the "buy" button the second I read the listing.

Say hello to machine number two.



The fact that there is evidence of corrosive goo actually having leaked out of the machine didn't bode well for this ever working again though.



Nevertheless the display looks to be intact and doesn't have any visible burn in, so even if that's all I manage to save from it, it's still proven to be really good value. It also came with all of the originally bundled software and documentation which as a collector is really nice to have.

A couple of days ago *another* one popped up. This was set with a buy it now of £65. Which is cheap for one of these. I did procrastinate over it for a while before deciding not to buy it. May is a very expensive month in this family courtesy of ConFuzzled, so I decided to be sensible.

Fast forward to lunchtime, and an email arrived. "The seller is now offering this item to you for £50!"

Fine. That was cheap enough that it broke my resolve and I bought it.

I didn't realise at the time, but that also came with the original case and power supply. So I do now have a complete setup between them all. Even if the power supply is dead it's still useful as the plug it connects to the machine with is proprietary, and the case is plenty large enough to house an alternative supply within.

Unlike the first two, this one was actually packaged really well by the seller. Turned up in a box about the size of a full size suitcase. Thank you so much for being apparently the one guy on eBay who knows and cares enough to ship these things properly.

So here's machine number three.



This is by FAR the cleanest of the three. Notably there is absolutely zero externally visible corrosion on the case, around the ports or on the battery packs. The only externally visible damage is one broken stabiliser on the space bar. I reckon this may well end up being the one we try to restore initially.

I figured this evening I'd crack open the "no hope" machine to see how bad it really was.

The main thing I wanted this for was the display panel. So we were already ahead, anything else is a bonus - though I'd really like to also salvage the hard disk as they're an odd standard in these (a running theme for Toshiba in the 80s/early 90s...) so are kind of hard to find. Though said drive is right behind that cover in the above photo showing where battery/capacitor goo had leaked out around, so I'm not going to hold my breath.

No, this isn't a great start.



Crusty!



Nichicon caps of this era up to their usual tricks. Plus leakage from both the RTC battery *and* the external battery packs.

Yeah, I think this power supply board may be a lost cause...that is just nasty.





Hard to tell in the photo as the camera hasn't really picked it up but I'm pretty sure there are several suspect looking traces there.

The hard disk...who knows. It's hard to actually see it as it's hidden away under an RF shield so this is all I can really see of it at the moment.



Getting that out involves removing the whole cage it's attached to...and I think a whole lot of stuff needs to come out to get that out as I recall. I've not gone digging that far yet. I can't test it until I've got one of these machines up anyway as the data and power are combined, I can't just hook up a molex connector and see if it spins up.

What I can *see* of the logic board itself doesn't actually look terrible to be honest save for some slightly green pins on the BIOS EPROM chip. So that might be saveable.



It doesn't look wonderful either mind you. Not bad enough I immediately dismiss it as beyond hope though. What I may well do is track down a 5V line on there, unplug the internal power supply, and just hook it up to an external power supply and see what happens. That should, if the board is okay, result in the system at least going through the POST process. If there's an accessible 12V line that should also allow the hard disk to try to spin up. I will NOT do this with the display attached as I don't want the inverter for the display powering up until I've checked it for leaking caps. An external VGA monitor will let me see if anything happens though. Would be a nice "proof of life" test if nothing else. As said this has always been a parts donor in my mind, just a matter of figuring out how much we can save.

Next step will be to pull the covers off one of the slightly cleaner looking examples to see how bad it is. Hopefully in better shape than this one.

[Zelandeth]

Actually had a spare hour for tinkering this afternoon - so of course 15 minutes into that time it started raining.



Great. Wonderful. Perfect.

The Rover successfully made a run a couple of miles to and from a destination without any issues or anything falling off. Well, completely falling off anyway. This badge is clearly attempting to make a bid for freedom.



One of the pins has broken off the back of it, so that's going to be a self adhesive pad job until a replacement badge turns up.

Similarly I noticed that pretty much all of the mounting points for the radiator grill look like this.



I think getting some reinforcement around there is something I'll need to look into. There's really not much left to reinforce, so I think attaching an L shaped metal or plastic strip wrapping around underneath the back of the grill and re-drilling the mounting hole in that will be the way to go there. I should be able to spread the load out over a larger area doing that, as I'm sure going on 50 year old plastic simply having gone brittle is one of the main factors at play here.

I'm declaring this officially off the road again now though until I've had the time and patience on hand to cure the oil leak. It has predictably got worse and is now a solid one or two drips a second at idle. Can't say I'm that surprised, leaks like that don't usually fix themselves.

What this test did allow me to do though was to let the engine idle for a long while, then shut it down for ~10 minutes before restarting. I do really have some worries that this car may have hot start issues in the future due to vapour lock. While on this occasion it started on what was still in the float bowls, it was a good 20 seconds or so before we had any appreciable amount of fuel actually being delivered through the filter. We'll just need to keep an eye on that and see if it does turn out to be an issue in the real world once we're driving it. Also reckon I might need to dial the timing back a touch as she always starts with a couple of proper diesel knocks when hot, and it sounds like the engine is fighting against the starter sometimes when it starts spinning. That's an easy one to experiment with though. Overall though aside from the oil leak, the car seems to be actually running the best it has since it arrived here now. I'm sure it will punish me for making that assumption soon enough though!


Moving onto the Trabant. While I had things mostly apart anyway I wanted to do a little testing to make sure that the bearings in the fan and alternator were in decent shape. The fan belt wasn't looking particularly happy either so it seemed a good opportunity to fit a new one.



It was quite badly glazed as well from being loose for quite a while.

Getting the belt off is one of the tasks which is actually a bit on the long winded side on this car. The main reason for this is that as you might have spotted, that the belt actually drives the fan from the back - so the belt runs from the crank pulley, to the alternator then vanishes into the cooling shroud. So to get to it you need to pull the main cooling shroud off. This is normally completely hidden from view.



This only takes ten minutes and requires nothing more sophisticated than a 10mm spanner, but I'm sure could cause a fair amount of cursing if you found yourself having to swap a belt at the side of the road.

The other oddity is that to remove the belt you need to disconnect the coil to points wiring. This is because the points (or in this case electronic module which has replaced them) is attached to the end of the crankshaft rather than being on a separate distributor.

This wire according to the previous owner had required repair when it had managed to get itself into the fan belt at some point in the past. No doubt the reason for this bit of tape.



Which turned out to contain a large amount of water and three bullet connectors.



Did the job, and will likely continue to for some time with a bit of grease to keep the water out. However I've got some proper waterproof latching four way connectors somewhere so will snip these out and install one of those as it will be far more secure and should eliminate the potential for corrosion related dodgy connections in future. For now I've left it sans tape as that seemed to be mainly be doing a good job of capturing water in the connection and not letting it dry out.

Actually looking inside the points compartment revealed some other historic repairs.



Guessing the green wire had got itself into the pickup at some point. I decided that I could go one better than some paper wrapped in clear tape and got some heatshrink involved. Also added some where the wiring goes into the compartment as there was some evidence of the wire chafing there. Sorry, I didn't have any black in stock in a large enough diameter, so you'll just have to deal with there being a tiny bit of red heatshrink tubing visible.



The wiring was then routed in such a way to ensure that it was encouraged to stay well clear of the fan belt.



I'll probably cable tie it to the fuel line which follows a similar route for the sake of ensuring it stays put once I've replaced the connector (ensuring that one end is still removable to allow for belt changes).

The bearings in the fan seem to be in really good shape. It's quiet and spins freely enough that it was quite happily windmilling in the slight breeze today. If spin by hand it would take a good 20-30 seconds to stop again. The alternator isn't what I'd call noisy but the bearings there definitely aren't in their first flush of youth. Nothing which is contributing to the overall mechanical noise though - confirmed by running the engine briefly with the belt removed.

Putting the fan back in place and fitting the new belt is precisely as far as I got today as I was in the middle of doing that when the rain properly arrived so that's where we downed tools and retreated back inside.

[Zelandeth]

Ran out of time to get an update on here yesterday - so have that one prior to today's (rather lengthy) update. I'm going to split these into separate posts for the sake of my own sanity.

-- -- --

Didn't get a whole lot done at the weekend because the weather was being so incredibly erratic on Saturday, and the moment I stepped outside when I was available it immediately started raining. Sunday I was mostly busy so only had a few minutes really spare. Nevertheless I was determined to get something done, however small.

Previously we identified this connection between the vehicle and engine sides of the ignition system which I filed under "could be better" when I looked at it.



This clearly wasn't going to be great in a relatively exposed location long term. Especially when two wires pulled out of the crimp terminals pulling the supposedly removable parts apart.

Before and after showing me in the process of switching this out for a more suitable connector for use buried down in the bottom of the engine bay.



There are some areas where it's easy to argue that little progress has been made in the last 40 years or so...but I'd absolutely argue that properly waterproof connectors like these really have been a vast improvement over their predecessors.

Should be a fit and forget solution, but also still allows the wiring to be disconnected without having to open up the points compartment to disconnect things to allow the fan belt to be changed.

The wiring has also been secured to keep it well clear of the fan belt.



Speaking of the points compartment - you all knew I wasn't going to be able to leave it with that bit of red heat shrink sticking out of it didn't you?



Added a bit of additional black tubing to both provide a bit of additional protection to the wiring and to make it look a bit tidier.

Hardly ground breaking work, but I'm glad I was able to at least tick something off the to do list.

-- -- --
-- -- --

Things escalated somewhat this afternoon!





Main mission for the day was to get a look at the rings to confirm they were all present and correct, and generally to look for any further signs of damage. My intention was also to pull the jug of number 2 (I'm numbering the cylinders 1 at the crank pulley end, and 2 at the flywheel end for clarity), to see if I could see any further bits of metal floating around in the case.

Step 1 was simple but awkward. Removing this lot.



Awkward because I had to remove it as one assembly because there's no way to get a (non stubby) wrench on the inboard bolt without first removing the starter motor...and just pulling it off in one piece seemed like less hassle. That heat exchanger is surprisingly heavy but it came off without too much hassle once I figured exactly which way we needed to twist and slide things to fit the manifold between the front valance and the starter motor. If you have a stubby 17mm wrench you could probably do it, but that's not something I have.

I was quite surprised looking inside the big metal assembly which is labelled as a silencer for the heater air supply to find that rather than just being a big box, it is in fact as the name suggests a proper silencer.



I'd expected at best for there to be some metal ribbing in there to help cut down reflected sound, but no...proper padding and everything. Again, surprising areas of attention to detail on a car that people by and large tend to dismiss as being chucked together without a care in the world.


Having the manifold out of the way revealed instantly where a good deal of the oily gunge in the engine bay had come from. Cylinder number 1 had completely blown its exhaust manifold gasket at the top, and number 2 had been fitted with completely the wrong gasket at some point which didn't even come close to actually sealing.

The rings on number 2 were indeed present and what I could see though the exhaust port looked in decent shape. However you can see from this angle what an absolute beating the piston crown took from that bit of metal.



You can clearly see how it's caused the edge of the piston to be mushroomed outwards - I'm pretty sure that this would have caused me issues if I'd left it - while it ran with the engine cold, once it warmed up and things expanded a bit that might be a different story.

Looking at number 1 things started to immediately ring far more alarm bells. For a start the piston skirt looked like this.



That's not just oily dirt - the surface is as deeply ridged there as a ploughed field. This is Not Good.

Even worse, when the piston was lowered there was also clear evidence of it having also ingested foreign matter, albeit less dramatically than number 2.



The head was pulled then to inspect and confirm that theory - and yes, there is definitely evidence of there having been something bouncing around in that combustion chamber - albeit whatever it was has long vanished down the exhaust in this case.



Number 2 is at the top, 1 at the bottom.

Don't read into the surface rust too much - that's likely it having taken a bit of water on when I pressure washed the engine, so I'm to blame for that.

While this piston crown hasn't taken anywhere near the battering that number 2 did there clearly has been something bouncing around in here.



That piston crown was pristine and damage free when I had the head off back in February to change the head gasket.

Between having ascertained that there was absolutely more than one piece of debris involved and having seen damage to the skirt on number 1, pulling both jugs was now something that absolutely definitely had to happen. I'm definitely not the first person to be in here given that one of the nuts was 12mm rather than 13, and 2 of the 8 studs were missing washers below the nuts. This and the exhaust gasket choice makes me somewhat hesitant to trust the attention to detail of whoever last had the top end apart.

I started with number 2...For reasons I don't really know. That theme continues for the rest of this post.

There's no really *horrible* damage (save for what we already knew about), though there is definite signs of a lot of blow by.

Front:



Rear:



Cylinder as we saw when we looked in there the other day does indeed have a few scratches on it. I had an absolute nightmare of a time trying to get the camera to focus properly on this.



The pitting nearer to BDC I find quite interesting as that's the sort of damage I usually associate with rust pitting. Though I know nothing of the history of this engine, and the car did spend some period of time off the road so it may have wound up with a bunch of moisture in the cylinder(s) at some point.

Piston number 1 is rather more gruesome...Those of a mechanically squeamish nature may wish to turn away now.

Front:



Rear:



Ouch. It's hard to see in the photos, but there are honest *chunks* of piston material missing, particularly from in between the rings. That piston is absolutely definitely scrap.

Given the state of the piston, I'm honestly surprised the cylinder isn't worse. It's actually better than number 2 aside from the one scratch at around 8 o'clock which is just deep enough to feel. Which also makes me think that this overheating/seizure damage most likely isn't something that's happened recently, if it had I'd expect witness marks to still be more obvious. With the exception of the one scratch I'd be surprised if most of this doesn't clean up with a good honing - the camera as is often the case with things like this makes it look worse than it seems in person, and that one scratch just below the inlet port is the only one which fails the fingernail test.



What I don't know about either of these however is if they're still circular and straight - though given they're both damaged that's kind of academic, I'm just curious. We're definitely looking at the very least by this point at a pair of new jugs and pistons.

Then I spotted something poking out of the oily pool by where the base of number 2 cylinder sits.



What was fished out of that pool very clearly didn't belong there, nor was it as I had initially hoped a bit of gasket material or similar.





Unlike the previous bit of metal we found this one very clearly is absolutely definitely hardened steel. Even with a pair of pliers on both ends I can't bend it at all. So there's every possibility that this does indeed originate from a bearing somewhere within the engine. Assuming of course that it's not a free gift still in there from a previous failure - as we've seen clear evidence that somebody has been in here before, and that they've not maybe been as careful as we'd like.

The wrist pins were the next items to come out - albeit requiring a little persuasion. Thankfully I managed to avoid pinging any of the retaining clips off to bounce off the ISS, into my eyes, nor did I drop them into the crankcase. Again we're doing number 2 first before moving on to 1. Plenty of pitting visible. While *most* of it is actually where the race sits, there are a few bits which do extend into the bearing running surface. This also needs to be filed under B for bin.



I couldn't see any damage to the bearings themselves - but I was working in bright sunlight and with no magnification on hand so I don't think that means much. I think this was actually from the second cylinder - the photo is mainly to give the curious among you a look at what the bearings look like though, and they both looked in pretty much identical condition.



As was the case with the piston itself, the wrist pin from number 1 was in worse condition. There's both more pitting visible and it's definitely deeper.



Despite the pitting on the wrist pins, both of these bearings felt fine with everything able to move smoothly and no play in the load direction that I could detect by hand.

With the pistons out of the way and looking down into the crank case, there are definitely a few small "bits" in there, but no big chunks of metal that I can see.

That "blob" you can see roughly centre frame in the first image below just appears to be some oily gunk. I thought it might be a bit of metal but poking it with a screwdriver proved it to be liquid.





The most concerning thing I was able to find in this area by a purely visible inspection though was some absolutely horrible looking scoring on the area adjacent to the transfer ports where the disc valve runs. While I imagine a little surface scratching is inevitable here, I'm pretty sure it shouldn't look (and feel) like a brake disc that's been run with knackered pads for a couple of thousand miles.

Cylinder 2:



Cylinder 1:



Given there's a very narrow clearance there though and we know there's been foreign matter floating around in the crankcase, that damage probably isn't all that surprising. I don't know how critical the condition of that surface might be in terms of the engine being rebuildable though - that's part of the crankcase so not exactly easily replaceable. You'd probably have to TIG weld to build the surface back up then mill it back to the correct surface - which involves equipment many, many tens of thousands of pounds above my pay grade!

The last thing I could check without any further strip down and/or equipment I don't have on hand was to look for play in the big end bearings. In summary: Not good. There's what I would say is about 0.5mm of "vertical" play at the bottom of both con rods, and enough play that you can visibly "tilt" both rods left to right by a good distance which doesn't seem right. The bottom end also sounds quite grumbly if you spin the engine over by hand.

Apologies for the vertical video, I didn't think about that when I recorded this.



I am open to feedback from people who know these engines there - but the fact that I can twist/tilt the rods just seems off to me. I'd expect a needle bearing to allow straight side-to-side movement, but not for the lateral relationship to the crank to be changed - at least not that extremely.



So what next?

Given the damage we've found to both pistons, the scored/pitted cylinders, hardened metal debris and what to me seems like excessive play in the bottom end, just throwing this back together and crossing my fingers feels like I'm just asking for further trouble. Whether that be 5, 50 or 500 miles down the road, something is going to let go and it's most likely going to do it at the worst possible moment. I count myself very lucky that when the breakdown that kicked this all off happened that I was able to coast without any drama into a safe stopping location well clear of the road at the entrance to someone's driveway. If this had happened during probably 85% of my normal driving it would have been far more of a nuisance, given the plethora of 70mph dual carriageways with absolutely zero provision on them for safe stopping in Milton Keynes, odds are that's where it would have happened.

My hunch is that the 35K kilometres shown on the odometer in this car most likely is 135K. Which if the bottom end of this engine hasn't already been apart at some point is pretty impressive going for a little air cooled two stroke with its design roots in the 50s I'd think! Especially given that the general evidence in this car suggests that it's never really lived a pampered life either before or since its arrival in the UK.

This leaves me with three options I reckon.

[] Find a second hand replacement engine.

[] Buy a rebuild kit.

[] Buy a reconditioned engine.

The first option is obviously most likely to be the least painful to my bank balance. If I can find someone in the UK who has one they're willing to part with at a sensible price of course - and assuming that engine itself doesn't also need major work, otherwise we just end up straight back where we are now.

Trabantwelt do sell a "rebuild in a box" kit which most likely would contain everything we needed to get up and going again. Albeit not exactly cheap - and viability of this is assuming that that scoring we found by the disc valve ports isn't a show stopper.


Link.

Actually a little more as I'd need to factor in return shipping for the old core parts, though that's likely to be a drop in the ocean compared to the overall price tag in all honesty.

By far the biggest single cost in there is the crankshaft assembly which is €550 if you were to buy just that alone.

Though if we're already looking at a four digit price tag for this as it stands, do we just accept this is going to be expensive and order a whole engine off the shelf?


Link.

Don't honestly know how much I'd need to add on to that for shipping the core back to Germany, but I'm guessing most likely somewhere in the region of £100. Don't imagine postage for the new part here is exactly going to be cheap either.

Time to do some digging to see if I can find a serviceable spare in the same country first I think as that would definitely be the easy option, also time to get the lump currently in there pulled out - as whether it's getting rebuilt or replaced it needs to come out of the car to be worked on. I'd also like to examine the clutch as that has always been prone to a lot of judder - so I'd like to know if we need to look at ordering that as well.

Getting the engine stripped down that far took maybe an hour or so - and that included probably 20 or 30 minutes wrestling with the exhaust before it occurred to me to just remove the manifold and heat exchanger together as one assembly. Total tools involved: 10 (is just to remove the cowling), 13, 16 & 17mm sockets (x2 for the exhaust manifold-heat exchanger bolts as they're not captive), a ratchet flat blade screwdriver, needle nose pliers, a few rags and a couple of ziplock bags to put each cylinder's small components in. Can't really complain at that to basically have an engine half way stripped down. Actually quite enjoyable to do as well, even the brief bit of wrestling with the exhaust wasn't all that annoying all told.

[Zelandeth]

Fallen behind a bit.

Somewhat idiotically, I didn't make sure that the Rover was drowned in wax before the winter. This was a mistake and made for a lot of scrubbing.



Likewise the Renault (which I do confess to having been kind of ignoring and hoping it will miraculously fix itself for a while - it hasn't) was even worse.





Couple of hours with the pressure washer and some scrubbing had things looking a bit more presentable.









Of course something fell off the Rover. Because Rover.





So had to glue that back on.



Which naturally meant I managed to get glue everywhere when the badge slipped out of my hands, because I'm a nightmare where anything involving adhesives is involved.


Driving the P6 through built up areas at low speeds with the windows down, the really deep burble just off idle definitely puts a grin on my face when it gets bounced back by surrounding buildings. It was quite pleasant to be driving it again.

Of course because it's this car we couldn't have a journey without something new cropping up. This time it was the temperature gauge which decided to go on strike.



Perfect on a hot day! That didn't add any anxiety to the drive home at all...no, I definitely wasn't at all worried...

Looks like we have an issue with the power supply to it as I'm only seeing 1.3V at the sensor. Which I promptly broke the terminal off.



New one added - which of course didn't fix the gauge.



Not that I really expected it to given the voltage reading. My guess is that the 5V regulator for the instrument panel (which I rebuilt using a solid state regulator) has died. Usually this would be made obvious by the fuel gauge also dying, but as that doesn't work anyway it's harder to be certain. Not going to have time to look into this today anyway.

Very exciting news to me though was that after having the enging idling for a couple of minutes while I fiddled with that was that I had no oil drips!



Coolant drips instead! Which appears to actually be coming from around this top radiator hose.



I have moved the hose clip a bit closer to the end of the hose, but given that end tank has obviously seen "some repair work" in the past, to be making sure there's not a crack or other damage to the hose mating surface which would cause us issues.

There is a tiny weep from a porous spot you can see in the photo, I think this drip is totally separate to that though.

Did get a nice photo while out though. Right up to the point I realised the bonnet wasn't fully latched.



Guess I'll need to snap that again then!

Which brings us to yesterday.

The instrument panel was once again pulled out of the car.



Which is actually really easy once you know how it comes apart. Less than ten minutes had the panel on the operating table. Any resemblance to our dining table is entirely coincidental.



One very important step was ensuring that the speedometer drive was securely sealed to ensure it didn't get grease everywhere.



A little more strip down then followed. I have to give the designers credit, this is by far the easiest instrument panel I've ever dismantled. Though there are some slightly questionable design decisions hidden within. These panels have a bit of a reputation for having connection issues. One source of these is some riveted vias through the PCBs, though I think I've found another obvious potential trouble spot. I give you the connection interface between what I have termed the backplane and the instrument sub assemblies.



Yes, that is just a hole in the solder mask where the PCB traces on the two boards are squeezed together by a nearby machine screw. While I'm sure this was a real boon in terms of production streamlining (the P6 I believe I read was actually the first mass produced car to use a PCB based instrument cluster, though I believe that was the original version, by the time this P6B was made plenty of others would have followed suit), 49 years and quite a bit of damp ingress later it sounds like a potential continuity nightmare.

The first specific bit of the panel I investigated was actually the ammeter. I had seen this twitch a few times but never really saw any significant deflection. More recently it had appeared to be completely dead. This turned out to be an entirely physical problem.

Here's a close up of the meter movement as it came out of the panel.



The issue is actually that the little circuit board on which the coil is mounted has over time and goodness knows how many heat cycles, worked itself loose. This has allowed it to drop downwards by about 1/8". This in turn meant that the armature of the meter had shifted too far away from the coil to be influenced by the magnetic field. This is actually where things should sit.



The board was originally held in place by the grommets around the spade terminals on the back, these however have lost their grip over the years. I eventually opted for just putting a couple of blobs of epoxy in strategic locations to hold it together.

I've always found the difference in designs of instrument panels of cars through the years always to be fascinating. So I was quite interested in a discovery I made while pulling the movement for the ammeter out. Warning...instrument panel design nerd rabbit hole ahead.

I had noted back when I first got this car that this instrument panel seemed to be extremely well and evenly illuminated for what I thought was an edge lit panel. Which based on being an early 70s design and having clearly raised digits it appeared to be.



Really is impressively well lit for something this old.



Turns out that it looks really evenly lit because it IS actually backlit. The edge lighting is purely for the pointers. Though not backlit in the way you're more used to seeing it executed. Turns out that the dial face itself is solid translucent turquoise tinted plastic with the black finish painted on. This is then clamped onto a solid 1/4" or so thick block of clear acrylic which is formed to behave as a light guide to provide an even illumination across the whole face. As demonstrated by me using a torch here.



This must have been really quite advanced panel design for the early 70s. Hats off to the designers - the night time illumination of this dash is easily as good as on any other car I've driven. Never mind one that was designed in the opening years of the 70s.

While the illumination might be quite high tech for the time, the actual gauge movements are pretty old school. These are all thermal gauge movements. If you've not seen one of these before, here's what's behind the face of one.



About as simple as it gets. It is literally a heater coil wound around a bimetallic strip. One end of this strip is rigidly mounted, the other is attached to the pivot of the meter needle. So as the current through the coil increases, the strip heats up more, it bends more and pushes the meter needle further. Very simple, and has the advantage of being inherently heavily damped. The downside is that they're obviously more power hungry than moving coil or moving iron meter movements.

Here ends the really nerdy bit, and we get back to fixing things.

The main fault I had dismantled things to address was the temperature gauge having decided to go on strike - I was pretty sure because the voltage regulator had died.

I had rebuilt the original thermal 10V regulator using a 7810 shortly after I got the car. However I really hadn't thought it through when I did this, specifically quite how electrically noisy an environment a car is. More specifically, it's also an environment where there are some really quite spicy transients floating around - especially when the starter motor solenoid is disconnected. As I learned much to my cost when I got an *almighty* belt off a Bedford YNT coach when fault finding an intermittent ignition switch. I don't know exactly what voltages or currents were involved, but that one was easily up there in the top five list for the most painful shocks I've had. The poor little 7810 really wasn't designed to deal with this sort of nonsense. There are proper transient protection diodes (I'm assuming they're basically very fast zener diodes) to install in settings like this. I don't have anything like that in stock, but I'll get some ordered for the future. For now I've added a 10uF bypass cap on the input side to hopefully help out - if I need to swap this again in future it's about 15-20 minutes work to get the regulator out and on the bench. You don't need to fully remove the dash from. The car, just pull it forward a bit so the regulator can be unplugged from the back.

The regulator shortly before it was crammed back together.



Before things went back together I also bridged the riveted connections to the regulator sockets with a bit of solder. It's not pretty, but it means the rivets aren't the sole things involved in making the electrical connection now.



Obviously I also gave all of the contact pads a really good clean. The scratches on some of these shows that I'm definitely not the first person to be in here.

The panel was thrown back together, lamp holders cleaned, speedometer drive greased, and inside of the front cover cleaned, then it was out back into the car. Result?



One working temperature gauge.

The ammeter is also now showing a lot more deflection than it was. Still sits pointing at a slight discharge as someone has clearly slightly bent the needles on both that and the oil pressure gauge slightly at some point. I'll need to fine tune that at some point but that's a job for future me.

Feeling accomplished here I decided to dig a bit further into the fuel gauge. I had tested the gauge itself in isolation and confirmed that it worked. I'm pretty sure that I had checked and found the sender itself to be open circuit from under the car. However I hadn't (as far as I could remember) really investigated the wiring to the back of the car. I had suspicions about it though - especially this chopped wire visible in the boot.



Sure enough testing this wire on the meter showed it to have 10V on it, and grounding it for a couple of seconds caused the fuel gauge to spring to life.



The wiring in the boot has suffered quite a lot of hackery in general from when the tow bar electrics were wired in (masking tape has good long term electrical insulation properties doesn't it?) and also from a rather shoddy speaker installation. Now I just need to figure out where that wire actually should disappear under the car. The sender did measure open when I originally checked I'm 90% sure but I'll obviously need to hook this back up properly either way or the gauge won't work even once the sender is changed! I did have a poke around underneath but couldn't immediately see where it went - though it's hard to see anything useful given there's a whole load of suspension and brakes in the way. Car really needs to be up on ramps to see anything much at all. That's a job for future me though

[GeoffR]

The method of panel lighting isn’t as high tech as you assume, the DH121 or HS Trident (same aircraft) had something similar in the 1960s, it first flew in 1962. Your Rover is slightly more advanced in that it doesn’t have “turrets” sticking out for the bulbs. The multiple separate panels in the Trident cockpit could be removed individually hence the lighting was part of the illuminated panel rather than the controller underneath.

[BillJ]

I had rebuilt the original thermal 10V regulator using a 7810 shortly after I got the car. However I really hadn't thought it through when I did this, specifically quite how electrically noisy an environment a car is. More specifically, it's also an environment where there are some really quite spicy transients floating around - especially when the starter motor solenoid is disconnected. As I learned much to my cost when I got an *almighty* belt off a Bedford YNT coach when fault finding an intermittent ignition switch. I don't know exactly what voltages or currents were involved, but that one was easily up there in the top five list for the most painful shocks I've had. The poor little 7810 really wasn't designed to deal with this sort of nonsense. There are proper transient protection diodes (I'm assuming they're basically very fast zener diodes) to install in settings like this. I don't have anything like that in stock, but I'll get some ordered for the future. For now I've added a 10uF bypass cap on the input side to hopefully help out - if I need to swap this again in future it's about 15-20 minutes work to get the regulator out and on the bench. You don't need to fully remove the dash from. The car, just pull it forward a bit so the regulator can be unplugged from the back.

There are regulators specifically for automotive use. They are designed to withstand all sorts of abuse in that environment including, for example, a negative spike of up to -400V due to "load-dump" if the battery is disconnected suddenly when the alternator is charging. If you want to do the job "thoroughly" then look for something like that. I don't know how much current you need. I have used the 5V version of this:
https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/MIC2920A
There are programmable parts in that series that should be able to output 10V and they are low-dropout so should work even if the battery voltage drops a bit below 12V.
Alternatively, I'm sure I've seen a solid-state, drop-in replacement for the standard voltage stabiliser.

[Zelandeth]

There are regulators specifically for automotive use. They are designed to withstand all sorts of abuse in that environment including, for example, a negative spike of up to -400V due to "load-dump" if the battery is disconnected suddenly when the alternator is charging. If you want to do the job "thoroughly" then look for something like that. I don't know how much current you need. I have used the 5V version of this:
https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/MIC2920A
There are programmable parts in that series that should be able to output 10V and they are low-dropout so should work even if the battery voltage drops a bit below 12V.
Alternatively, I'm sure I've seen a solid-state, drop-in replacement for the standard voltage stabiliser.

If this fails again that's definitely something I'll look in to. Given that what's gone in is about twenty minutes and less than £1 of parts though I'm not going to lose too much sleep over it. I have seen the electronic drop in replacements - the vast majority seem to just contain a garden variety regulator like I've used without any additional protection - they just charge £30 or so for it!

-- -- --

As seems to have become customary I've fallen behind here, so have a few updated bundled in together.

-- -- --

Much as I despise working under cars that are jacked up, no matter how many axle stands are involved, I really wanted to see if I could get the fuel gauge reconnected.

Blindly waving my phone around in the vicinity of the pickup and taking photos until I got something useful revealed that the wiring was still connected to the sender. I was pretty sure this was the case beforehand as I was sure I'd tested it and found it to be open. Though what I couldn't remember was whether I did this at the tank or whether I'd tested it from the relevant terminals at the dash.



That's looking pretty much straight up from just forward of the diff - front of the car is top of the frame.

I couldn't find any angle I could see this from in person. From the back I could just about reach it with one hand while I was basically eating the cross bar on the rear suspension. That's a definite downside of the Di Dion tube setup...it's in the way of things no matter which side you try to sneak up on what you're trying to work on.

Eventually I did spot where the end of the wiring was floating around. This is looking towards the front of the car - offside rear wheel is to the right of the frame.



Trying to strip that back to clean wire and connecting new leads to it was precisely as much if a pain as you'd think given I was working with one hand essentially stretched out as far as I could reach up above my head.

Yes, I used Wago connectors. This will be done "properly" at some point in the future when the car's on a lift or proper ramps. This is just wanting to get things hooked back up so I know what I actually need to fix when I can get to it properly.

Turns out that I was correct about the pass through in the boot floor being the cable's route, this is where the wiring was meant to run through. However it does actually just go straight under the car, I originally thought it went into a box section.



Wish I'd realised that sooner as it would have made my routing of the fuel return line far less of a pain!

As expected this hasn't actually restored function of the gauge - but the sender I was already pretty sure was knackered.

The cooling system definitely seems to require some more work though. Not sure whether I'm just seeing higher readings now because we always had a voltage supply issue on the instrument panel before, or if I've just been running the car longer. Bumbling around in 30/40 areas it sits bang in the middle at 85C, but driving on any higher speeds roads it creeps up to what I reckon is about 95C. Sitting stationary it definitely starts to creep upwards after five minutes or so. Exactly how FAR it will creep I don't know as I chickened out when I got to here.



I know the radiator isn't in the best of shape. Both end tanks have had several repairs in the past and I can see that the fins have separated from the core in a few areas - based on all of the above it's not unreasonable to expect that it's not flowing the best either. It will need to be replaced - sadly having talked to two radiator specialists they both deemed the end tanks in sufficiently poor shape that they'd not be willing to re-core it. They'd happily make me a replacement using the original as a template - for somewhere in the region of £650 plus VAT. So I think I'll have a bit of a hunt for a more reasonably priced option given the bill which will be landing soon for the Trabant. I'm not going to lose sleep over finding the automatic specific one as the transmission can just get a stand alone oil cooler installed when we get to that level on the snagging list.

-- -- --

With the Partner in work commuting use, the Invacar still boxed in behind a broken Trabant, the Trabant having only half an engine, and the Renault still as far from being road ready as it was at Christmas, the Rover was placed on Daily duty.



She actually behaved based on the history to date very well. Still running a touch warmer than I'd like but not too worryingly so, the windscreen wiper blades are utterly hopeless, and that blasted sidelight has gone out again. The holder in that just needs to be replaced really as it's knackered. If I clean the contacts it will work again for a couple of uses before packing in again.

Niggles aside though, we did probably 30 miles over four or five errands dotted around town, and she just did car things without complaint. Do I dare believe that we're starting to turn a corner with things towards the car being properly usable? Or do we have another exciting random failure waiting to pounce as soon as I believe that? Don't know, but I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

Now that we've got that oil leak under control I think I just need to make a point of using the car a bit more and try to get some miles covered to shake the remaining bugs out.

-- -- --

Sidelight has been repaired. Again.



The whole back of the cluster is just rotten though so I don't expect it to stay fixed for more than five minutes. Annoyingly I did get a couple of spare tail light assemblies with the car but no front ones. The little light pipe at the top of the lens does work quite well to show you where the front of the car is after dark (even if the one on the driver's side has been snapped off sadly).



Additionally to properly fixing the wiring to the fuel gauge, I really want to get this car up on a lift so I can properly get a look at the rear suspension. There is a very noticeable difference in the ride height between the two sides.

Nearside:



Offside:



I did have a look around while I was wrestling with the fuel gauge wiring and couldn't see anything that looked obviously amiss like a broken spring, but something is obviously awry. Not sure if maybe there was a broken spring at some point and only one was changed - so one is relatively new, and the other has 48 years and 101K miles of wear on it? Answers on a postcard please.

Finally having got some hose of the correct hose in stock I was able to get rid of this randomly blocked off vacuum port on the hose to the brake servo.



I'd ascertained already that it wasn't entirely sealed, but additionally the hose was a good couple of inches too short so was firmly wedged up against the back of the alternator.

Much better.



Also added a couple of hose clips to the vacuum line between the two halves of the servo as that line was quite a loose fit after this many years. Evidently this improved matters as first time I went for the brakes after doing this I just about launched myself through the windscreen.

Having fixed the sidelight meant I could have another shot at getting a halfway decent photo of the car.



Still breaks my brain a little to think how long ago this design was drawn up. Not quite as much as it does to drive the car mind you. It absolutely doesn't feel like a 60 year old design.

-- -- --

It's funny to think that the P6 was considered a proper full size family car when it was launched. However it even makes the Clio I parked next to today look positively bulky. Never mind the eyesore SUV on the other side.



A maintenance job I'd never really properly tackled since I got the car was to balance the carbs. I had a feeling that the engine was mostly idling on the offside carb just from the sound of things and given that that bank seemed to be running significantly warmer when I was doing some temperature checks last week.

I don't have a proper carb balancing kit here. Not least because this is the first car I've owned which had more than one carb so it's just something I've never needed before. I do however have an off cut of fuel hose, enthusiasm, and a reasonable understanding of how these things work.



Simply put, just disconnected the throttle linkage between the two carbs, then used the hose as a stethoscope to listen to each intake as I adjusted things until I got both the desires idle RPM and the same amount of air being drawn through both carbs. The linkage was then adjusted to compensate for the rest position now being slightly different (as predicted, the car was really heavily leaning on the offside carb with virtually nothing being done by the nearside one at idle) and reconnected.

Given that there were no real signs of carburation issues present I opted to just leave everything else well alone - I'm sure 90% of the carb issues that people run into are down to twiddling adjustment screws when there really was no reason to in the first place.

Idle speed is sitting at 700-750rpm in neutral, dropping to 550-600ish in gear, which sounds reasonable enough to me without having the book figures in front of me. It does occasionally hang slightly higher, but that seems to be down to the throttle pedal linkage rather than anything at the carb end.

Definitely sounding a lot better now than when she arrived here.



The exhaust is generally pretty subtle compared to what a lot of V8 cars seem to end up fitted with, the one exception being just how bassy the rumble at idle is, which I'm not sure if the mic will ever really pick up.

While I had the air cleaner off I took the opportunity to finally ask a question about what this unused hose connection on the back of the air cleaner is meant to be used for?



I've never seen anything floating around in the engine bay which would likely have been meant to connect to it. Given the surface rust on it I don't think it's had anything attached for a good number of years.

Evidently I do need to do some more leak searching on the cooling system as there's a bit of coolant which has gathered on the valley cover. Given the slope on our driveway and how the car is parked I'd expect this to pool at the back like this, which is why I'd not spotted it until I had the air cleaner off.



It looks like a lot there but one paper towel was fully able to soak it up easily, so not actually a massive amount. Those heater hose clips are both secure (the lower one is actually on there fine - the fitting the hose goes on to extends a long way into the hose). I'd be tending to look more suspiciously at the thermostat housing or the connection up front to the lower heater hose as they're really quite awkward to connect up as there isn't much space to play with.

Not trying to do that now though while the engine is hot. Same reason I've kicked looking at fine tuning the kick down cable adjustment down the road - trying to do that now is just a recipe for burned fingers.

Last thing I did today was to provide a bit of protection for the coolant bleed line that runs between the top of the intake manifold and the top of the radiator.



This was chafing on the alternator belt shield - and given the direction the fitting coming off the radiator points I really don't see how it's meant to go anywhere else.

I realised when going to secure this though that I'd somehow actually managed to run out of zip ties...so securing it properly will need to wait until I've had a chance to pick some more up.

-- -- --

Hopefully I've found the cause of the water sitting on top of the valley cover.



That's a new hose and the clip wasn't very tight. Hopefully it had just loosened a bit as the hose compressed. Have wiped it down and will see if the water reappears.

I've lost track of how many applications have been made now, but the leather is definitely improving compared to the cardboard like texture it had when the car arrived here.





Would be good to get some dye on it at some point to bring back out the original colour. If the above was already too much orange for you, look away now.



Definitely not an interior colour choice for everyone this. However I'm rather partial to bright colours in cars so suits me just fine.

I mean subtlety isn't really what this car is about is it?

[Zelandeth]

P6 has been out and about again today. For the first time I took it out for an errand run, albeit a short one, and wasn't actively nervous.



Had someone again call out as I was leaving the car park to compliment the car. It definitely seems to be turning heads!

That's 60ish miles done over the last week, which is by far the furthest I've gone so far without something new going wrong or falling off. Trying not to let it know I've noticed.

Tiny fix today.



The little swinging covers over the keyhole on both front doors were being actively held away from sitting where they should be by their springs. Things are now lined up properly I think so the covers sit where they should do.

Really like the door handles on this car. They have that really satisfying design that is a perfect balance between being very deliberately designed, but not OVER designed. Feel really nice to use as well. I do need to adjust the hinges on the remaining three doors a little though as they catch slightly when opening. Driver's door was the same but that one got adjusted as unsurprisingly it's the one I use the most.

[Zelandeth]

Sometimes you're looking for a car, sometimes you're not really but keeping half an eye out for things, sometimes though something pops up which was completely left field and surprises you.

I very much wasn't looking for another car last week. However then I spotted someone on another forum put something up which was such an absolute home run in terms of my wishlist for a daily driver that it had to be worth a look.

After a nice drive out to Boston (huge thanks to a couple of friends for the lift, it was going to be a gigantic pain to get there by public transport), I had a new car on fleet.



















Not actually all that unusual a car, but one which doesn't turn up all that often in this spec, mileage and condition.

I've been a Saab fan since I was about five (hence having had several classic 900s), but until now had never owned a Volvo. I'd always fancied a 240, but had never found one at a price I was willing to pay when I was looking. So I've skipped a few generations and ended up with a 2007 V70.

Initial impressions are very much positive. Very comfortable, feels very well screwed together, definitely doesn't hang around, and being the D5 makes an extremely pleasing noise every time you touch the throttle. Not a Saab, but there definitely feels to be some similar DNA there, and the same sort of feeling of feeling "right" is definitely there.

For some reason my camera seems to struggle with the colour. It looks almost black in a lot of photos, but this is far closer.



My brain still hasn't quite wrapped itself around the idea of this not being a car I've rented or borrowed. Seems far too nice for me! Will be quite nice though to have a car which is just *nice* from the get go and I can just keep it that way rather than trying to sort 20 years of wear, tear and neglect. Yes there are a few items on the to do list, but compared to most cars when they arrive on fleet it's a very small list!

It does mean that the Partner will be looking for a new home in a week or two.

[Shalien]

That's certainly a nice find there Zel. The D5 is a great engine and does sound nice for the devil's fuel, and the SE Lux trim level is especially nice (my Dad has an XC70 D5 SE Lux Geartronic, but permanent 4WD, and despite it's lofty position, is a very capable car).

Looking forward to find out what faults (or is it nuggles?) you have identified?

Getting shot of the Partner though? Yes, I fully concur, that is no competition in the load lugging/modern cruiser competition

[Zelandeth]

That's certainly a nice find there Zel. The D5 is a great engine and does sound nice for the devil's fuel, and the SE Lux trim level is especially nice (my Dad has an XC70 D5 SE Lux Geartronic, but permanent 4WD, and despite it's lofty position, is a very capable car).

Looking forward to find out what faults (or is it nuggles?) you have identified?

Getting shot of the Partner though? Yes, I fully concur, that is no competition in the load lugging/modern cruiser competition

It's not a very long list.

The only really important one is that the rear suspension could do with some bushes replaced. The main culprit being the front trailing arm bush, which goes "soggy" and allows too much movement. This allows the toe angle to wander and makes the rear end feel really unsettled over bumps. Sounds to be a pretty common issue and is due simply to age more than miles. Once that's been done she will want a four wheel alignment done, and I'll probably treat the car to a full matched set of new tyres at the same time. The ones on here are all decent brands, though they're going to want changing before the winter anyway. One is an odd one out, so likely has been a puncture replacement. Given how wide they are I was kind of braced for these tyres costing a fortune, but they're not bad. Around £90 each fitted at my local independent for Uniroyals. Yes I could probably save a few quid via the web based services, but I like supporting a local firm, and they're good guys who always show the same level of care and attention that I would want to my own car. That's absolutely worth an extra £15 a corner or so to me any day of the week.

The niggle list isn't exactly huge.

[] Climate control knobs have gone sticky/flaky.



Replacements are readily available - though I'm trying to find somewhere that's not going to charge me €30 to post less than 50g of plastic to me. I'm going to try cleaning the existing ones first though, if I make a complete mess of them I just have to grumble and pay the shipping.

Thankfully this seems to be the only thing on the interior they seem to have used this material on, so it's not like the whole centre console has turned sticky. Yes, I'm looking at you VW.

[] Broken backrest adjustment switch one the passenger seat.



That's already been fixed though with a transplant of a few bits from a local breaker.



[] Headlights could do with a polish.



Pretty standard for plastic headlights. Not a huge issue. Especially as it's not really affecting the big the light actually passes through, it's just the top edge.

[] Driver's side B pillar seatbelt surround is missing.



This is basically standard apparently. These always get sawed in half by the seatbelt and snap. Annoyingly, this moulding is specific to the facelifted version of the V70 so they're near impossible to find. I have a plan for this. There's a company local to me who do 3D scanning. I'm hoping to get the passenger side one (which is fine) scanned, mirror it in software, then 3D print myself a replacement bit of trim.

There are a few little bits of paint that could do with touching in, particularly on the front bumper corners. That's a job which I'll probably entrust to a body shop. Like Xantias these cars always seem to suffer from scrapes on there as they have long, low noses and it's easy to misjudge where the front end is in tight quarters.



I've no excuse for any reversing incidents here as this has parking sensors - a first for me. Didn't half make me jump the first time it beeped at me when I was reversing into the driveway.

I did just pick up some paint to touch in the couple of dings on the trailing edge of a couple of the doors though.



Decided as I could, just to get the right stuff for this.



Which actually turned out to be significantly cheaper than the offerings from Halfords which I'm sure wouldn't be even close to the right colour.

Guy on the parts desk was really enthusiastic and helpful though, even if they couldn't find my suspension bushes as they're no longer made so I'll need to go aftermarket for those. Not really a surprise at this age, but it was worth a shot. Given how extensive the history of this car is and that it's clearly been looked after I'd like to stick with OEM parts wherever I do have that option. Though obviously after 17 years that's just not going to be possible sometimes.

Last item on the wish list, to really get the car looking absolutely spot on, the alloys could probably do with being refurbished as there are a few kerbing marks here and there. That's really it though. The suspension bush refresh for the rear end is the only thing which is really high priority.

Given how up to date the rest of the car feels, and that the option is there to do so without it looking daft, this car will probably get an updated stereo installed. There are off the shelf kits available to allow a double-DIN unit to be installed, which would allow for integrated navigation and Bluetooth connectivity exactly the same as a car rolling off the production line today. Given how clean and tidy the interior is, it would be nice to have that in the dash rather than having to have things stuck to the windscreen. I have an absolute seething hatred of having "stuff" stuck on the windscreen/dash, so getting that functionality integrated would definitely be nice. I use navigation quite a bit as I'm a long way from where I grew up, and have an absolutely legendary lack of sense of direction!

[Zelandeth]

Finally got this little rattle box out for a run today.







Can't believe it's been nine months since she last left the drive. Still makes me smile to drive though.



Given the issues I've had with those fuel filters on the Rover that one will be getting binned and replaced with a better quality one shortly.

Just five miles or so running about locally with no real destination in mine, just enough to blow the cobwebs out and get things properly warmed through.



Brakes are a lot better than I remember, and while still unavoidably bouncy given the small wheels and light weight the ride is surprisingly compliant. The Trabant definitely shakes you around a lot more as a passenger.

I'm holding off making direct performance comparisons yet given I now know how many issues that engine had so it wouldn't really be fair. Once there's a healthy unit installed I'll be able to make more meaningful comparisons there I think.

The Trabant definitely feels orders of magnitude more solidly put together though. The fact the Invacar's body is just an unstressed fibreglass box on top of an (admittedly quite sturdy) platform chassis rather than part of a body frame which encompasses the whole cabin is very much obvious when driving. The impression I get as well is that while they're both fibre reinforced plastics, Duroplast has quite different characteristics to fibreglass in some ways - I reckon it's a good bit less flexible for one. Skinny, bendy indicator stalk aside it's surprised me from square one how fragile the Trabant *doesn't* feel. Especially given the reputation they seem to have.

I do try not to end up making too many direct comparisons between the Invacar and Trabant given that they're really very different cars, made for very different purposes, with very different price tags.  However both being lightweight, plastic bodied, air cooled two cylinder cars it's a bit hard not to.

Still want to give TPA a proper end-to-end inspection and a service before going too much further, but glad she's made it out of the garage at least!

[Zelandeth]

Probably the most obvious thing which ages the Volvo is the somewhat cloudy headlights.



Evidently these are made of rather harder plastic than the last ones I polished (on my much missed Cappuccino), as it's taking forever. We're getting there though.





The rear marker lights on the V70 are LED based.



I'd assumed the front ones would be the same, but peering more closely at them shows there's a W5W incandescent lamp hiding in there.



Gave the engine bay a quick wipe down, mainly to clean up the fine mist of polish I'd managed to cover everything in the immediate vicinity in.



While in there I noticed that a bit of sound deadening was hanging loose on the offside of the engine bay. After scratching my head a bit I figured out that there were no clips involved - there was a self adhesive strips on it. From which the protective backing had obviously never been removed 17 years ago.



With that removed I was able to properly stick the panel back in place. Hopefully it won't be in danger of getting caught in the pulleys or anything like that now.



If only all fixes were that easy!

Had a bit of a crawl around the back of the car and have identified the bush that's definitely in need of replacement. This one.



Which has been booked into the garage to have done. I think this is a job which could be DIYable, but given the fun and games potentially involved in getting those bolts out I think that can be someone else's problem - someone with a proper lift. Just a shame they're booking five weeks out!

[Derek UK]

Special tool needed for this bush I think. Make sure the garage has one available. Your car a P2. For P3 a tool for the Mondeo can be used. Might also be usable on P2. As parts in the area have to come off it's a good idea to see if there are any other bushes there that would benefit from being changed. Don't want to pay the labour a second time unless you have to. I have a 2000 P1 V70 as my daily.

[Zelandeth]

It's been very quiet for the most part in terms of the fleet lately. Waiting for a couple of house tasks to be sorted and paid for before I chuck money at the Trabant & source a new radiator for the Rover. Volvo goes into the garage to have the rear suspension bushes changed tomorrow. Just for variety, TPA was out and about again today.



In a bit of a change of pace she did get a bit of attention today. Just due an oil and filter change, nothing exactly groundbreaking.



I do appreciate having the separate drain for the filter housing as that allows a completely drip free change to take place despite the inverted filter.



No metal whatsoever on the magnet this time round.

Topped back up and good for another while little while. All 1.75 litres it takes to refill from empty.



Been good to get some use out of this car again today. Has been too long since she was out regularly.

[Zelandeth]

As it was a pleasant day and I was "off the clock" for want of a better term, I pulled TPA out for the errand run today.





This was actually meant to be a quick run as I only had a couple of things on the list - but somehow I ended up having wandered around for somewhere around 40 or 50 miles by the time I arrived back home.

Two niggles turned up. One occasion she cut out. This was immediate, with no warning, and immediately restarted. I'm pretty sure this was down to scratchy contacts in the ignition switch as you can very visibly make the lights on the dash flicker by wiggling the key. Think some contact cleaner may be in its future. Failing that I'm at least 50% sure I have a spare floating around somewhere.

Second was an odd clicking noise coming from the front now and then after traversing a bump. This wasn't too hard to track down.



The mud guard has come detached at the rear edge. The noise was it bouncing around. This guard has quite a bit of corrosion at the rear edge and the bolt has just pulled through it. Given that this does also actually as a brace for the front of the shell it does want properly sorting. For now though I've gone with a very low tech solution and secured it with a cable tie.



Has been really nice to get this car out for a proper run again.

[Zelandeth]

It's been a while since I did any silly size comparison photos of an Invacar in the wild. So here's a picture of a Mini and a small car.



And next to my other small, two cylinder air cooled car. Not words I ever expected to be saying.