Trabant 601 - The Beast from the East (of Germany)

[AceOfHearts]

Cheers for the comments

We finally finished off the main welding today and refitted the wing. Welds ground back and started painting so its starting to look a lot better now. Ran out of daylight though so had to stop for the day. We have made quite good progress over the last two days and I am glad the weldathon is over. Jon is off home tonight but I will finish of the paint tomorrow and hopefully get some better pictures of the finished work.

Looking forward to start on the mechanicals and cosmetics soon

[AceOfHearts]

Thanks I will take a look

(but I have been doing the welding, Jon has been making the panels and doing all the thinking )

[AceOfHearts]

50 Shades of Beige

Cracked on with a few more bits today, mainly cleaning, rubbing down and repainting the floors so we are ready for carpet. Also put the drivers door card back on and some external trim bits. Plan for tomorrow is get the car in the air and start stripping the underside.

Before





After





Great pictures LeoZwalf

In September I went on a little Euro trip on the motorbike and stopped off in Berlin and saw the cars outside Trabiworld. I wanted to do the Safari but they were closing up when I arrived

I thought I would get into the Trabi way of life though so stayed at a DDR themed hostel which was spitting distance from the wall

[AceOfHearts]

Another picture heavy update today, we are starting to make good progress We started by turning the car around and removing the engine, then since we are refurbishing the suspension, decided to go the whole hog and drop the front subframe. Not bad for 2 hours work

I will let the pictures do the talking

[AceOfHearts]

New carpet just arrived

[AceOfHearts]

Good stuff, and no still not registered because it needs an MOT before we can send off the documents (I have been through the NOVA process a couple of times before which has always been a pain ) I can imagine it being even worse now the local offices are closed.

I imagine we are going to have a bit of a battle with this as it has actually been in the country for around 8 years, and was originally imported over as a film prop. We have the German registration document with the car though and the name of the guy (and company) that imported it originally, so we will have to suck it and see when the time comes. I am hoping it will be MOT'd by early next year (maybe February?) and I expect the paperwork will take a couple of months to sort.

Have you got any pictures of yours? What are your plans with it?

ETA yes Trabantwelt are where we have been getting most of the bits from. The sills were from German Ebay. LDM tuning are also worth a look for other odd bits but I think they are a little more expensive

Edited by AceOfHearts on Wednesday 21st October 22:09

[AceOfHearts]

I think if you add in a polite covering letter with all the information you have, and photos of the date plates should be sufficient. The first car i put through was missing some documentation but they didn't seem to hold it against me

[AceOfHearts]

Looking good

If you have half an hour free this is an interesting watch (to me anyways )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emoF0EFxjjA (Starts at 5 minutes)

Looks like an awful place to work, and I appreciate the super band saw safety at 25 minutes

ETA:

I also like the way that the panels are deliberately made too big on the doors, so the panel gaps are set by running a big grinder between the door and wing

Edited by AceOfHearts on Friday 23 October 17:26

[AceOfHearts]

Kieranv said:

Excellent thread! We did the Trabi Safari in Berlin and loved it...and then came home and bought one for ourselves.

Here it is at the seaside.

That looks fantastic! I don't think ours will ever be that clean

[AceOfHearts]

Despite the weather today I carried on with little Trabi. With the Jaguar on its way soon (see other thread) which will be taking priority, I want to get as much done on this beforehand so I don't hold up our progress too much.

I started by stripping the rear of the car



Leaving me with this







I started with a few soapy buckets of water, a sponge and stiff brush, and scrubbed as much of the mud and flaky paint off the underside as I could, and then jet washed the entire lot. Very messy work! I will leave that to dry today, and then tomorrow (weather permitting) I will wire brush any flaky or rusty bits, re-paint them and then give 2 coats of Dynax UB (left over from the XJS). It looks to have had underseal before that has dried rock hard which is good (you can see the drips were it was slapped on). Here i how it looks now after thorough cleaning





And rear suspension jet washed off and stored with the other junk ready for rebuilding

Edited by AceOfHearts on Thursday 29th October 19:23

[AceOfHearts]

Heres my old Sinclair thread if you ever want to read about another terrible vehicle

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=144...

[AceOfHearts]

jamiebae said:

LeoZwalf said:

AceOfHearts said:

Looking good

If you have half an hour free this is an interesting watch (to me anyways )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emoF0EFxjjA (Starts at 5 minutes)

Looks like an awful place to work, and I appreciate the super band saw safety at 25 minutes

ETA:

I also like the way that the panels are deliberately made too big on the doors, so the panel gaps are set by running a big grinder between the door and wing

Edited by AceOfHearts on Friday 23 October 17:26

Holy crap, that video is quite an eye-opener. How miserable, dirty, noisy, dangerous those factories were. Spray painting with no masks, huge presses with no guards. Yikes indeed

I think that footage was shot in 1990 actually, it would have been even worse (if that's possible) in the 70s.

Same year our car was built

Cleaned up the flaky paint underneath today and got the first coat of Dynax on the wheel arches. Got to go in to work now though so had to stop there

[AceOfHearts]

A small update, unfortunately progress has been slow over the winter (partly due to Jon breaking his thumb in a drill whilst wire brushing Trabi parts!)

Today however I got a bit of time and a break in the weather so put the second coat of Dynax UB on the arches and got the first coat on the underside of the car. Its really looking good under there now so I will get some pictures after the second coat is on. After that I I will be cleaning up the engine bay so the shell will be finished and ready for stuff to get bolted back on.

There have been a few water leaks (I suspect window seals) so this needs investigating further before the carpet can go in.

Now the shell is almost complete we will need to put in the final parts order soon (Full brake system, suspension parts, interior parts)

[AceOfHearts]

Small update. Jon and I have booked off a couple of days next week to get cracking on with rebuilding the sub-frames and hopefully getting the car back on its wheels. Maybe a touch optimistic but we can have a good crack at it.

With this in mind the second big bavarian box of bits has been ordered



It includes:

Brakes
-Master cylinder and hardware
-Full new copper brake lines front to back
-Front and rear flexible brake lines
-Wheel cylinders
-Shoes
-Shoe mounting springs, adjusters and all bolts
-Handbrake cables
-Handbrake adjuster

Suspension
-Rear bushes and mounting plates
-Shock top mount bushes
-Rear shock and suspension bolt kit

Extras
-Engine fan belt
-Spare spark plugs
-Spark plug brush
-Wheel nuts
-Interior trim clips

I think that is everything

[AceOfHearts]

First day of two that me and Jon have off to work on the little Trabi. Tomorrow should have some good after photos of the parts we have been doing today (rear suspension mainly). I also got the final coat of Dinitrol under the car so it is ready for reassembly ones the parts are refurbished.





Lot of grot



New vs old shocks



Growing pile of parts



After a day of disassembly, wire brushing, rust converting and cleaning Jon finally got busy with the POR15.

Edited by AceOfHearts on Tuesday 9th February 22:30

[AceOfHearts]

Finished underside looking good in the Dinitrol. As Jon says, much better than the car deserves







Rear shocks built up



New vs old front leaf spring



We made a start on the front end too.



Stripped down, here was the gearbox before



And after



I also started to de-gunk the subframe prior to paint. This all took quite a while though so we will carry on another day

Edited by AceOfHearts on Thursday 11th February 09:44

[AceOfHearts]

Got a little bit more done with Jon yesterday but was scuppered by some missing parts (mainly bolts I forgot to order) We now have another order list that we need to get over from Germany which I will sort out this week. We did manage to get some suspension bushes in though:



Wheel bearings cleaned out and re-packed with grease



And refitted to the car



Its nice for things to start going back on

[AceOfHearts]

Front subframe finally cleaned up and painted

[AceOfHearts]

One corner built up.

New brakes


And a clip from the manual for anyone nerdy enough to care


Hub and drum on (not torqued up yet)


And jacked up a wheel to see where we should end up

Edited by AceOfHearts on Saturday 9th April 21:41

[AceOfHearts]

Looks great, how was the registration process in the end?