Discussion
Excellent! 
Pics please.
A friend and I just put one on the road in the UK that originally came from Hungary. I would put pics up but I cant at work apparently. Needless to say its pink and cost us £1.
Is it already set up for the UK?
If not then things you need to do:
Headlights - Mk1 MX5 lights can easily be modified to fit
Indicator repeaters
Swap fog light and reverse light over - easy as pie, swap lenses and wiring in boot over.
Rear seat belts - you will probably get away with this as its pre '89
To import it and get UK plates you need to get a bunch of stuff sorted we found the following order is the way to do it:
HRMC - need to declare the car to them and how much you paid ASAP, you most likeley wont need to pay any import duty, we didn't have to
MOT - on vin plate
Insurance - on vin plate
V55 form - fill in and take with MOT cert, insurance cert, registration cert from what ever country, take this all to your local DVLA office (if its still open). In 4 days or so you will get a tax disc and a certificate of registration through. Go make plates up and enjoy on the road.
They are GREAT cars, they are soooooo s
t that they come out the other side and become good! Such a hoot to drive. Although ours is a '90 model so has a VW 1.1 4pot engine in it so can actually do 60Mph... I am not sure how gutsy the two stroke engines are.
We just took our one over to Fort William from the east coast of Scotland, about a 500mile round trip and it was faultless. It was loaded up with 3 people a LOT of beer and all their camping stuff and it was fine. Love it.
Get yours on the road and go enjoy it.
Pics please.
A friend and I just put one on the road in the UK that originally came from Hungary. I would put pics up but I cant at work apparently. Needless to say its pink and cost us £1.
Is it already set up for the UK?
If not then things you need to do:
Headlights - Mk1 MX5 lights can easily be modified to fit
Indicator repeaters
Swap fog light and reverse light over - easy as pie, swap lenses and wiring in boot over.
Rear seat belts - you will probably get away with this as its pre '89
To import it and get UK plates you need to get a bunch of stuff sorted we found the following order is the way to do it:
HRMC - need to declare the car to them and how much you paid ASAP, you most likeley wont need to pay any import duty, we didn't have to
MOT - on vin plate
Insurance - on vin plate
V55 form - fill in and take with MOT cert, insurance cert, registration cert from what ever country, take this all to your local DVLA office (if its still open). In 4 days or so you will get a tax disc and a certificate of registration through. Go make plates up and enjoy on the road.
They are GREAT cars, they are soooooo s
t that they come out the other side and become good! Such a hoot to drive. Although ours is a '90 model so has a VW 1.1 4pot engine in it so can actually do 60Mph... I am not sure how gutsy the two stroke engines are. We just took our one over to Fort William from the east coast of Scotland, about a 500mile round trip and it was faultless. It was loaded up with 3 people a LOT of beer and all their camping stuff and it was fine. Love it.
Get yours on the road and go enjoy it.
Well, arriving later today, so I'll do a few pics. I paid more than £1 for it though .... I feel cheated !
It was still cheap, and oddly enough if you look through the classifieds they seem to be advertised for 1k upwards for UK reg, MOT's ones ... so might make a few quid after I have got it out of my system.
Mine is an 85 car, so 2 stroke, 601cc. From what I can glean from the MOT testers manual, I shouldn't need to fit rear belts, or side repeaters at this age, also no emissions test on 2 stroke engines.
The MX5 headlight is a good tip though ..... I used to have a LHD MX5 (Miata) and I seem to remember I replaced those headlights with ones from a Mini ?
I have a couple of holes in the floor to weld, and a bit of general tidying, but hoping to have it smoking down the road very soon.
Did your mate take his to the MOT station without number plates on (this is a Hungarian car, no number plates, but VIN numbers etc all match).
I'm reluctant to get some plates made, which will get junked as soon as it is UK registered ?
It was still cheap, and oddly enough if you look through the classifieds they seem to be advertised for 1k upwards for UK reg, MOT's ones ... so might make a few quid after I have got it out of my system.
Mine is an 85 car, so 2 stroke, 601cc. From what I can glean from the MOT testers manual, I shouldn't need to fit rear belts, or side repeaters at this age, also no emissions test on 2 stroke engines.
The MX5 headlight is a good tip though ..... I used to have a LHD MX5 (Miata) and I seem to remember I replaced those headlights with ones from a Mini ?
I have a couple of holes in the floor to weld, and a bit of general tidying, but hoping to have it smoking down the road very soon.
Did your mate take his to the MOT station without number plates on (this is a Hungarian car, no number plates, but VIN numbers etc all match).
I'm reluctant to get some plates made, which will get junked as soon as it is UK registered ?
[quote=rswift
The MX5 headlight is a good tip though ..... I used to have a LHD MX5 (Miata) and I seem to remember I replaced those headlights with ones from a Mini ?
[/quote]
7" round ones then? as fitted to almost everything back in the day. Look on eaby & you'll get halogen conversion kits for £35 (or they where last time I got one).
The MX5 headlight is a good tip though ..... I used to have a LHD MX5 (Miata) and I seem to remember I replaced those headlights with ones from a Mini ?
[/quote]
7" round ones then? as fitted to almost everything back in the day. Look on eaby & you'll get halogen conversion kits for £35 (or they where last time I got one).
rswift said:
Well, arriving later today, so I'll do a few pics. I paid more than £1 for it though .... I feel cheated !
It was still cheap, and oddly enough if you look through the classifieds they seem to be advertised for 1k upwards for UK reg, MOT's ones ... so might make a few quid after I have got it out of my system.
Mine is an 85 car, so 2 stroke, 601cc. From what I can glean from the MOT testers manual, I shouldn't need to fit rear belts, or side repeaters at this age, also no emissions test on 2 stroke engines.
The MX5 headlight is a good tip though ..... I used to have a LHD MX5 (Miata) and I seem to remember I replaced those headlights with ones from a Mini ?
I have a couple of holes in the floor to weld, and a bit of general tidying, but hoping to have it smoking down the road very soon.
Did your mate take his to the MOT station without number plates on (this is a Hungarian car, no number plates, but VIN numbers etc all match).
I'm reluctant to get some plates made, which will get junked as soon as it is UK registered ?
You are lucky about the seat belts they turned out to be a pain in the arse. It was still cheap, and oddly enough if you look through the classifieds they seem to be advertised for 1k upwards for UK reg, MOT's ones ... so might make a few quid after I have got it out of my system.
Mine is an 85 car, so 2 stroke, 601cc. From what I can glean from the MOT testers manual, I shouldn't need to fit rear belts, or side repeaters at this age, also no emissions test on 2 stroke engines.
The MX5 headlight is a good tip though ..... I used to have a LHD MX5 (Miata) and I seem to remember I replaced those headlights with ones from a Mini ?
I have a couple of holes in the floor to weld, and a bit of general tidying, but hoping to have it smoking down the road very soon.
Did your mate take his to the MOT station without number plates on (this is a Hungarian car, no number plates, but VIN numbers etc all match).
I'm reluctant to get some plates made, which will get junked as soon as it is UK registered ?
We took it to the MOT station without plates as the previous owner needed the plates to take the car off the road in Hungary. And it was fine. So you don't need to worry about that, they are only MOTing it on the VIN plate.
I would love to know how many of these cars are in the UK, it cant be much more than a handful.
Good luck with the work you have to do they are really easy to work on though. Just dont set fire to it
Alfachick said:
HRMC - need to declare the car to them and how much you paid ASAP, you most likeley wont need to pay any import duty, we didn't have to
It's over 10 years old so no need, this step can be ignored here - but the rest of your advice (initially get Insurance and MoT using VIN number, then visit DVLA with everything you listed) is 100% . It's dead easy 
.
This was mine about ten years ago. It was bought on a whim out of the local paper (having heard the Trabant described as the worst car in the world I had to buy one) It was being sold by a lad who had gone back-packing in Australia and his dad, who I dealt with, had never driven it, so it was fun working out the gearshift pattern to drive it home. The club were great for spares even supplying a hardback English translation of the hand-book.
I used it locally for a while and wish I had been daft enough to take it down a drag-strip when I had the chance. It got loaned to a mate who was stuck for transport (that's one way to stop people asking to borrow a car) and I eventually swapped it for a pair of Citroen 2Cvs.
Have fun with it, but get ready for everyone telling you it's made out of papier-mâché (it's more like formica or bakelite)
So at last, a few badly taken photographs, of which seem to have up-loaded at 90 degrees in the wrong direction. Anyone know how to edit this ?
This was Sunday, a day of welding the floor......it took about 10 minutes to take all of the seats & carpets out. I did remove the seat covers, and stuck them in the washing machine....they still look like a tramps vest !
So the fruits of my labour, (purists, or professional welders please look away now)
Then the starter motor packed in .... but two wing nuts later, access is very easy. Starter motor removal is literally a 5 minute job. Just had it in bits tonight ... actually babysitting, but the range of the monitor goes as far as the garage. Found a broken connection from one of the brushes, a bit of soldering (which is as good as my welding) ! and all seems good...well on the garage floor with a set of jump leads. I'll refit it tomorrow and see what happens.
This was Sunday, a day of welding the floor......it took about 10 minutes to take all of the seats & carpets out. I did remove the seat covers, and stuck them in the washing machine....they still look like a tramps vest !
So the fruits of my labour, (purists, or professional welders please look away now)
Then the starter motor packed in .... but two wing nuts later, access is very easy. Starter motor removal is literally a 5 minute job. Just had it in bits tonight ... actually babysitting, but the range of the monitor goes as far as the garage. Found a broken connection from one of the brushes, a bit of soldering (which is as good as my welding) ! and all seems good...well on the garage floor with a set of jump leads. I'll refit it tomorrow and see what happens.
rswift said:
Hi, yes I registered as it seems to be quite helpful. I was also trying to get hold of whoever runs Trabbi UK for a few essential spares, but no luck...so I guess it will be off to Germany with my order.
We had to order all our spare parts from Germany. My advice is to figure out exactly what you need and also what you think you might need in the future and get it all in one order. Then you only have to pay the postage once. We kept finding things that we needed after each order, so it started to get quite expensive. Annoyingly I cant see the pics on my computer, probably something to do with being on a ship. Looking forward to getting home and seeing it.
Good luck with it all. Hope you get her on the road with minimal effort and stress.
Well the update is ....starter motor broke, but managed to fix it with a bit of schoolboy soldering, in other news still can't get the engine to turn, and fear I may have seized it will mucking about trying to get it going properly on old fuel ... mixture (remember it's 2 stroke) unknown.
Well it's supposed to be simple to work on....I'll keep you posted.
Well it's supposed to be simple to work on....I'll keep you posted.
Interesting that your starter motor is borked too. Ours had decided to die, which was part of the reason that we managed to get the car in the first place, but thats a whole other story.
We sent ours away to get refurbished and it came back as good if not better than new. I think it was almost £100 though, a bit steep, but the cost of a new starter motor was something ridiculous like £190 or something and the car starts first time every time now. I will see if I can remember the place we sent it to.
Best of luck.
We sent ours away to get refurbished and it came back as good if not better than new. I think it was almost £100 though, a bit steep, but the cost of a new starter motor was something ridiculous like £190 or something and the car starts first time every time now. I will see if I can remember the place we sent it to.
Best of luck.
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