Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[MattBLancs]

I like that old sticker, could you put some clear vinyl over it to stop the shedding?

[MattBLancs]

P.s. the paint touch ups has made a massive difference!

[myglaren]

I like that old sticker, could you put some clear vinyl over it to stop the shedding?

Or a new one over the old one.

[Zelandeth]

I like that old sticker, could you put some clear vinyl over it to stop the shedding?

Or a new one over the old one.

I've got high resolution photos of it, so if I wanted to have it recreated (being a silver foil backed one it's not something I could do at home) at a later date I could definitely do that. Though it's technically wrong for the car anyway - a period and geographically correct sticker would have read DDR rather than D.

[Zelandeth]

Big old box was picked up from Parcel Force today. Which has been through the wars a bit en route.



Though the innards were well protected and nothing had escaped.



This is what was fished out after a solid ten minutes of de-packaging.



It's astonishing how much pipe there seems to be in even a really basic car exhaust for a tiny car when it's off the car and inside the house.

It doesn't sound like a lot on paper, but you can definitely see it is bigger than the standard pipe when you compare them. Doesn't look ridiculous though. The 45mm one would look distinctly more conspicuous.



Apparently there are differences to how the innards of the heat exchanger/expansion box are set up compared to the standard one. How much difference it makes in the real world remains to be seen.

It's actually only held on the car in four places, and they're all actually easy enough to get to. Only two require crawling around under the car, the ones on the silencer. I'll have a quick look at the state of those tomorrow so I know what sort of fun and games we're in for. Everything else has been off recently so shouldn't be too much of a headache.

[Zelandeth]

Went out to have a look at the exhaust on the Trabant. The intention was to just see what was going to be involved in removing it. Yeah, less than ten minutes later...



Total of six fasteners - four 10mm bolts on the hangers and two bigger ones on the manifold clamp, and the jubilee clip for the heater outlet and the whole thing just drops off. The exhaust doesn't go up and over anything, and there's plenty of room under the car so it can just be pulled off intact.

Turns out the silencer was in pretty poor shape so I definitely made the right call to replace the lot.



It's definitely perforated somewhere around the inlet side. Plus a black spot on the underside I originally thought was a splash of underbody sealant actually turned out to be a hole.



I'm kind of curious to attack this with the grinder to see if the internal structure is any different to a "normal" one to optimise things for the two stroke application. It also rattles...so I'm kind of curious to see whether it's full of carbon crud - or the bits of metal which escaped from the original engine. I'll need to cut the main pipe down to take it to the recycling centre anyway as it's unwieldy with it being so long at the moment.

It's basically impossible to judge the condition of the front box because it's hidden away inside the outer shell - but it externally looks pretty rusty and given that it's most likely as old as the rest of the system I'd not want to trust it long term. Especially as there's very much a safety aspect here as a failure can result in combustion products being pumped into the cabin.

Less than an hour after I started we were done.



That is the easiest exhaust swap I have done, ever. Okay, maybe the rear engined Skodas are possibly easier - assuming the fasteners hadn't rusted away to nothing and/or the manifold to downpipe studs decided not to snap anyway, though that always seemed to be a gamble.

I was planning to do this on a ramp, but it just seemed so simple I just got on with it.

It sounds way different. Will take it out for a proper test tomorrow, but a very quick run round the block shows it sounding far sharper, and it is definitely a bit louder - but not obnoxiously so given the car we're talking about here.



Excuse the portrait video. I'll try to get a better one tomorrow and a proper test drive.