CatatonicChimp

So I sold the Trabant a couple of weeks ago, its still in Wellington, but no longer with me at the wheel. It has been a Fun few years, but time to move on to something else! Nothing planned yet, and will probably buy something sensible first... I do still have my 2 bikes I am restoring, but after who knows Hopefully when the bug hits me again, I'll have some new Digs where I can house all the bits and pieces without having to pay for storage or shed access.

So I am guilty of leaving this thread with no update in a long long time... So where to start... At the end of 2014 I decided that I wanted to try a new career path, and to do that I needed to move to Sydney.... so with little to no warning I did just that, and I bundled up all my stuff including the Trabi and put it on a slow boat over the tasman... Thankfully this was before Australian customs went mental on any little spec of asbestos, and it went through customs with only one slight issue, they bitched to me about how much my car was worth, I had given them the original bill of sale, but they want me to detail all the work that had been done on the car, "If you had done it yourself, estimate how many hours and multiply that by a fair wage.", I didn't keep track of those details and I don't want to know how much I spent and also fuck them, so luckily a friend of a friend was a car importer, and went out and valued the car at a predetermined value. Next became the mission to register the Trabi. The Australian Design Rules "ADR's" are a bitch, they are/were a good 5+ years ahead of almost every other country in the 70s and to fully register a car you have to meet the ADR's of the year of manufacture (from after I think 1972)... and there was no way the Trabi was going to comply, it would fail on rear seatbelts, on front seatbelts, on side instruction, lack of headrests and on emissions. The only other option is for Historic Club registration, which exempts you from complying, but means you have to be a member of a car club, and you are restricted on driving your car to and from car club events... So first thing, this sucks... second thing, try finding a car club that would suit a Trabant, not be in the middle of nowhere, and not full of wanky old farts. There was little in the way OldSchool in terms of a melting pot of different kinds of cars and people, the car club scene seemed to be dominated by wankers in $100K hotrods and "Australian V8" or specialty MG, Mini etc clubs... anyway I found two suitable clubs in the end... one that happened to be meeting just down the road from me... which sucked in regards to short distance to drive, but were willing to sign me up straight away, and had just signed up for the Historic car 60 day logbook trail in NSW. The 60 day logbook meant I could drive the car and do other things for 60 days of the year, but I had to keep a logbook, and had to turn up to a certain number of club meetings per year. (meets at 7am on a sunday really screw up my saturday night drinking plans) Anyway things were fine with the car, and in fact I found another Trabant less than 2km away from me, followed by 6 more on the other side of the harbour (6 were owned by the same person) The One that was 2km away was a 1989 Trabant KubelWagen used by the east german military, and the owner brought it directly from the factory just after the wall fell, currently only has 3000km on it and purrs by comparison to my car or Rodney's (The guy who owns 6). As far as the owner was aware (and based on the full documentation I've seen) it's the last 2stroke KubelWagen produced and the only one sold directly to a civilian with all the military radios etc... so that was quite exciting to find that hidden in sydney. Anyway things ticked along fine till end of 2016 when another Trabant in South Australia came up for sale, and I flew down and drove it back to Sydney via Melbourne and I was looking forward to having a second car which mean I could use them for 120 days a year. The Trabant Kombi make the journey with only the only problems been a temperamental starter motor, and a hole in the front window seal (only a problem when it started to rain 2hrs away from Sydney), however despite make it all the way back it was full of structural rust, the entire roof was swiss cheese and due to the way it was imported back in 1994, there was no way I could get it on the road even if I did fix it. In case you're wondering how I drove it back then, there is a loverly quirk in Australia called unregistered vehicle permits, which allowed me to drive it ~1600km unregistered from Adelaide to Sydney. ^ Taking full advantage of my extra wide single car park space and small cars, pretty sure I could fit a third in there as well if I tried... So I ended up striping it for parts, which means I now have a spare engine, gearbox etc etc etc... sad but there wasn't really any other options available for it. So anyway back in August I got approached by my old job to come back, and it happened to suit me at the time, (so much for changing careers) and now I am back in Wellington, with the Trabi #1 and now 3 east german MZ ETZ Motorbikes... after having to wait a few extra weeks as the moving company lost an key employee who was supposed to be doing all the paperwork, I finally got access to the car and just drove it over to VINZ (shhhh don't tell the police) where it got re registered without and issue (didn't even have to reinstall the centre stop light) so is now occasionally cruising the streets of wellington central.. only things I need one is a couple of little paint touch ups and to get new window seals all around as the grey seals I have all hardened and the rear window is now leaking, it's now a known problem with these reproduction grey seals as they had to substitute some chemical that is no longer allowed to be used in the EU, and well it doesn't work as well as it should, so I'll end up having replace the seals with black ones

MZ ETZ 300 1987 "The Pom" ALBUM (UK MZ ETZ 300) Also brought on Trademe a few weeks ago, originally form the UK... however still in nelson at the time of writing. The Good: Everything is there, it should be 100% ready to go (nothing to restore) The Bad: Its currently in nelson waiting on NZTA to issue it a VIN and NZTA is been slow about it. It also needs to be added to the LAMS list for me to legally ride it, which it should happily comply, it's just a matter of finding the documentation, which is hard since it was a UK only bike, and as its 99% a MZ ETZ 250 with a slightly larger engine, there was not a lot of tech manuals which spell out the spec as required by NZTA...

MZ ETZ 250 1988 "The New Zealander" ALBUM (NZ MZ ETZ 250) Brought off Trade me sight unseen a couple of weeks ago. Apparently it was originally from a deceased estate, the guy I brought it from got it in boxes and put it back togeather... The Good: The engine has compression and have been guaranteed that it runs.... going to try that this weekend The Bad: Everything else... its missing lots of small parts.. the wiring is a mess no throttle grip tube chain guard system is broken missing foot peg bent shifter broken clutch lever broken tacho missing key bad paint job no seat random hole via a screw in the side of the fuel tank missing petcock valve the list goes on...

Its been a few years since I had a proper project, so middle of last year I decided to get my motorcycle license and buy a bike... I've started off with one and end up with 3.... the first one I bought on Gumtree AU, sight unseen, been sitting for "YEARS" in a guys garage on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. A few weeks after it got delivered to my door I unexpectedly moved back to NZ and brought both the Bike and Trabi back with me. MZ ETZ 250 1985 "The Australian" Album (AU MZ ETZ 250) The Good: It has 99% of all its parts The Bad: A previous owner... (the guy I brought it off never did anything with it, just stored it) put the piston in backwards, it smashed up the cylinder and piston... repainted it badly put a dent in the exhaust left fuel in the tank and it rusted to hell lost the petcock valve didn't fill crankcase with oil so big end and small end surface pitted...

Hey OS I am looking for a garage/lockup/workshop to rent, to work on two motorbike projects in the Wellington Central Area... (a 1985 and 1988 MZ ETZ 250) I would do them at home except its in an apartment garage which has a sensor light that goes off after 5mins, and that I am not allowed to do any work in there. So looking for some sort of lock up/garage/workshop that I can store the bikes during the restoration and do some work on them during the occasional weekday evening and weekends during the day, ideally space would have power but at a minimum some sort of lighting but I think that would be it... Cheers Andrew

Jeeze, its been that long, I haven't updated the thread in a long time with all its adventures etc since 2015... I'll give you a buzz via PM 2052

Yeah well that is exactly my question, I've called VTNZ Thorndon and Adelaide Rd , and they apparently don't do the reregistration check, even though Adelaide Rd does do entry cert *at least according to their webpage... I just want to try and avoid going all the way to the Hutt... if it was thorndon or adelaide road or somewhere in the city, I could get it around there without a tow... but getting to the hutt is probably a stretch too far...

@ajg193 I took it over to Australia when I moved there, and I deregistered it because I didn't know how long I would be gone, or if I was ever going to be coming back.

Hey Everyone Just arrived back in NZ last month and my car https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/33440-catatonicchimps-1977-trabant-601/ should hopefully now be on solid ground in Welly (the boat arrived this morning), I am assuming it's going to take a number of days/weeks, before it gets through the gauntlet of Customs/BioSecurity, but I was wondering where I can go to get the re registration checked etc done, that doesn't involve hiking down the road with an expensive tow truck to Lower Hutt. Is there anywhere in the city that does Reregistration certs? (Nothing modified, nothing changed since it was last registered in NZ, except the odo with a couple of thousand extra km) Cheers Andrew

See you in Thorndon at 7pm

My best laid plans to go were ruined by a tooth infection... I spent the day in bed, high as a kite on some opiates..

Oh yeah they are amazing.. makes it so much easier to remove and reattach the carb... 5mins in and out vs 20-40mins and several smashed fingers.

So what is the best day to come up? Saturday or Sunday?

Anyone else planning on going this Sunday?

Just and update on this... I managed to get everything working reliable on wednesday and went out to the miramar headlands and took some photos pointing back towards the city to send off to AutoBild... so looking forward to seeing the article when its printed... That said the engine is back out of the car as the new crankshaft arrived on wednesday (same day we did the photos) so I hope to have that installed tonight after I finish the prep work.

I've done it before, its not something I want to repeat unless in an emergency Plus it would need another driver which I don't currently have as everyone I know is working 7 days a week...

Well option C kinda happened, which is: oh shit I can't get the dowel/key pin out of the old crank, so no point even trying to drill out the broken one... lets just smash it all together and see what happens... and it starts... well for a few seconds.. (carb is flooding a bit..) but then the battery died... so I will have to wait till tomorrow to take it for a test drive (very gentle test drive) and if that works fine then go take some pictures with it. Cheers A.

I am still waiting on the new crankshaft from Germany to arrive.. however I just got an email last night from an editor at Auto Bild Magazine in Europe.. and they are doing a 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down and the Trabant... and they want to include mine because as far as we can tell its the furthest away from Zwickau where they were made... I've been told before that there is one in Christchurch but I have no details of that one.. So i am trying to go through an emergency plan to get the car on the road at least temporarily so I can get some photos of it in front of an NZ landmark... Oh I should mention they want photos by monday.. Option A: Probably the best option with the limited time, does anyone have a car trailer + tow car and time tomorrow to Taxi the car around for about 1.2hrs (25mins from Karori -> Miramar + photo time + 25mins back to Karori)... I was thinking some photos in front of the Wellington Sign might be the best bet in that case, but could take other suggestions if you think there is a better location... Edit: I have a work colleague with a 4wd we can use as a tow car if someone has a trailer we can borrow... Option B: Try and drill the damaged dowl in out tonight and replace it with the dowel pin from my original crank. (Will know if that is possible tonight) If that works, use the new flywheel and hope it sticks together for the day. (requires extra work to reassemble everything) and a spare pair of hands would be awesome for the final install and timing setup. But will know more if this would be even possible when i get home later this evening. Cheers C.

Sounds awesome... should have Trabi fixed by then, and its nice and close to home as well

If you haven't read the other posts in the meetup thread, - Got in car to go to meetup - attempted to start car, starter makes a high rev noise, but engine doesn't start. - Push starting doesn't work Return today with tools. - remove starter - starter appears to be fine, no teeth missing on starter or ring gear. - notice that fly wheel is spinning easier than it should. - notice that turning the fan which is connected to the crank is not rotating with flywheel. So hopefully its just a case of removing the engine and clutch, line up and reattach flywheel... reassemble clutch and stick the engine back in... worst case something has snapped, but I haven't heard anything go ping.. so hopefully just detached. But what I need help with is, I can lift the engine on my own when its out of the car, its only ~40-50kg but that is when I've have had all my weetbix and I have good starting position to lift the engine cleanly, getting it out of the engine bay is a bit harder, so I was hoping that someone might be able to lend an extra pair of hands to help lift it out/fix and reinstall (shouldn't take more than an hour including beer drinking.) or if someone could lend me a engine crane so I can do it myself. Location: Karori Cheers Catatonic

I took the starter out of the Trabi at Lunch... and its fine.... the fly wheel looks fine as well... the issue is that is spinning freely... so I think the nut that holds it all together wasn't torqued correctly and has come loose,... or something has snapped... hopefully its just the first one..

I am all the way out in Miramar, gonna have to flag it, even if I can start it, its not something I want to then drive all the way out to porirua... the starter spins... but its not engaging... grrrr...

Just went out to the car park to head to porirua.... and the starter won't engage.... I also left my tools at home.... shit...

assuming shit doesn't hit the fan at work... I should be there...