CatatonicChimp

Churs dude, it was good fun, despite the shitty fire alarms.

I am heading there now, see you at 11.

I could be interested depending on time and route...

I wish I could have come on Thursday, combination of brake issues (I seem to be plagued by them even after then inspection) and I was sick in bed with some form of ebola. I know you guys have done them on the city/eastern suburbs before, but are there any plans for evening meet ups on city/eastern suburb in the near future, I don't get off work till 7pm so travelling out to lower hutt is a bit of a pain. I assume all the suggestions that Shaz is posting are for weekend trips? They all sound awesome assuming the weather stops been so shitty.

Its official:

A friend from work just had his two bikes stolen from his garage last night in Melrose. "The Ducati is in mint condition and is a one-off. There can only be a handful of these in NZ so it should stand out." Rego is: A8BGJ "The Yamaha YZ250 was almost finished being rebuilt and is missing the exhaust and the riders seat." If anyone has heard of seen anything, we would love to know Cheers C.

Thankfully the inspection issues have been sorted, IVS managed to come up with a solution that works for both of us, so they will be doing an inspection in the next week or so when I take the car to get the brakes fixed. I am just waiting on the new brake parts from Germany to replace the parts that got contaminated by the brake fluid when the slave cylinder failed. .

Yeah I really hope so...well it will get sorted its just a question over who ends up paying for it. I am sure IVS does a good job, but in cases like this where things slip through the gap, I am so far not impressed with the service. There was no invoice or details on that stickers that mention you have to ring up and pay for the inspection service. This is on top of the fact it should have already been paid for by the Shipping company. I am pretty sure the shipping company did the right thing, its just unfortunate that they don't have access to specific invoices between their depot and IVS for the inspection service costs as it apparently paid in a bulk sum. Otherwise I could hold it over IVS' head...

I've picked the car up from the entry certifier... couple of things that need fixing. - Centre stop light has no standards on it, (already fixed last night with a crappy looking Narva centre light, had to replace the 12v bulb with 6v but works fine) - poor performance on R|R brake, (basically the slave cylinder failed and contaminated the brakes, so that needs a rebuild. I ordered new parts.. hoping it arrives in less than 20 days.) - brakes dragging on two wheels (going to replace all the brake drums with the new ones I have at home) - Windscreen washer + horn where marked as not working, but that was because it wasn't operated correctly or he couldn't figure out how to test. - Play in steering rack. -hopefully it just requires a bit more grease and a slight adjustment, worst case is its the bushing and requires new parts... . - Too much play in brake pedal.. so partly rear brake failure to blame, and probably needs some tinkering with the piston position. - Headlight aim needs to be fixed. - possible bearing failure R|R, could be related to the brake cylinder failure, will have to see when I get it up on the jacks.

Still no luck with NZTA or IVS.... they can't find any record of the car... seriously there is only maybe 5 in the country at most, and I've given them all the forms about when it came in, shipping codes, container codes, MAF documentation etc... I do know the car was inspected by IVS because it had a pink IVS inspection sticker on it along with the NZTA sticker saying it has rust.. but apparently they never entered the details in the system... which seems contradictory to the inspection guidelines... Apparently that sticker should have been enough to tell me to go pay them for inspection services. yet there was no info on the sticker to that effect, or invoice with the paperwork when the car was delivered, and the fact that the freight forwarder had already charged me for the NZTA inspection already. So my two lines of enquiry are currently a) did Taurus (the freight forwarder actually pay the inspection bill) or b. did IVS just screw up the filing of the paperwork. I am leaning towards b at the moment. EIther way I feel like one of them should be footing the bill for the screw up.. But the end result looks like I will have to cough up another $144 if I want the car registered this century...

Highs and lows today.... The VW is no longer pissing its coolant all over the ground. Although my wallet is a lot lighter as a result, the other upside is no more buses to get to work. But a few things need to be sorted with the Trabi already.. just after it arrived at the entry cert... Centre brake light isn't certified... Shit... $50 + for to replace it with something shitty because almost everything certified is meant to run on 12v, unless you go for the crappy looking one and replace the 12v bulb with a 6v bulb... yay.... feel the sarcasm. $300-500~ for translation of original registration... this sucks... just waiting to hear back if I can do a selective translation.... I can translate 90% of the stuff on there without a problem, but of course it has to be certified... stupid LTNZ... Add to the fact that MAF screwed up... we can't find the car in Landata... although I think I may have a reason why... the put the wrong fricking VIN on the documentation. They also said they would have to strip the interior, which I am kinda annoyed about, considering that it has a full repair cert... what do you expect to see behind the panels.. This is proving to be a little more difficult then I though... I thought I was on top of it all.. but now I feel like a complete noob.... of which I am... but now I feel ass about it... Rant Over.. also as of Thursday the car is 37 years and 1 month old... I missed its birthday last month

Good News Everyone I decided to give windscreen installation a try and it went in... without a problem. and just a few minutes ago... I booked the Trabant in for Entry certification this week. YAY!!! Its actually a little sooner than I expected, but I need to get it rego'd asap as my VW is stuck in the shop with a massive water pump failure and a shitty gearbox. Edit: me no write good english.

Yay..... lets just say I am a happy person at the moment.... All in one piece Along with another box from project601

I gave Autoglas Steiger a call this arvo, the guy I talked to was going to check with Franz, but haven't heard back yet, I'll follow up tomorrow if I don't hear anything... Yeah no way I am going to throw it away yet... The guys at sharps autoglass wanted to check it out and see if they have anything that matches its curve and have one cut to size... but otherwise yeah will look at the guys in auckland for a custom job if need be... just depends on costs Cheers C.

I wouldn't say it was packed by a imbecile, in all other cases I've been really impressed with their packing. There was a lot of support in there, the images look shitty because I removed all the extra packing before I got deep enough to ply the glass out. But yes improvements could have been made in their packing, a bit more thorough support at the ends around the corners to protect it if it was thrown and it landed on a corner... basically looking at the box, its landed on something and the corner made a tear through the outer layer of the box and became exposed. Anyway still waiting to hear back with confirmation that they are shipping a new windscreen... I asked another vendor and it would cost 220euro just for just the shipping.. although that is with a full wooden frame built into the package.

I should have followed @k-trips advice and ordered two from different vendors..... farrrrrrrkkkkk..... Just called TrabantWorld and sent them the images, they say they are going to send me another.... but dammit... another 2-3weeks

Despite the rollercoaster of emotion that one gets from starting at nzpost tracking data.. or lack thereof... my two boxes from germany have arrived... Windscreen appears to be intact, but I will wait till I get home before I unpack it completely and confirm that fact. Small box is heavy as hell... I guess thats is mostly the 4 new drums I ordered...

In the end yes... went to the wrong place first, google maps has their old address on Webb street...

Dropped the Generator off with Nino this morning, hope to hear back today/tomorrow as to its condition. Worst case I just order a replacement from Germany, but its a little expensive 80euro plus shipping. Regulator is also an unknown, but by the looks its probably the generator not the regulator, however the is pretty much nothing to fix a bad regulator, so I've ordered a replacement anyway, since it was only 30Euro. Cheers A.

So it appears my Generator needs some tender love and care.... I know some of it works, as it runs like a motor when I apply 6v to it, but I can't work out why its not generating power, even when shorting DF and D+ max voltage generated is 0.8v. I replaced the brushes and yes it probably still not bedded properly, but the collimator looks pretty dirty... so I need to find a sparky with a lathe who can clean it up, and tell me how stupid I am... Any recommendations for auto electricians who would be able to service a generator in Wellington city area? Cheers C.

So a couple of things you may notice in the video... a) the gear map is just leftover from when I sent it into get the brakes done. (I know what the gear mapping is without looking.) finding the gates for the gear is rather difficult, and it doesn't help that I just rotated the gear leaver about 25deg counter clockwise, as my thigh was causing the gear lever to pop out of reverse when looking over my shoulder. It will need further adjustment as now 2nd and 4th are hard to grab behind the wheel. c) I haven't driven a manual in about 9 months so much clutch work was also shit... (please forgive god of clutches) d) a bunch of the noise you hear on the second downhill section is the brakes rubbing... new drums are on way to hopefully fix that..

So... progress report time... Brakes: working kinda... apparently two of the drums are slightly warped and are causing the brakes to stick... ordered new drums to hopefully fix the issues. Lights: All working, new centre brake light has arrived from the USA and will be installed tomorrow. Seatbelts: Arrived at Auckland mail centre and should be here monday. Windows: Rear, and Sides have been installed. the front however shattered during install and is now in a few thousand pieces. The glaziers have agreed to pay for the shipping costs, so I ordered a new windscreen last night from Germany, 60euros for the glass and 68euro for the shipping. Since its a fixed price for shipping based on max weight/volume I also got some extra little bits and pieces that had previously been uneconomical to buy without having to purposely buy them like spare 6v lights and petcock kits etc. So hopefully that will be here in 3 or so weeks. Lessons learnt this week are: don't forget to remove paper wrapping from the bumper before going for a test drive... especially when that paper is butting up against the very hot front muffler, no damage done, but it freaked me out for a few minutes, "Why do I smell something burning under the bonnet". Edit: Other items that have moved up the list since I am waiting on the the windscreen. - Speedo maintance, discovered that the speedo only seems to report 0 or 40kph as its speed... so will have to disassemble and give it a bit of lubrication I think. - Trim pieces, for the tops of the fenders/doors and roof trim, I need to removed all the old sealant that was on them and polish them up and then screw them in with only new sealant for the roof trim. - The rear seat needs to come out and get the new covers put on, they are not nearly as bad as the original front seat covers, but I have the replacements so I may as well use them. - Interior side cards need to be installed properly with correct mounting hooks and screws.

Sad news everyone, looks like I won't be able to make it for June, but should be up and running for July... Everything was on track till this morning, and unfortunately the front windscreen didn't want to behave, and ended up shattering into a million pieces... So I am ordering a new windscreen tonight... (its only 60euro, but shipping costs is 60+euro, and on average it takes 2-3 weeks to arrive from Germany, so unfortunately I am shit out of luck at the moment)

apparently my friend is a bit useless at filming with his mobile (sound is muffled and the video is vertical) It had a little trouble starting for some reason... it was smoking quite a bit, and it stalled on its own as I reversed out, so might need a little bit of adjustment to the idle values. However it was fine after I gave it some juice to get out onto the street.

Hopefully it only needs to on 2 more piggy back rides... 1 home tomorrow after it gets the bolts extracted.. .and the other out to lower hutt to get the entry cert/warrant/rego..