I'm Never Detailing My Trabant Again



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49 thoughts on “I'm Never Detailing My Trabant Again”

  1. Years ago, I watched a guy that looked like Mr. T (only way bigger) use Ajax powdered bleach (the stuff for toilets) on a red car that was so shot it looked like faded pink. Really cut thru the oxidation.

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  2. Ah the (not so) good old Trabant.
    My Grandpa had 2 of these and had to wait around 12 YEARS for the second one to be delivered.
    That was an event for the whole family, back in around 1987.
    Wir hatten ja nüscht. 😄

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  3. You DEFINITELY started too coarse with 400-grit. I use 400-grit wet-sanding to polish metal, for god's sake. You should've started at 1000-grit.

    You really need to repaint the headlight bezels to match the rest of the car. I don't care how hard it is to match the color. The black ones look awful.

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  4. I’m of the bonnet persuasion 😂 love that. I was under the impression that the color was molded into the Duraplast, and it wasn’t even painted, but this being the GDR I would fully expect the enslaved North Korean factory workers (yes, that was a thing, almost nobody ever mentions or talks about it but there was a weekly flight from East Berlin to Pyongyang on Interflug specifically for the workers) at the Zwickau factory to like lightly brush on the paint with a model kit paintbrush

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  5. Long term treatment is to powder coat the car. It will be far more durable than the factory paint. Not to keep it from rusting but to avert paint burn in which happened with too much polishing. In the meantime, consider the brown spots on the hood character if you can stand them!

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  6. Detailing of Trabbi with waxing, and ceramic coating is pure overkill. The old patina fits better, because it didn't looked any better brand new in the factory ready for delivery. The must have detail on that wannabe car are commie era licence plates, preferably DDR plates and oval DDR country code sticker. Thats it all what it needs to fit to the zeitgeist of the era. Those Hungarian plates does not fit at all, those are a post commie plates, almost contemporary plates used until EU membership.

    But I guess, a Hungary is a good place for harvesting a used spare parts because at 1989 on the country's western border to Austria Hungarians got a plenty of abandoned Trabants. 1989 was the year of exodus of biblical proportions of east Germans to the west, and Trabants are left behind in oblivion.

    During a Yugoslav commie era that vehicle as a marvel of German automotive engineering was the bottom of the market, the biggest competitor for bottom position was Soviet/Ukranian beauty ZAZ Zaporožec, a crappie Yugo was highend quality vehicle compared to Trabant. There was even a story as urban legend that duroplast panels of one Trabant was eaten by pigs.

    Today that awful litle car look as nice educative DIY project for kids to learn a basics of car mechanics.

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  7. I noticed the "z" or "zed" on the front. I think the car manufacturer was acquired by Opel at one point after reunitification after 1989. I remember seeing shitty looking cars in the mid-2000s owned by some Germans. I had a 1989 Opel Kadett GSI with LCD gauges. It was cool for the LCD stuff. I was a soldier in Europe, if you are wondering.

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  8. Mr. Robert Dunn I have a theory the reason why the rough sanded patch is shinier than the very smooth sanded patch is because I think the polisher can grab the paint and melt it with the friction and make it shiny and the other part can't do it as well that's my theory hopefully that makes sense to you

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