2006 when i got Couchette, an 810S5 – exchange engine was mounted – at (assumption) around mileage 71000 Km .

On higher speed the engine was working always quite roughly, maybe because bad crankshaft balancing (?).
2007, ambitioned by a discussion with our former club president, i purchased an R15TL engine at an auction on ebay.fr and got her at an car receycling place near Paris . (see Saint Germain Axis)

2008 then i installed the R15TL engine (w/o previously opening the engine) Carburator, distributor- and collector manyfolds are from the Estafette

Drowned bushings

With this configuration (i guess its around 45-46 PS) driving is very comfortable upto a speed of 100 Km/h on the highway. Also the inclines are going better. Consumption is even a bit lower, On holiday – en vadrouille – (wandering) its around 9 l / 100 . If necessary the engine revs up quite quickly
Comparing with old engine now one has simlpy a bit mor reserves. (drivers of modern turbo diesels may here just sneering 🙂 )

2015 – after around 10000 Km Couchette started to spit out white smoke and wather. Ich had to refill wather periodically. Then i decided to unmount the head and let it face milling – then grinded the the valves and remounted the head with new head gasket.
The engine was runing but the white smoke became even stronger.
So i bought first a spacer on ebay and inspected the head – it was perfectly even .
Then i checked the egine block and its bushings with the spacer – normally the bushings has to overlap between ca 0.04 bis 0.11 mm – but on my R15TL overlapping was just zero – now it was clear – the bushings settled over the years – so i had it to do with “drowned bushings”.
In a hobby shop (!) i got then 1/10 mm copper coil and cut out two seals with a nail scissor. This “intermediate seals” i laid then directly between the top of the bushings and the head gasket
This repair last until today 🙂

Later i installed the “123 Ignition” (2018) and the “AMM-L1 High-Precision” Lambda-Regulator from “Altmann Micro Machines” (2020) -> Ignition & Lambda