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1980 Austin Princess


vulgalour

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I've been looking at stuff like Pyle and Bassface headunits that have better basic stats and often look nicer.  There's also an interesting update on Sweetpea's MR2 thread where he uses one of those tiny basic MP3 players hidden in an ashtray which I quite like: http://forum.retro-rides.org/post/2405483/thread

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It's shorter and lighter so I wouldn't have the wobbly issue so much.  I also thought from the picture initially that it was smaller than standard DIN, which again would have been easier to fit, potentially in the lower centre console.  However, on looking up stats on these units most are only rated at 30W (per speaker, max 4 speakers) so it's actually a little underpowered as a complete unit for what I'm thinking of doing.  I'm looking at fitting something in the 50-60W range instead so I'm back to the drawing board a little bit on this one.

 

I've got 20W speakers hooked up to the original radio in the Triumph Acclaim and anything above 1/3rd volume causes the entire interior to vibrate and rattle

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Depends largely upon the sensitivity of the loudspeakers (how much volume they generate for a given power input). I have a pair of speakers in the living room that a 24 Watt amplifier makes the crockery rattle on the other side of the room. I have another set that only start to get up to a decent volume by the time they're getting about 10 Watts pushed into them.

 

Most car speakers tend to be fairly crappy in terms of that- and they can also turn a decent head unit into a disappointing turd. For low wattage units look for speakers with sensitivity ratings over 85dB. A lot of car speakers are down in the 65dB range, which makes their power output terrible (but they can handle a lot of wattage for the sticker on the back).

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I'm ignoring the tunes situation for now and focusing on Other Things.

 

I was going to start dismantling and cleaning up the door I removed ready for welding and paint.  Before that, I wanted to see if I could move the wing at all so I could push the A pillar hinges forwards a smidge without the door catching the wing.  The simple solution is big hammers, but I want this to look nice when I'm done so we shan't be doing that.  Instead, I double-checked what I needed to do to remove the wing with minimal damage to it so I can repair it off the car.  I'll likely convert to bolt-on because alignment, etc. is going to be a lot easier and, if I get a really nice pair of wings in the future, it will be a lot easier to remove these old ones.

 

So, to remove the wing you have to unbolt the 4 bolts that attach it to the A pillar.  You can't get to these bolts without removing the door.  You can't remove the door without stripping the trim off it again and the door is held on with six nuts at the hinges.  Then you have to drill out the spotwelds holding the wing to the car.  There's a lot of spotwelds.  I had enough time today to remove 26 of them.

 

26628080217_dc09897131_b.jpg20180416-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

There's another half dozen or so spotwelds at the nose end of the wing around the headlight aperture and a few more on the wing rail that I can't get to because the bonnet is in the way.  So I'm going to have to take the bonnet off too.  Added to this is the complication that this is my everyday car, so it can't really come off the road while I do this during the week.  I hate welded on wings, they're a chore to remove.

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Mike has been really rather unwell lately so I've not had a helper for the next stage of wing removal.  He's on the mend, happily, but a trip to the hospital was rather more important than taking my car to bits.  As a result, with today being the first really nice day of the year and me hoarding a few supplies in preparation, I decided to make a start sprucing up the outside of the Princess much like I did the engine bay.  We're not going for super professional show quality here, just tidy and clean.

 

I'm focusing on the passenger side as that needs less work and I'm breaking the job down into smaller sections so I can deal with the best bits first and leave the repairs for last.  This is an odd way of doing it, I'm aware, but if I make as much of the car presentable as I can, blending in the repairs will I think give me a much bigger boost and allow me to properly draw a line under things.  Aiming for perfection with this car at this stage is silly, far better to aim for presentable.  Right, excuses out the way, here's what I got on with today.  Only tackled the beige on the passenger side doors and rear wing.

40852038774_23d7de1d9c_b.jpg20180419-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

40670923235_4839e6d675_b.jpg20180419-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

It's quite difficult to photograph!  I didn't mask off the lower portion because I'll be redoing all of that with fresh paint.  The purple on the lower half was fairly hastily applied for the most part so I'll be sanding back through a lot of it when I do the preparation.  There's a couple of areas that showed up as needing a little more attention once I started getting a shine on the panel, which I'll likely tackle in the future, but they're not bad enough that I feel I have to do them right away. There's a huge amount of overspray on the lower half because there was no point wasting materials masking it off since I'll be keying it all back and dealing with imperfections before putting fresh paint on.  I'll obviously take more care masking off the fresh beige when I do the lower portion though.

 

Here's a shot without so much exposure.  The finish is pretty reasonable.  There's a couple of spots where historic dents are visible in person from certain angles that just don't show up in photos.  So that's fine really, isn't it?  The beige is pretty flattering to panel imperfections.

40670923265_64be7fa54a_b.jpg20180419-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

The boot lid was never finished either, I had to rush to get that back on.  You can see that the paint on it is far too thin, especially compared to the rear wing.  I'll wet sand and polish things once I've got everything tidied up properly like this.

40852038444_f67782c867_b.jpg20180419-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I'll put the trim on either much later tonight or tomorrow, I don't want to accidentally damage the fresh paint refitting trims since I can still use the car with them off.

 

Now the sun has gone down a bit I could get a better shot of the finish.  Only one bug (successfully removed without paint damage) and minimal dust issues is pretty impressive for a driveway rattlecan paintjob, if I do say so myself.

40852778034_786d929e2f_b.jpg20170419-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

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Job done. (Paint).

 

Leave it just as it is. I don't think it really needs anything else. For now.

 

Had any more thoughts about doing the Fairlane rocket tail-lights?

 

With the driver's wing, rather than fit another temporary wing then refitting this one again, - how about filing the existing trailing wing edge (or the beige door front edge) a little to create a bit of clearance so you can shunt the door-hinges forwards?

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Jee:  I've got another wing that's rotten in all the places the one on the car is good so I'm combining the two to make one good wing and deal with all the problems.  I can always modify the repaired final wing if needed for clearance.  The Fairlane lights will go in I think when I've dealth with the wing, doors and what paint I can do.  I'm in no rush, especially while the Princess is my sole transport, I'd rather take it off the road for a long weekend or a week and get the whole back panel done in one go.

 

Rev:  I don't know, they've never expressed concerns.  We have fairly decent relations with them to the point that tools can be loaned and returned safely, parcels taken in for other folks or for us, if missed.  I don't push my luck and they don't seem to complain so we've probably got a fairly healthy balance.

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Today involved some of this because it's once again glorious and lovely.

27714309408_98a1c1c754_b.jpg20180420-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

The back door needed rather more filler work than I'd expected and there's plenty of imperfections still remaining on this side.  I'm fed up of constantly trying to find enough time to make things perfect so I'm embracing the imperfections that need hours and hours of hand sanding to resolve and instead getting myself a reasonable 6' finish on everything. Much less stress and the car will look much nicer.  I can always deal with those imperfections a panel at a time in the future, or get someone else to do it for me if ever I can afford a proper respray.  For now, it's all a case of Thistle Dew.

27714309278_1f938c56a6_b.jpg20180420-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

27714309198_1f938c56a6_b.jpg20180420-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

39776255480_98a1c1c754_b.jpg20180420-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Oh yeah.  I changed the colour again.  Thank you to the three people I told for keeping it secret!  When I redyed the orange carpet the result was so good it made me rethink the purple and what I could go with that would match the beige.  I had briefly considered two-tone grey with an orange pin stripe but the amount of work involved to redo things like the engine bay put paid to that drastic a colour change.  Orange, equally, didn't go so well with the beige and I didn't fancy brown because there's already two-tone brown-and-beige Princesses in existence.  So I went with Rustoleum Balmoral to compliment the Rustoleum Antique White.  I'm glad I took the chance, I like this more than the purple, and if it mellows a little darker I won't mind that at all either.

 

Why Rustoleum?  It's easy to get, it's cheap, and it's proven to be really good for this sort of work on other cars.  I've used lacquer over the top of it in addition for the extra protection and to hopefully prevent colour fade but, really, I've found this paint to be pretty durable even when applied hastily and neglected.  It's good stuff, I'd recommend it.  You'll just have to pretend the whole car is going to look this smart when I'm done.

39776255300_825cb5f793_b.jpg20180420-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

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Cheers chaps :D

 

Close up it's slightly orange-peel, as you'd expect for a fresh paint job.  I've not wet sanded or polished it yet  and the camera is fairly representative of the actual finish.  It's not a very deep shine, but that's okay, it is at least shiny now.

 

It's sprayed rather than brushed, and is the Painter's Choice range of colours which can be got for as little as a fiver for a 400ml can.  This portion of the car too about 2.5 cans to get a reasonable coverage, it could happily take the same again and likely will when I iron out the smaller imperfections at a later date.

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The red is the nuts,makes the purple look pants! Based on my experience of using tractor paint/rustolieum,dont use t cut or anything with petroleum/ammonia,it melts the paint,but,especially in the heat we've had,you can ignore the wait 2 weeks brigade and wetsand with say 800g and I used g3 colour restorer to polish it up,then turtlewax,worked a treat for me :-)

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