project 1980 Austin Princess

[Rocket88]

Its Rustoleum isnt it? Could you use this? Says interior use but I guess you could overcoat it with exterior clear?

 

https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/rust-oleum-clear-glitter-protective-sealer-400ml/p/0471693?nst=0&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7t6i0bKB3gIVhrTtCh12eQGBEAQYAiABEgKAI_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

Either way though the car looks amazing! It reminds me of the off the wall creation in the 70's that appeared in Hot Car and Custom Car when Customizers put two fingers up to what society thought a car should look like

 

This does work.....needs a lot of lacquer though..........this was done with it......

[Asimo]

Re the reflectors.

 

Practical aluminium things are made of aluminium alloys because alloys can be designed to suit whatever widget is being made.

Pure aluminium is just about the best reflector for visible light that we have so pure aluminium is deposited on glass, plastic (including CDs) and even aluminium parts for maximum reflectivity. It is a cheap and quick process too, which is why it is so widely used.

[Timewaster]

I have followed this thread from the start.

Some of the ideas I genuinely thought WTF?...

 

I quite liked the Lotus wheels. And the moon discs..

 

But those tail lights look great.

Brilliant job!

 

I'm not keen on the high level indicators but it's not my car.

 

Now it is just the front number plate location that makes me twitch a bit.

[vulgalour]

You're not alone!  Some of the things I've tried haven't worked, that's the nature of the beast.

 

Lotus wheels need refurbishing and some nice tyres, since that's expensive they keep being bumped down the list and now the roads are being salted I'm leaving them until next year and we'll stick with steels and moons.

 

Front number plate is a personal bugbear, there's just nowhere for it to go.  I'd love to ditch the front plate completely but there's some sort of legal thing which means I'm not allowed, so it's best compromise there.  Moving the plate further up the front of the car, or using a stick-on one, just looks uglier.  There's no way I'm putting an offset square one on either.

 

High level indicators are, oddly enough, a safety thing.  It's the same reason we fitted the high level brake light.  Modern drivers only look straight ahead and don't see the Princess lights in the stock location and no matter how large they are, they just don't look for them, so the tiny little high level brake and those high level indicator dots are just more visible.  Which is daft.

[MorrisItalSLX]

 

Just a thought.

 

Also, MS Paint is the extent of my skills.

[mat_the_cat]

Re the reflectors.

 

Practical aluminium things are made of aluminium alloys because alloys can be designed to suit whatever widget is being made.

 

That makes a lot of sense - in our case choose the right alloy for machinability and polishability, and then coat with pure aluminium (or silver in some cases) for reflection.

[vulgalour]

That's almost the factory location for the plate, originally it looks like this.

 

Trouble is, without the bumper it looks a bit daft when it sits above the bottom line of the car.  Here it is affixed to the centre bar.

 

The issue mainly isn't that it looks particularly bad mounted above the bottom line of the car when you look at it face on, at headlight level, it's that it looks bad from every other angle.  The 'chin' on the car is very Jimmy Hill so if you stick the number plate on it rather than under it the plate ends up sticking out like an underbite.  Tilt it back to meet the centre bar and it looks really odd, turn it into a stick-on vinyl plate and it looks dreadful.  In meatspace, sticking the plate underneath where I've got it now actually works best because most of the time it's not even that obvious it's there while also being fully visible and legal for things like speed cameras and whatever.

 

Here's a side view of that massive chin to demonstrate how far it sticks out and and well it hides the front plate from certain more normal viewing angles.

 

If I was allowed to, I'd ditch the front plate altogether, like many cars it looks hugely better without a front plate at all.  I'm not keen on relocating the front plate at all at this point, I've spent a long time finding the best compromise for it and feel I've got that now.  I would like to mount it further back underneath the car but that gets a bit sketchy because it starts to be obscured by bodywork which may get me the sort of attention I don't particularly want.

 

 

[Tadhg Tiogar]

....If I was allowed to, I'd ditch the front plate altogether, like many cars it looks hugely better without a front plate at all.  I'm not keen on relocating the front plate at all at this point, I've spent a long time finding the best compromise for it and feel I've got that now.  I would like to mount it further back underneath the car but that gets a bit sketchy because it starts to be obscured by bodywork which may get me the sort of attention I don't particularly want.

Pity it's not legal to have an adhesive plate on your bonnet lid.

[PhilA]

I'm still trying to figure why you need a pair anyway. One's enough, works just fine here.

 

Most designers, if you look at the sketches, avoid a plate on the front if they can anyway. Defeats the purpose when it's a domestic design that legally needs one, and a large one at that.

 

Phil

[SiC]

This

 

Reminds me of

[Timewaster]

These are by no means recommendations but I assume you have considered a square plate or offset mounting ala 156?

[Asimo]

When I removed the Renault 20's front bumper I mounted the number plate in the centre of the grille.

 

Just a thought....

[panhard65]

With the front plate how about making a sort of box to mount in on in the middle. Sort of like the opposite of how the rear is Frenched in. Does that make sense to any one ? It is really looking good now but the rear high level indicators spoil the lines a little I think, but that is just my opinion.

[Inspector Morose]

Nah, they’re a good idea but they need to lose the chrome. Or how about frenching them into the pillars a-la Citroen DS?

 

Anyway, you car, your choices. It’s just nice to see you’ve got your mojo well and truly back with this. I’ve read of your lowest ebbs in the past years but you’ve stuck it out. Its now paying off!

[wuvvum]

Could you not just pretend the plate has fallen off and stand it on top of the dash so it displays through the windscreen?

[Dick Longbridge]

Those rear lights look brilliant. Cap doffed.

I’m with Timewaster on the front plate thing. Small offset front plate, which doesn’t dominate the front end.

Well done on sticking with all of it, regardless.

[vulgalour]

All of these suggestions with the number plate have been mocked up and tried, to no avail.  Some look fine in digital mock up, and then just don't translate at all well in meatspace mockup.  The box idea was considered and it looks dreadful in profile, the offset plate just makes the front end look wonky which, honestly, you don't want with a Hydragas car, it just makes you paranoid.  Sticking it up on the grille looks dreadful, I'd show you but I can't find the one example I have of that right now.

 

[vulgalour]

wuvvum:  I did for a bit, when it had, and it looked like the shonkiest thing ever.  Fine when the car was actually pretty shonky (which is why the plate had fallen off) but not so much now.

 

So yeah, anyway, suggestions appreciated on the number plate but not really needed.  I've gone over it a *lot* both on here and offline and I'm happy with where it is now.  Same with the high level indicators, I like them, they look how I want, and we're not doing more welding on the rear end unless it's for rust repair now.  It's as done as it needs to be for the forseeable.

[somewhatfoolish]

Dodgy stick-on plate on the front of the bonnet a-la Paddy Hopkirk and his bloody mini? TBH where you've got the front plate is pretty good, although it might look better with a quasi-dodgy reduced size one like bikers get so the vertical dimension doesn't overhang the scoop area or the grille.

[vulgalour]

In 99% of cases, stick-on plates make a car look like a bad kit car.  In 99% of cases, I hate them.  The Princess is definitely not in the 1%.

[Des]

Best plate position I can see is at the bottom, although it will be vulnerable, but if you hang it from a couple of hinges not so bad, and it will also disappear from view when you're in motion. 

[They_all_do_that_sir]

A shame that sticking it on the grille looked crap, as in my head it could work a la Citroen sm front end....

 

Sent from my TA-1012 using Tapatalk

[vulgalour]

Plate is less vulnerable than you might expect at the bottom, if anything it's useful because I know if anything smashes into the plate it's going to be very bad news for the sump.

[Noel Tidybeard]

just be carefull "touch" parking now with those rocket exhaust sticking out like that

[eddyramrod]

I'm with Joloke here.  Take the comparisons to magazine projects as compliments, because that is exactly what they are.  I feel like I'm reading a more detailed Custom Car from 1977.  Top work, Angyl, really top work.  I hope to see it in the metal when it's done!

 

Front number plate: have you considered a US-size plate hanging from the grill down to the chin, centrally?  I have a picture in my mind that makes the car look wider that way...

[vulgalour]

Don't worry, I'm taking the recent responses very much as compliments rather than criticisms and the references to things like Custom Car is pretty satisfying since that's the main influence behind all this nonsense.  Squarer plates, and US proportioned plates, don't actually make the front end look wider strangely, it just makes it look oddly pinched.  The standard UK plate isn't too terrible.  The ideal is to put an Italian sized plate in the current location since they're extremely tiny and pointless, but I'm pretty sure that's 100% illegal and will get me in trouble.

[vulgalour]

Today Mike helped me fit the rear screen.  It went moderately well.  Arbomast non-setting sealant on the surround then plenty of soap and some strong string in the rubber seal followed by quite a bit of swearing and effort.  Surprisingly the corners went very easily, normally I find non-round corners like these quite difficult.  After that it was a case of massaging the stainless trims as close to perfect as I could before fitting those.  Turns out if you push the big bit of the channel insert in first, you can then work your way around with a screwdriver to ease the small side of the channel over the trim where needed.  It still took far too long and was incredibly frustrating, I can see why they switched to the plastic inserts later in production.  However, I do think the earlier stainless trim looks a world better than the skinny plastic one ever did.  After that the heated rear screen and high level brake were plugged back in and the C pillar interior trims reinstalled.  The glass was given a clean, but nothing else at this point, I just wanted to get home and I can clean the car better at home anyway... which is where it now is!

20181015-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I did a best guess on the headlights and alignment is better for me but I suspect may be dazzling oncoming traffic a little so I'll reset those properly when I can next park in front of the garage door.  Behaved itself on the handful of miles home, which was a relief after having disturbed quite so much stuff.

20181015-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20181015-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Happily, we're now down to normal car maintenance and fettling.  Unless it throws something at me, there are no major jobs to do and that's a huge relief.  Probably won't put many miles on now with the roads starting to be salted already and the Rover being easier to live with when it's really cold, so I can happily take things a bit easier now and not worry about getting every single item finished.

[320touring]

That looks fucking Awesome!

 

#BLGalaxie

[Pillock]

Please can someone turn that photo into an animation with the "thrusters" spouting fire and the car shooting into the distance. That looks amazing.

[PhilA]

Highway to the danger zone.