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1980 Austin Princess


vulgalour

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I didn't put a relay in (I didn't know if they already ran through one, lots of horns do by default) but on inspection they do not. I should've known, being BL and all. Direct drive from the loom.

 

Putting one in is easy peasy, I'll do it Monday. I'll run the speaker lines for the rear speakers too.

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Fantastic news Vulg, looking forward to seeing the magic bit of Ministry paperwork soon.

 

A geek question: why did the Princess, and other BL cars of the era, have a seatbelt warning light - long before wearing seatbelts was compulsory? I can imagine many bank-managing driving-gloves-wearing owners of the time muttering about the nagging light while assuring their wives that they would be "better to be thrown clear." Was it a government attempt to increase seatbelt wearing, or an attempt to competer with Volvo on safety?

 

(As I swapped between various cars yesterday, I temporarily forgot how to switch off my modern Disco. Before remembering that it's by undoing the seatbelt. Yes, really).

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I don't know their reasoning behind it.  I do know lots of people found the light annoying, plenty have taken the opportunity to ask me if I've disconnected "that annoying red dash light".  There was some attempt to sell the car on its safety features, such as halogen trapezoid lamps and Denovo run flat tyres.  The suspension was also advertised as offering predictable, safe handling.

 

In 1975 the Princess/18-22 range released and in 1983 seatbelts compulsory in the UK, just as the Princess had ended production and become the Ambassador.  I don't know if the Ambassador had a seatbelt warning light, I suspect it didn't which would be perfectly ironic and fitting of BL.

 

British Leyland were actually quite keen to sell their cars in the American market and in the 70s, there were plenty of US cars with lights and chimes for seatbelts so I suspect it was to fall in line with that.  The Princess would have been well suited to America's roads and the interior does seem quite American market friendly with the large squishy seats, fashionable* colours and the little bit of wood on the dash.  It was probably too radical a design, too slow a car and had too strong a competition to really make it worthwhile exporting them, which is why they sent America some Marinas instead.

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I didn't put a relay in (I didn't know if they already ran through one, lots of horns do by default) but on inspection they do not. I should've known, being BL and all. Direct drive from the loom.

 

Putting one in is easy peasy, I'll do it Monday. I'll run the speaker lines for the rear speakers too.

 

in the light of Angyls habit of letting the smoke escape its prolly a good idea :mrgreen:

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Fantastic news Vulg, looking forward to seeing the magic bit of Ministry paperwork soon.

A geek question: why did the Princess, and other BL cars of the era, have a seatbelt warning light - long before wearing seatbelts was compulsory? I can imagine many bank-managing driving-gloves-wearing owners of the time muttering about the nagging light while assuring their wives that they would be "better to be thrown clear." Was it a government attempt to increase seatbelt wearing, or an attempt to competer with Volvo on safety?

(As I swapped between various cars yesterday, I temporarily forgot how to switch off my modern Disco. Before remembering that it's by undoing the seatbelt. Yes, really).

Uncle had a couple of Princesses new. He worked for BL and managed to aquire a couple of seatbelt buckles which he plugged in to turn off the lights.

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I didn't put a relay in (I didn't know if they already ran through one, lots of horns do by default) but on inspection they do not. I should've known, being BL and all. Direct drive from the loom.

 

Putting one in is easy peasy, I'll do it Monday. I'll run the speaker lines for the rear speakers too.

 

Combine the two jobs and feed the speaker output into the horns. That'll work.

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In 1975 the Princess/18-22 range released and in 1983 seatbelts compulsory in the UK, just as the Princess had ended production and become the Ambassador. I don't know if the Ambassador had a seatbelt warning light, I suspect it didn't which would be perfectly ironic and fitting of BL.

Neither of the two Ambassadors here have a seatbelt warning light.

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It's broken again.

 

I'd made a start on reinstalling the interior, which was coming along quite well.  Stopped before putting the front passenger seat and dashboard in so we could make sure it was all working properly.

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Got the bootlid lined up as well as I could.  This still needs a lot more work, the alignment is terrible.  It's as good as I can seem to get it for now and I don't want to make the bolt adjustment holes any bigger if I can help it.  The boot lid appears to be slightly deformed in the middle and may well be on the corners too.  It still fits better than the green one did.  I guess the acres of filler in the back end really were necessary to make it look halfway okay.

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Had a look through the radios I'd got and ended up using the most battered of the lot (not shown), an old brown Panasonic radio-cassette deck because it was the most functional of the lot.  I may get one of these internally modernised, I don't know.

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Then the fun and games began.  Before screwing the dashboard in fully we wanted to test it so we wouldn't have to get it all out again.  Things checked out okay at first and then it started blowing fuse #5 again.  After a process of elimination we ended up plugging my spare dashboard in which didn't blow the fuse.  A little more elimination and the issue appears to be with the printed flexible circuitboard on the dashboard (the blue one) whereas the spare seems okay (the gold one).  This is especially annoying.  There's no obvious sign of damage of any sort.

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The other irritation is that the car now won't idle either.  It has fuel in and all systems are normal but now it's decided it won't idle.  Oh, and one of my newly fitted tyres had gone flat, I was warned it might because of the condition of the rims but it's not the one that was leaking before.  So the Princess is back in the bad books again.

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Combine the two jobs and feed the speaker output into the horns. That'll work.

 

Oh god don't tempt me like that.  :mrgreen:

 

Small update that I expect vulg will expand on later; fitted a relay to the horns and they work beautifully, but the dash has developed an issue with blowing fuse 5 again. Vulg has a spare dash which we swapped over for testing and it doesn't blow the fuse, so I suspect the ribbon circuit on the back is completely knackered. Thankfully since we have a spare vulg brought them home and I'm hearing a lot of swearing from the other room as he swaps them over.

 

EDIT: YOU BEAT ME BY ONE MINUTE DAMN IT.

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RE: the issue with it not idling; it won't idle but will sound like it's catching, the plugs were the wrong way around (but it ran with it like that for a long time.. the hell???) so I put them the right way around according to the workshop manual firing order and even checked online that it's correct. It is! I'm guessing the timing is just off a bit and the carb needs resetting as it was set waaaaay too rich.

 

But it ran like that.

 

For ages.

 

Set rich with the plug leads on the wrong order.

 

Perfectly happily.

 

:huh:

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What carb does it have fitted?

 

If its a HIF it has a flat bottom

 

Take the dash pot off with its 3 screws and pull the piston out.

 

See what the jet height is by eye because twiddling the screw doesn't always work on the HIFs (I work on them daily)

 

The mixture screw has an 'o' ring which furrs up and sticks, the jet is sprung with a bimetallic spring which will let you richen it but won't always go the other way.

 

Looking down from above, turn the screw anti clockwise and the jet should raise up through the jet holder, get the jet and jet holder flush and then turn the mixture screw two turns clockwise as a base setting, then put the piston and dash pot back on and fine tune using the piston lifting pin on the side

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Michael1703: HIF44, if I remember correctly.  All the internals on the carb were fine when it was got running recently, the idling issue has only come about since running the tank dry by accident so I suspect it's just pulled some crap through past the inline filter and got a bit gummed up inside.  No big deal to take apart a few pieces and free it off again.  It only plays up like this when it isn't used regularly, when I was using it daily it was much less troublesome.

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them fuses, blew 2 on holiday back in 1993 on isle sheppey, spent 3 hrs finding shop that did them

 

We're going to change them for a much more practical blade fuse bank at some point in the future, they're not expensive and it'll be easy to fit.

 

The current ceramic type (though they're actually plastic) are 8A and 16A. Closest blades are 7.5A and 15A. I honestly don't think the difference will be enough to set the loom on fire.  ;-)

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With the success of the Rover passing its MoT yesterday, today attention turned again to the Princess to see if we could get to the bottom of this fuse-blowing problem.  First, I got some new screws for the rear speakers (originally front door speakers) just so they weren't rattling around.

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Mike then patiently tried to help me understand how the wiring was doing what it was doing.  I struggled with that, managed to accidentally pull a spade connector off one of the fog light wires when disconnecting them and eventually we plodded through until we found the fault.  Not a fun job, and not, as it happens, anything to do with the fog lights.  The issue was definitely in here.

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After figuring out what wires went where and did what we had it down to 3 light bulbs and the front cigar lighter as being the source of the problem.  It seemed to take forever getting to this point and for a time we did think it was to do with the wiring to, or the black plug itself on the main dashboard loom connection piece.  It wasn't.  In the end it came back to the cigar lighter shorting out internally.  I did have another that had done this and replaced it with this one which had been fine until we were preparing the car for MoT.

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Thankfully, that's an easy replacement and I wanted to upgrade the two cigar lighters in the car at some point anyway so we'll do that now and eliminate two issues.  Halfords had generic ones at something like £4 each that are suitable for Sat Nav connectors which is all I use the cigar lighter for.  I also picked up a windscreen tint since I spotted it and remembered how unpleasant the untinted glass in the Princess can be on a really sunny day.  Hooray for Mike's Halfords discount card too, I'm not going to grumble at the additional 15% discount on these bits.

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Tomorrow, hopefully, we'll have the car back in one piece and ready for final MoT checks just to catch anything that's been missed.  Once I've shuffled funds around I'll be looking at MoT and insurance options, sadly not VED exempt for a few more years yet.

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Another day of mixed results with the old lump today.  Mike got both of the new cigarette lighters wired in and they work a treat, quite nice that they have green illumination rings to match the dashboard.  I've managed to misplace one of the dials for my old Panasonic radio-casette, it works well enough and you can just swap the one dial onto whichever post you want to operate.  I've got my eye on a couple of period replacement units, they're just all very expensive for what they are.

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Happily got the passenger front seat and the dashboard lower half reinstalled.  Today is the first day the car has felt genuinely close to going for a new MoT, I feel like we've crossed a bridge in terms of the work put in and now it's just desnagging.  Tested the dashboard and things were working quite well too...

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...were... past tense.  The ignition switch I'd repaired recently has failed completely.  This is why the car won't idle.  I've tried to repair it but it's completely dead.  Most annoying of all is that the spare switch I've got from a 1979 car is different and won't fit, the piece the key goes into on it is a completely different design and 10mm smaller diameter.

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There are other minor jobs that can be done without the switch, it just stops me driving the car since I'm disinclined to hotwire it just so I can wobble around the yard until the MoT is booked.

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Thank you for the links, Michael, I ordered a brand new one earlier tonight which should be here next week but if it turns out to be unsuitable then the Metro one might do the trick.  I think the same one was suggested on another forum I use.

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With the Renault no longer preying on my mind I can switch my attention to the Princess properly. It's a huge relief. Didn't have a great deal of time spare today so I was focusing on establishing a pre-MoT desnagging list by going through the car and finding out what does and doesn't work.

I've ordered a new ignition switch of the correct type and until that arrives I'm following the suggestion of using the spare switch and a screwdriver. This worked perfectly and means I can check through everything and find if anything is amiss. Thank you to whoever it was that suggested it.
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Mike and I then were a bit perplexed as the car wouldn't idle on more than what sounded like 2 cylinders. We did all the usual checks for fuel and spark and whatnot and it was okay. Checked the carb and even put more fuel in it in case it had already gobbled through the last can I put in but that wasn't it. Finally, we decided to fit the brand new NGK spark plugs I'd bought for when the car returned to the road, on pulling the old ones it was fairly obvious why they weren't working. Three are Bosch and one is a Champion and from memory, I think the Champion came out of my brother's Applause when it had running issues, I just never got around to sorting this out.
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New plugs in, all the usual suspects checked such as points gap, and the car sprang to life very willingly indeed and idled quite well. It is obvious the carb needs fine tuning to get things spot on and then I noticed the overflow was weeing petrol out like a racehorse so we turned it off and I've added 'rebuild carb' to the desnag list. It likely just needs a clean out or the float adjusting slightly, it won't be a serious issue. Now attention could be turned to the various functions. Mike resoldered the missing tabs on the passenger door speaker so that we could get balanced sound out of the radio-cassette which now works well. I'm after a radio-cassette of 80s or very early 90s vintage with a green display to match the dash, nothing too fancy or high end, just something on a par with what's in. I'm not in a rush for this as the current one works well and sounds nice enough, it just doesn't match the interior that well.
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Interior light is now working reliably rather than when it feels like it.
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At the front, all lights function as they should. Imagine the indicators on fully, I was very good at pressing the camera button when the indicators were off, not when they were on. All headlight functions are normal and the horn is instantaneous since having the relay wired in. Obviously I can't photograph the horn going honk so you have to imagine that.
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At the back, all the lights are now working with the exception of one reversing light and the brake lights. Suspected dodgy bulb for the former and possibly dislodged switch for the latter. The brakes were working properly, they're not now. I couldn't get a photograph of the indicators in action, I tried a dozen times and just couldn't press the button at the right moment, so imagine those illuminated too.
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Almost there. I didn't have time to get the car up in the air to have a wiggle of things underneath. I'm hoping to have enough time this week to get through the last of the niggles and be MoT ready. My updated list is like this:

MoT list update:
> tune the carb
> identify insecure CV joint fail from previous MoT
> identify why brake lights aren't coming on with pedal
> exhaust downpipe/manifold joint is blowing
> exhaust stay needs replacing
> replace hazard relay
> clean carburettor to resolve excessive overflow
> replace fuel gauge (put the original one back in, replacement one broken, original wasn't)
> identify why passenger side reversing light not working
> coolant flush and change
> trim/bend exhaust pipe tip so it clears fog light better

> make hazard switch work - DONE
> identify why fuse #5 is blowing - DONE
> connect fog lights - DONE
> connect number plate lights - DONE
> stick number plates on - DONE
> make the indicator lights work - DONE
> pump up the suspension - DONE
> fit the new tyres - DONE
> fit a new washer jet pump - DONE
> find the loose steering component - DONE
 

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