project 1980 Austin Princess

[Honey Badger]

Hope the recovery goes well, the princess looks better with every picture.

 

would a discreet bonnet vent above the pancake filter help slove the hot air issue, or maybe a Scooby monstrosity, made tasteful by the application on Purple paint?

[Noel Tidybeard]

louvres is what you need

[Parky]

Or a NACA duct as seen here on a lightly restyled Princess

[Noel Tidybeard]

 

It's a terrible design, it really is.  The old filter has a cold* air feed that runs from the air box to a point at around where the cambelt is on the inner wing, Easy enough to reinstate it with a slightly longer pipe.

 

 

 

I don't know how I'd achieve that, the air flow around the fuel lines is much the same as it was.

 

One big problem I had with the car on hot days was heat getting stuck around the carb, with the manifolds and carb sharing space in the pocket of engine bay behind the engine nothing ever seemed to cool down where it needed to.  You could feel the heat difference in the air with your hand between the front and back of the engine bay it got so bad.  I don't know how exactly to resolve that issue, I assume having a cold air feed to the pocket behind the engine would help or having some way to suck the hot air out.  It's only a problem for two weeks of the year really, but those two weeks become a real chore as a result.

 

 

maybe you could fashion an item out of a biscuit tin or quality street tin to fit between carb and filter with a cold feed from the inner wing or grill area

[vulgalour]

It's fine, we'll leave it as it is for now and see what happens.  Or maybe use Pringles tubes for cold air induction piping...

 

---

 

I may repeat myself a bit, I'm not sure where I am on various fora I update so here's a brief recap:

 

Hydragas pump bodge resulted in me dropping the suspension half an inch by accident and then the pump stopped working.  Pump is currently in bits while Mike gets new stuff to make it work again so we can lift the car back up.  Awkwardly, that now means the car is stuck with arches on the tyres again.

 

Headlights were earthing through the throttle cable for some reason.  This was resolved by checking and fitting good new earths to the new headlights, courtesy of my brother and Mike, and now the headlights work fine.

 

Weirdly, after fixing the headlights and doing nothing else, we went to start the car to run it for a bit to put some charge back in the battery (we'd had lights on and off for a while testing stuff) and it wouldn't start.  Even stranger, the handbrake warning light was on with no key in the ignition but would extinguish if you release the handbrake.  Choke and oil pressure lights came on as normal with the ignition but turning the key to start the car just resulted in those and the handbrake light going out and nothing else.  The interior light wouldn't operate at all.  No fuses blown, no bulbs blown.  The car was, effectively, dead.

 

A few days and much headscratching later it was determined the problem must be in the dashboard part of the wiring as it was the only part that hadn't been tidied and debodged.  Today, just to see if it would, I put the key in the ignition and the car started fine, perfectly normally, and all electrical functions were restored.  I didn't fix anything or inspect anything, just literally put the key in the ignition and started the car.

 

I came to the conclusion the car must be haunted.

 

Then my brother pointed out some electrical tape on one of the ignition wires so we unwrapped that to see what was going on and in this blurry picture you can see that there's a split in the casing of the white wire with bare wires exposed at the kink.  Although these were insulated from the rest of the wiring by the tape, this could in fact be a broken wire offering a poor connection so it will be repaired.  It's possible this was used as a live feed for a radio or the old tape deck that was in the car when I got it.

 

The other small bit of news was that I found an indicator flasher relay that I believe to be the correct sort to replace the later 90s Nissan one that was bodged in by a previous owner.  Plug and play at least and when I have the dashboard plugged back in I'll be able to check that.

 

 

More updates when I have them.

 

[Rocket88]

I would suspect worn ignition switch / barrel / connections.................try bypassing it, and hot wiring it....................

[danthecapriman]

Excellent progress with this, inspite of inheriting Junkmans Rover spirits!

 

I like the back end btw, it looks the dogs plums it does!

[vulgalour]

colc:  It's the first time it's ever done it in the four years I've owned it so I'm more inclined to think it's because everything has been disturbed than a worn ignition barrel.  The ignition barrel doesn't feel particularly worn in operation either. With everything in bits just recently it's possible the white wire wasn't connecting properly when we tried to start the car previously.  I'm just happy it's working again.

 

Dan: cheers

[Timewaster]

That white wire cut looks like scotchlock damage.

 

Connector of the devil.

[RoadworkUK]

This may be my favourite project on all of these here pages, you know. Superb work all round.

[michael1703]

This may be my favourite project on all of these here pages, you know. Superb work all round.

Bump for an update,need my fix

[alf892]

Re earth problems

 

I caused an ambassador to rev to destruction........I fitted a clutch and to do this you dropped the engine a bit. The factory earth lead goes from battery to engine.....with a lug that bolts to the body en route. To allow the engine to drop enough for clutch job you just undid the lug and left the rest connected. Bits like this are important when you are on a time saved bonus!

 

In my haste (Friday afternoon) to reassemble the car I left this lug off.

 

End result was the car sitting in the car park on Monday morning having been recovered by the AA. It was being driven at night and the throttle stuck open. Driver dipped the clutch and it revved till it went bang and pushed the cam through the cam cover.

 

Cause was the throttle cable overheating.......as it was the only body earth.

I learned from this mistake....

[vulgalour]

No updates, unfortunately, I've not been able to do anything.  Unsurprisingly, getting the bits to refurbish the Churchill pump is proving tricky as much of it is obsolete, particularly annoying as the pump side has decided to stop working.  It's likely that I'll chock the suspension to get the last few jobs done once I have some free time, which I've had very little of since the last update.

[vulgalour]

Actually found some time to get to where the Princess is and do something on it. Namely, fighting with the footwell to fit the throttle cable. It's not a difficult job, so long as you can hold a torch, the cable and move the throttle pedal all at the same time to get the cable and clip on the end of the pedal leg. All done, factory yellow one fitted. The red one is the choke cable and while it works, it could do with being replaced ideally, if for nothing else than the cosmetic.

 

 

I had hoped this was the root of my running problem. You see, the car will fire but won't idle. It's getting spark and fuel but the throttle pedal was jammed because of the old cable having melted to the plastic sheath when we somehow managed to earth the headlights through it last year. I thought that was, therefore, the route of the problem and fitting the new cable would mean the throttle would work as it should.

 

Not so.

 

It's ignition barrel related and I found that out by accident today. If you turn the key to the on position, none of the dash illuminates, which is a bit odd because I've never had that problem before and it's all plug and play so it shouldn't do that. Turn the key to start the car and away it goes no bother only to die as soon as you let go of the key. So I held on to the key for a bit longer to see what would happen and found that the car runs perfectly fine until you let go at which point it dies like you've switched it off.

 

It's as if the functions of the ignition barrel have rotated one too far clockwise without having physically moved. I haven't investigated further because I've no idea what to look for on this one. I expect it will be something really obvious and other people have experienced it. I hope so, anyway.

[Des]

I've seen BL ignition switches fail here and there, once saw a lazy car dealer try to fix one without any dismantling by emptying half a can of WD in, caught light on him.

[vulgalour]

*puts the WD40 can away* what, I wasn't gonna... you know...

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Pretty simple really. Unplug the ignition switch from the loom, find the power cable (red probably), bridge the contact that brings the ignition and red light on, and then using another bit of wire, just bridge these to the wire that operates the starter. When it starts, take the wire away. If it continues to run - ignition switch suckered. If it stops, it's something else.

 

 

That'll be £5 please.

[michael1703]

Also run a wire from positive terminal of battery direct to LT terminal of coil and eliminate wiring from coil to ignition switch

[panhard65]

I suspect there is something connected the wrong way round somewhere as these electrical faults are very unusual. There really should be no way that the headlights should use the throttle cable as a ground. I would be checking under the dash and make sure it is all connected correctly. The trouble with old British cars is they used the same connectors on everything making it pretty easy to get wrong. French stuff from the same era uses different plugs so it is a lot harder to get wrong. (which is pretty handy as they have a habit of changing the colour of the wiring from one end of a feed to the other) I would be looking closely at the indicator stalk and ignition switch connectors to start with.

[vulgalour]

FIXED!

 

Found and fixed the problem thanks, once again, the wealth of help and information available on the internet through this forum and many others I use.  As it happens, it was a very easy fix, just a fiddly one.  First job was to remove the ignition switch, a look in the book told me how.  I ignored the instruction to drop the steering column down as that was unnecessary, I already had the column shroud and the parcel shelf removed from other work that had been done on the car so I only needed to unscrew the tiny locating screw that holds the switch into the barrel, located on the underside.  The switch is then unplugged from the loom and removed from the barrel, being sure to keep the tiny screw safe.

 

 

Immediately apparent were two items that needed addressing, the first being the old PYE tape deck wiring that had been let in by splitting the shroud and then wrapping the wire for the tape deck haphazardly around the ignition switch wiring.  The other item is the cut white shroud which previously had a chock-block also for the PYE tape deck that was fitted when I bought the car.

 

 

 

Mike checked for continuity and found the wires to be in good order so there was no need to rejoin or replace them and they were rewrapped individually with proper loom tape.  The connectors for the switch were carefully prised out and found to be quite grimy so they were cleaned up and treated to some fresh electrical switch grease before reassembly.  I did have some difficulty initially getting the switch to operate but with a bit of patience it soon worked as it ought with clearly defined notches at the relevant points.

 

I then tried it out in the car, plugging it all back in and found my dash lights illuminated as they should and the car now runs when you release the key.  I had enough time to go through as many of the functions as I could and found that headlights, sidelights and indicators are all working properly.  Horn and interior fan also works.  The foglights aren't connected yet and I couldn't test the heated rear screen as it wasn't fogged up to watch it do its thing.  The hazard switch isn't working but I think that's down to the switch needing a clean, the old one I had in there was the same.

 

The list is now very short:

Suspension - got a contact for someone with a pump willing to come to me, hooray!

Steering Rack - find out what component is loose, it's definitely something under the car I've just not been able to get under it

Fog lights - connect

Hazard lights - find out why they don't work

Tyres - get them fitted to one of my sets of wheels

 

Er... that's it I think.  At least for the MoT.  I'm nearly there.  It's much easier now the days are getting longer, I have more time available to actually work on the car.

 

 

The Princess loom is pretty good under the dash because the plugs are colour coded, you can't really get it wrong.  I think my issue has been previous bodge more than anything, now all the bodge (I hope) is out things seem to be working as they ought.

[danthecapriman]

Nice job. Glad it turned out to be something pretty easy once you found it.

That wiring bodge is terrible!

[tooSavvy]

With the Cam sprocket free to whirl in open air.... why not bodge up a 'paddle fan' onto the pulley, add a 'tin pot' cover and then have a nice draught directed back across the carb/fannymould.

 

*inspiration from 'vac pumps', on Diesel camshafts....

 

 

TS

[vulgalour]

er... anyone?  You've lost me there, tooSavvy.

[tooSavvy]

er... anyone?  You've lost me there, tooSavvy.

 

...err - like a dash blower but on the cam end not an electric motor .. ..

 

TS

[vulgalour]

So that it can cool... the carburettor?  I'm not sure what this would be for.

[tooSavvy]

Hmm... recalibrate this post... shall we?

 

I saw the whizzing sprocket/read comment of 'heat soak issues/thought of free blower ** opportunity **

 

 

.... where was my nice comfy stone....

 

 

TS

[vulgalour]

ah, that problem.  I fitted a sheet of aluminium as a heat shield and so far that seems to be doing the trick.

[Des]

If carburettors were supposed to be cool they'd be wearing Raybans.

[Eddie Honda]

Mmmm PYES!

 

 

Look at the back of the box - note outline of other wedge shaped vehicle usage.

 

 

I've got a BNIB 2279. Bought only because I had fond memories of having one before in my old Wolseley 16/60 auto (later being transferred to Reliant Rebel no 1)

 

passenger: I wanna here that song again.

me: [ejects tape, flips it over and has to fast forward to find the right place using skill and judgement if not track 1]

 

Edit to add: It was also fitted in my Mk1 Austin 1100, with gaffer tape to the bottom of the case to insulate it from the metal strip on the under-dash parcel shelf, because positive earth car.

[vulgalour]

Double post