Sold 1972 Austin 1100 - SOLD

[Angrydicky]

I like the basic dashboard too. I've only ever seen them on MK2 two-door 1100s, presumably they were never fitted to the four door variants?

[MikeKnight]

Joe's post of me being mostly terrified on the previous pages is about accurate.

 

Though this looks like a very easy car to sort. Wiring looks about as simple as four wires and a fuse someone tossed in "just to be safe".

 

On a tangent, what's the score with that GT6? Looks like terminal damage, although they now command $$$ even as snotters.

 

Like they said, it's waiting for a new body shell.

 

BUT I need to pull the knackered body off and check the chassis before anything else. If the chassis is bent it will be uneconomical to jig it for straightening, in which case it's broken for spares.

[adw1977]

I like the basic dashboard too. I've only ever seen them on MK2 two-door 1100s, presumably they were never fitted to the four door variants?

 

It seems the Mark III two door was only available in the basic spec with this dashboard, the four door only in Super Deluxe with full dash:

 

 

However in Mark II form there was a two door Super Deluxe with a different full width dash shared with the four door:

 

And a basic 2 door with the small instrument binnacle (there was no basic 4 door):

[beko1987]

That's lovely! You'll have that sorted in no time

[vulgalour]

On another forum someone popped up to say the seats aren't from a Wolseley, they're actually from a 1968 MG 1300.  His, in fact.  Because he had them re-trimmed and re-foamed and wasnt' happy with the end result so swapped them with some reasonable seats someone else had.  That's why the fronts are in so much better condition than the rear and why the seats are so ridiculously squidgy.  I'll be off to the unit in a mo to have a tinker with the engine and wiring, see if we can get it to cough into life.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

2 door 1100's in both Mark II and Mark III form had the Mini speedo. Typical BMC/BL, making life complicated.

 

The welding looks shit but solid. I'd get that wing on, sand the whole car down with a DA and get some suitably beige/tan non drip gloss on there. MOT test, on the road.

 

I still have some 1100 bits somewhere, left overs. Two were broken up for bits for parts needed for the Mark 1.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Notice that the 2 door still uses the old steering wheel and seats - obviously clearing stocks.

[vulgalour]

Captain70s:  I don't know on the Allegro colours.  The only purple-y one I'm aware of was Damask on the early cars which is almost the colour of ruby port.

 

This car is a Mk3 Austin 1100.  Because it's a 2-door, that makes it the absolute bottom of the pile.  You got NOTHING. At some point the rear screen has had one of those aftermarket square-spiral jobbies on it, the ghosting is still there, and very late in life it got a radio (since removed).  While the seats are from a posher model, originally it was plain vinyl front and back with the meanest approach to padding possible.  It's almost as if it's a throwback to the start of production really, especially with the gigantic steering wheel.

 

---

 

Since I'd like to get this running this week if I can I've been trying to get everything reinstated and find out what might be amiss, if anything.  There were several earth points to reattach on the inner wing with the chunk cut out of it.  You can also see two thick brown-and-white wires with nothing attached to them.  I've not investigated this further yet, there's nothing they obviously attach to that's still in the engine bay or the stash of spares, so I'm not sure what those are for at the moment.

20170712-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20170712-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

One of the wires for the coil had pulled out of its spade connector, so I crimped a new one on.  Unfortunately the bolts that hold the coil clamp to the bellhousing have been cross threaded in the past so I need to retap those before I can fit the coil properly.

20170712-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20170712-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I'm not 100% certain this spring is installed correctly for the clutch slave cylinder.  It seemed correct.  I'll need to rebuild that cylinder too, the rubber boot doesn't look too clever and clutch operation is a bit hit and miss.

20170712-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I found a purple and a black wire in the engine bay that didn't go anywhere and chased them back inside the car where they also didn't go anywhere.  I assume these are from the radio that was fitted and since removed.  Thankfully they hadn't been spliced into the original loom and had been routed very neatly so were easy to remove and have gone in the spares in case they prove useful for putting a radio in the car.  In the process of chasing these out, I removed the dashboard.  Annoyingly, none of the manuals I've got show exactly how to do this for this particular dashboard so I just had to figure it out on my own.  I also found out the car has two ignition barrels, something I'd failed to notice until today.  I'd like to return it to just the column barrel rather than the one in the dash panel so we'll have to see what I do about that one.

20170712-06 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

With the dash out I thought I might as well investigate the heater box which was a bit wobbly.  There's a few loose things here and there, entirely expected since the car has been worked on recently and I knew bulkhead work had been done.  I was also hoping to find the water ingress, unfortunately that wasn't to be as there's no obvious point it's coming in.  What does need doing is a little bit of welding under here as a couple of the mounting points for the heater box are missing.  It's the usual rust story for this area from what I've seen of other projects and much of it has already been sorted out so I just need to do a little bit of finishing work.

20170712-07 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Once home I  sorted out the various loose fixings I'd got, some of which I know the destination of, some I don't, and some I'm sure are from an entirely different car.  The ashtray bracket is present in the car, the ashtray itself needs glueing back together.  Incidentally, this is exactly the same ashtray as fitted to the later Princess/18-22/Wedge, had I known that when I was trying to find a replacement my search would have been easier.

20170712-08 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Engine bay is looking more organised now.  I put the water sheild thing back on and after a lot of headscratching finally found out where the washer jets were located.  I've never seen the strange hidden jet arrangement these have before, for a while I thought someone had blanked them off for some reason.  I reattached one of the detached pipes to the back of the dashboard pump too.  The rubber hoses are in surprisingly good shape, I always expect them to be hard and perished on a car like this.

20170712-09 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Picked up a pair of 11" wiper blades for a tenner from the local autofactors.  Luckily the bayonet fittings from the old wipers swapped onto the new ones.  This is better than the sponges I had on there temporarily.

20170712-10 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I ran out of time to do any more at the unit so I brought the rear door cards home with me to see if I can get the speakers out of them.  I didn't have time to remove the front ones, I'll try and do that tomorrow.  Once these and the parcel shelf are removed I can order enough board to make them new and some scrim foam before recovering them all.  I may have to do the dashboard too, it turns out the sticky stuff in the passenger footwell is actually glue, it's all over the back of the dashboard where the fresh vinyl is applied and just oozing off which is annoying because the green vinyl retrim is a really nicely done job and one I was going to leave alone.

20170712-11 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

The fabric that came with the car for the retrimming work is a bold design and not one I might have chosen for anything else.  I've not decided if I'll use it the usual way or the reverse side yet, both sides really suit the car far better than you might expect.  I'll probably do the parcel shelf in plain green vinyl since fabric on a parcel shelf tends to fade very quickly.

20170712-12 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I'll be going in tomorrow and hopefully getting to the bottom of those wires and getting some things to light up.  The engine turns freely and appears to have reasonable compression so I'm optimistic it will run without too much effort.

[Noel Tidybeard]

isn't brown a main live on BL?- maybe those wires are the proper ign supply for the column switch

[vulgalour]

Could be.  I didn't have time to investigate the dash wiring, what little there is, to find out if I'd missed anything else.  There's no life at the ignition at all which would suggest something somewhere isn't connected and those brown wires were the only ones I'd found without something attached.

[mk2_craig]

Theres a very sad looking 2 door been found at the back of a scrappy - photo on one of those there Feece-book classic car spots groups.

[plasticvandan]

It will run. Because A series.best engine ever.fact

[mk2_craig]

...

[vulgalour]

Sadly that one looks pretty terminal.  I can see it's got the radiator shroud mine is missing and still has its Hydralastic cans which are always worth grabbing but other than that the car doesn't have much of use.  I wonder if its ignition barrel works and has keys?

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

BL  discontinued the rad surround on Minis around 1972 ish, may have done on 1100's.

[vulgalour]

Even though that seems a stupid thing to do it doesn't surprise me in the least.

[Eddie Honda]

I can see it's got the radiator shroud mine is missing

I don't think yours is missing as such as I think it was never there in the first place. Because bean counters.

[catsinthewelder]

The dash mounted switch is a recentish replacement,  the car came with an ignition key similar to an 80s Ford,  I accidentally used the door key in it one day and that also worked as did any other key I tried. 

 

I'm trying to remember if the old switch was the column mounted one or an older dash mount.  I remember trying to buy one for the column and only finding dash mount switches available.  It was around this time that the old cardboard dash dropped to bits so I made the current one from plywood and some vinyl that I bought for the parcel shelf.

[richardthestag]

when you do get it running and find that the clutch doesnt disengage enough you will probably find that the ball on the bottom end of the clutch release arm (which the spring is attached to) has worn away on one side when robs the lever of leverage which in turn means the clutch drags instead of releasing.

 

 

I spent most of the mid to late 1980s fixing mates cars with this issue. replacements from Uniprat were made from cheese

 

On the whole this motor looks cleaner than a lot that I worked on 30 years ago!

 

Tales from 1986, 

• My brothers 1100 4 door (with cool ribbon speedo) had a rear floor section (under the back seat) made up of carbboard, duct tape and wood.
• Someone knocked into the back of him on the bridge over the Thames at Kingston and just over a kilo lump of filla fell out of the trailing edge of the back wing. not because of rust but to fill a huge dent
• I ended up drilling holes through the front floors to let the water out faster than it was coming in. The outer body panels were reall good on this one, just the inner frame that was rotten, Would have made the example in your vid look good.
• My brother who has never possessed any mechanical sympathy complained of an odd noise. We went out and within 50 yards I told him to stop, pulled the dipstick which was dry and sent him on his push bike to Uniprat to get a longer dipstick from Albert the notorious bad tempered parts counter manager.
• stupidest thing was that the driveshafts were very very tired, I told him to take it easy. one day he turned up on foot at home. told me that his car wouldn't go and that it was sitting halfway across a main road. went with dad in his newish sierra . looked at the car but quickly got bored of the honking hooters an stuff so tied a tow rope to the front suspension and attached it to the tow ball on dad's sierra. told dad to just drive and not stop what ever happened until he got to the layby on the other side of the road. Off he went the poor old 1100 was bouncing around all over the shop and eventually the driveshaft which was only attached by one remaining bolt, snapped, the car launched itself and kissed the back of dad's car. The diff casing broke and the sump emptied all over the middle of the Ewell ByPass oops. That was the end of that one, it would have been 15ish by then, I simply couldnt be arsed with it.

 

A mates sister had a gorgeous 1300 Plahhhhhhh Automatic that I maintained for her from time to time. Really was a peach. silly mare scrapped it in wales while on horrorday because the autobox "died" . never saw it again. not a spot of rusty anywhere and low mileage too. Mate was as gutted as I

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Loving this and watching with great interest

 

I suppose with its basic instrumentation it is the nearest you will ever get to a bigger Mini

 

Re: the second ignition switch it would bug me too but could you not hide it somewhere get the column one working and use the other as a retro immobiliser ?

 

Id love to say "Do Not Paint" but I have the feeling you will.....................................

 

 

 

The ADO16 is a superior vehicle to the Mini is most respects. The Mark II 1300 really did drive well - a GT with the servo discs is a sweet thing to punt around.

 

Careful on the clutch slave Vulg - iirc, Mini ones don't fit due to the angle off the flexy hose outlet. It's worth joining the 1100 Club.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

when you do get it running and find that the clutch doesnt disengage enough you will probably find that the ball on the bottom end of the clutch release arm (which the spring is attached to) has worn away on one side when robs the lever of leverage which in turn means the clutch drags instead of releasing.

 

 

 

The trick is to remove it, mig weld the worn section and linish it off in a bench grinder. You used to see all kinds of bodges - arms heated up and bent, washers between the arm pin and the slave etc etc. Actually fixing it properly took less than an hour.

 

1100/1300's were great cars. You do wonder what went through the mind of anyone who bought a Viva HA or Anglia instead.

[richardthestag]

fvcking loved my 105e in 1985 

 

wasn't really into 1100 range in those days probably because all my mates seemed to have one. They have really grown into their looks and they weren't too shabby to start out with

 

I guess ironically my first car in 1985 was going to be a bright orange 1300GT. terminal rot around the bulkhead saw me run away despite my mate insisting "but it is a 1300 GT"

[vulgalour]

I'll have to see what we find with the clutch side of things, it's familiar and unfamiliar to me at the same time, I just know it's going to need some fettling to put it right.  Top info above, everyone, I really appreciate that.

 

---

 

Today, we took a look at sorting the wiring out.  The wiring diagrams in the books come close to helping but fall just short, this car has a slightly different wiring loom to any in the book.  It's not clear if this one started with a dynamo or an alternator either, the wiring diagrams confused rather than clarified this particular point.  There has been some tinkering with the wiring in the past but surprisingly, no actual bodge.  The ignition switch in the dash is non-original and the column ignition has anti-tamper fixings which will make changing that challenging.  I'll leave it as it is for now.

20170713-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

At the moment it's a case of figuring out what's been disconnected for welding work and what can be just removed temporarily as other things are worked on.  The heater box was proving a little annoying flopping around in the car so that was taken out.  The pipes had got caught around the accelerator pedal linkage too which was a bit annoying.  With that and the control panel removed there was a lot less parts and cables flopping around in the way.

20170713-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

There is still coolant in the system so rather than have it spit it all out we bypassed the heater hoses so the circuit is fine for testing.  Then it was on to fault finding.  The starter motor that was in the boot was actually fine while the one on the car was completely dead, so those were swapped over.  The solenoid switch under the bonnet worked when one of the brown/white wires was reconnected which allowed us to spin up the starter.  However, the car then started to earth through the choke cable, which was less than ideal.  That was removed and the bellhousing-to-wing earth point cleaned up which cured the earth issue.  The throttle cable was also removed as the peg end that goes into the pedal assembly was jammed in the bulkhead and on trying to remove it I managed to damage one of the sheath ferrules.  I'll replace both of these cables if I can, I imagine they're standard parts.

20170713-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20170713-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Mike and the wiring diagram managed to decipher and relocate almost all the wires.  We were left with one brown/white cable that didn't have an identifier and a dead ignition switch.  After some multi-meter work we figured out where it went after doing some brainstorming and checking the shape of the wire to see where it wanted to sit and then everything was connected.

20170713-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

At the same time we learned why it spat brake fluid out on collection day.  It wasn't a burst pipe after all, it was a totally missing brake line.  This was presumably removed when the inner wing repair was started.

20170713-06 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Earlier in the day I'd put some water in the washer bottle and tested the manual button.  They work, which is one less job to worry about.

20170713-07 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Fuel was also got and after a while of cranking we got that through to the filter.  Going to need a new filter or three to make sure no gunk gets through into the carb.

20170713-08 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Then it was the big one.  We now theoretically had everything connected to fire off the ignition key so we turned the key and...

20170713-09 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

 

HOORAY!  Great success.  We've got headlight, sidelight, rear running lights and wipers all functional.  Indicator relay seems to have died as it's silent so we have no indicators and we can't test the brakes at the moment.  There's no fog light, hazards or reverse light to test.  I also forgot to check the interior light.

20170713-10 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20170713-12 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

After some more testing we found there was no spark at the plugs.  This could be a number of very basic things like the coil or the points or the condenser.  Happily, the engine does crank very willingly and sounds quite healthy doing so.  I'm very optimistic about this one.  Mike dug out a NOS coil with a suitable listing on the back of it so we're going to try that on the next visit.

20170713-13 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Just ran out of time to do more work on the car today.  It will be running very soon, of that I have no doubt.  The other job I'd been doing at home was the rear door cards, last night I misted them with water and left a large concrete slab on each card.  Today they were very nearly completely flat so I'm going to deem those salvagable which saves me buying new board.  To fix the speaker holes I can use the board from the back of some old art supplies.  Cut one circle to fill the hole so it's level with the old card.

20170713-14 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Then use a full A4 board on the back to hold everything in place before a scrim foam or layer of fleece and finally the new fabric to cover them.  Very nice easy job to put right and will improve the interior no end when done.

20170713-15 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Not forgetting...

20170713-11 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Your car, VIN AA2S/AD7***87A came from the factory with an alternator.

 

It's the 'A' on the end!    

[greengartside]

I'm in love with this little car! I've always wanted one ever since John Cleese was chauffered around in one in Clockwise.

 

Also, these are GR9 4 BLOWIN UP HARRODZ IN DA 80S*

 

 

 

 

 

* It was actually a 1972 1300 GT that was blown up but you get the gist.

[KruJoe]

Good work so far, Team Purple!

[Felly Magic]

Progress already Angyl, you will have this bugger running in no time, then the hot sparky glue stick and bits of new metal can start to be applied. AS hero!

[chaseracer]

I don't think yours is missing as such as I think it was never there in the first place. Because bean counters.

 

Project Drive was nothing new...

[vulgalour]

Progress already Angyl, you will have this bugger running in no time, then the hot sparky glue stick and bits of new metal can start to be applied. AS hero!

 

 

I'm shocked and amazed at how easy this has been so far! Throttle cable and classic Mini floor pan ordered already for less than £30.  The classic Mini floor pan isn't identical but I'm told it's a good cheap fix and better than just slapping a flat sheet of steel in since it has some pressings in it.  Personally, I don't care what shape the pressings are in the floor, so long as there IS a floor.  I'm also bidding on a correct Mk3 boot badge so I'm hoping I win that since this little car has no boot badge at all.

[danthecapriman]

Brilliant progress already, can't wait to see how this one goes!

 

One of these, a green J plate 1100 was almost my first car. I wanted it badly and went to view it but on arriving found the dick wad owner had already sold it and he didn't bother telling me.

I was pissed about missing it but got my Capri in the end instead!

 

Keep up the good work.