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1972 Austin 1100 - SOLD


vulgalour

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I had 5 1100s - 1300s    on the trot when i first started driving . All mk2 though .

 

This sweetie  was hidden at a place i go to.. It really is a minter under the dust . Just one over rider on the back bumper is blemished . Trumpets are as new , 30k on the clock. Must be one of the last mk2s its on a K plate

 

 Edit : I've just run an mot check on it and its back on the road..I knew i shoulda bought it ..It was offered to me for 800quid  :-( and i declined!!

 

 

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In the next barn / lean to,   is this old Dodge ! More dust and pigeon shit.. :shock: .! Note the correct side for the driver :-D ! Came from South Africa..

 

post-17940-0-34893100-1499976087_thumb.jpg

 

 

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I'd have the 1300 .... 

 

Click the 1300 pic.   see the spotwelds still on the rear arch !

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That's the strange thing about the no-hatchback era - Austin had virtually got there with the A40 Countryman and didn't extend the idea!    That must be a prototype that bottom one, d'you think - looks a bit unfinished for a Crayford.   I bet that leaked a bit, too....

 

There was the Innocenti Combinata before that, with a full tailgate. 

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Bloody typical of BLMC, that would have pissed on Ford and VW's chips if they had bothered to sell them here, a baby Maxi

 

 

Not really. BMC already made the 1100/1300 Estate that was a surprisingly poor seller. Look at VW Golf sales figures in the seventies - they were nowhere near what Ford were achieving with the Escort. As it was, the 1100/1300 was a huge seller - they got the recipe just right.

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One of the Great Mysteries of our time.

 

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Right then.  I said I'd have this engine running today didn't I?  Mike had gone into the unit ahead of me and retapped those threads in the bellhousing, he'd also tested the old coil and found it was indeed dead and so had installed the new one.  The last thing he'd done was clean up the points in the distributor cap.  When I turned up we then went through the basics and found we had weak spark at the points and no further.  A quick check of the points gap, which was book-perfect (a first on any car I've worked on, this is usually messed up) and a clean of the surfaces and we had a nice healthy spark.  A press of the starter solenoid and...

 

 

WOOHOO!

 

 

Not only does it run, it runs really, really sweetly on the dregs of whatever's in the tank and one jerry can of fuel and with ignition components of unknown age.  The oil in it is still as clean as if it were put in yesterday and even the air filter is in reasonable condition.  There is no engine work to do.  There's no smoke.  There's no leaks (beyond the usual A series rocker cover ooze).  This... this is a BIG thing and I'm incredibly pleased because the biggest chunk of stress for me in any project isn't going to be.  We did only have one issue which is that the ignition key no longer starts the car for some reason, so you turn it to the on position, open the bonnet and press the solenoid to get going instead.  This is fine for now, but will need investigating before the car is in proper use as I reckon that particular novelty will wear off pretty quickly.

 

Bodywork next then, since there's NOTHING ELSE TO DO.

 

*ahem*  There might have been some hammer action in a few places on the wings.  Nothing serious, it was just less messy to knock out filler than to use the flapwheel or anything else.  To be honest, I'm surprised how little filler there is in the car, even were you can obviously see it there's barely anything by old Austin standards.  I decided to start on the front wings because they're the most visible part and, potentially, the most difficult since they need to look at least a bit nice.  It also means I can find out if I need to replace them whole or repair them.  The driver's side one is very, very bad, even where there isn't rusty holes the metal is very thin.  There's not much of use on it.

35922736725_344201edb4_b.jpg20170714-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

So I chopped it off.  I needed to do this anyway to do the inner wing repairs.

35752955042_fa691195a8_b.jpg20170714-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

While everything is undersealed and that has saved a fair bit of the car, the trumpet is completely toast.  Only one bit of fibreglass added right at the back of the trumpet, so it's relatively free of bodge, it's just done what they always do.  Going to be a chore to remake this if I can't source a replacement, it's a funny shape.

35882132206_2e6aaf00ae_b.jpg20170714-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

At the front the subframe mount isn't as bad as expected.  There's a lot of good metal still here, for all it looks brown and there is a hole, I gave it a good prod and it's nice and solid for the most part so that should repair quite well.  Where the inner wing meets the valance needs a little tickle with the welder.

35752954622_97011c7fd1_b.jpg20170714-06 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Where the inner wing meets the A pillar is similarly better than it looks.  The old underseal had lifted and trapped moisture, on scraping it off the metal is surprisingly sound underneath with just a small bit at the bottom needing attention.  This was a very pleasant surprise, I was expecting horrors.

35882131986_0369ac988b_b.jpg20170714-07 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

The closing panel on the wing has holed.  The replacement wing I've got has done the same, just not as bad, so I'll repair the panel before fitting it.  The bit in the foreground is a wing stay, presumably to give the wing some rigidity, they're very flimsy once they're off the car.

35113778233_b43ecc7051_b.jpg20170714-08 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

There's nothing more I can really do on the driver's side until the inner wing panel arrives (thanks Rich from ado16.info for that) so I moved on to the passenger side and hit all the suspect areas with the flapwheel to see what I was dealing with.  The trailing edge of the wing was better than anticipate and the headlight bowl much worse.  This wing isn't too far gone so I'll be repairing it, which is just as well because the replacement I've got for this side is incomplete.  When I can afford to I'll put a pair of new wings on the car, for now repairs and second-hand panels will do fine.

35882131676_7bd63c8bca_b.jpg20170714-09 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Got the bumper off too so I could inspect the front end.  There is rust, obviously, but there's also a lot more metal than I expected to find.  I have everything I need to repair the areas that need it, the necessary bits came with the car.  I'm not de-bumpering this one, though it would be easy, as I prefer them with the bumper.

35113777933_34302022e6_b.jpg20170714-10 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

More poking and this big lump fell off.  A lot of metal still underneath this massed patch/clump so there's still stuff to work with and I've got a spare piece on the donor wing.  It's a classic turn of the century repair when newspaper was falling out of favour; fibreglass resin and aluminium mesh were at this time competitively priced with the more traditional materials and began to take precedence.

35882131436_0d903d8817_b.jpg20170714-11 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

35113777663_b459e7fb57_b.jpg20170714-12 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Much procrastination later I eventually took a deep breath, got the angle grinder, and set to work.  The bottom bit of the wing I can salvage from the front lower corner of the wing I chopped off which will give me most of the profiles I need to rebuild where the wing meets the sill.  It's a really complicated set of shapes to try and make from scratch.

35791216601_ff9c40f429_b.jpg20170714-13 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Bits chopped out of the donor wing and offered up.  Measure twice, cut once, works really well if your measurments are any good.  I ended up having to put a bridge panel in for the headlight join because I'd cut it perfectly 2mm too small on the top.  Well done me.  I don't have another wing to chop up and since I plan to replace these, this is an adequate repair.  I'll say one thing for ADO16 steel, it's a pleasure to weld compared to 70s Renaults, 80s Austins and 90s Citroens!  In fact, even though this job went less than perfectly it's some of the most enjoyable fabrication I've done purely because of the quality of the steel I was working with.

35882130386_717ac696df_b.jpg20170714-14 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

35791218511_1bc81f8d13_b.jpg20170714-15 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

While I waited for that to cool down I checked the time and realised I'd run out for today if I was going to get the place tidied up so I had a quick whip around with the camera while I was tidying to see what I might have missed.  The driver's side wing/face bumper support panel was made entirely out of a sheet of fibreglass, luckily I have a good section of this on the replacement wing that needs minimal repair.

35113776653_e91194e6e3_b.jpg20170714-16 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

All of the headlight bowls are knackered.  I'll be ordering a pair of plastic ones to stop the rot.

35882130106_eec3c93d95_b.jpg20170714-17 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Mike made and fitted a blanking hose for the missing brake line.  This is temporary until I've replaced the inner wing, there's no point trying to make a pipe if we don't know what route it should actually take and this way we keep the braking system free of any dirt getting in from work I'm doing on the car.  I also identified the missing bonnet stay screw so that's now fixed in place properly.

35752950422_b68019a49d_b.jpg20170714-18 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Before I started the tidy up I applied the first skim of filler and draped the spare wing in place just to see that it was something like right, which it is.  I'm not looking for perfection with this repair, I'm just looking to make it tidy and when I'm done I'll paint it with the purple that came with the car providing it's still okay.

35882129566_3f9454833c_b.jpg20170714-19 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

35791217121_5a2175ed73_b.jpg20170714-20 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

You know it's been a productive day when your rust pile is this big.

35752949102_a5f518e409_b.jpg20170714-21 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I am pretty happy about this little car right now.  Yes it's rusty, but it's really easy to sort out.  In fact, of all the cars I've worked on to date this is the easiest in every regard.  I'm not frustrated by it, I just want to give it a big hug and tell it everything is going to be fine.  I can see why people really liked them.

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Good oh. It's very A-Series to just start and then work properly despite everything.

 

I've only driven one of these, back in the day, and I can confirm that they should not be fitted with Town+Country cross-ply remoulds. (aargh, Farmers!)

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Lorks, that is pretty major progress already, your mojo clearly has returned big style, and this is yet another buttery biscuit base flavoured car on the beige place. Perhaps the Sierra bASe, and DTCM's base Capri could be posed together at some point in the future? Would be a calendar shot for deffo

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Speaking of basey goodness, my only deviations from that I plan are a cigar lighter socket and, potentially, 2 mirrors instead of just one.  However, I would like some tunes in the car that don't rely on a mobile phone or a transistor radio.  I do not wish to install a head unit or aerial permanently into the car or its wiring.  What are my options?  The sound quality doesn't have to be mega, just audible over the engine/wind noise/exhaust farts and ideally it would be able to receive FM radio and play MP3s.  I must add, it mustn't rely on a mobile phone either as I don't have one that's suitable.

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