Craig the Princess

A Princess has come up for sale here in Norway. As far as I know, they didn't sell many of these here, so this could possibly be Norway's only survivor.
This is a 1980 1800 HL with 122,000 km

There are more pictures in the ad and the price is 1434 pounds
https://www.finn.no/car/used/ad.html?finnkode=319741607

I woke up this morning to find a sunshine colour MG TF on the drive, so yesterday wasn't a dream!
Non car stuff this morning so I used the TF to enjoy driving to my errands.
This afternoon was more work for @Slowsilver as it was time to put some more cars into strorage. Then time to get the MG Metro out of storage ready for the BL day at Milton Keynes Museum Sunday.
Also on Sunday after 4:30pm is a general car gathering at the Barn Beefeater in Milton Keynes, I plan to take the Metro to after the BL show is finished.

The MG TF drove faultlessly home so I went to a Classic car gathering in the evening.

And he's off! 🙂

This was at swinging 60s at Oulten Park yesterday. Whilst I don't profess to being any sort of mini expert, I did kneel in the grass and have a right good look and it seemed every bit as good as first glance.

OK, excitement over.
Just put 12v to the starter - she spun a few times then died and now does nothing, so I'm guessing it's all seized inside.
Onwards with the strip down and rotisserie building, I guess. @Uncle Jimmy here are the dimensions for you to get cracking:

😉
Hopefully off to collect a 4m scaffold pole this afternoon.

and on with the will it start.
Dandruff cleaned out from the carb:

and muck from the float chamber:


and all back together:

Good enough for the girls we date 😉
Before I even touched the lightning whirler I thought we'd at least spin it over on the battery and see if we had sparkles. So all plugs removed and a good squirt of oil down the bores. I know it turns freely by hand so no problems there:

Jumper packed hooked up in the boot, because that's where the battery lives on these, remember.
Turn the key and.... nothing at all, but as a little consolation here's what the dash is now showing:

She lives! Kind of.
Time for a cup of tea before I start on the solenoid.

I'm amazed the groovy wheeltrims weren't binned off years ago

Yep - even though the silver 25 was one owner from new, and only had MoT work by the local garage there was still plenty of bodgery and filler to get through, making the rust 10x worse.
The black one is going to get completely stripped and then mounted on something like this:

I've got a long scaffold pole. If only I knew someone who was good at making stuff out of wood, eh @Uncle Jimmy?

It's just arrived!

and rolled happily into the garage:

Who couldn't love such a cute little face?

I sat in one at the 1988 London Motorshow. I loved it, but I was 10 and no other fucker went on the FSO stand so the sales people made a fuss of me and let me sit in all the cars 

Went down to my parents place in Sidmouth today and went to the local classic car show on today. A lot of cars but tbh it was a bit boring. The usual quantity of MGBs/Stags/Sunbeams/pre war Austins/etc. Nothing classic Italian I could see. Occasional unusual car like the tarted up 2cv. Pretty busy and so many old dodgers standing in the way gawping at stuff about half a foot away from the car. 
110 pictures so sorry for those on slow connections.

Agricultural engined, smoke snorting buses with bone jarring suspension, cold blue formica and bare checker-plate interiors topped off with heat sticky red vinyl seats.
What a time to be alive.

Not a secret poisoner are you?   I had a pile of mercury tilt switches out of a series of late 70's farm/grassland machinery - they were there to cut the engine if we capsized the stuff on a hillside or into a ditch but they would, in a similar fashion to the buses, get triggered by a sudden lurch or the like - so they got removed. Very H&S back then wasn't it  ?

And that the brake lights come on when you accelerate in reverse - a surprisingly common way of operating the brake lights on a certain age of cars and commercials. I still have a little bottle of mercury that someone recovered from all of the brake light mercury tilt switches in Bournemouth trolleybuses. 

Apologies for there being a me in the shot, but not only was this one-of-six Daimler CVG6 with centre-door a joy to drive, the video on it did amazingly well too.
Keep-fit steering, three brake servos (one for each front wheel, one for the rear effectively acting on the handbrake mechanism), pre-select gearbox and a lovely Gardner six cylinder diesel.
My favourite fact, not mentioned in the video, is that the brake lights are operated by a mercury switch, so only come on with sufficient G force!
Only one conclusion to draw. I must feature more buses.

I saw this on a schools run the other day - I couldn't believe it! The operator is Trooper's Lodge Motor Services who run some cool old buses/coaches, vans and recovery vehicles. 

Getting into the Spirit of things for my last bit tonight.

I worked in a dealership, a Caro "Osprey" was £4995, and a "Phoenix" was £5995. The "Phoenix" had "wood" trim, electric windows,central locking, and electric sunroof and stripes.... all fitted by me..  

This beetle had a dead auto choke, i was glad  to get the £19 part and replace/ set it up in time for autumn to avoid cold running woes.
When i arrived at the after school club yeaterday to get the kids, it died and would not restart just as i made it into the car park. I established fuel was reaching the carb (pulled the hose and saw the petrol, much to the interest of nearby pupils) and after i very professionally wiggled the condenser it started up fine. HMM. Maybe a dodgy condenser or dodgy wiring.

 

 

Different eras of “peoples car” in use. The UR version looks like a toy!

Fleet shot whilst i was tinkering with the beetle today….

Coming up in the next ACA classic auction
https://angliacarauctions.co.uk/classic-auctions/2610-04-Nov-2023/3508~1-1988-fso-polonez

In the sort of state I remember seeing them in the 90s before they all became bean tins.
"Find another!"

Found my watch.  I didn't put it in the van, I put it in the Renault 4 for some reason.  I R twat.

Cool new band t-shirt arrival

For reference, this little Hyundai Getz 1.5 diesel has the D4FA engine,  documention for which can be found here.
Ok so when I first got the car,  there was a raft of faults in the memory,  and after I'd put the above mentioned cables back in the correct places, and fitted the refurbished starter motor, I gave it a reasonable test drive where it behaved right up until I went to pull onto my driveway.
There, it cut out and refused point blank to restart.  This behaviour got worse the more I drove it, although I did find that if I deleted the fault that had occurred (P0091) from the memory, it would start straight away.  If I attempted to start it whilst the fault or the issue was still present, I sometimes got P1186 also.
What does all this shit mean?
What it is imperative to remember when dealing with fault codes is that they are only there for guidance.  Indeed there are in depth tests to ascertain the cause of the fault in the manual linked above.
Annoyingly, the tests pointed to the fuel pressure regulator on the rail being ever so slightly out of range.  I did procure an entire fuel rail whilst in the scrappy earlier this week (and got pissing wet through in the process).
However I then tested the resistance of the replacement regulator and found it to be exactly the same as the one on the car.  Not only that but I also spotted it had been replaced when the parts cannon had been fired at it last time.
I started to consider the circumstances under which the fault occurred,  usually when slowing down, you know when I said the tests pointed to the fuel pressure regulator?   Yeah,  turns out that with an intermittent fault, your tests have to be a little more robust.
When considering when the fault occurred, I started working my way from the FPR and up the wiring harness moving and twisting it as I went until I managed to get the engine to cut out.
Some gentle prodding from either end eventually narrowed down the spot.  Stripping the protection off of the loom and the slightest of tugs on the wire in question:

Yep, that'll do it!
I've let in some new cable and joined it with solder/heatshrink butt joints and am hoping to road test it fully tomorrow. 
I'll go back tomorrow and add more pictures here and a few more details of the testing process.