vulgalour

The Lanchester is testing my patience once more with the wiring. The semaphores decided to stop working for no reason, the horns too, the wiring to both of them doesn't want to work either for no reason. Today I've just been chasing my tail trying and failing to fault find this. I'm not looking for advice, just a little vent. If anyone knows, or is, an auto-electrician who would be willing to come out to the car to try and sort it out please get in touch (not as a freebie, we're willing to pay for work done providing we've the budget). I reckon it's time to hand this part of the job over to someone who knows what they're doing, I can then focus on all the other stuff that I'm actually competent at.

We have news from the DVLA regarding the donor car. The car does not exist on their system, which we already know, but since we can prove existence of the car we could get a V5C for it. We would need to contact a suitable car club - DLOC is likely the best candidate - to confirm the car is what we've said it is. Then the DVLA will issue a new V5C with a non-transferable reg marker on it. If we were restoring the car this would be ideal. However, if the club chosen refuse the application we do have an alternative route of applying for an age related plate, also non-transferable, through the usual forms. For us, that means the end of the road for the chassis. Unless someone out there desperately wants a bare chassis with a non-transferable reg we shall be chopping this one up and disposing of it.

We are finally putting things back on the car instead of taking them off. The main thing to reinstall was the waterpump, to do that it needed the engine mount to be replaced which until recently has been an issue. Happily, the donor car came with what appears to be a NOS engine mount. It isn't an easy job at all to replace the engine mount, the radiator had to come out, the water pump would have had to come out had it not already been removed, and it took Pat on one tool and me on another to get everything in. You also have to jack the engine up under the sump - cast aluminium and not finned so it's strong enough for the job - so you can align everything. The old engine mount came off in three pieces, which it shouldn't do. The new one slotted in quite nicely and once installed we found the engine sat a good bit higher and now had some wiggle to it where before it was completely solid, which makes sense since the rubber part of the old engine mount wasn't really doing any damping of any sort. After that, the water pump could be reinstalled, the top hose put in place so it's not floating about in a box, and the radiator slotted back into its hole. The new fan belt was also dropped on. Finally, the dynamo was reinstalled loosely. The stuck nut that had caused an electrical connector to shear proved to not be stuck at all once the dynamo had a spanner taken to it and undid quite easily by hand. Not sure what that was about but since nothing else was wrong with the dynamo before it made sense to drop it in the hole today so it's another thing that's not just knocking about in the boot. At this point I'm only interested in restoring and sprucing up parts if they need repairing, if they don't need repairing they can stay scruffy until further notice. Access to fit the dynamo is appalling and I hated every minute of it, in case you were curious. Now, if I can just find the time to get caught up with my video editing queue and absolutely trashed upload schedule, perhaps they'll get up to somewhere near where we are in real time soon.

This sort of behaviour does highlight why things like MoTs have to be in place to at least try and protect the rest of us from numpties like this. Here's hoping when that tyre does let go it's not a dramatic event and he steps in dog poo when he gets out of the car to fix it and generally has a day full of minor inconveniences until he absolutely loses it in the middle of Tesco much to the amusement of all present. And then he drops his keys down a grate when he gets back the car. And then a seagull does the biggest pteradactyl sized bombing running across the lot.

I reckon it's more likely that's a Morris Ten Series M. Made from '38 to '48. I almost thought it was a '39 Hillman Minx until I saw the rear end.

Those are some fun ideas, I like those, especially the truck. --- It's been a busy day today, doing my best to get more of the donor gone through. The wiring harness that runs through the chassis was proving difficult to remove so instead I removed all the other wiring which will be hopefully useful for reference for later. The battery cable was also removed, it's not really in good enough shape to use again but is complete so like the wiring harness will be very useful for reference when ordering parts to make a new one. Some smaller items like clips and bits of the chassis ID tags that had self-removed were rescued, as was the brake light switch. Amazingly, the one on the donor car isn't seized and only has minor surface corrosion, even the rubber gasket is in good shape. Once I've cleaned and tested it to make sure it's good, I'll be fitting that to our main Lanchester in place of the dodgy plastic switch that doesn't seem to work. All of the front suspension has now been liberated, along with the main front-to-rear brake rod. I had intended to then remove the rear axle but I was done with fighting rusty bolts and skinning my knuckles so changed tack. With the front suspension removed it was very easy for Pat and I to pick up the front of the chassis and just move it to the new location. The only thing that made that difficult is the rear wheels won't roll. This could be a lack of weight so it's just easier for the ancient tyres to skid than roll. It could be that because I've removed the handbrake cable and mechanism, and the front-to-back brake rod that the brakes are on, or it could be that this was the first time we'd tried to roll the car forwards and something is broken meaning the rear wheels only roll backwards. I don't know. It didn't matter anyway, because there was so little weight we could just drag the thing to the new spot to free up the garage and get the good Lanchester out. The main reason I wanted to do this was some metal drip trays I'd been keeping on a stack of wheels had fallen off without any input from anything, apparently, and I couldn't get in to sort it out without getting the Lanchester out of the garage, which of course I couldn't do with the donor blocking the way. Turns out some of my plastic storage boxes are collapsing, had shoved against the stack of tyres moving them far enough that the metal trays fell off. I suppose I better spring clean the garage then. Much better! I've relocated the tyre stack, shuffled all my rubbish... er... valuable and rare spares.. about and gained a foot or so of extra width and length to the useable space in the tiny garage. That's quite an achievement. I even threw some things away! What I didn't do was go through every single box and organise things because the boxes are fragile, I only had so much time, and I can't afford the racking I want to put in the garage to solve my storage issue. The good Lanchester is way easier to get in and out of the garage now we've got that extra space to play with, and I can get to stuff easier too because there's room to walk down the side of the car at last. Good Lanchester out of the garage and I'm happy to report no signs of active woodworm, moths, or other pests. Aside from some dust, all looks well. As a little treat and to keep them from getting accidentally damaged, I boshed the three trim rings that came with the donor car on our car. These rings will get the oxalic acid treatment followed by a coat of lacquer or similar to keep them from completely dissolving. It would be nice to find a fourth scruffy one to match, for now these will do. Looking forward to being able to dig into KKV again soon and get things moving once more now the donor car is properly out of the way. Still more to remove from the donor of course, there's just less pressure now since we've got to wait up to another month before we can chase the DVLA about the V5.

So relieved that the rear arch repair panel, an item I've been after for pretty much my entire ownership of this car, is actually a really good fit. Not sure when I'll be doing the bodywork on the Princess, I need to get Maestro and Lanchester jobs out of the way first. I do now have a front wing for the driver's side, a front arch repair panel for the passenger side, a full outer sill for whichever side it is I need it (I can't be bothered to go to the garage and check), and this rear arch panel. That addresses all the remaining rust areas I'm aware of. The only thing really stopping me using the Princess at the moment is the rear brakes and I'm just stretched too thin financially to get the tools/pay a person for the moment. It'll sort, Princess isn't getting any worse where it is and is in no danger of going anywhere, it just has to wait a bit longer.

You have to view them in context a bit. When pre-selectors were most popular, a lot of stuff still didn't have synchromesh on first if manual, and were godawful if automatic. It's a surprisingly intuitive thing to use, at least for the short distance Pat and I have used ours, and makes for a very pleasant gearchange. No worrying about balancing the clutch before setting off or whatever, I imagine it's just about impossible to stall it if it's in good health, and just makes the driving experience a bit more relaxed.

Some potholes get repaired you know. Locally there's a bunch of them that had been steadily growing to about the size of a K10 Micra that it only took 2 and a bit years to repair. To protect said repairs they've now decided to dig up the road around them for a new development that's going in. Naturally this has attracted more potholes to the area that are steadily growing on the edges of the roadwork barriers. I'm sure they'll have it all sorted by 2030 by which time it'll probably be illegal to mention potholes anyway.

Do we think it's a major enough facelift between the two that we get a point each here?

I've been getting myself organised with projects here and making plans to get stuff done in the most pragmatic way I can. Lots of house projects have been wrapping up finally, leaving us with the more expensive ones to save up for. With the cars, I've made the decision to sell the Maestro probably next year (don't all rush at once) by which point all the cosmetic jobs I'd like to do on it should be done and it should be a reasonably well sorted little car for someone to continue to enjoy. For now, Maestro is on SORN as a money saving exercise, I've cut back on everything non-essential to try and speed up the savings accumulation, especially given how terrible a month April was for work this year. Most things I need are in walking distance, so having the Maestro off the road for a couple of months will save me a bit of cash since I won't be taxing it, putting fuel in it, or going on those impulse drive-and-shop treks when I want a little retail therapy. With the Lanchesters, the donor is almost fully stripped now and weather permitting should be fully stripped this weekend. The other Lanchester is just waiting to come out of the garage so I can get some of it put back together after the woodworm saga and get moving with the next stage of work I'd hoped to have been doing while the donor has been getting worked on. I'm really hoping this is the year we get the main Lanchester sorted out and actually drive the thing on the road, it's taken far too long to get as far as we have. Such is the nature of these things. Princess I'm planning to make my main transport again. Realistically, it's the car I always go back to and does everything I need, even more so since moving South and finding I need to drive even less than ever before. I just keep getting distracted by a second/third car, my time and money resources get stretched too thin, and the important jobs get put off again. What I want to do is sort out the last few bits of bodywork, send the engine off for a rebuild (£1000-1,500), and get the suspension treated the same (£750+). Then I can finally do the paintwork and maybe even get it a much needed new windscreen. I reckon I need to sink a couple of grand into the Princess to get it where I want it, definitely more than it's worth, and I'm okay with that. It's not a car I want to move on, it's the only car I've ever been totally happy with. I have a loose idea of putting aside a new-financed-car payment aside every month which I reckon would be more than enough to keep the Princess in fine fettle and perhaps even pay other people to do work on it for me so I don't have to. Really, if I hadn't kept buying other cars and just focused on the Princess it would be finished nicely by now instead of being in a constant state of not-quite-done. Speaking of Princess bodywork, after ten years of looking for one I finally found a rear arch panel for sale. Timing was terrible, I'm supposed to be saving not spending, but like the Lanchester donor sometimes the right thing turns up at the wrong time and you just have to make it happen. Here's hoping it arrives in the post no problem because it's going to save me a lot of grief when I come to repair the rear arch, especially that complicated bunch of curves that make up the lower trailing edge.

Yesterday I hosed the chassis down to get the bulk of the dirt off and make it easier to strip the few remaining items of value to us. It looks much the same as it did in the last photo. This made stripping off the next few bits somewhat easier since I could see where the fixings, or what was left of them, were. Most of the items I want off the bulkhead are now off, there's very little left to remove here. That meant today's small haul is the wiper motor, some wiring harness P clips, the copper fuel lines, the fuel reserve cable and pull, and the bulkhead trim panel. Somehow, against all logic, the bulkhead trim panel has survived with little more than some surface rust on the rivets and a bit of surface mould on one edge. Given how this car was stored and how prone an area this is to getting wet, it should be little more than mush. Still to remove is all the rear running gear including the leaf springs and lever shock dampers, the front suspension and hubs, the main battery cable, all of the brake mechanisms, and what's left of the wiring harness. That should then leave us with a chassis and bulkhead awaiting its fate at the hands of the DVLA. Since I'll have a spare pair of rear wings, and at least two good spare steel wheels and matching hubcaps I've been considering getting a modern lightweight box trailer and dressing it up with Lanchester parts so it looks age appropriate. I'm not really tempted to use the back half of the chassis from the donor due to the weight of it, far easier to make a modern trailer look old than build a modern trailer entirely from old parts.

CVT Uno. Worth it for the grille alone, frankly. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304921328915

Austere. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325641238855

1936 Austin 7 with a Hamblin Cadet body from the 1960s on it. Perhaps the weirdest thing about this is seeing something of this nature actually finished. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185860855977

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325626625730

This is amazing. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/404263255628

Just absurd. Hopefully it also had a red velour interior to match the burgundy and silver exterior.

Even when moving, these things give off yard couch vibes. Wallowy slouchy saggy looking things. Naturally, I'd love to own one.

'58 AMC Rambler feels like a good contender, first and only time I've seen one in person, but was it one of you lot?

Mazda 121 I've a suspicion at least one of our Australian correspondants has owned one in recent years.

Fiat Tempra, any shape. Bonus points for estate ownership.