project 1980 Austin Princess

[vulgalour]

It is done!  The front seats went in really easily which was very unusual, normally at least one bolt refuses to line up.  I'm very pleased with the end result.  Worth noting, I did actually do the piping on the seats where it wasn't dyed as well as I'd've liked by simple standing the seat up and spraying from the top with the fabric masked, which gave a really crisp finish.  If you get your face right up to it you can see its been dyed in places, if you know what to look for.  Overall, the casual observer won't notice and indeed there's nothing that bothers me about the interior redo.  I'm so much happier with it now than any other interior colour this car has had. I'm seriously considering using this dye to cover up the glue staining on the headlining too, a common Princess problem, something about the glue means it stains the vinyl this horrible yellowy colour and you can't clean it off.  That's something for another day.  For now, enjoy the maroon-and-black, Captain Picard's uniform, interior splendour.

Oh wait, one last thing...

Perfect.

[MorrisItalSLX]

Tremendous.

The maroon/black/cream combo compliment the exterior perfectly.

Bravo.

[GingerNuttz]

Turned out bloody fantastic ! I'm definitely going to give their black a try 

[Parky]

Love that.  It actually looks as if it could have been a genuine BL interior colour option, albeit one reserved for one of the Club 100 models which I recall had a red interior.  Really well done that.

[vulgalour]

@Parky Spanish Rose.  http://www.leylandprincess.co.uk/Princess%20Club%20100.htm

Club 100 was one of my inspirations for this, that and the ruby interior in Mk3 Ford Cortinas.  That it looks genuine to someone else makes me smile too, that was very much my aim, that it should look like a rare factory option rather than a custom interior.

[Parky]

Allegros had a very red interior option so the colour could very easily have been offered on the Princess.  It absolutely looks like a rare option rather than customised

 

[captain_70s]

Looks good, you'd never be able to tell it was a DIY affair!

[ETCHY]

Great job, very well done.

Yeah glue stains on the headlining seemed to be a big BL thing back in the day, it's often mentioned in contemporary road tests, Dolomite's often seem similarly afflicted too !

[320touring]

Fucking hell vulg, that looks absolutely tremendous:)

 

Excellent work!

[Keymaster]

Tremendous scenes! Looks ace and the maroon headrest panels work so well. I'd feel like king of the world if I were you today

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Fair play to ya Vulg, even I have to admit that looks great!!!! 10/10

[Noel Tidybeard]

8 hours ago, vulgalour said:

It is done!  The front seats went in really easily which was very unusual, normally at least one bolt refuses to line up.  I'm very pleased with the end result.  Worth noting, I did actually do the piping on the seats where it wasn't dyed as well as I'd've liked by simple standing the seat up and spraying from the top with the fabric masked, which gave a really crisp finish.  If you get your face right up to it you can see its been dyed in places, if you know what to look for.  Overall, the casual observer won't notice and indeed there's nothing that bothers me about the interior redo.  I'm so much happier with it now than any other interior colour this car has had. I'm seriously considering using this dye to cover up the glue staining on the headlining too, a common Princess problem, something about the glue means it stains the vinyl this horrible yellowy colour and you can't clean it off.  That's something for another day.  For now, enjoy the maroon-and-black, Captain Picard's uniform, interior splendour.

Oh wait, one last thing...

Perfect.

no! not pefect- i see no cushions!?

 

 

 

 

but otherwise top banana ?

[vulgalour]

I'll be sure to make some twee union flag cushion covers in various shades of velour with twisted silk rope piping, just to finish things off properly

[MikeKnight]

That looks grea- *suddenly pauses as he sees the dash switch cluster in one pic and has Vietnam type flashbacks* ?

[Noel Tidybeard]

56 minutes ago, vulgalour said:

I'll be sure to make some twee union flag cushion covers in various shades of velour with twisted silk rope piping, just to finish things off properly

jolly good ??

[Parky]

Anyone else looking at their cars interior plastics and vinyls and thinking “hmmmmmm”?

[vulgalour]

In oily news, the tools I needed for the head rebuild arrived.  If I'm really lucky, the shims I have in both the heads I already own will have the correct sizes for the clearances when I lap the new valves in.  Not getting my hopes up on that one.  Special camshaft clamping tool and an old fashioned mechanical metric micrometer rather than a modern digital jobby.  I'm unlikely to use a micrometer that often so it made sense to me to go for one that didn't need batteries.

[Christine]

I was up your way an hour ago!!  I was looking out for you in the princess!  Maidstone was empty, a few cop cars about though. Do you need a valve spring compressor?

[vulgalour]

Fortunately I've got the perfect spring compressor for the job.  One of these days we'll cross paths in meatspace.

[vulgalour]

Tat time~  Got for nostalgia rather than any sort of performance improvements they might offer.  That said, if they can stop the passenger wiper juddering (even with a new blade and a very wet screen) then that would be nice.  They only just fit on the Princess due to the 'hidden wipers' and the annoying side-pin fitment.

[vulgalour]

New valves have all been lapped in, this took less time than I was expecting, got to nice clean even surfaces fairly quickly.  This is possibly due to the valves having only just been done before I bent everything, I just expected the new valves to require more work to align.

Unfortunately I didn't have time to do more than fit the camshaft clamp ready for measuring the valve clearances tomorrow, so that's what I did and that's where we leave it for now.

[vulgalour]

Spent some time today trying to get the valve clearances what they should be.  The book states Standard Tappet Clearance to be .30mm plus or minus 0.03mm.  It also states adjustment is only required if clearances are below .20mm.  I was going to do this job in the shade in the garage until I found how frustrating it was to try and turn the crankshaft without everything sliding off my wobbly table, so I improvised with some cardboard and loosely bolting the head to the block.  This made measuring etc. a lot easier.

After measuring everything I had my first readings.  I hadn't changed the order of any of the shims from how they were previously, the only change was fitting the new valves.

From left to right we had .35mm, .10mm, .40mm, .30mm, .45mm, .05mm (just, this one very tight), .45mm, .20mm

I then did some maths to figure out what size shims I needed along with measuring and labelling all the shims out of the head I was working on so I could figure out what best went where.

This quickly became quite frustrating as I didn't have exactly the shim sizes I wanted, so I shuffled things around to try and improve and got:

.45mm, .30mm, .35mm, .20mm, .35mm, too tight to measure, .50mm, .20mm

I then robbed the shims out of my spare head to try and improve matters, most of the shims in that head were a good bit thicker, and even with those the only measurement I improved was getting #7 to go from .50mm to .40mm

I ran out of patience at that point.  I was too hot and working in a spot I couldn't shade.  I'm going to have another crack at this tomorrow when I've more free time to devote to it, I suspect if I do a bit of shim swapping I might be able to get the numbers a bit more balanced, moving the .20mm ones into the .45 and .50mm ones might just balance things out so we're more in the .30-.33mm range.

I have a lot of shims that are too big and I was wondering if it's safe to file or sand them down to the thickness you want since they are, on the face of it, just a disc of steel.

[Asimo]

The shims will be quite hard and their surface quality is important, especially if it is the shim surface that faces the camshaft. (I can't remember where the O series shim sits -between cam and bucket or between bucket and valve)

I once tried thinning an Audi 80 shim (about an inch in diameter) using wet 'n dry (on a piece of glass to keep it flat.)  Gave up after a lot of effort had made no measurable difference. Sometimes you just have to give in and buy parts.......

[vulgalour]

They go between valve and bucket, sit in a little cup on top of the valve spring.  Hopefully I can get things a bit closer so if I have to buy more shims I don't have to buy too many, for such a little thing they seem quite expensive, especially if you get the size wrong and have to order more.

[GBJ]

Measure them all with no shims. Then work out what you have got to make up the gaps.

 

[keef]

42 minutes ago, GBJ said:

Measure them all with no shims. Then work out what you have got to make up the gaps.

 

Not sure the reason this wasn't done innthe first place? Was it in the hope fitting new valves wouldn't change the gaps?

[somewhatfoolish]

circa 1994 I assisted with doing the shims on an E series 1750; we thinned the shims by holding them onto the side of a grinding disc in an angry grinder; in our defence we were stupid teenagers, we all retained ten digits each although our fingerprints took a battering and a toasting. A less hazardous means might be to hold the shims with a neodym magnet(with regular water quenching as neodym is very heat sensitive), further hazard mitigation achievable by using a belt sander instead of an angry grinder.

[keef]

Would it not be easier to shorten the valve stem(s)?

[vulgalour]

A bit more maths, old metal tools, and the arrival of some new assembly lube happened today.

The shims measure 15.5mm across, and the desired gap is .3mm (give or take .03mm).  After a bit of swapping and measuring and generally reminding myself that I really do dislike the tedium of this particular sort of job, I finally had what is probably the best set of measurements I'm likely to get from the shims I have, without modifying said shims.

• .30 (4.24 shim)
• .30 (3.5 shim)
• .30 (4.20 shim)
• .20 tight (4.24 shim)
• .30 (3.19 shim)
• ? can't quite get my 0.05 feeler in there, and that's the smallest one I have (3.08 shim)
• .30 (4.31 shim)
• .30 (3.07 shim)

That leaves me with just 2 to correct and that shouldn't be too difficult.  4 is easy to resolve, I just need a slightly thinner shim than I have available, 6 it's probably best to remove the shim and measure the gap to get some idea of where it ought to be.  Given how much tighter 6 is than all the others I did wonder if the valve was sticking and did check, all appears to be fine and not sticking, so I guess the gap on that one is just a lot tighter for whatever reason.  Ran out of time to do more on this today so tomorrow I'll take a look at what 6's gap is without the shim.

[vulgalour]

15 hours ago, keef said:

Not sure the reason this wasn't done innthe first place? Was it in the hope fitting new valves wouldn't change the gaps?

It just never occured to me to do that.  This is only the second time I've done shims, the first time we were doing it after old valves were ground in so since we measured the gaps with shims fitted it seemed sensible to repeat that even with the new valves I've fitted.  Likewise shortening the valve stems, not something I'd heard of doing until you mentioned it, though that's not something I'm planning to do since the thinning the shims is definitely the easier option.