project 1980 Austin Princess

[NorfolkNWeigh]

I too have great love for the Lotus rims, those trims make it look like you really wanted a PT Cruiser.

[Noel Tidybeard]

I wonder what the nail salon next door do with their little jars of nail paint when there's not enough left to do 10 more nails...

 

 

I think you need to go and see if you can score a few dozen (maybe take them a box to drop them in for you) - I'm sure you could come up with something glittery, arty, and thoroughly lovely.

 

my bro-in-law used spandangle nail varnish when he mixed some paint to do his car to give superb metal flake effects

[Skizzer]

I like the chrome domes. I like the Lotus wheels, too. But I don't think you were actually asking a question, were you?

[vulgalour]

As previously stated, ditching the Lotus wheels is temporary.  Trouble is, the tyres on the Lotus wheels are fucked, they're cracking in the tread blocks and around the side walls because they're really old.  The alloys also really need polishing and painting, I've kept moving this down the list in favour of other jobs like welding and wiring.  There's also the small matter of price difference:

 

Lotus wheels - £275

Refurbishment - sandpaper and paint £40, plus buckets of time

Tyres - at least £200 for a set of four

Fitting and balancing - at least £35

 

Chrome domes - £95

Purchase - £60

Tyres - already purchased

Fitting and balancing - at least £35

 

I'll carry on doing my thing, I always upset someone with my choices so I don't try to please anyone but me with this car now.  Next on my list of questionable jobs is to get a couple of tins of paint, some masking tape, and get the beige and purple at least moderately uniform so the car looks more presentable for MoT time... if it ever stops raining.

[Noel Tidybeard]

aconite FTW lets have none of this fraud purple vevet talk near this car

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

aconite FTW lets have none of this fraud purple vevet talk near this car

 

 

Bollocks.

 

What would Matchbox have done?

 

What would Harris Mann have done? 

 

They envisioned the 'Cess with metallic and alloys. I know this. 

[michael1703]

No mot tester is going to be bothered if it's painted or not, just lob it in for a test.

[Tickman]

No mot tester is going to be bothered if it's painted or not, just lob it in for a test.

This, presentable for MOT to means clean enough so the tester does not get too dirty from the car and lights and windows clean.

 

However if you need to have it clean for the test that is a different matter and one that is fully understandable.

 

Progress is progress no matter how slow it is.

[vulgalour]

Yeah, the paint thing is for me not the MoT guy, I just want it to be that bit more presentable and for a couple of hours of work (if that) it seems silly not to.  Still not got much voice so that's holding me up with the suspension and I can't spend more than about an hour outside before I'm coughing up a lung so I'm impatiently kicking my heels while I get better now.  I could have pretty much everything that needs to be done in a weekend now.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Maybe do something like this in an early seventies pale metallic, chrome Princess badging from a 1300 VdP and a 1971 J or K plate.

 

Harris (he's the) Mann far left. LegEnd.  

[vulgalour]

I am as happy today as the Renault made me unhappy yesterday.  That's very happy indeed.  Today was an opportunity to do some good with the Princess since I'd booked a chap to come out and sort my suspension out and see what else I could do on the car to make things a bit more finished and complete.  Inside the car, the rear seats have a little bit of vinyl trim that goes on the body beside the seat base, you can't see it when it's fitted but sometimes see painted bodyshell when it isn't.

 

At the front, I finally got the A pillar kickplates in and the fresh air vent pipes reinstalled.  I'm still missing two strips of black carpet for the inner sills, not vital at the moment and easily resolved with just some black stuff which I'll do eventually.

 

 

All of the glass got a clean inside and out and everything got vacuumed and dusted inside the car which I haven't done for months.  It does need a full deep clean, for now it's just nice and tidy.  I got the lower section of the dashboard fitted bar one or two screws and managed to get the bracket for the large ashtray that lives under the switchbank to fit properly so that's also ready to go in now.  There's no wiring behind this piece so it made sense to fit it since it's quite a large item to have flopping around the place.

 

I'm really happy with how much tidier the interior is looking now, almost like a real car.  On the outside, Mike was busy fitting my new number plates.  I'm really pleased with how the rear one looks, it makes so much sense of what the various lights are doing and looks far better than it did in my head.  There's some more work to do on the paint and the exhaust tailpipe needs tweaking a little, other than that I'm really happy with the back end of the car now, even the foglights I wasn't certain of before.

 

Mike also fitted the front number plate once we figured out how to use the original Princess brackets that needed a slight trim.  This I'm also delighted with, it's really tidy and clean and the numberplate is both visible, discreet and sits now lower than the sump.  Absolutely perfect.

 

You may have noticed the car is sitting a little higher and level.  That's because the suspension is now pumped up.  I had the opportunity to drive around the yard to resettle the suspension part way through the job and it but the biggest, stupidest grin on my face that I just couldn't get rid of.  I'd forgotten just how quick the Princess could be but certainly hadn't forgotten how fun it is.  The brakes are better than I remember too.

 

This does mean I can update my list!

MoT list update:

> connect fog lights

> connect number plate lights

> stick number plates on - DONE

> make hazard switch work

> make the indicator lights work - DONE

> pump up the suspension - DONE

> fit the new tyres

> fit a new washer jet pump

> tune the carb.

> find the loose steering component

[Felly Magic]

That's not a very big list to tick off there. Soon be on the road

[vulgalour]

It's very exciting.  Fitting the tyres are the only thing I need to spend money on now, everything else is just time and not a great deal of it for the most part.

[Noel Tidybeard]

i think that the number plate mounted that low is going to end in tears though especially as its plastic which would be a shame as they are nice 

did you try it flat on the centre of valance?

 

i forgot how nice the dash surround looks in shlurple- how ace would purple wood grain look?

[vulgalour]

Believe it or not, the sump is lower than that number plate so if I smash the plate I've got much MUCH bigger problems ahead of me.  I did try it flat on the valance, it looked shit.

 

I wonder if you can get purple wood veneer?  I be it's expensive if you can.

[Des]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Diamond-Ceiling-Sparkle-Grooved-waterproof/dp/B00IYI0UK0/ref=sr_1_24?m=A1YEWMZXV3I1LP&s=merchant-items&ie=UTF8&qid=1488015618&sr=1-24

 

What about this? It's corrugated plastic that I've been wondering about using for a headliner.

[worldofceri]

The number plate will be fine like that.  The plate on my Beetle hangs below the bumper and has always been fine.  Also, looks higher than the bottom of the bumper on most modernz.

[vulgalour]

@Des:  I'm guessing that's similar to conservatory roof polycarbonate sheeting in construction so I'm not sure if I could use it for the dash unless I could split it down to just the purple sparkle sheet and use it as a veneer.  It would look really good, I didn't even know it was a thing.  Quite like the black with rainbow sparkle they do too.  I'm trying to think of what you'd be putting it in as a headlining, you'd need something with a very flat roof.

 

@WoC:  pretty tough to get a number plate lower than a Beetle's torsion bar even when you do hang it off the bottom of the bumper.  I'd guess the Princess plate has about 6" clearance, possibly more, it looks way lower than it really is.

[Parky]

You could give the car that modern lightweight sports racer feel with this purple carbon fibre finish:

 

http://www.premium-quality.co.uk/Purple_Carbon/purple_carbon.html

[vulgalour]

I could.  I'm not going to.

[vulgalour]

Princess progress again, folks.  First thing to illustrate is how much lower than the number plate the sump is.  I'm really happy with how much lower the car looks on the front than it really is and the number plate location is a big part of that visual trickery.  Rust is just some surface where the paint was thin from an unfinished job and outdoor storage, I'll be rectifying that soon.

 

Found the central ashtray in the garage today and got that back in place.

 

Tried out the various bits and bobs to see what would work.  For one brief, brilliant moment, everything did!  Apart from the horn and two of the dash binnacle illumination.  The main beam telltale is almost invisible, the lens is a really dark blue.

 

 

I wanted to see what the lights looked like properly at night and was impressed at just how huge they look on the back end.  I should be pretty hard to miss.  They're like rocket boosters, which pleases me.

 

 

Apart from the aim being off, the new halogens up front are pretty good too with a noticeable difference between dip and main beam.

 

I replaced the side repeater that wasn't working, the one I removed just sort of fell apart so it's no wonder it wasn't working.  The new one went in really easily, one of the quicker jobs on the car.

 

Dug out the mk1 screen wash bottle from the spares stash and was going to use the matching pump I had but the connectors were wrong, so I used a brand new pump Mike gave me last year which is a proper match.  The pump needs fastening down but I now have working washer jets again.  That's an MoT job off the list!

 

 

Removed the mechanical fuel pump to reseal it and found all but about 5mm of the bottom of the spacer block was actually sealing really well.  The spacer block isn't deformed or cracked and bonded so well to the pump itself you can't remove it without more force than I was willing to put in since it's working fine that side.  I tried fitting a thick paper gasket to stem the oil leak from this that has plagued me since fitting the mechanical pump, the only failure of this alteration really since it's perfectly fine as a pump at all speeds.  Time will tell on this one.

 

Splashed some purple on the front wing to try out the full length two-tone.  I do like it, the car looks really long in profile and it takes a lot of that visual weight out of the nose end of the car.  For now, this is what I'll go with.  Finding the best line over the arch flare was tricky.

 

Finally, I swapped the old boot lid on in favour of the green one that didn't fit so well.  Stripping the paint was proving really difficult because it's ludicrously thick and barely anything touches it apart from the most recent respray I did some time ago.  I decided to try out the alignment and had it fairly close I thought so went to just shut the boot to, but not on the latch, when it shut on the latch.  Now it won't open. I've managed to shut tools, the manual and spares in the boot too.  The lock works on the key but won't release so I'm not really sure how I'm going to fix this problem without damaging the boot lid.  I've tried various prying, leaning, hitting, wiggling and easing of the boot lid to no avail.  I'm not sure I'm small enough to fit through the cross-brace holes behind the back seat to get into the boot to release it from inside, it's not a job I'm looking forward to.

 

 

I believe I've found the cause of the electrical gremlin too. After having everything working, the horn stopped working properly, then the indicators gave up, then the rear heated screen switch wouldn't illuminate. Fuses are fine, what wiring I can see without dismantling the dashboard is also okay. The Princess did this when I bought it five years ago, in almost exactly the same way (I don't recall it blowing fuse #5 back then), and it was down to dirty switches and connections in the dashboard panel itself so I'll take the dashboard out and give everything a clean and check over. Hopefully that's all it really is.

 

MoT list update:

> connect fog lights

> connect number plate lights

> stick number plates on - DONE

> make hazard switch work

> make the indicator lights work - DONE

> pump up the suspension - DONE

> fit the new tyres

> fit a new washer jet pump - DONE

> tune the carb.

> find the loose steering component

[vulgalour]

P.S. suspension stayed up! I was very nervous going back into the unit given this car's history with displacer failure.

[Noel Tidybeard]

you could use the wing top and window line as paint split- i'm sure rolls/bentley or the muricans did something like that back in the day

[vulgalour]

You mean like an HLS Princess with a contrast trim full vinyl roof?

[Pillock]

The number plate will be fine like that. The plate on my Beetle hangs below the bumper and has always been fine. Also, looks higher than the bottom of the bumper on most modernz.

I used to have my Beetle plate nice and low, mounted on zip ties so it hung vertical at rest but hopefully flapped back enough at speed so front facing cameras would be oblivious

 

And mine wasn't torsion bar, so the next low hanging thing down the car was the gearbox.....

[vulgalour]

Fancy moderns with their fancy suspensions.

[Noel Tidybeard]

You mean like an HLS Princess with a contrast trim full vinyl roof?

 

no like- bonnet, roof, pillars & under rear window in beige bellow widow line shlurple

[vulgalour]

Oh right, I get you.  Not sure how I'd split that on the front wings since there's no natural line for it.  It's a shame the 'bulge' on the bonnet isn't a slightly different shape so you could run from the back corners to the front along the line of it.

[sporty-shite]

 

Those foglights remind me of funny car wheelie bars, for some strange reason. Everything sensible in me tells me they shouldn't look right, but I think they just do.

[Angrydicky]

This is looking great, but I'm going to stick my nose out here and say that the Captain Slow and WBOD stickers spoil it, along with the crumpled wing and oversized wing mirror. Extending the purple paint to the front was the right thing to do, and although the Lotus wheels are better, the chrome hubcaps are a perfectly acceptable alternative until you get the new tyres sorted.