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1980 Austin Princess


vulgalour

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Who knows?  Barry from Croydon will probably tell everyone it's shit like and I've ruined a classic while Amanda over in Tunbridge Wells probably thinks I should scrap it.  Meanwhile, Wilfrid Horsemanure is probably still prattling on about The Strikes And All That and gradually working himself up to a red faced political frothfest about how his rights are being impugned because he has to wear a mask in Aldi.  You know, the usual Facebook bollocks.

 

Anyway.

 

Today there was petrol on the floor behind the Princess.  It does this in the summer sometimes when the back of the car gets hot and its got a full tank of fuel.  While it does have a full tank of fuel, it's hardly summer.  Normally, unscrew the cap to release the excess pressure and then it's fine once you've burned a few liquid dinosaurs.  This time, I unscrewed the cap and was greeted with about half a litre of unleaded flooding out of the filler neck, narrowly missing my shoes, and spilling down the side of the car.  Then I made the mistake of wiping it off and took the freshest paint clean off to bare metal where I'd done some repairs a year or two ago.  Not sure what that's about to be honest, it's almost like the tank has over pressurised due to a blocked vent tube or similar and it's not something it's ever done in winter before.  It's also become reluctant to start on the first attempt of the day, usually taking three attempts to actually catch and idle so there's something amiss.  Once it's actually started its fine and behaves all day long so again, no idea what that's about.  It probably hates me.  I painted the bare metal with blue enamel paint because it's all I had to hand and I didn't have time to drag the Lanchester out of the garage to get to the proper colour and since I'm doing the paint later this year I couldn't give any less fucks than I currently do about the state of the paintwork.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Fame!  Kinda.  Always brings me joy to know other people got excited enough by the Princess to tag a picture and share it on the social medias, especially if they're nice about it because she doesn't look her best just at the moment.
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https://twitter.com/boggissimo/status/1490436469097480196

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  • 2 months later...

I managed to put this update in the wrong thread, so I'm reposting it here for the sake of completeness.

---

I had one 5 mile errand to run. I know I can do that before the car consumes all its oil and water so thought I'd chance it. Checked fluids etc before setting off and all was well. At cold idle, small bubbles appearing in the expansion bottle. Off we went, car drove normally, temperature gauge rose normally, no issues.

First stop (it was one of those stop-start errands sort of a thing), everything was the same so I carried on.

Stop two and the bubbles in the coolant had become larger and more frequent, coolant level had dropped a bit, but I was less than a mile from home so I did the thing I needed to do and then made my way home.

Once home, engine was up to full operating temperature, coolant hadn't dropped any further, and the bubbles had completely stopped even when revving the engine. It was like the head gasket had fixed itself. That was a bit weird.

Now, I will be doing a compression check on this both when the engine is cold and when the engine is hot. Reason being, a friend suggested it sounds like a cracked head. That could also explain why it seems to keep blowing head gaskets but why there's nothing visibly wrong with them when the head is removed. I do know the O series suffered from casting issues with some heads, so it's entirely likely I have a bad head on this car. Quite why a cracked head wouldn't show up when it was pressure tested and skimmed last I'm not sure.

Anyway, the engine is still getting rebuilt by someone else, but I will do a compression test over the weekend and report back on the findings, see if we can see any difference between a hot and a cold engine. Perhaps the issue with this engine has been a bad head all along and that's why it's been so difficult to pinpoint.  A leakdown test, as suggested over on the blue forum, is also a sensible choice if I can find someone to do it since I don't have the kit required to do it myself.

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It's the head the car came to me with, presumed original.  It might be possessed...

---

Okay, now I'm confused.  Got the camera out to document what the engine is doing and now it isn't doing it.

Compression figures are reasonable, if not great:
1 - 145
2 - 140
3 - 150
4 - 135

Could be better, obviously, but could also be a lot worse.  The other strange thing is that it's putting no bubbles in the coolant at all now and the coolant is clean again where when I was having issues it had gone a bit murky.  Could it be that I've simply driven it enough to dislodge some grime somewhere in the system and had a minor airlock somewhere?  Something else?

I have no idea.  I still want to get the engine rebuild but now it's magically fixed itself I guess I'll keep using it until it randomly pretends its broken again.  This makes no sense at all to me, to be quite honest.

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I've been trundling about in it today and on a whim booked it in for an MoT.  Driving away from the garage of course it snapped the speedo cable.  Again.  I'm hoping I've got one in stock, otherwise I'll have to get the TomTom out until a replacement arrives.  I know what it's done, the plastic collar at the back of the speedo will have gone weak and snapped like the last two.  You need the hands of a child to sort it out so I'll be squeezing my spades in there and probably come out looking like I've been in a fight with a hamster and lost.

Also, the horn stopped working, or rather it didn't work when I needed it to, and one side repeater blew.  At least it did it today and not on MoT day, and replacing a bulb and wiggling some connectors got things sorted.  I'm not aware of anything it might fail on other than headlight alignment after going through that flood (which might also be what shortened the lifespan of the side repeater, to be fair) so we'll just hope it lurches through okay.

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The fog light switch decided to stop working almost entirely. Annoyingly, even though I have a spare of every dashboard switch, a fog light switch isn't one I do have. Gave things a wiggle and almost got reliability out of it, and then the switch stopped working again. Bulb, connectors, and fuse are all good, it's the connection at/in the switch at fault. That's probably going to be an issue at MoT since I believe the car is just new enough that a fog light is legally required. I'm just going to hope it works on MoT day.

Side repeater I couldn't get to work and I can't find my spares, that's a corrosion issue since the inside of the bulb holder refuses to turn into shiny metal and remains steadfastly crusty brown. Fortunately being pre-85 side repeaters aren't legally required so I've unplugged them (which doesn't alter the flash rate of the indicators, probably because of the digital flasher can I've got fitted instead of the old bimetallic type) and taped over the holes which is legal as far as I'm aware. It's a fix, just not a proper fix, when I find the spare side repeaters I know I have I'll refit good ones.
 

I also don't have a spare speedo cable in stock so I'll have to order a pair so I've got one to fit and one in stock again. TomTom to the rescue in the meantime so I don't accidentally speed.
 
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There's a speed camera near home on a road you'd swear was a 40 but is actually a 30.  Trouble with the fog switch is the way the dashboard is built makes it a nightmare to access without dismantling things and the connection issue is the sort where I might find it works fine out of the dash and stops working as soon as it's installed.  I've had this issue with other switches in the same pack, just requires plenty of wiggling and fettling until the switch finally gives in and decides to work again.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Another video and I've not done the write up for the last one.  Oops.  I'm hoping to sit down this weekend and do all the write ups on the projects I need to so folks can get caught up.

In the meantime, here's the mirrors going on the Princess.

 

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The starting issue.  This is one of those daft issues that is down to user error for once.  First job, do some talking to camera and then demonstrate what the car does.  Apply choke with obligatory clothes pegs, and turn the key expecting the usual start-and-die routine before it idles on the third attempt.

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Except the Princess decided that today it was going to start on the first turn of the key and make a liar of me.  Right.  Well that could make diagnosis a bit of a nuisance if this issue has suddenly decided to be all intermittent.  I already knew I was getting decent spark and fuel and wasn't getting anything silly happening with oil and coolant so the next step was to investigate the dashpot which I realised I hadn't checked since refitting the head.

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Sure enough, it was pretty low on oil.  Topped that back up with some light machine oil, which it needed rather a lot more than usual of, almost as though perhaps it had drained out while the head was off the car and somebody had refilled it.  Made sure it made the unpleasant squelchy noise and screwed the cap back on.  Then took it for a quick blezz up and down the street to see if matters had indeed improved.  Imagine there's a big pile of boxes I'm about to drive through, and an overdub of screeching tyres and a more powerful engine. It's more entertaining that way.

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It seemed to be a lot happier, a lot less lumpy as it was warming up, and certainly started much easier.  Convinced Pat to be cameraman and took it out for a test run to see if it really was better and I'm happy to report that it's about as good as it's ever been and didn't embarrass itself by doing anything mechanically daft.  Ended up behind a funny van.

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Spotted someone else having fun with colours on their old car.

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And we discussed the Ford Ka.  You'll have to watch the video for more details, it doesn't translate that well to this sort of update.

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  • 1 month later...

Another Princess update. I had planned to do some more paint and got sidetracked by doing a 'quick bit of welding'. Namely, I wanted to weld up all the trim holes I'm not using, and the mirror holes in the front doors.

Got rid of the wrong set of holes for the spoiler - by which I mean I kept the holes that should be there for the spoiler, and welded up the holes I'd drilled in the wrong place previously - in the boot lid, and welded up the original badge holes. Bit of bodywork still to go here, it's just flatted back welds and primer, no filler or top coat yet.

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Same deal with the front doors, all of the various holes for the various mirrors the car has worn are now welded up, bit of primer, no filler. This went a lot easier than I was expecting, but will need filler before top coat.

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Had another go at the door bottoms on the drivers side to get the shape a bit better. Ideally, they need someone with better skills and tools than me to do them properly, they've never been entirely the right profile even before the rot was chopped out, so it's all guess work really. Still, they'll take filler much better now and perfect panels gaps look weird on BL stuff anyway. Again, no filler, just welded repairs (from ages ago) and paint here because I never actually got chance to do this job properly.

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Finally, I poked at the 'little rust hole' in the front passenger wing on the arch lip and ended up rebuilding pretty much the entire lip. Weirdly, the return was in pretty good shape, it was just the vertical face that was shot so I carefully snipped out the vertical face, cut some sections to suit, and welded those in. This wing has already been repaired by me before some years ago and that was on top of repairs it had come to me with even further in its past. Ideally, it could do with a new wing on this side but they're very, very hard to find now. Fortunately I do have a new wing to go on the other side which currently sports a wing made up of at least three different wings and is predictably starting to bubble anew. As with the other jobs, no filler here, just welding and primer.

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It's too hot to do any more on this today. I've done my penance, drank enough water to launch a cruise ship, and got sunburn on the only bit of my neck my PPE didn't cover. I've got some repairs to do on the driver's side rear arch, the lower edge of the drivers side sill, and one small hole in the very bottom of the passenger side front wing. Then it should all be finished (for now) on the welding front bar fitting that new wing I need to get in paint before it can go on the car.

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When it's a bit cooler I'll tackle the filler work and sanding prep for top coat. I did learn that when I was moving the car about there's a knocking noise coming from a the rear passenger side which I suspect is something brake related. It's too hot to investigate now, but the knocking gets faster when you go faster and stops completely when you press the foot brake, so I'm thinking it's something in the drum that's out of adjustment or broken. I'll investigate when it's a bit cooler outside.

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The rubber part of the rear axle/crosstube mounting bracket has basically worn out.  The nut you see there should sit in the middle of that circular hole but the rubber has got tired so it can move about more than it should.  Replacement is necessary.  If you have a spare bracket, or know the part number, or anyone that's selling a good bracket (or even better, a pair), please let me know.  I'm coming up blank on this one and haven't been able to find replacements yet.

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Fitting wing mirrors to the Princess.  I've had various mirrors on this car as long term viewers will know and of all of them, these black aftermarket wing mirrors have been the best of the lot in terms of visibility and aesthetics as a combination.  The Honda Acty mirrors were easily both the best to see with and the ugliest on the car, while the original Tex branded mirrors were perhaps the most well suited cosmetically while also being the most useless mirrors I've ever had on a car.

When I started this job it was pretty cold and wet, there's never really good weather to do this sort of thing in so I just got on with it.
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Gather my tools up which comprised a cordless drill, some masking tape, a pen, and some sockets for the mirror's fixings.
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On the passenger side wing there were still the nubbins from where I'd ground back but not filled the welded up holes from when the wing mirrors were previously on the car.  The driver's side didn't have this guide to help me since that wing was replaced with a Frankenstein's monster of a thing made up of several wings.  Masking tape deployed to give me something to write on and to prevent the drill bit from skipping since I still don't have a centre punch for marking drill holes.
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Start drilling and think the drill bit is blunt, check the battery and find out that actually it's got nearly no charge in it.  Recharge the battery and try again.
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Then inspect the mirrors and find a couple of the nuts are rust-welded onto the bolt threads so spend some time cutting through the bolt threads after trying every other method, and then install new fixings.

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Dry fit the mirror into the wing and decide I'm happy to once again have these back on the car.  I should never have second-guessed myself with these, they fit in with what I'm doing really well and I like using them, so I should have more faith in my own vision.

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Next job is to remove the arch liners. These things are a pain.  If you leave them in they do protect the nose end of the wing from stuff building up, but they do nothing to protect the other end of the wing.  They also destroy the arch lip whenever you try and remove them.  They're held in with several screws.

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Once the liner has been fought out, access to put the nuts onto the floating captive bolts in the mirrors is possible.  These mirrors aren't sprung loaded and you adjust them by pushing on the glass which is mounted on a ball socket inside the mirror housing.  Usefully, they don't stick out further than the car's widest point which you'd think would be a problem for seeing behind you, but with them so far down the wing it's really not an issue.  They're also pretty large for wing mirrors, so the field of vision is surprisingly good in them.
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Looking up inside the wing you can see the spreader plate that's used to keep the mirrors from jiggling - they really don't vibrate at all, surprisingly - and I gave all this a coat of paint to protect it from rusting, I just didn't record that bit.
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It's not really that easy to show what it's like to use them when you're in the car, the camera isn't really looking at the mirrors the same way you do when you're driving, but they really are great.  The big advantage is I can make a quick glance at either mirror and see what's going on behind me without really taking my eyes off the road in front, unless I'm doing over-the-shoulder checks of course because it always pays to be vigilant.  The one thing these mirrors do best of all out of all the mirrors I've had on this car is almost totally elimate the C pillar blind spot which is massive due to the 70s styling.
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With both mirrors fitted it felt a bit more like my car again.  These definitely aren't to everyone's taste, and that's okay, I'm not building this car for anyone but me so I'm the only person I need to satisfy with it.
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