project 1980 Austin Princess

[vulgalour]

2.0 is the best of the bunch and if you like automatics, when paired to one of those it makes for a well balanced car.  The 2.2 is a bit heavy and a bit thirsty for no real gain otherwise beyond the novelty of a transversely mounted straight six.  The fishtank headlights are said to be  bit rubbish too, compared to the twin rounds which are easily upgraded to halogens or whatever if you want to.  Of the two, the black one is probably the better car so obviously if I had to choose I'd go for the blue one.  Because I hate myself.

[wuvvum]

I can confirm that fishtank Princess headlights are indeed rubbish.

[captain_70s]

I know about that one, yes, one of the best examples out there, I'm told.  

 

It was certainly very nice looking in 2013 when I didn't buy it for £800...

 

 

The bloke had bought it to modify but found it was way too nice and was a rare poverty spec example so was selling it on. The fact I bought all the cars I have and not that one pretty sums up my utterly tragic life...

[GrumpiusMaximus]

That black one has just set up my morning.  Hnnnggghhhh....!

[JeeExEll]

It was certainly very nice looking in 2013 when I didn't buy it for £800...

 

P8037493_1024x768.jpg

 

The bloke had bought it to modify but found it was way too nice and was a rare poverty spec example so was selling it on. The fact I bought all the cars I have and not that one pretty sums up my utterly tragic life...

Saw this (then local) one around 2013 too, really really minty condition, especially interior.

 

Still on BIN £3,250.

Am sure it's not totally 100% flawless but, bargain.

A 70s car with character you can use everyday. (With 70s levels of maintenance, or else . . .).

Made of factory black too.

[SiC]

I reckon that's priced to sell for £3k. I really quite fancy it. Unfortunately any budget I had has been blown with this month's car expenditures. So can't even consider it.

 

Told my FiL though and trying to convince him to buy it.

(He'd like it but no storage to be fair).

 

I'll be very surprised if that isn't sold by the weekend.

[Mally]

You'd be far better off with an MGB, and I've owned both.

[SiC]

Isn't it basically a MGB but with better suspension and more doors?

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

The Princess 2 is a much better car. The 1800 B Series is so glacially slow, but the black one is a honey.

 

The Denim 2000 would be better for £2500, and £1000 painting it. BL sorted out the Hydragas and made a few other improvements.

 

Trapezoidal headlights are for winners.  I've got the HLS, peasants.

[vulgalour]

Isn't it basically a MGB but with better suspension and more doors?

 

You take that back!

[SiC]

The Princess 2 is a much better car. The 1800 B Series is so glacially slow, but the black one is a honey.

 

 

Would these fit to gain a bit more performance?

http://www.oselli.com/classic_oselli/engines/engines_mgb

 

I love that the power diagrams have been drawn with graph paper and a pencil for believable* accuracy.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I'm not sure - unlike the A and E Series, the transverse B Series retained the short tail crank but I think the block may be different. Just a gas flowed head, higher compression and a better cam will liven it up no end though, no .

 

Did 1800's have a 1.5 or a 1.75" SU? 

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Leyland Special Tuning did a conversion for the 1800 Princess , which was basically a twin SU and better flowing exhaust manifold . Similar, I suppose to the old 1800 S, but without the higher compression and 5 star petrol requirement.

Don't know how fast it was, but I remember magazines reporting on it and it was quicker than a 2200.

[Des]

Isn't it basically a MGB but with better suspension and more doors?

 

You're getting confused with the Sherpa van chap, admittedly it can be tricky to tell them apart but if you ever see them parked side by side the pre and post war differences are fairly marked. 

[vulgalour]

Today, I rendered myself without a car I can drive.  Because I'm an idiot.  But, the welding on the Princess really is a job I need to do before I move because I'm not sure when I'll get set up with a welder properly once I move so I might as well dig in and get stuff sorted.  It rarely takes me long to get things fixed now.  The wing is proving to be quite an involved job and not one I'm especially enjoying.  Happily the bonnet didn't need to come off, I noticed Rovamota had propped his bonnet pretty much vertical in a recent update on his build so we did the same which gave the access needed for the last wing rail spot welds.  Only they weren't spotwelds, it was a good 1/4" of filler over brazing.

20180502-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I suspect that isn't factory.  I suspect this is in fact a replacement wing too.  With the wing rail now un-welded, I cheated on the leading edge by flapwheeling the return to separate the layers.  I did this because I don't need to save more than this and it's easier to clean up and repaint the surrounding bits.  I made one mistake by thinking I had to take the spotwelds out around the return, which in turn meant removing headlights, headlight bracket, and grille, so I could get in with the drill.

20180502-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

What I learned when the wing came off is the extension fillet piece looks like it's actually part of the wing itself rather than the body of the car.  Also, the fillet was only held on by half a spotweld that didn't look very factory, lending some credence to the theory that this is a replacement wing.  It looks bad, but there's plenty here for me to reuse.

20180502-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

With  the wing off I could finally see what the real damage was underneath.  The extension piece is a little deformed and there's a difficult dent to knock out in the inner wing, but other than that everything is in pretty good shape.  There's no rust concerns at the nose end beyond what I was aware of on external panels and with the wing off I can clean and straighten what I need to.  I've already spent some time on this getting the metal work looking right again after this picture was taken.

20180502-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

While most things are fine, there is a rust hole behind the fuse box.  I didn't know about this at all and the only way I was likely to discover it was by taking the wing off.  It's an easy piece to make since it's just flat sheet, I just have to be careful of the wiring.  Of note is the little shelf to the top of the A pillar which serves ostensibly as a drain but in my case as a small composting area.  The wing aerial goes through the drain hole in this area and practically fills it, which is less than ideal.  However, the metal is all nice and solid so it just needs a really good clean once I've welded up that hole.  one strange thing is the large black blob which turned out to be some sort of sticky putty.  Underneath there was no hole or surprise, so I have no idea what it is or why it was there.  And yes, annoying the door did need to come off to get to the bolts for the wing.

20180502-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

With everything cleaned up for trial fitting, that's just what I did.  The front valance needs a slight massage on this corner but otherwise, things are falling into place where they need to and not fighting so I'm cautiously optimistic that this will all go together nicely.

20180502-06 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

The panel gap between the orange wing and bonnet is hugely improved now.  Once the old wing was removed, everything sprang back into the place it should be.  The wing rail needs a little massaging from the damage caused by spotweld removal, but nothing patience can't resolve.

20180502-07 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20180502-08 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

The areas the orange wing needs repairing are the same I'd already repaired on the beige one, so I'll be chopping out what I need from the beige wing and fitting it to the orange one.  To get the beige wing to fit is going to need a lot of work, I suspect it's slightly stretched or buckled given how nicely the orange wing just drops on compared to it.  So the orange wing needs the corner at the top trailing edge, the lower trailing edge (I've already done the exact same repair on the beige one, so I'll cut that off and swap it over), and the lower leading edge.  the majority of the arch itself is in really good shape.  The other really big job is repairing the wing rail lip on which I need to weld up most of the old spotweld holes (some I plan to repurpose for bolts), and replace a missing section.

20180502-09 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20180502-10 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Tomorrow I'll hopefully get some of the repairs done, probably the inner wing work first, and we'll see how I get on.  It's a lot of fiddly time consuming stuff to do on this.

 

[320touring]

I am jealous of your inner arch solidity!

 

Wing looks promising too

[vulgalour]

It's because it's such a modern car, you see, they barely rust at all

[vulgalour]

Got some more time in on this today and made some pretty decent progress.  First annoying task was moving the wiring out of the way.  I also had to move the bonnet release cable and that resulted in every plastic locator clip breaking so I'll have to reinstate that with new clips.

20180503-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

With that lot out the way I could investigate how bad that rust hole was.  Not too bad, as it happened, just had to be a bit of a funny shape.  While I did spend some time grinding back the welds I didn't go overboard because this bit is never, ever seen.  On this car, there was no point making it perfect here, just solid and not rusty.

20180503-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I cleaned up the blind side of the wing fillet and doused it in rust converter.  I couldn't do all of the other side with the bench grinder, I'll have to attack it with paint stripper and a wire cup brush in a drill, I didn't have time to do that today.

20180503-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I stripped back the surface rust and found no horrors lurking.  There was quite a bit of historic repainting as I've found elsewhere all over the car, but it wasn't so bad to deal with here since it seems to have been done with the wing welded on, rather than before.  A pillar was as BL intended, so there was nothing but a bit of surface cleaning to do there.  I then doused the lot in rust converter which I will leave until tomorrow.  I usually sand back when I've used rust converter before putting any paint on top as this seems to give a more durable finish and helps the paint adhere better.  Under here this will get stonechip, primer, colour top coat, and underseal of some sort to keep it all as absolutely healthy as I can manage.

20180503-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

More and more I'm sure the front wing I removed is a replacement.  There's signs of brazing around the front end too and I'm sure they didn't braze these panels from new.  The rear door this side also has brazing repairs so I suspect this is pre-restoration work and more likely DIY work in the mid to late 80s when Princesses were generally starting to look a bit tired but you could still get replacement panels for them. You can see on the slam panel that there's a couple of bright spots of braze and on the headlight support there's a long line that at first looks like sealant, but is actually more brazing.

20180503-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20180503-06 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

I was going to drop the bonnet to so I could keep as much dust out of the engine bay as possible to make cleaning up later and as I screwed the bonnet ram home, the captive nut decided it wanted to be free, so I'll have to tack that back on.

20180503-07 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Finally, I gave the orange wing an exploratory flapwheel and found, on the whole, it was in better shape than I'd expected.  The majority of the arch is in really good shape and the rot on the leading edge isn't actually as advanced as I feared.  Unfortunately I couldn't salvage the leading edge piece from the beige wing as it's rotted out here.  I chopped off the two sections I needed to repair the orange wing with but I don't think I can fit those until I've sorted out fitment on the car, so the next job is to bolt the orange wing onto the car so I can trim and tack the repair sections into place before welding it all, then stripping all the paint off, filling, and painting it all.

20180503-08 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

A few more days of my free time to go to sort this one out yet.  We'll get there, it's looking very promising so far.

[vulgalour]

Got another few hours in today but it was so warm in the unit, especially with my overalls on, that I couldn't manage as much as I would have liked.  I'll be going back in tomorrow or Monday to finish up, I hope.  One advantage of it being warm was that the paint on the inner wing went down quickly and easily, so that bit is finished now.

 

I marked out which of the spotweld holes were best to repurpose for new wing fixings and Mike drilled the holes for me.  I've straightened this out as best I can too, so I just need to replace the missing section (already cut out and ready to fit) and weld up the holes I don't need to use to sort this bit out.  For the bolts, I'm using some fairly small ones that go into clips that fit to the wing rail as this is the best way of doing it within the limitations of the space available.

 

To help fill trim, spotweld and small rust holes, I've been making use of this chunky brass fitting.  By holding it against the back of the panel I can sort of puddle weld the hole in without blowing through the thing steel or leaving loads of welding whiskers on the back of the panel.  It's saved me buying a block of copper or similar, which is what I was going to do.  If it gets too covered in welding blobs, just wire wheel it and it's good to go again.

 

With the inner wing done I could put the outer in place and start rebuilding it.  Fit is pretty good for the most part and to keep it that way it made most sense to tack the repair sections in place with the wing on the car, then remove the wing to weld them up fully.  There was a good amount to remove, but nowhere near as much work as putting the beige wing right.

 

With the big patches on the trailing edge at top and bottom welded on, I had another look at the spare wing for the leading edge piece I needed.  I've got two used K11 Micra wings that have some useful profiles, but none that were suitable for the complicated curves of the lower reaches of the Princess wing.  In desperation I sliced off the bottom of the spare Princess wing and cleaned it back on the wire wheel.  It isn't this side I repaired, it was the other side.  This side is the one that had been repaired before and had a thick skim of filler.  I cleaned it back and had enough of the original profile left to build out from that it was worth using.  There's a few edge bits I need to redo, but this is far easier than trying to make the piece from scratch and have it look anywhere near as right.

 

With that welded in place the wing is much more solid now.  I need to clean up and reattach the fillet, weld up the bumper and spotweld holes, and clean back the welding on the wing next.  After that I'll do the rust treatment, paint, etc. on the back of the wing before undersealing it and reattaching it to the car properly since it's going to be a lot easier to profile and paint the outside of the wing on the car.  It will also allow me to get it all back in one piece again so I can use it, so I'm not too concerned with the patchwork look of the outside of the wing for now.  The last job today was welding the captive nut for the bonnet rams back on.  Not a pretty job, but at least it's solid again.

 

[Dick Cheeseburger]

You seem to have fully grabbed the bull by the horns on this project, once again. Good to see - the old bird is looking more solid by the day.

[vulgalour]

It should be the last big welding job to do.  After this it's doors and rear panel and those are much easier to tackle, especially the doors since I don't need to immobilise the car to do those.

[320touring]

Good work on that - I have some outer wing welding to do on the Oxford, but as it's not structural it's waiting on a clear day..

 

I can start to see how you've done the shaping, so am storing the information for when I get onto making pretty bits:)

[Timewaster]

In fact, I see your super nice black one and raise you this super rare metallic blue one.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AUSTIN-PRINCESS-only-12k-from-new/163017446344

 

I can't see anything past that awful number plate.

[Felly Magic]

I've always wondered what an Ambassador would look like with a twin headlight Princess nose on & Princess chrome bumpers. Good work once again Vulgalour, and it's been bloody hot here today too, so I can well believe you were at gas mark eleventy in overalls

[vulgalour]

I can start to see how you've done the shaping, so am storing the information for when I get onto making pretty bits:)

Happy to be of service. However, very little of the shaping is done by me! Instead, it's almost entirely done by the spare bits of wing I chopped off. I couldn't figure out how to do the wing where it curves under the car but also curves in the opposite direction for the arch flare and then sharply returns for the arch face. I cheated on the lower trailing edge too by using the back end of a half-cut sill for the other side of the car which was close enough to look right. You can get away with a lot more when it's a car you're unlikely to ever park next to, lines don't have to be absolutely perfect, which is a relief on the complicated stuff.

[Isaac Hunt]

Leyland Special Tuning did a conversion for the 1800 Princess , which was basically a twin SU and better flowing exhaust manifold . Similar, I suppose to the old 1800 S, but without the higher compression and 5 star petrol requirement.

Don't know how fast it was, but I remember magazines reporting on it and it was quicker than a 2200.

My Dad fitted one to his 1800HL Princess. He always claimed the B Series in the Princess used smaller valves than the B Series in the 1800 Landcrabs. The Special Tuning Kit was twin 1.75 SU's and a Tubular Exhaust Manifold. I was made up cos I had a Dad with a 'breathed on tuned motor'. I later used the twin 1.75 SU's on a Marina 1.8TC in which I put an 864 Cam. Bloody Hell that thing flew in a straight line (well for a 1.8 Marina it did) and you were alright until you came to a sharp bend in the road.

[vulgalour]

Today was a rare day off properly for me so I determined to get the Princess sorted enough to drive it home.  Was a bit delayed by it being a bit of a scorcher and I didn't really want to be welding in the height of the heat today.  The short version is this.

20180507-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

It's not finished yet, there's still stuff to do, I just ran out of time and after having the driver's door put up a monumental fight for an hour and fall on me twice (remember, last time I did this it was easy peasy and almost a joy to do), I just didn't have the energy to do any more.  By 9pm I was heading home after about five hours work and goodness knows how many pints of water to stay hydrated, satisfied that things were good enough.  I didn't take many pictures of the progress because I just knuckled down and got on with it so I can't show you the amount of work I did cleaning up, rust treating, painting, and undersealing the inside of the wing, nor the work done undersealing the inner wing you can't get to once the outer is on.  What I can show you is the extent of the repairs.  It's not my finest work but the condition of the two wings I was working with made it very difficult to get a better finish, a skim of filler and you'll be none the wiser.

20180507-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20180507-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20180507-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

At the moment the wing does sit too far forwards and the panel gap between the wing and the bonnet needs closing up a little.  This is something I can do later since it's just slacking off fixings and pushing the wing about until it's where it needs to be.  Then I can finish the paint and the lower front corner repairs.  I also managed to straighten out the dent in the valance reasonably well so it lines up pretty well with the wing, I just need to finish tidying up the edges so I can secure it fully.

 

Then it was a case of cleaning off the windscreen, connecting the side repeater (which I left in the engine bay so I don't make a complete hash of the fresh paint on the wing) and driving home.  Princess started absolutely no bother and drove home quite happily, it was a big sense of achievement to actually manage to do that, even if the wing isn't quite finished yet.

20180507-06 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20180507-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

[vulgalour]

Made the executive decision to leave the front wing alone for now.  After considering how difficult it is to take on and off because of having to take the door off, I decided it would be wiser at the moment to repair my original driver's door and have it painted and ready to go on before doing this wing.  This way I won't have to then remove and refit the door again after doing the wing, I can do both at the same time.  So today I made a start on that.  Limited time again because I only have 2-4 hours a day spare on work days  so I didn't get into the welding.  Also, there was almost no filler on this panel but that's because there was so much paint on it you didn't need filler.  In places there were five resprays evident not including the quick tart up I'd done with the purple pre-MoT.  Happily, overall the door is in reasonable shape (for a Princess door on a car that lives outdoors all year round).

 

20180516-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

20180516-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Removing the lock escutcheon was a bit annoying, got there in the end when I figured out which bits came apart and which didn't.  The rust staining under the waist trim turned out to be the usual Princess problem, something that's much more advanced on the orange door.  A fiddly repair, but not too daunting.  Further down the panel there's also a tiny hole about the size of a stonechip, which was a little strange, hopefully that will just fill with a quick blob of weld like doing a trim hole.

20180516-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Leading edge was much better than anticipated.  This was still wearing mostly just factory paint and is in good shape so I've only attacked the obvious problem areas here rather than stripping it right back to bare metal.  Nice to find a good solid bit of door where I expected problems.

20180516-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Equally, the lower edge which I had thought was really bad, was actually fairly honest.  There's not a great deal that needs replacing here and even the historic repair in there is done well.  Whoever replaced that square of door bothered to cut out the rot and shape the patch piece well enough that I'll leave it alone, no point undoing adequate work.  The trouble with these doors is that the drain hole isn't the lowest point water sits and because of the way they're made, you can't put drain holes in lower down.  The only solution, really, is to fill the bottom of the doors with cavity wax until it's coming out of the drainholes and seams and hope it never dries out enough to trap moisture.

20180516-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

The only negative surprise was on the trailing edge under the door latch where there's always been a blob that looked like thick paint.  It was actually filler.  There's a strengthening panel inside this part of the door which looks to be unaffected beyond a bit of surface rust.  Rather than chop out what must have been very small holes back when this was bodged, whoever did it decided to put enough filler on that it nearly smoothed out the panel pressing and ignore it.  Worked pretty well until I poked it, in all fairness.

20180516-06 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Now I have to decide whether to do the outer skin or the inner frame first.  I don't want to lose my reference points on either but I'm not in a position to be putting the door on and off the car repeatedly to check fit.  It's also not a job I'm skilled enough to do with the door on the car.  I'll probably make a template of the outer skin, repair the inner frame after cutting away what I need to of the outer skin, then repair the outer skin, seal, and paint.  I'm going to try and take it slower on this repair as I want to do better than I did with the other door I repaired which ideally needs the sill edge redoing as it's ever so slightly off.  I want to get good at doing door bottom repairs, the sort of cars I like owning always need this job doing so it would be a useful skill to master.

[vulgalour]

Made a start on this today properly and began by using a combination of hand tools to unfold what's left of the door skin edge where it folds over the inner frame.  It was bad, but not as bad as I'd expected, so that was a fairly positive start to things.  I roughly marked out the bits that were too far gone to work out what to replace.

20180518-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

This edge and corner is going to be a fiddly thing to put right because of the pressing.  Not sure how well I'll be able to recreate the factory pressing for the corner so I may go with a simpler shape since this bit is seriously prone to rotting out so will likely need doing again in the future no matter how careful I am with the repair.

20180518-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Then it was tape, angle grinder, and brave pill time so that I could cut a massive hole in the bottom of the door.  I do not like this bit.  I was in two minds about leaving the step on the repair panel to the left, the metal is really good there but it's also a funny shape.  I decided to leave the good metal in because getting the angle grinder in was harder than making the repair piece the correct shape.  Very much a compromise, a proper repair would most likely involve removing the whole door skin and that would certainly have made access to this bit a lot easier.  Never mind, we're doing it this way.

20180518-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

 

Got the first large repair piece made, offered up a couple of times, and the nearest fit I could manage within my skills.  I'm not talented enough to do the whole repair of the inner frame in one piece, I'll do the corner and that trailing edge as two separate pieces before stitching it all back together.  I got it all tacked in place, tweaked where needed, and got on with the welding.  The welds started getting really spitty and ugly and I realised the gas bottle was empty so I had to stop, which was a little frustrating.  New gas bottle on order and I'll pick this up again when it arrives.

20180518-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

[320touring]

Have you considered using hobby weld? They rent out bottles and you just take it back and swap it for a full one when empty.

 

You pay the bottle rental when you first get it, then it's just the refill of gas you pay for.