project 1980 Austin Princess

[vulgalour]

Just be aware these are 5 3/4" units, your Mini will probably want 7" ones and I don't know if they do this exact style in that size.

[Morris 63]

Whoops, that's a very good point, thank you 

[Noel Tidybeard]

why should you only have the outers as dipped beam?

afaik a lotus esprit has 4 dip

[vulgalour]

I'd have to double check, but last I was aware if you have twin lamps only the outers can be dipped as per the MoT handbook, but all four can be main beam.  I can't remember if older stuff is allowed all four on dip and newer stuff isn't, there might be a date cut off like there is for white indicators and side repeater lamps and it could be that the Esprit and Princess fall on opposite sides of the cut off date.

[High Jetter]

IIRC it was always the rule, certainly in the 70s, as seen on P6 & Triumphs.

[vulgalour]

Turns out I don't need a radiator fan switch after all, it does work just fine.  Doing some checks and nudged the wiring near the radiator and now the fan switch works just fine.  Just old car stuff.  It's probably a slightly corroded connection from when the car had been sat idle for a while so I'll just keep an eye on that for now.

Amazingly, the fuel pump still isn't leaking oil, and neither is the oil filler tube.  The oil leak on the belt side has reduced too, whatever is causing it, so when I finally get opportunity to clean everything down I should be able to find that easier.  It does seem to be coming from somewhere higher up than the oil pump/filter assembly so I'm thinking it's probably something like a camshaft end seal which is a moderately easy thing to replace and pretty common as a failure.  The leak is definitely more in the weep territory than an actual honest to goodness leak so I'm not that worried about it.

[Zelandeth]

On 23/05/2024 at 17:12, High Jetter said:

IIRC it was always the rule, certainly in the 70s, as seen on P6 & Triumphs.

I'm pretty sure this was one of the reasons that Plaxton went with vertically stacked quad lights on the Supreme coaches - as they were able to run all four on both dip and main.

...At least the two I've done wiring repairs in that area were set up that way seemingly from the factory anyway!  Those were on a T and V plate respectively.

[High Jetter]

2 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

I'm pretty sure this was one of the reasons that Plaxton went with vertically stacked quad lights on the Supreme coaches - as they were able to run all four on both dip and main.

...At least the two I've done wiring repairs in that area were set up that way seemingly from the factory anyway!  Those were on a T and V plate respectively.

Interesting! Sounds plausible. Maybe Facel Vega too?

[vulgalour]

Remember these Lotus alloys?

I've had these for nine years now and lugged them with my stuff over several house moves and never put them back on the car. Time to admit I probably never will since I've been perfectly happy with factory steels and trims. I've got a set of proper Lotus tapered sleeve wheel nuts to go with them too.

Honestly, the money from selling them could be better spent on the car too, there's a bunch of jobs that need doing like getting the suspension regassed, and ordering supplies to get the paint done properly, that I'd rather have than the Lotus alloys. I'm glad I tried them and proved a point, now I think it's time to move them on.

[Zelandeth]

20 hours ago, High Jetter said:

Interesting! Sounds plausible. Maybe Facel Vega too?

Not sure!

Know we used to set them up so that the upper lights were aimed to the usual height and the lower ones were deliberately aimed about 30% low so you got a bunch of additional light on the road near to you.  They definitely worked pretty well - especially with a newly re-silvered set of lights in and nicely relay upgraded wiring.

Unlike the fancy projector lights on the Premiere in the 90s, which were absolutely bloody useless in my experience and may as well have been a couple of candles.

[High Jetter]

Regs were less strict in the 70s

[Dick Cheeseburger]

11 hours ago, vulgalour said:

Remember these Lotus alloys?

I've had these for nine years now and lugged them with my stuff over several house moves and never put them back on the car. Time to admit I probably never will since I've been perfectly happy with factory steels and trims. I've got a set of proper Lotus tapered sleeve wheel nuts to go with them too.

Honestly, the money from selling them could be better spent on the car too, there's a bunch of jobs that need doing like getting the suspension regassed, and ordering supplies to get the paint done properly, that I'd rather have than the Lotus alloys. I'm glad I tried them and proved a point, now I think it's time to move them on.

That iteration of your car, for me, worked so well. I loved the look of the Lotus alloys and looking at it again now, I reckon would go hand in hand with a V6 tucked away under the bonnet. 

 

 

[vulgalour]

2 hours ago, Dick Longbridge said:

That iteration of your car, for me, worked so well. I loved the look of the Lotus alloys and looking at it again now, I reckon would go hand in hand with a V6 tucked away under the bonnet. 

 

 

Totally agree, it was a good stage for it and I'm glad I did it when I did it, surprised a lot of people with how well it worked.  What you need to do is buy my alloys and a Princess and a V6 and make your own :P

[vulgalour]

This damp weather is not something the Princess is particularly enjoying.  The age old foible of the headlight switch has resurfaced.  What happens is the copper contacts inside the switch get a tiny bit of corrosion on them when it's damp, and it doesn't matter how many times you clean out and regrease things, it always happens right on the point where the grease gets cleared away so the contact points can do their thing.  Regular use keeps the switches happy except for the headlight switch which does this thing where the sidelights won't come until you've clicked down twice to put the headlights on and then return to first click for the sidelights.  I assume the little extra boost needed for the headlights burns off the corrosion.  Once you've got the sidelights on the first time, they work fine until a little bit of damp gets in again.

It's not the new headlights at fault either on this one, I've had this problem on the original sealed beams, and the halogen upgrade, it's entirely down to the switch design.  Just BL stuff.

[vulgalour]

Amazingly, the weather hasn't broken into rain today so I got the welding done on the front jacking point.  I'll sort some photos and whatnot out later.  This job is one of those where it's actually a bit bigger than I can tackle properly at the moment, so I've had to sort-of-bodge it.

I wanted to find out why the jacking point had failed and correct it.  The reason is rust, and I've fixed part of it.  A combination of rust and repairs from before my ownership had seen the floor and inner sill separate next to the jacking point bar that runs from the inner sill to the chassis leg.  That meant the floor got pushed up, leading to the look of a collapsed jacking point.  The rust was invisible because of the thick layer of factory sealant inside the car, and the multiple layers of steel panels on the outside of the car, the rust was buried in the middle of it all.

I got the rust repaired where needed so the floor and inner sill are tied together again and I could jack the car up now without pushing the floor up.  However, I did start getting crunchy noises and when I let the car down off the jack the actual jacking point bar has now failed since the floor is stronger than it.  This is really old damage, that bar was crushed when I got the car and I don't have the means to replicate it with the tools and skills I have.  Spares don't exist, obviously.

I've seen other Princesses with the front jacking points replaced by square bar tubing stuff and that might be a route I go since it's easy to get hold of, strong, and unlikely to rot out particularly quickly.  It's just a really unpleasant job however I try to go about it doing it on the driveway outside at home.  What I wouldn't give for a ramp to work under so this job was at least tolerable, and an assortment of nice air tools, and maybe someone else to do it for me since we're asking.

 

[vulgalour]

I have been spending cash.  Little stuff, like some square tube to replace the crushed jacking point, balljoint dust covers, steering rack gaiters... and big stuff like a new windscreen.  The windscreen is something I've been putting off since getting the car, there was always something else to spend on, and it's taken me a little while to save up for it.  Special order from Pilkingtons to match the original screen in the car, comes out at £614.99 including VAT and delivery.  That's a big oof but balanced out by the fact it's for a car whose manufacturer hasn't existed for a couple of decades and is itself heading towards fifty.  Sometimes, things are just expensive.  I do have a new seal, have had one for ages, and just never pulled the plug on a new windscreen to go with it.

Next big spend is going to be ordering paint since it makes no sense to fit a new screen and seal without sorting the paint on the roof out at the same time, that's going to be considerably more palatable since a friend is helping with the labour on that one.  Suspension is also on my spending agenda since I need all of my displacers regassed.  Just as well I like this car!

[vulgalour]

Good news! I finally found someone supplying valve shims that are suitable for the Princess.

Purely by chance I ended up reading an American forum where they were discussing using Jaguar parts to fix Triumphs and someone mentioned that Stags take the same 5/8" shims as most British cars from the period. That somehow sparked a connection in my brain and I measured the Princess shims which I'd done in metric up until now, and sure enough they're 5/8". Sent a message to Robsport International who I also found by accident coincidentally with the forum post and they confirmed the measurements and have a huge range of sizes available.

Sometimes you just need to know what question to ask and while I had looked at Triumph shims previously, they weren't the correct size because I was looking at the wrong Triumphs.

That means tomorrow, weather permitting, I'm pulling the cambox apart and disabling the Princess so I can measure the shims, work out what size I need, and get an order in. Worst case I need to buy 8 shims and at £2-3 each that's still not terrible. I suspect I actually only need one or two since it was only one I was struggling to get when I last did them and it has quietened down a lot over the last couple of hundred miles.
 

I'm making good progress on the Princess at the moment, the only fly in the ointment has been my friend's paint supplier of choice being unable to make RAL Luminous Pink which is the colour I want to use, they also can't do RAL Telemagenta or RAL Antique Pink which are my secondary choices. We'd like it in a water-based 2k since that's what my friend prefers to paint with. I'll probably do a shout in the help section for this for an alternative supplier, the pink is pretty important as part of this car's identity and my personal happiness.

 

[LightBulbFun]

On 27/05/2024 at 10:43, vulgalour said:

Totally agree, it was a good stage for it and I'm glad I did it when I did it, surprised a lot of people with how well it worked.  What you need to do is buy my alloys and a Princess and a V6 and make your own

stupid nearly 5AM thoughts, but through a chain of association, would a Jaguar V12 fit under the bonnet of a Princess? I mean my thought process was thus, the Princess Transaxle is special because its one of the few that will bolt up to a Rover V8 right? mostly used for when you want to mid-mount a Rover V8 into a Mini or something such, but you could theoretically stick a Rover V8 into a Princess right? which is cool enough as is, but then it got me thinking, the princess has enough width for an inline 6 as per the 2.2, and if it is got enough under bonnet length for a V6/V8 transverse, does that mean a transverse V12 would also fit?

[New POD]

Yes. 

[vulgalour]

I'm not an engineer so I don't know.  However, there are some things I do know from this discussion being had many times over the years for many different engines.  The problem with the Princess engine bay isn't the width, they got a transversely mounted six cylinder in there after all, it's the depth front to back.  There's also a lot of depth to be had, the engines the Princess came with as standard are none of them short so you can go quite tall providing you can find something to marry up to the gearbox underneath it all.

So in theory, if the Jag V12 has a narrow enough V you probably could get it in there, I don't imagine height would be an issue since the Jags it was found in had a much lower bonnet line than the Princess.

Getting the engine in is the easy bit.  Keeping it cool, making sure the gearbox can cope with it, routing the exhaust... that's a different matter entirely.  I do wonder what it would do to the handling side of things too, how much heavier than the straight six is the V12?

[vulgalour]

I've now disabled the Princess.  On measuring the valve clearances, six out of the eight were the same, which is good and reinforces what my ears were telling me that it sounded like one or two were off.  Turns out two of the clearances were a bit smaller, on valve 2 and 7 (counting left to right, looking at the front of the engine) so those were the ones I need shims for.  Did all the number things, several times because I'm terrible with maths, and made use of online valve clearance calculators which honestly took so much stress out of the process for me!

Have ordered two shims, and am hoping that's what I need.  If not I re-measure and try again.  Made me feel a bit better about the health of the engine too, I've been worried about the rattle but given how clean everything looked inside, and how close the clearances are to one another I think I've perhaps been suffering from an abundance of caution on this one.

Still, it'll be nice to have the car back to sounding less rattly, the O series should be a nice quiet engine really so you can hear the wonderful noises the gearbox makes.

[Zelandeth]

5 hours ago, vulgalour said:

I'm not an engineer so I don't know.  However, there are some things I do know from this discussion being had many times over the years for many different engines.  The problem with the Princess engine bay isn't the width, they got a transversely mounted six cylinder in there after all, it's the depth front to back.  There's also a lot of depth to be had, the engines the Princess came with as standard are none of them short so you can go quite tall providing you can find something to marry up to the gearbox underneath it all.

So in theory, if the Jag V12 has a narrow enough V you probably could get it in there, I don't imagine height would be an issue since the Jags it was found in had a much lower bonnet line than the Princess.

Getting the engine in is the easy bit.  Keeping it cool, making sure the gearbox can cope with it, routing the exhaust... that's a different matter entirely.  I do wonder what it would do to the handling side of things too, how much heavier than the straight six is the V12?

Weight would be an issue...the engine and box as used in a V12 XJ-S is near as makes no odds half a tonne.  It's a lot of engine.  Vaguely recall the dry weight being something like 430kg.  Simply put, not light.

Servicing is also a little painful at 12 litres a shot of oil and I I remember right 19 litres of coolant...

[vulgalour]

That is a heck of a lot of weight.  So then you have to consider the extra stress on the suspension which isn't easy to upgrade at all, and the bodyshell itself and that's before you get into the extra torque stresses the engine is likely to put on things if you get the thing moving.  Brakes could be upgraded moderately easily up front I imagine, mostly because that's one of the few bits of the Princess well catered to in the aftermarket thanks to the stock brakes being a popular upgrade to other cars for years.  Steering is going to be heavy, and it's already heavy as standard with the little four cylinder up front so you'll have to figure out how you're going to package power steering or start your own spinach farm.

I wonder how FabCo are getting on with their Jag-powered Princess these days, I'm in their neck of the woods now...

[Zelandeth]

I don't have a decent photo underneath the front of the XJ-S from when I had it, but to say that the rear suspension was "pretty substantial" wouldn't be inaccurate.

I reckon it's one of those things which really would be on a hiding to noting.  It's just such a big, heavy old lump.  I reckon you'd probably never get it in the front anyway - there just isn't room for it - look how LONG it is, never mind the width.

Just the rocker covers are longer than the bonnet on plenty of cars, never mind that and the width of the whole assembly, though you've got a bit of opportunity to improve things there by using different intake/air cleaner arrangements - though you're facing a similar challenge as on the XJ-S of having a very low nose to work with, so probably not really by much.

For all the fun I reckon a highly tuned Jag V12 in a Princess would be, probably something that looks like a Princess but had the engine mounted amidships would be far more realistic.  I'd also never wish having to work on that on anyone.  For all I loved it the car, it was an absolute pain in the arse to do anything on, even in a car that was all but designed around it.  Don't think I'd ever had a car where it took me a whole afternoon to change a set of HT leads before.

XK8 era V8 though?  That might be doable.  Probably half the weight for a start.

[2flags]

Just a note of caution here, remember that the manual 2200 had to be withdrawn for a while as the driveshafts could not cope. What about a KV6 with its 5-speed gearbox, driveshafts, hubs ect. Yes, it would be a lot of work, but so would any other engine swap. 

[vulgalour]

The KV6 has been discussed more seriously than this theoretical.  Fact is it's too chunky in the wrong way to go in, you get all the same problems as Johnny Smith's Allegro build even though the Princess is a bigger car.  Rover T series had also been considered but has issues because it sits too far back in relation to the driveshafts and interferes with the suspension that runs across the bulkhead.  Funnily enough with the KV6 is not the height or width of the engine that's the problem so much as the depth front to back.  The Princess engine bay space is really short front to back because of the transversely mounted displacers along the bulkhead, but really wide since you've got no traditionally located suspension struts which is how you can get a transverse straight six in there.

[Rocket88]

Ahem…..

[2flags]

I do remember there being plenty of room in the engine bay. Lovely thing to work on as you could get to everything. Not all plastic shrouding, trunking and soundproofing. 

[Dick Cheeseburger]

This one has a Rover V8. It would be interesting to hear what it's like to live with. 

[2flags]

I do love a Rover V8, although, the engineering challenge to turn the car into rear wheel drive would be quite an undertaking! What about the K series? The 1.8 engine produces 135bhp, the turbo versions 160bhp. The 1.8 would not be too much different in size to the 1.7 O series already in there would it?