project 1980 Austin Princess

[Split_Pin]

It is, but the little moments of pure joy they give you makes it all worthwhile. So not unlike cars at all really!

[trigger]

Same 'un, he's bonkers, bless i'm, but will no doubt have it on the road soon-ish

He's sold it on today as he felt he couldn't do it justice, not to worry though, it's still in the ECR fold and you WILL be seeing it on the road.

[vulgalour]

So instead of forking out for important* things like prom and graduation days and parties I'm not invited to, I get welding bills instead?

[MikeKnight]

You're welcome. 

 

The Little Chef made it totally worth it.

[Cheggers]

Those tat hauling missions can be long, uncomfortable days but so worth it in the end...well done!!

[vulgalour]

yeah... I should mention Mikeknight did the driving and some of the heavy metal lugging.  I keep forgetting we're not a gestalt entity like some sort of rust-hunting Portugese Man-o-war.

[MikeKnight]

rust-hunting Portugese Man-o-war.

 

I shall now use this to describe my occupation on any and all local government forms.

[vulgalour]

We have daylight, we have motivation, we got our arses down to the unit to get sorting and inspecting the Princess. Got the (knackered) tyres pumped up and the car emptied out so I could see what was what. I also had a short drive around the yard to get a feel for the suspension. When the last sphere went it was very hard and bouncy on one side, but now apart from a slight list to port it feels much as it ought.

 

The car also hasn't dropped any further than this, which is considerably less wonky than when the last sphere (I'm calling them spheres for the sake of convenience) blew on me.

 

With everything out of the car, the suspension came up a bit and doesn't look catastrophically low, just like it needs a pump up on one side. There's also no hint of hydragas fluid under the car anywhere. I even looked in the pocket at the front where the front spheres live and there's no evidence of hydragas hiding in there. This really makes me think it's an internal failure in one of the units.

 

After bouncing each corner, the front passenger corner is very, very hard. After jacking the car up to inspect underneath and letting it down some bounce returned but it quickly became hard again. The rear corner on the same side feels exactly as it ought with good travel still. The car also sits a bit lower on the front corner, whichever way you park it.

 

All is still good on the other side, the rear arch gap is, amusingly, spot on, though the front is about 2-3" too large.

 

When I was under the car I looked for damage. There is some water and oil sprayed about which is from the broken thermostat housing/cap and the fuel pump starting to leak oil again after the car has been stood for a while. I did notice some fairly fresh damage to the hydragas pipe which appears to be slightly crushed on the bend but it didn't appear to be leaking.

 

At the back, where there was one small drop of hydragas fluid, there's nothing evident at all now. Everything back here is dry as a bone, but as you go further towards the front of the car the pipe gets wetter so I'm wondering if some hydragas fluid leaked down the length of the pipe to the lowest point, which would be this unit.

 

Had a look at the flexi hose too and that is nice and dry, there's no sign of any split or swelling and the union to the sphere also appears dry. Of note is the lack of any hydragas fluid odour at the back of the car, there is an aroma of it to the front.

 

I will inspect this more properly but I think it means dismantling portions of the car to do so now. I'm suspecting the front passenger sphere instead of the rear passenger one now. I do have a spare on what's left of the orange car, I just have to hope I can liberate it before anything happens to the remains. If not, at least front spheres are easier to acquire than rear ones and aren't handed.

 

Have a pretty picture to finish this update with.

[MikeKnight]

The Porsche looks like a murderous bouncer in that last pic.

 

"NO PICTURES, FECK ORF"

[MikeKnight]

Or...

 

 

[vulgalour]

 

I can't afford a full respray, so instead I plan to repaint the bottom half as illustrated above as I repair the sections on the car.  I'm going to acquire something like generic Rustoleum purple and roller it before flatting back and polishing, because that's something I can do well.  The spare door handles I've got will be repainted beige to blend into the bodywork a bit better and the bonnet and boot lid will get resprayed to match accordingly.  This should give me a tidy car I'm happy with.

 

Beige and black alone is just too damned boring for me.  But full-purple is too expensive just now.  This is the ideal solution.

 

For the interior I need to do very little. The slightly damaged rear parcel shelf is getting a pair of front door speakers from a spare set of interior vinyls I've got installed and a thin chrome strip added to the moulded section of the vinyl to hide a couple of little holes.  The spare dash fascia will be tried out with a colour insert as the wood looks really out of place in there now and I'll install the Radiomobile radio once I know it's fully functional.

 

I'm not going to worry about overhauling brakes and whatnot until I know the bodywork is solid now.  There's very little to do mechanically, I've sorted most of the issues that have arisen and now have the stuff to sort out the few outstanding items.

 

Tomorrow we hopefully finish stripping the remains of the orange car - this will help provide the last few mechanical bits I need - and I can then actually make a start on the beige one.  It's strange getting positive pressure to put the car right, but a very welcome thing.

[KruJoe]

That's a good idea!

[vulgalour]

 

Spare dash insert from the orange car.  The veneer and lacquer were in very bad shape so there's no point trying to restore it.  Gave it a very quick sand and blast with grey primer and then some Ford Purple Velvet and I have to say I'm pleased with the result of the trial.  I'll sand it back again and get it all lovely and smooth before I finish the paint off properly.

 

There is a spare bulb on my car for another telltale, it seems they added an extra one late in '79 or some time in '80 so I'm going to drill another telltale hole for that since I have all the relevant bits to achieve this.  I'm also going to give various moulded edges on the black plastic trims a coat of chrome to make the dash look a bit more finished.

 

If I'd got door cappings or even a wooden steering wheel and gearknob I'd keep the dash insert wooden, but it just looks strange as a stand alone bit of wooden trim so painting it is the better solution.  I will keep my current dash insert anyway and probably restore it, even though it's not the original one for the car.  I should have the dash with square telltales that have colour filters in them as that's what the car came with, but I like this one better.

 

This week I'm hoping to get the Princess up on the ramps at the unit so I can make a start sorting out the rust.  I've got metal and paint and underseal and all the relevant tools and I should have some more time in which to do the work, I just have to make sure I don't get in the way of customer cars while I do it.

[DSdriver]

That's the weirdest head gasket I've ever seen 

[Noel Tidybeard]

 

 

Spare dash insert from the orange car.  The veneer and lacquer were in very bad shape so there's no point trying to restore it.  Gave it a very quick sand and blast with grey primer and then some Ford Purple Velvet and I have to say I'm pleased with the result of the trial.  I'll sand it back again and get it all lovely and smooth before I finish the paint off properly.

 

There is a spare bulb on my car for another telltale, it seems they added an extra one late in '79 or some time in '80 so I'm going to drill another telltale hole for that since I have all the relevant bits to achieve this.  I'm also going to give various moulded edges on the black plastic trims a coat of chrome to make the dash look a bit more finished.

 

If I'd got door cappings or even a wooden steering wheel and gearknob I'd keep the dash insert wooden, but it just looks strange as a stand alone bit of wooden trim so painting it is the better solution.  I will keep my current dash insert anyway and probably restore it, even though it's not the original one for the car.  I should have the dash with square telltales that have colour filters in them as that's what the car came with, but I like this one better.

 

This week I'm hoping to get the Princess up on the ramps at the unit so I can make a start sorting out the rust.  I've got metal and paint and underseal and all the relevant tools and I should have some more time in which to do the work, I just have to make sure I don't get in the way of customer cars while I do it.

 

KILL HIM!!!

[vulgalour]

What, I'm just trying to add value* to my otherwise undesirable* car.

[Noel Tidybeard]

What, I'm just trying to de-value* to my desirable* car.

EFA

[oman5]

Wowfabgroovy! With them lotus wheels on this is going to look great in a totally 70s way

[Ghosty]

Oh no, a minor change that will annoy the swathes* of Princess purists out there...

 

I kid, I don't doubt that'll look pretty good!

[plasticvandan]

that princess is so far from factory spec that its now at the stage where it can be passed off as a limited edition i like purple

[320touring]

MOAR PURPLE!

 

Your car, your colour.good work

[Noel Tidybeard]

moar purple indeed but come on bl/ar did enuff purple that we dont need no ford stuff

 

amaranth would be interesting and i'm sure it was one of the ones available in rattle cans form hellfrauds etc

[fordperv]

Don't listen to them vulg ford purple velvet is a beautiful colour, the dash insert looks lovely

[vulgalour]

A bit later I'll give you all an update that includes some exciting* up-skirt shots of this old bird.  It has been a day of pleasant surprises and grumpiness.

[Bren]

I like the artwork on the bootlid - reminds of the first series of Space:1999 - some of the sets looked very similar.

[Pillock]

Oh no, a minor change that will annoy the swathes* of Princess purists out there...

 

I kid, I don't doubt that'll look pretty good!

I thought Vulgalour WAS all the princess purists out there?

[vulgalour]

The weather today has been pretty miserable, and normally that would stop me working, but this week I have the opportunity to crack on with the welding the Princess needs so Mikeknight and I pushed her into the unit to get her up on the ramps and take a look properly at what needed doing.

 

I was actually amazed at how solid things are and how much underseal is left.  Apart from the really bad corner, it all looks in reasonably good fettle under there and far better than I'd expected.  The exhaust is now blowing quite badly though, I'm entirely sure from where, and there's some new damage to the passenger footwell that looks like someone has jacked under it for some reason, it's very fresh as the areas missing paint inside the cabin haven't even flash rusted.

 

 

There's a lot of oil here for some reason.

 

I think it's coming from this selector rod seal in the back of the gearbox, it seems to be the most oily part of the engine back here.

 

Rear valance in surprisingly good fettle, I was expecting this to be frilly by now and it's not.

 

 

This is the driver's front corner where there's been a bad patch applied in the past.  You can see where the wing has also separated from the sill.  I've got repair panels for this area, thankfully.

 

And this is the rear end, the bit I made a start on today.  It really is very bad but not Austin 1100 levels of bad.  There's some perforation in the floor pan as well but what you see here is as bad as it gets, where there looks to be good metal there really is which is reassuring.

 

 

 

After cutting a rather large hole to patch the biggest bit of problem in the floor pan I got the welder out.  It is one of these.

 

Fiddled about with the settings until I could get it to do a decent tack weld and ended up here on 0.6mm wire.

 

It was fine at tacking, but any attempt to lay a seam was ridiculously poor.  None of the horrendous spitting that the Xantia threw at me, happily, but the wire kept stop-starting no matter what I did with the tension.  Cleaned the earth point to no noticable improvement.  I think the nozzle/tip is fubarred, I know I'm not as bad a welder as the end result makes me out to be.

 

 

I persevered as best I could but I wasn't feeling it at all.  Something is wrong with the welder and I couldn't work out what.  I don't know if it is the tip at fault, the settings or just me, but it just didn't sit right with me at all.  I'm getting decent penetration on the welds and occasionally I'm getting very good small stitches going down but the majority of the time it welds and lays a spot, then the wire sort of jams, it tries to feed again by which point I've moved the gun and it makes this horrible dotty weld that doesn't do the job at all.

 

I did flapwheel it back and found the new patch has stitched quite securely to the edge I persevered with and is now one piece of floor so that's something, but I suspect I'll cut this out and do it again because something just isn't right for it to weld like this.

 

 

 

As you can see, it's a pretty large patch I'm letting in.  I'm starting with the floor section first as that will lend strength back to the weakest bits of this corner, then I'll do the inner sill before cutting away the outer sill and repairing that and the arch.  The inner sill only needs about an inch deep patch for the very tail end of the sill and it hasn't rotted any of the pressed shapes away, just the flat sheet.

 

I was hoping to get the big patch stitched in and make some headway on the inner sill today.  Once that's in I can work on the next section of floor where the strengthening bar is which ideally needs the spotwelds drilling out and a new panel letting in before re-spotwelding it in place.

 

Welding is a remarkably similar discipline to painting and sewing, just with more chance of red hot blobs of molten metal attacking you.

[jonathan_dyane]

Looks like you need to whack the power up a couple of notches. I find the best setting is when its just below the point where it would burn through unless you dance about with the torch in little circles.

 

Does that sound mental?

[vulgalour]

If I go up one more it won't weld at all, if I go up another one after that it blows holes as though the metal is actually rice paper.  I don't think the wire being all stop-start is helping because I can't second guess it.

 

Oh, to be able to do this with the stick welder!

[Skizzer]

Welding is a remarkably similar discipline to painting and sewing

 

See what you mean, but I now have a mental image of young ladies in an early 19th century drawing room, one doing embroidery, one delicately touching up a watercolour landscape and the third one arcing away at an Opel Monza on a rotisserie.  Thanks for that.

 

Vulgalour: the man who put the Austin in Jane Austen.