project 1980 Austin Princess

[MikeKnight]

I shouldn't be excited about the possibility of getting to maybe drive the Princess again...

 

... but I am.

[vulgalour]

Like my nephew, the Princess likes you more than me for no reason I can work out.

[MikeKnight]

My most precious memory of it is spending literally a full minute trying to find third gear.

[vulgalour]

My least precious memory was losing all the gears in the middle of Sheffield when the gear lever bolt came undone.

[vulgalour]

That only happened tw... (counts on fingers) six times.

[Captain Slow]

My least precious memory was losing all the gears in the middle of Sheffield when the gear lever bolt came undone.

 

North of Sheffield. I remember it well. CHompy and I had to come and rescue you from literally a bus stop.

[vulgalour]

Identified two causes for the non-running of the Princess.  The first was the earth wire that was temporarily fixed several years ago.  This is one of those repairs where it works so well when done you forget to repair it properly until eventually it fails and you're reminded.  The connectors had dropped off the ends of the earth wire in the distributor.

 

Mike did a beautiful job of soldering new connectors on a new wire (seen here in white) as well as fitting the new condenser.

 

Initially the car wouldn't start.  We pulled a plug to check for spark and at the first hint of a spark the car sprang to life on three cylinders which was quite surprising and unexpected!  After everything was all buttoned up properly the car was started anew and seems very willing now.  Ignition timing is a little off and the exhaust is blowing as expected.  These things will be resolved fairly quickly though I'm not looking forward at all to sorting the exhaust out again.

 

The other job was to sort out the number plate brackets.  I found that if you take the original brackets that fasten between the bumper and valance and turn them 180 degrees they can be mounted to the lower valance quite easily.  Only got them stripped back and painted today, we need to drill a couple of new holes to fit them to the car.

 

Feeling very positive about the car at the moment and I'll gradually work through the electrical stuff that needs attention like refurbishing the headlights, sorting the dashboard wiring properly (a job I've put off for four years) and getting the wiring ready for the new rear lights.  It's actually quite exciting to be making progress again.

[Felly Magic]

Getting it running again is often a good morale booster

[vulgalour]

Could it be?  Is this an actual update of things that have happened with this car?  Why yes, yes it is!  This is posted on several forums, so I may repeat myself a little while I fill in the gaps for those forums I haven't updated.

 

The running problem was narrowed down to three causes, the first being the brand new condenser on it's way out (after about a mile of use), the second was that the ignition timing was way off and the third was that the plugs were in the wrong order.  Forums are super for flushing out helpful people and it was one such that came along and diagnosed this and sorted it and got the car running in about half a minute if that.  So big thanks yet again to Scaryoldcortina.  Reason for the timing and plugs being muddled was me getting into that terrible spot where you know there's a problem and you try and fix it only to find whatever you do makes it worse and then you can't remember how it all was to start with.

 

In turn, that meant I could finally move the Princess under its own power which is vital for the last bit of welding.  The clutch is now VERY noisy and doesn't work very well, it's been less than great for the past four years and I do have a new clutch kit to go on so I'm hardly surprised it's finally given up.  The duff condenser makes running rough but works well enough to get the car in and out of the unit until the replacement component arrives.  The brakes work.  I pumped up all the tyres and wobbled into the unit this afternoon so I could actually do some work on the old boat.

 

It was actually fun, even though nothing is really as it should be, to trundle around in this car again.  After using the Rover for the past year the Princess feels enormous, and very slow, and the steering feels quite heavy.  Still, we got in and Mike helped me remove the doors for the job ahead.

 

I spent most of today just cleaning back the mess that was the old sill.  It had been sort-of-welded along the bottom edge and tacked once every 3" or so (except for the 6" either side of the B pillar where there was NO welding at all) on the top edge and then SMOTHERED in filler. There was so much filler it had oozed between the old line of the original sill and the replacement.  It took a very long time to get it all back to good metal.  Also removed a big chunk of filler from the sill-to-arch join which was hiding, unsurprisingly enough, some holes and thin metal.  This area was up for replacement anyway and will be part of the next stage of repair.

 

The other area is the sill end.  I'd already repaired what I could inside the car but I now need to let in some smaller pieces for the sill rail, the sill closing panel and the inner arch.  I also need to rebuild the outer arch where it had rotted away.  None of this is particularly complicated, it's all just fiddly little patches.  I'll be making it structurally good rather than pretty because most of this won't be seen when the new sill goes on.

 

Finally, an overview of what I achieved.  The old sill had gone very thin and was much more damaged than the driver's side (which I'll need to replace in the future, but can stay put for now since I've already repaired it).  Happily, the inner sill with the exception of the above is absolutely solid and cleaned up very nicely, I was actually quite surprised there wasn't any creeping rot hiding in here.

 

I am quite busy with work but my schedule is more manageable this week so I'm hoping to get a bit of time in every day to do a little bit of repair work this side until the weekend when I hope to fit the full outer sill and get it painted.  I'll also repair the door bottoms and sort out the blistering paint - which started showing itself as micro-blisters 4 years ago and so far has always been down to excessive use of filler - before they're refitted to the car.  I'm not worried about perfect paint and finish, I just want to eliminate as much rust and rot as I can while I have things in bits.

[anonymous user]

Thanks for the update, i had wondered how things were going. I must say that the rear end light treatment currently looks like one of those factory styling models where they try out different things

[vulgalour]

on the subject of those rear lights, the new tins I bought are slightly smaller than the first pair and don't accept the BMW lights.  They do, however, accept 5 3/4" headlights very smartly so I feel like I have to get my thinking cap on.  The slightly smaller tins look better in board of the originals than both being the same size so I'd like to go with them if I can, I'm just not sure what lights I want to put in them yet.

[Ghosty]

This is going to be my new daily in a few months

 

How things change...

[Ghosty]

on the subject of those rear lights, the new tins I bought are slightly smaller than the first pair and don't accept the BMW lights.  They do, however, accept 5 3/4" headlights very smartly so I feel like I have to get my thinking cap on.  The slightly smaller tins look better in board of the originals than both being the same size so I'd like to go with them if I can, I'm just not sure what lights I want to put in them yet.

 

Yay, twin lights!

Could be made into a reverse light and foglight if you can find a unit with light, brake and indicator for the outside? One red, one white, and cover the reverse light with something to make it look red?

[vulgalour]

 

http://www.carbuildersolutions.com/uk/bulls-eye-rear-lamps-stop-tail-and-indicator

 

I've got brake, indicator and reverse in the BMW unit and I'd like a similar style unit but smaller, which those are.  The top brake could stay as such, the bottom converted to fog and the indicator in the middle nicely matches that on the BMW units.  Not a bad price and a smart enough style to suit, the only shortcoming is they're a smidge smaller than I'd like, but they should work well enough.

[vulgalour]

Got a tiny bit of free time to do some more on the Princess.  Started by making the repair sections for the back end of the sill which is mostly just the closing panel and a small section of the lower rail.  Went quite smoothly and while the welding isn't the most attractive it is strong enough to hold the patches firmly to the car.  The welder doesn't seem happy and I don't know why.  Sometimes it welds lovely and then you'll go to do the next bit and it just doesn't want to know, as if it's on a whole different bunch of settings.  Pretty frustrating really so it slows me down a lot.

 

With that bit sorted I could move on to fitting the outer sill.  Except I'd left the drill and the drill bits at home and since I want to spot weld the bottom of the new outer sill on for the whole length in addition to the other welding to attach it that put the brakes on that side of things.  Not wanting to waste my time I instead took the angle grinder to the back panel for the inner light bucket on the passenger side.  I ordered a new pair of lights last night that will fit so I thought it best to get these in ahead of them arriving.  I've not welded the bucket in yet, just made the hole and pushed it into place to check it all looks as I want it to, and it does.

 

 

Still unsure about the number plate solution.  I've got some ideas but none that really grab me as the ideal solution yet.

[Ghosty]

That's a bit close to the boot lid edge isn't it? Save judgement for the finished product though.

[vulgalour]

It's meant to be that close, I mocked it up nearer to the larger bucket and lower down and it just didn't look right.  Where it is has the added bonus of being easy to mirror on the other side - the larger bucket lines up to the shut line and the panel seam - and it fits snug within the existing body lines.  It's difficult to fit it any other way too, the larger bucket's bottom edge is nearly touching the boot floor so you don't have much option on where to situate things.

 

Got to do something about the exhaust too, it's seriously ugly.

[eddyramrod]

 

 

Got to do something about the exhaust too, it's seriously ugly.

Slim chrome "lakes" pipes along both sills

[eddyramrod]

 

 

Still unsure about the number plate solution.  I've got some ideas but none that really grab me as the ideal solution yet.

Is the bumper going back on?  If not, how about frenching the plate into the valance?

 

Or, and here's an idea so ambitious that I don't know if it can even be made to work with white-and-yellows.... can you make up a box to mount it within the rear window, and backlight the plate?

[Ghosty]

If there's sound logic it's all good! It being all one colour will help massively too.

[vulgalour]

For the number plate I've been considering letting in a suitable box, getting the smallest plate I legally can and having hidden lights for it in the section between the inner light buckets.  Alternatively, I was going to chop off the bump on the lower valance and recess it in there with the light in the top.  Since the bumpers aren't going back on I have made life a bit difficult for myself with the rear number plate.

 

I'm also still looking for a suitable small marker light I can fix to the top corners of the of the C pillars just for a bit more visibility of the rear end at night.

[anonymous user]

For the number plate I've been considering letting in a suitable box, getting the smallest plate I legally can

I think A1 is already spoken for, although other single letter digit combinations may be around, a neighbour of my aunt used to have H35 on an old VW Polo, it used to amuse me that they would probably get more for the plate than the car.

[vulgalour]

I don't mean anything so GAUCHE is a private plate, my goodness no!  I just want to get GBT563W as small as possible.  Shame it's a 7 digit plate really, a 6 digit one would be easier to get on a square plate.

[vulgalour]

Mind you, I'd definitely have 4Q if I as allowed.

[Ghosty]

Square plates are awkward. American sized perhaps? Might help confuse people too.

[PhilA]

That could work, either inset the depth of the swage below the crease and hanging down, or if you put bumpers on, above and on a hinge with the fuel filler cap hidden behind it.

[vulgalour]

Got the outer sill on today.  I hadn't intended to, but Mike needed to move the Toyota and to do that he needed to move the Princess and I wasn't happy doing that until the outer sill was attached. There is now substantially more welding holding this sill on than the one that came off so I deemed it safe to put back on its wheels.  I still need to finish the seam welding, I just ran out of time to do more today.

 

Unfortunately, I had to chop the bottom of the front wing off to get access for the leading edge of the sill.  This may be a good thing though as it dislodged a chunk of some sort of brittle foam stuff that had been squirted into an unseen area and allowed me to repair a section of sill rail the wing attaches to that I wasn't aware needed doing.  The piece I removed isn't great and has been repaired before, I'll do what I can with it.  I'm definitely in the territory of really needing new front wings on this car, I just have to make do with the ones I've got for now.

 

I made a start on putting the front end together and stopped pretty much straight away.  I'd forgotten that the driver's side aperture needs a bit of work on the lower rail for the trim to fit properly, it's only out by about 0.5mm, but that's enough to be a little too snug for the trim.  I'll manipulate the metal to make things fit properly when the headlights and their associated brackets are refitted.  Fiddly work that I just haven't felt motivated to do until recently.

 

 

There's lots of little jobs after this sill now, nothing that's insurmountable and most of it actually fits well with the free time I do have so I'm hoping I can make some good visual progress over the next couple of weeks.  I'm not setting a date for 'completion' on this one, or even road legal, because that will just make me panic about not getting it done.  It'll be done when it's done and not a moment sooner.

[fordperv]

Great stuff vulg, keep chipping away and before you know it there will be nothing left to do

[purplebargeken]

^^ There's always something left to do. Always.

[strangeangel]

The skill, hard work and mental resilience (as opposed to my 'Fuck it. This is never going to get finished') evident in projects like this always impresses me.

 

I always knew this place was what it used to be though