project 1980 Austin Princess

[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

[vulgalour]

The only reason this car will see the road again is my bloody mindedness.

[strangeangel]

The only reason this car will see the road again is my bloody mindedness.

 

Then I raise my bottle of Poacher's Choice to your bloody mindedness.

[barrett]

Please don't put flippin caravan lights on it FFS. What about Simca 1000 or 1300 or Fiat 850, as just three off the top of me 'ead suggestions for good looking period ish round lamps?

[vulgalour]

In all honesty, I've really struggled to find other round lamps of requisite size that aren't really expensive.  My budget for the second pair was about £40, I spent £32.  I couldn't even find Simca or Fiat lights online (and yes, I looked other than on eBay) and I haven't been able to get out to autojumbles and the like so it's a case of making use of what I can find.

 

Could've been worse, I could've just screwed a load of Landrover lights onto the back panel that I'd smoothed by gluing a sheet of fibreglass matting on.

[captain_70s]

Please don't put flippin caravan lights on it FFS.

Somebody should have said that to BL when they built the Dolomite...

 

 

They look like they've been nabbed from the ABI Elddis factory ffs.

[MarvinsMom]

to be fair to BL, Michelotti was responsible for them lights on the Dolly,

 

he used EXACTLY the same trick on the Austin Apache, Triumph 2000 and the TR6....

 

Apache

 

Triumph 2000

 

TR6

[vulgalour]

There are so many styling decisions to hate on the TR6.

[MarvinsMom]

of course Michelotti didn't do the TR6, that was Karmann, though Michelotti did design the original TR4.....

[vulgalour]

 

Ordered myself some new mirrors.  I like the black wing mirrors and they're nice to drive by but they've never been first choice, just the nearest to what I wanted that I could find.  I wanted something quite chunky, square and possibly door mounted for the right mirror.  Nothing that stuck out too much or was too curvy and modern and nothing that was too elegant and classic or organic looking.

 

I'll probably repaint them satin black, I suspect they're going to be a bit much in full on plasti-chrome and a repaint should help make them look like older units than they are.  They arrive in a couple of weeks, so in the meantime I'll put the wing mirrors away safe just in case I want to use them in the future.

[bub2006]

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

4Q2 is what my mate has on his robin bootlid

[scaryoldcortina]

RegTransfers have FU2 (ex Paul Raymond then Billy Smart's Circus) on their site for only* £205k.

[purplebargeken]

Those mirrors are quite interesting.

[michael1703]

I'd lob this in for an mot right now and see how it goes, an mot is a much lower standard than most people imagine.

 

There might be a couple of blebs that you're fretting over that aren't going to stop you getting a ticket

[Timewaster]

^^ I think you might need to fit some rear lights at least.

[trigger]

I saw this posted on my car group tonight and thought of you.

 

 

 

 

 

[vulgalour]

I've not seen that one before, quite a find!  Nice use of Toyota alloys and Morris sidelight/indicators.  Not so certain of that Ford grille or the double rear Princess bumper.  Is that a side exit exhaust poking out under the driver's side front wing?  Properly interesting find at any rate, a Princess hearse is single-digit rare and a modified one has to be unique.

[vulgalour]

Amazingly, my new lights arrived yesterday, much sooner than I was expecting!  The pre-wired 5mm LEDs look to be of decent quality and not afflicted with hair-thin wires, picked clear ultra-bright ones that light up red so they'll blend with the bodywork better and be more visible when lit (in theory).  They weren't the cheapest out there, but neither were they the most expensive at about £6.50 delivered for 50.  Next job will be working out how many and at what spacing they need to be before I fit them to the C pillars

 

The other lights were a very good guess.  I'd worked out the size I wanted so they'd match the way the 2002 ones fit, and the sort of style I wanted.  I didn't want something that looked brand new, everything on this car I want to look like it might have been done when the car was new.  That doesn't mean I'm being super period correct, but it does dictate the 'feel' of things I do.  It's a bit of a nebulous concept really.  So, those lights.  I mocked them into place with some tape just to test fitment and first glance appeal so the angles and depths aren't exactly as they will be.

 

 

 

I'm happy with that.  They look how I want them to and when I've fiddled about with angles and light depth and all the finishing on the light buckets they should look like they belong there too.  I'm looking forward to getting these properly installed and wired up now.  We'll see how far I get with finishing the sill this weekend as to how much I get done on those lights.

 

[plasticvandan]

I get the lights now.top bombing!

[Dick Cheeseburger]

Whilst I admire your originality, my OCD tendencies have kicked in upon spotting the inner rear lamp sitting higher than the outer one. Intentional, or the way the cookie crumbled? Either way, it's not a dig, more an observation.

[vulgalour]

Think less like this.

 

More like this, but with the inners sitting high rather than low.

 

In the mock up the lines are thrown off by a number of factors.  The inner bucket isn't trimmed yet and the outer light sits low in the bucket while the inner light sits high in its bucket because that's the only way they'd stay put with tape.  In person, having them lined up in the style of the older Skyline looks wrong with the line of the boot lid and the line of the valance so I used the boot lid shutline as my reference point for the top edge of both light buckets.

 

Edited to add: The top of both light buckets will sit at the same height, they just look like they don't because of the above.

[dieselassist]

Im with 'terry wogan' on this - the lamps look cranked up this way /... the inner one doesn't look like its sunk in any way into the valance 'ledge' - there also seems to be too much of a gap between the 'inner n outer tail'lamp bowls... I was going to post all these thoughts last night but I had a few cheapish beeers in me, n I thought it was down to my eye being cock-eyed, with the cheaper sudz... ive threated myself to a few more expensive beers tonight, n still see the same - doesn't look that 'symetrical' to me...

 

...still its your car, n your the only one to please who matters, really; I love the 2002 lamps btw; I have a GP mk1 buggy 'project' myself, n want these rear lamps for it, sunk in - its hard to get them in non crazed/frosted condition, these days, tho I haven't chased them that hard via e-bay or whatever n the car is a long way from being built presently....

[DeeJay]

Just thought I'd chuck this in the mix.

 

I'd cut the lip off the boot lid (straighten it across) and have the number plate between the lights.

(On the Princess)

 

.

[Parky]

Yeah but the holes are there now and I am pretty sure Vulgalour doesn't want to weld them back up again!