project 1980 Austin Princess

[Spottedlaurel]

This Kadett may (or may not) serve as inspiration:

 

Opel Kadett 1900 by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

[vulgalour]

Those rear lights remind me of arcade machine buttons and I want to press them.

[eddyramrod]

Inspiring work!  I love those mirrors, please do NOT paint them!

[oldford]

What's the score with MOTs and plates these days? Do they have to have the BS and makers marks for the test or is that just for VOSA / old bill purposes?

BS markings are not checked on the test, makers names are not required as well for the test.

[vulgalour]

*sigh*  I finally find a set of mirrors I really like and look great on the car only to find that there is no single location on the car they'll fit.  They look great on the door but the stem is too short for the mirror to be in the right location to see behind you, even if you turn the mirror on its side.  They look great on the front wings but the only location you can see behind you with them from there the mirror head fouls the bonnet by a considerable margin.  Worst of all, when you hold them where you can see behind you they're a really good mirror and you can see lots in them, there's just no way of putting them on the car in a usable location.  I am very disappointed about this, but at least I still have the black wing mirrors which I guess I'll be sticking with since I like those too and they are good, just not as good as these new ones I got.

[vulgalour]

This has been rattling around in my head all day and I think I have the solution and a very simple solution it is too. The bigger problem is the angle the mirror stem fits to the door, the length of the stem is neither here nor there. That means I have to change the angle of the mirror and the easiest way to do that is to make up a wedge spacer block. Here's a very simple diagram to demonstrate, the door in beige and the spacer in red, before and after.




Ideally, the spacer wants to be made from a solid block of aluminium so it can be polished to match closely the mirror itself and look less obvious. To fix the spacer to the door I drill two holes that line up with the original mirror mounting holes that are equipped with captive nuts. To fix the mirror to the spacer I just put a fixing through the pre-made hole into the spacer. In theory, job done.  Now just to find out where to get relevant blocks of aluminium from.

[Noel Tidybeard]

isnt that how the standard BL mirrors fitted a princess?

[vulgalour]

Yes and no.  I'm fitting the new ones in the standard location, it's just that the standard mirrors are rubbish, these aren't.  The old mirrors don't have a separate plinth, they look like it because of how they're cast, really that should have been my tip off for a solution I just didn't think of it.

[anonymous user]

While you wait for the aluminium there's a lot to be said for knocking some up in hardwood with a bit of aluminium paint

[LC Torana]

Or cut up one of those heavy styrene? cutting boards.

[oldcars]

Well... that didn't take long to pop up as a question did it?

 

I don't believe it matters on a car this old.  The plates have the correct font size and spacing and are age appropriate for the vehicle they're fitted to, a BS marker is neither here nor there with this one.  The 1994 Corsa we've got doesn't have BS markers on its rear plate and went through it's last MoT without any issue at all.

My 75 has a smiley plate with out the BS marker on it and passed no bother.

[vulgalour]

Today I'm feeling much better and that meant some Princess time again.  Mike was volunteered to hold the doors while I bolted them on, it's a horrible job to try and do solo and I'm grateful for the help.  That was after the sill filler work was finished and given a coat of top colour so I could get the doors on.  Getting the front door aligned was surprisingly easy and it now lines up and shuts much better that it ever has in my ownership.  I got enough primer on both doors to see what I'm working with and some filler work started.  The rear door needs the arch-door gap tweaking at the bottom corner as the repair is ever so slightly wrong and the door-sill gap isn't quite as even as I wanted it, but not bad for a first attempt at this sort of work and satisfactory enough for me to work with it.  The repair is going to need much less filler than I expected it to which is quite rewarding.

 

Rather than cover both doors with filler as was previously done I've just focused on the areas that need it which are much smaller than previous restoration would suggest.  It's nice to see the swage line showing through crisply now for the whole side of this car.  I've done what I can with the lower section of the front door to line it up with the new sill better, it will need some filler as the old patch repairs have warped things because of the way they welded them on.  Other than that, it's not too shabby really.

 

I couldn't hang around to do more filler and paint today.  I'm just happy to have the doors back on the car.  Getting the bodywork straight on this side is going to be fairly easy now, it won't be perfect, it will just be solid and tidy.  Perfection can come later.

 

[Felly Magic]

Hopefully getting this done today helped your mojo. It's a major step getting the doors on. Happy days

[vulgalour]

It did.  I'm getting pretty bored of this car being a case of going in to do a 'quick job' and it ending up being another weldathon.  It's probably 40% mig wire now.  Almost all the metal that's gone in to the repairs has come from that single orange Princess bonnet too so while it was no good as a bonnet it's been an excellent way to sort this entire car out!

[Dippy]

Nice progress, it looks to be coming together nicely now.

[vulgalour]

Today is the day I finally finished all the welding on the passenger side of the car that needs doing.  Feels good to have reached this point even with the filler work and paint ahead of me.  The wing bottom I chopped off was an historic repair which needed to be repaired so I repaired it and put it back where I chopped it off.

 

The rear arch repair was trickier.  I only really have a hammer and a vice for shaping panels and no stretcher/shrinker or fancy tools.  I wanted to do it in one piece if I could and did manage that.  The patch moved as I was tacking it in so it's not as flush as I'd hoped but not far off.  After realigning the rear door the panel gaps aren't too bad and I don't need to reweld the bottom corner for an acceptable fit now.

 

I repaired the inner arch before the outer arch patch went on.  I did take the wheel off to do that repair, access wasn't great otherwise. Before you say it, I know that arch edge looks bad, that's because it's not finished.  I need to fold the whole arch lip under so it clears the tyres I need to put on the Lotus alloys.  The arch return isn't in great condition and I'd rather do this than than spoil a repair panel.

 

Now there's just a lot of patient filling and sanding to do so all of this work is made presentable before the top coat of paint can go on, something I had no time to do today.  I checked the car over to see where the key areas were that I needed to focus on next and with the exception of the rear panel (which is my next target because it's less fiddly and more fun) there's only a few small bits needed on the driver's side of the car.  The driver's front door needs quite a lot of work, the corner is made entirely of gaffa tape and has been for a while, it's also rotted out part of the bottom of the door skin so it'll be a similar repair as that on the rear passenger door I expect.

 

The rear driver's door isn't as bad as I remembered it.  This panel still isn't great, it's done the same thing as the back door on the other side so it'll be a good amount of work to put right.  I'd forgotten that I'd already repaired the sill-arch area and got top coat on before it went outside, I just didn't finish the filling work so I'll revisit that.

 

The rear of the driver's side arch needs a blanking plate for the old bumper hole and a small patch letting in at the bottom of the arch, these are both really easy jobs.  This panel is a bit of a state too, it needs old paint and probably filler taking out of it to sort it all out.

 

 

The bodywork is nearly sorted and I'm really happy about that, it doesn't feel so insurmountable a project as it did earlier in the year.  My brother put a misleading decal on the boot lid as motivation.

[vulgalour]

I've been a busy bee this weekend with the welder and the grinder and playing with sharp bits of metal.  My first duty was to get the car level so that the work I was about to undertake would also be level.  Jacking the car up with a tiny spirit level on the roof is much easier than trying to sort out the suspension right now.

 

Then I got the cake tins and the marker pen out, marked up the back panel for the three light buckets I had yet to install and got busy.  I forgot to take any photographs of progress.  Compared to the first one I installed, these were for the most part quite easy.  There's definitely a knack to it.  This was yesterday when I didn't have a huge amount of time, just enough to do this stage.

 

Today, I had much more time so I'd determined I'd get everything welded in, including the back plates to hold the lights.  If I had enough time I'd make a start on the number plate recess too.  It went remarkably well!  But first, here's the one problem I did encounter.  I knew where I wanted the number plate to sit in the rear valance and had made a good guess for location for what to cut out on the back panel.  What I hadn't banked on was there being a big structural piece behind the outer skin that I have to work with.

 

It's okay though, I can still locate the number plate close to where I wanted it, just a little lower.  Wiring and location for the new number plate light should be quite easy to achieve too, there's good access inside the boot and enough depth to the panel to make that relatively straight forward.  I now have to finish my cardboard template for the piece of metal I need to cut, fold and weld to fill the hole.  Then there's just lots of trim and bumper holes to fill in to smooth it all out properly.  You can imagine I was quite pleased to get to this point tonight.

 

 

In the photographs it looks wonky, I know this will get pointed out.  You'll have to take my word for it that it isn't and that it's the fisheye effect of the lens on my camera which makes the lights look like they're not lined up or pointing the right way.  Because I've used loose bottomed cake tins as my template for the buckets, the back of them has a nice round rolled edge with the light clusters sitting slightly recessed in them and leaving no sharp edges at all in the boot.

 

The BMW outer lights are rotated 90 degrees, this means that both my running/brake lights are in the top half of the light clusters and the reflectors are to the outer corners which seemed more sensible and the large clear reversing lens is less obvious like this.  I'm very excited about getting it all finished off and wired up so I can see the car come to life with its new lights.  There's just a few holes to fill that the original bumper and wiring have left behind and the recess for the number plate to weld to finish off all the MoT required welding now.

[Pillock]

QUAVERS GONNA QUAVE.

 

Lookin' alright that. It did look wonky before, but now I see what the deal is with the slightly smaller inner lights being level with the top, it no longer looks wonks.

[Ghosty]

:GRIN:

 

That looks utterly bonkersly brilliant. (Boso bonnet??)

 

Great work sir - keep it up, you're well on the way now.

[vulgalour]

As already stated on the blue forum, Mr Ghosty, I'm not going to sharknose the bonnet.  I'm not.  Really I'm not.  Not even thought about it.  Mustn't sharknose the bonnet.

[Asimo]

Love the love this wedge is getting!

[fordperv]

vulg that bonnet really needs shark nosing and an awesome splitter adding, I love it

[vulgalour]

If this car's chin gets any longer it'll start getting bookings as a Jimmy Hill impersonator!

[plasticvandan]

queefers gonna queef

 

bonnet needs a bulge out of a 3.0 capri aralditing on top

[Felly Magic]

Or a Knight Rider bonnet bulge? LED scanner bar behind the grille, and suddenly we have 'Shite Rider'

[Rocket88]

Do this!

 

 

 

[vulgalour]

^ I'm not even sure what I'm looking at.

[Ghosty]

It was a Passat once.

[vulgalour]

Well... tonight a thing happened.  I intended to just pop into the unit and tidy up a bit, show my brother what I'd got up to with the rear end.  The boot was all cleaned out and tidied up.

 

A view of the back of the buckets, showing how user friendly and not-sharp they are.  Just the wiring and a little bit of metal tidying on the back panel to do here.

 

Then we sort of got talking about the suspension yet again and my brother asked why I didn't just patch it for now so we could at least move the car around.  Worst case scenario is that it wouldn't work.  So we repaired the broken hydragas pipe by cutting the broken ends off smooth with a pipe cutter from the pipe fixed to the car, and the spare incomplete pipe, then sleeved it with some suitable rubber hosing and four jubilee clips. THIS IS NOT A PERMANENT FIX.

 

Anyway, there's no photograph of that.  What there is a photograph of is our offering to the patron saint of bodging, Heath Robinson.  It turns out the schrader valve connector on my hydragas dalek is broken and I didn't have a replacement.  What I did have is a spare air line and a tyre inflating fitting. 

 

It was a little tricky, you have to hold the schrader fitting on at a particular angle and the trigger leaks a bit.  You also have to have one of you holding the inflation fitting and the other pumping the pump.  I would not recommend this method, it is appalling.  The important thing is that it worked and that I'll be getting the pump refurbished so I can do it properly next time.

 

We took things steady, partly because we had to, partly because we didn't want to risk breaking anything.  The main reason for doing things this way is to find out if the new displacer works (it does, yay!) and to make it so the car could be driven around the unit easier.  We got it all up to the requisite pressure but couldn't get it to sit level, no matter how much we jiggled the car. Not wanting to risk overloading it we decided to leave it slightly wonky.

 

A bit disappointed, but still really happy to see the car off its bumpstops for the first time in a long while, I decided to just roll it back and forth to check it would still run and the brakes hadn't got stuck on.  Then the wonkiness went away!  Because of course you're supposed to do this with the handbrake off and I'd forgotten.

 

 

All level  It's good enough until I get the pipe replaced and it'll allow me to see whether or not the displacers are any good.  So far, no leaks, not even on the pipe bodge.  It's a big step closer to getting everything sorted.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Wow I would have bet £50 that a jubilee clip pipe repair would have popped straight off. Now I would be £50 worse off!!