project 1980 Austin Princess

[vulgalour]

The boot light wiring is fine, tested both working and not.  My comments on that may have been misleading.  The wiring is not shorting through the boot light or its wiring.  It's going to probably be in one of two places now: the seatbelt stalk switch (seatbelt not fastened warning light on the dash is on this circuit) or chafed/cracked wires where the loom goes through the bulkhead.

 

Minor little hiccup too in that I thought the Rover's MoT wasn't due until June/July time when in fact it's due at the start of April.  That means I might have to wait an extra month to be able to afford to MoT the Princess, can't afford both at the same time especially with the cost of tax and insurance on the Princess too.

[vulgalour]

Success!  Mike and I went to the unit today and did some more fault finding on the Princess.  The last thing on the circuit that uses fuse #5, the seatbelt stalks, were checked and found not to be the problem.  So, Mike had another look in the fuse box and noticed a small piece of metal that was loose on the fuse side which we hadn't spotted before.  Turns out, an old piece of blown fuse had been rattling around in the fuse box and shorting them out.  It was well hidden as it looked like part of the fuse holders and the box had been inspected several times and this was completed missed.  With the loose bit out, the fuses stayed intact until the horn was tried and then we found one of the horns had failed and it blew the horn fuse, looks like it was shorting out internally.

 

Horns removed, nice fresh fuses installed, and one of the captive bolts for the original horns sheared off the battery tray without any real force being applied.  That can't have been helping the horns out.

 

No bother, I had some twin-tone, MoT friendly air horns to fit which once tested were found to be perfectly fine.  Installed quite neatly in the big empty space behind the passenger headlights.  The sound of these Italian made horns suits the Princess much more than the factory snails too.

 

All systems checked, fuses fine, everything normal, we could get on with reinstalling the interior.  Only got as far as reconnecting and refitting the centre console when Mike asked if maybe it would be best to run the wires for the speakers I want to install now while everything is out of the car before we finish installation.  Sounds sensible to me, since I'm not in a rush to get things done.

 

The boot compartment could finally get tidied out, the spare wheel put back in its place and all of that cleaned up.  Was nice to finally see this all empty and tidy again, it's been a while.  I've yet to construct the new trim boards, that's a job for the summer I think.

 

I sorted out the latch component I'd got wrong, cleaned up the mechanism and gave it some fresh grease and now the boot latch works better than it ever has all the while I've owned the car.  Mike helped me put the boot lid back on the car and, astonishingly, I got the latch to work perfectly on the first try.  Panel alignment is not the Princess' strong point and it looks like the hinge bolt holes need easing out a little so I can get a slightly snugger fit.  The previous restorer's solution to this issue was to load the panels with filler and I don't want to go down that route.  I'm really pleased with how much cleaner the back end looks in uniform colour now.  Still lots and lots of bodywork finishing and paint to do, I'm just happy it's tidier than it was.

 

Finally, a little gift arrived from a nearby island (cheers, dieselassist!) in the form of this nice chunky grille badge.  Not normally my sort of thing but it really does look at home on the Princess.  Had a little trouble with one of the bolts that hold it on so I'll need to fettle that a bit before this is a permanent arrangement.  I like it.

 

 

MoT list update:

> tune the carb

> identify insecure CV joint fail from previous MoT

 

> make hazard switch work - DONE

> identify why fuse #5 is blowing - DONE

> connect fog lights - DONE

> connect number plate lights - DONE

> stick number plates on - DONE

> make the indicator lights work - DONE

> pump up the suspension - DONE

> fit the new tyres - DONE

> fit a new washer jet pump - DONE

> find the loose steering component - DONE

 

[twosmoke300]

Ahh was honestly going to post asking if you had checked the fuse box itself . Glad you have got it sorted . I had a Toyota avensis in once with all sorts of weird leccy issues and it was the leg from a modern mini blade fuse that had broken off and had been pushed inside the ( massive ) fuse box .

With the randomness of the faults I assumed water ingress but when I took the fuse box out it rattled rather than sloshed

[vulgalour]

This bit was cunningly disguised as a bit of the fuse holder legs, which is why we missed it.  Looks like it had been in there ages too so it could even have been the cause of my weird wiper issue years ago.  What a daft root cause.  Still, I now know my wiring is good, debodged and I learned a little bit about how to read wiring diagrams and how to fault find better.  I'm probably going to switch to a blade fuse type box in the future, getting reasonable quality ceramic type fuses is getting difficult now and they are an arse to deal with compared to blade fuses.

[Ghosty]

Excellent news best of luck with the MoT when the time comes.

[purplebargeken]

Excellent!

[Pillock]

I do like the amount of DONE your list displays.

[vulgalour]

Me too.  I might... MIGHT... make it to SF17.

[beko1987]

You so have to make it to sf17! It'll be spotless when you leave with the amount of drool itll get covered with!

 

We could make a podium for it

[vulgalour]

I might make it to PoL too, that was the big goal for it this year.

[Noel Tidybeard]

just a small thing- you might want to swap the pipe on the horns round so that they have an equal run from the T piece or you might find one sounds before the other, and check that the compressor doesnt need to be moar vertical

 

i had a set of these on my 1973 mini 

 

p.s did you wire them up with a relay? you should you know, as they draw a fair bit of lucas smoke

[vulgalour]

Well spotted on the pipes, I think the short ones are supposed to go to the horns and the long one to the compressor, I'll get that sorted.  Er... I assume Mike has put a relay in, I didn't think to ask.  Getting the compressor vertical is easy to, just slacken off the nut and let it hang vertical before tightening again.  Easy peasy.  They do both sound together, so I'm guessing the pipe is short enough to not be a problem.  I lost the instructions YEARS ago, I used to have these in the Polo because of driving in Sheffield in a small low car, they were super effective at make people poop themselves a little bit.

[KruJoe]

I once failed an MOT (also a 1973 Mini) for air horns - there was too much of a pause between pressing the stalk and noise coming out. They might have been a particularly shit set-up, or poor installation because 19-year-old, but still worth a mention. Are yours pretty much instant, Angyl?

[PhilA]

I wired my air horns up to the original horn wiring, that driving a relay with the original horn in place still. Sounds a bit odd but it's nice to still have a horn if the compressor seizes up or one of the pipes pop off.

 

Phil

[vulgalour]

Push the button, horn goes honk.  They'll be fine.  I did want to wire loads of different sounding horns in to make the most horrendous racket I could but apparently that's not allowed.  There's probably some law against impersonating an angry traffic jam.

[captain_70s]

The bloke who is fixing my 1850HL takes the horn from every car he breaks and fits it to his mk1 Clio. I think it currently has 7...

[Noel Tidybeard]

Well spotted on the pipes, I think the short ones are supposed to go to the horns and the long one to the compressor, I'll get that sorted.  Er... I assume Mike has put a relay in, I didn't think to ask.  Getting the compressor vertical is easy to, just slacken off the nut and let it hang vertical before tightening again.  Easy peasy.  They do both sound together, so I'm guessing the pipe is short enough to not be a problem.  I lost the instructions YEARS ago, I used to have these in the Polo because of driving in Sheffield in a small low car, they were super effective at make people poop themselves a little bit.

 

you can imagine that people jumped a little when a small purple blitish reyrand economy car shouted at them like a citroen cx in angry mode*

 

 

 

*cx's had a beep beep horn for town and twin maserat air orns for country angry use

[Noel Tidybeard]

i put a set on my friends sierra and left the pipes as long as possible so there was a slight delay in them sounding because we left the standard fraud beep beep horn as was as well- ergo short tap on steering wheel = beep, long press = blaaaaar

 

it did rather make the mot tester jump the first time he used them lol

[STUNO]

Next weeks edition of " Vulgalour fixes things ".

A wee bit OTT though    

[MikeKnight]

I didn't put a relay in (I didn't know if they already ran through one, lots of horns do by default) but on inspection they do not. I should've known, being BL and all. Direct drive from the loom.

 

Putting one in is easy peasy, I'll do it Monday. I'll run the speaker lines for the rear speakers too.

[JohnDeere]

Fantastic news Vulg, looking forward to seeing the magic bit of Ministry paperwork soon.

 

A geek question: why did the Princess, and other BL cars of the era, have a seatbelt warning light - long before wearing seatbelts was compulsory? I can imagine many bank-managing driving-gloves-wearing owners of the time muttering about the nagging light while assuring their wives that they would be "better to be thrown clear." Was it a government attempt to increase seatbelt wearing, or an attempt to competer with Volvo on safety?

 

(As I swapped between various cars yesterday, I temporarily forgot how to switch off my modern Disco. Before remembering that it's by undoing the seatbelt. Yes, really).

[vulgalour]

I don't know their reasoning behind it.  I do know lots of people found the light annoying, plenty have taken the opportunity to ask me if I've disconnected "that annoying red dash light".  There was some attempt to sell the car on its safety features, such as halogen trapezoid lamps and Denovo run flat tyres.  The suspension was also advertised as offering predictable, safe handling.

 

In 1975 the Princess/18-22 range released and in 1983 seatbelts compulsory in the UK, just as the Princess had ended production and become the Ambassador.  I don't know if the Ambassador had a seatbelt warning light, I suspect it didn't which would be perfectly ironic and fitting of BL.

 

British Leyland were actually quite keen to sell their cars in the American market and in the 70s, there were plenty of US cars with lights and chimes for seatbelts so I suspect it was to fall in line with that.  The Princess would have been well suited to America's roads and the interior does seem quite American market friendly with the large squishy seats, fashionable* colours and the little bit of wood on the dash.  It was probably too radical a design, too slow a car and had too strong a competition to really make it worthwhile exporting them, which is why they sent America some Marinas instead.

[Noel Tidybeard]

I didn't put a relay in (I didn't know if they already ran through one, lots of horns do by default) but on inspection they do not. I should've known, being BL and all. Direct drive from the loom.

 

Putting one in is easy peasy, I'll do it Monday. I'll run the speaker lines for the rear speakers too.

 

in the light of Angyls habit of letting the smoke escape its prolly a good idea

[Royale80]

Fantastic news Vulg, looking forward to seeing the magic bit of Ministry paperwork soon.

A geek question: why did the Princess, and other BL cars of the era, have a seatbelt warning light - long before wearing seatbelts was compulsory? I can imagine many bank-managing driving-gloves-wearing owners of the time muttering about the nagging light while assuring their wives that they would be "better to be thrown clear." Was it a government attempt to increase seatbelt wearing, or an attempt to competer with Volvo on safety?

(As I swapped between various cars yesterday, I temporarily forgot how to switch off my modern Disco. Before remembering that it's by undoing the seatbelt. Yes, really).

Uncle had a couple of Princesses new. He worked for BL and managed to aquire a couple of seatbelt buckles which he plugged in to turn off the lights.

[Pillock]

I didn't put a relay in (I didn't know if they already ran through one, lots of horns do by default) but on inspection they do not. I should've known, being BL and all. Direct drive from the loom.

 

Putting one in is easy peasy, I'll do it Monday. I'll run the speaker lines for the rear speakers too.

 

Combine the two jobs and feed the speaker output into the horns. That'll work.

[Craig the Princess]

 

In 1975 the Princess/18-22 range released and in 1983 seatbelts compulsory in the UK, just as the Princess had ended production and become the Ambassador. I don't know if the Ambassador had a seatbelt warning light, I suspect it didn't which would be perfectly ironic and fitting of BL.

Neither of the two Ambassadors here have a seatbelt warning light.

[vulgalour]

It's broken again.

 

I'd made a start on reinstalling the interior, which was coming along quite well.  Stopped before putting the front passenger seat and dashboard in so we could make sure it was all working properly.

 

Got the bootlid lined up as well as I could.  This still needs a lot more work, the alignment is terrible.  It's as good as I can seem to get it for now and I don't want to make the bolt adjustment holes any bigger if I can help it.  The boot lid appears to be slightly deformed in the middle and may well be on the corners too.  It still fits better than the green one did.  I guess the acres of filler in the back end really were necessary to make it look halfway okay.

 

Had a look through the radios I'd got and ended up using the most battered of the lot (not shown), an old brown Panasonic radio-cassette deck because it was the most functional of the lot.  I may get one of these internally modernised, I don't know.

 

Then the fun and games began.  Before screwing the dashboard in fully we wanted to test it so we wouldn't have to get it all out again.  Things checked out okay at first and then it started blowing fuse #5 again.  After a process of elimination we ended up plugging my spare dashboard in which didn't blow the fuse.  A little more elimination and the issue appears to be with the printed flexible circuitboard on the dashboard (the blue one) whereas the spare seems okay (the gold one).  This is especially annoying.  There's no obvious sign of damage of any sort.

 

 

The other irritation is that the car now won't idle either.  It has fuel in and all systems are normal but now it's decided it won't idle.  Oh, and one of my newly fitted tyres had gone flat, I was warned it might because of the condition of the rims but it's not the one that was leaking before.  So the Princess is back in the bad books again.

[MikeKnight]

Combine the two jobs and feed the speaker output into the horns. That'll work.

 

Oh god don't tempt me like that. 

 

Small update that I expect vulg will expand on later; fitted a relay to the horns and they work beautifully, but the dash has developed an issue with blowing fuse 5 again. Vulg has a spare dash which we swapped over for testing and it doesn't blow the fuse, so I suspect the ribbon circuit on the back is completely knackered. Thankfully since we have a spare vulg brought them home and I'm hearing a lot of swearing from the other room as he swaps them over.

 

EDIT: YOU BEAT ME BY ONE MINUTE DAMN IT.

[vulgalour]

mwahahahaha!  Though I had forgot about you fitting the relay and swapping the horn pipes.  So thanks for the reminder.

[MikeKnight]

RE: the issue with it not idling; it won't idle but will sound like it's catching, the plugs were the wrong way around (but it ran with it like that for a long time.. the hell???) so I put them the right way around according to the workshop manual firing order and even checked online that it's correct. It is! I'm guessing the timing is just off a bit and the carb needs resetting as it was set waaaaay too rich.

 

But it ran like that.

 

For ages.

 

Set rich with the plug leads on the wrong order.

 

Perfectly happily.