Sold 1981 Austin Princess - [expletives removed]

[philibusmo]

I popped down the garage and drove it home after work. Happily the garage lied to me. There is only 2 fail sheets and the emissions print out - the second sheet only has one failure point on it as well so that's not as bad as expected.

 

Here is my list of FAILS:

 

Measurements

Brakes Failures: RBT Brake Imbalance 2% and 68%

 

Reasons for refusal of a Test Certificate

001 Rear fog lamp not working (1.3.2b)

 

002 Rear Exhaust has a major leak of exhaust gases (7.1.2)

 

003 Exhaust emissions hydrocarbon content excessive (7.3.B.1b)

 

004 Nearside rear brake recording little or no effort (3.7.B.5a)

 

005 Offside rear brake pipe excessively corroded (3.6.B.2c)

 

006 Nearside front constant velocity joint is insecure (2.5.C.1b)

 

007 Offside front lower Suspension arm has excessive play in a ball joint (2.4.G.2)

 

008 Offside front track rod end ball joint has excessive play (2.2.B.1f)

 

009 Nearside front Headlamp aim beam image is obviously incorrect

 

010 Brakes imbalanced across an axle (3.7.B.5b)

 

Advisory Items

 

011 Nearside rear brake pipe slightly corroded (3.6.B.2c)

 

012 Nearside Rear wheel bearing has slight play (2.6.2)

 

013 Oil leak

 

MOT Exhaust Emissions Test Results:

 

CO % vol: Max limit 4.500. Actual Value 1.663

HC ppm vol: Max limit 1200. Actual Value 4106

[Anglevan]

That doesn't look too bad at all. Are you still persevering with it ? If so good luck.

[Craig the Princess]

That is pretty encouraging, at your rate of acheivement that will be done will within the retest window (not the 7 years it would take me to start)

 

Princess lives

[Parky]

Seen worse - brake pipes, couple of balljoints, fog light bulb, headlamp adjustment, thicker bean tin on the zorst shouldn't be too problematic. Emissions might be, especially if you have it on max strength to reduce the backfiring but could you wind the mixture back just for MOT purposes?

[twosmoke300]

im guessing headlight bulb upside down .

 

Hc is crazy high , did they push the choke in?

[Cheggers]

Nothing too painful there. OK, it's not a pass, but it could easily have been a whole lot worse.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[philibusmo]

The fog lam isn't working because I forgot that we didn't plug the switch back in when the dash was reconstructed at half 4 in the morning a couple of weeks back.

 

Headlamp beam is off because that headlamp is full of water.

 

The rear brakes will probably need a full overhaul and I'll try welding in a section of exhaust from one of the odd bits of pipe I have hanging around in the garage or loft.

 

The ball joint will be a nuisance as I don't have a press strong enough to remove the original from the lower arm and goodness knows why the hydrocarbons are so high. When I picked it up, the choke was in so I guess they did the test with it in, the exhaust blow probably isn't helping but maybe the carb needs a rebuild.

[skattrd]

No welding required, thats a plus

[vulgalour]

CV joint and brakes are the same advisories/fails I got on mine, on the same sides too I think.  Not having an advisory for rust is a big bonus (apart from the brake lines but that's barn finds for you) so hopefully you're not too disappointed with the result.  A pass would have been preferable after all the work that's been put into the sodding thing, but it's certainly not far off.

 

Could the HCs be high because of stale fuel remnants in the tank?  I never cleaned it out and it was pretty rank stuff in there as you know.

[Angrydicky]

I'd guess something in the carb is stuck through lack of use causing an excessively weak mixture and the resultant high HC level. Whatever it is is probably the cause of your backfiring as well.

[michael1703]

With the disparity with co and hc, Incorrect ignition timing might be causing it

 

I think they run about 18 degrees advance with the vacuum plugged at about 900 rpm

[philibusmo]

I'll have a poke around with the ignition timing. I think I left it too advanced so that will go back a bit.

 

Because I can't much be arsed to look all through this thread, can anyone remember if the carb has ever been taken apart, cleaned or rebuilt?

[Pillock]

If it doesn't pass I'm going to take it back to where I found it.

I bought a padlock.....

[vulgalour]

I think that's the carb I cleaned about six hundred times because crap kept getting past the filter.  I can't remember whether or not I replaced the small needle valve or not in this one, I know I did on the beige one.

[red5]

I bought a padlock.....

 

I see....

[red5]

16 degrees btdc @ 1500rpm no vac advance.

 

Advance checks -

 

2-6     @ 1200

10-14 @ 2200

26-30 @4800

[michael1703]

16 degrees btdc @ 1500rpm no vac advance.

 

Advance checks -

 

2-6     @ 1200

10-14 @ 2200

26-30 @4800

Camshaft snapping and impacting forehead @ 4900

[plasticvandan]

logging onto ebay at 4950

[vulgalour]

Phil, do you still want/need an alternator?  Someone dropped me a message to say their dad has one that he'd kept from his old S reg Princess for some reason and it was up for grabs.  The alternator that is, not the Princess... or their Dad.

[philibusmo]

The Fiesta alternator does seem to be working, just the charge light circuit being borked is stopping it from doing its job. The manual and boot struts arrived yesterday by the way. Thanks for those.

[philibusmo]

I made a start today on rectifying the MOT issues. I didn't start until about 1:30 as I had spent the morning sleeping off a hangover and then went to deliver a scrap steel wheel to get the shonkiest Saxo in Devon to the weighbridge where is will have now shuffled off this mortal coil.

 

Anyway today the following failures were fixed:

006 Nearside front constant velocity joint is insecure (2.5.C.1b)

 

007 Offside front lower Suspension arm has excessive play in a ball joint (2.4.G.2)

 

008 Offside front track rod end ball joint has excessive play (2.2.B.1f)

 

I started with the track rod end, which I thought was an odd one as Vulgalour had replaced with new ones and I was pretty certain that even the lowest quality Chinese parts made of recycled Renault interior trim wouldn't die in 36 miles. It was soon apparent what the issue was, the locking nut hadn't been tightened up against the track rod end fully so it was rotating on the track rod. No wonder the tracking was out and the steering felt very wooly at best, seeing as each steering input changed the tracking. Tightening the nut up fixed the problem.

 

I then set to the ball joint which was slightly more difficult due to the size of the hexagonal head that was machined into it to unscrew it from the hub. It was mahoosive, even my very biggest spanner was nowhere near sufficient. You can't really see it very well here, but I managed to get a proper pucker old Unipart one which should hopefully be decent quality.

 

 

In the end I found something big enough to unscrew it - a massive adjustable spanner that was purloined from an airline run by the mafia in about 2005 and has sat in the garage unused ever since. With it removed and the new one ready to be screwed in place there was some faffing about with shims as BL were too cack-handed to machine the hubs or ball joints to a consistent size so always used a variety of shims to make it work properly. After not too long it was all back together and working as it should.

 

 

The CV joint being insecure had me worried as I couldn't quite work out what it meant. Surely the CV joint would either be properly seated or the car would be very broken indeed and wouldn't move anywhere? On investigation it turned out to be a far more simple issue, the CV boot on the wheel side had lost its larger clip and so was flapping about and exposing the joint. I re-covered the joint in grease and bodged it temporarily with a big tie wrap and that job was done.

 

These two failure I started fixing today:

002 Rear Exhaust has a major leak of exhaust gases (7.1.2)

 

009 Nearside front Headlamp aim beam image is obviously incorrect

 

The offending headlamp has been taken off, the water tipped out and it is now drying off in the conservatory.

 

Despite my repair to the major blow on the exhaust being less than substantial on checking it today it was all still in one piece and not leaking which was a pleasant surprise. This did beg the question of where the leak was though. After some extensive searching I found three. On on the join between the exhaust down pipe and middle section and two small holes on the rear silencer. The two small holes on the join have now been welded up and the rear will wait until I have time free again and the rear is jacked up for me to crack on with the rear brakes.

 

So far this is going well. With the exhaust patched up I will start working on the emissions, The SU seems to be a newer design without the pins that move the piston. As far as I can see, apart from the idle screws, mixture screw and oil reservoir at the top, it is pretty much a sealed and non-adjustable unit. I think I'll need to read up on this a little more, find out exactly what carb it is and get a rebuild kit.

 

Once it has an MOT (shouldn't be too far off now) I will spend my time cruising about, looking like Terry Medford has fallen on hard times but safe in the knowledge that should anything go wrong, I have SUPERCOVER.

[Honey Badger]

 

The offending headlamp has been taken off, the water tipped out and it is now drying off in the conservatory.

 

 

This is the only forum I can think of that this comment would simply be thrown in as part of the joys of owning ageing chod. BArry shitpeas has his next tagline for the Autoshite stickers.

 

Top marks for persistance Phili, things like that ball joint are the reason I "liberated2 a set of 24" Stilsons from work.

 

Once you have got it through the MOT are you going to do anything to the body work or just enjoy soaking up the ambiance from 1981?

[philibusmo]

This is the only forum I can think of that this comment would simply be thrown in as part of the joys of owning ageing chod. BArry shitpeas has his next tagline for the Autoshite stickers.

 

Top marks for persistance Phili, things like that ball joint are the reason I "liberated2 a set of 24" Stilsons from work.

 

Once you have got it through the MOT are you going to do anything to the body work or just enjoy soaking up the ambiance from 1981?

It will be staying as is, with the possible exception of the passenger side rear door which is currently so badly aligned that it doesn't shut properly and creates a bit of  a din at motorway speeds. There really can't be many cars left now which give such a historically accurate representation of life on a council estate in about 1992 - so really it should be kept as is so that future generations will know what it was like.

[michael1703]

HIF info

 

http://sucarb.co.uk/technical-hif-type-carburetter-dismantling

[vulgalour]

Sorry about the TRE, that's embarrassing!  I do recall being pestered by people when I was doing the job, I guess it got overlooked :/  For the carb, there should have been a little plastic bag with the tag in it actually in the car, if I remember rightly the tag snapped off the carb but was kept in said back in the front parcel shelf or glovebox for future reference.  Then you just call SU who will tell you exactly what kit you need and what may be amiss.

[phil_lihp]

Top work Phil, good to see it speeding rapidly towards a fresh new ticket!

[philibusmo]

Right then Shiters – about time you had an update ‘ey?

 

I have been slowly working my way through the various jobs that needed doing before the MOT test in the hour or so after work before it goes dark and then have also spent the past day and a half really cracking on with it.

 

First I set upon the brakes, replacing the corroded brake line, which of course was a right pain in the arse – typically the pipe was so long that if it was laid down flat it would go through three different post codes. Added to this was the issue that while the unions at either end were very easy to see, the end closest to the drum was virtually impossible to get a spanner onto and was seized solid.

I decided to chop off the pipe half way as I didn’t have enough new stuff to make up the full length. The front end of the line was still looking pretty good so I cut it off just before a little kerjigger that held it against the floor and lobbed a union on it. This took far more time than you can possibly imagine, thanks to the difficulty in undoing the union at one end and the tiny amount of space available under a jacked up Princess making every job 20x more difficult as I squeezed myself between the floor and the fuel tank. This lack of space was made even more apparent when the check strap holding the passenger side brake drum up suddenly snapped causing the drum to swing down at speed to a space about 3mm away from my testicles. That was a scary and very close moment. By the time it had got dark I had only managed to move half the pipe and get the union on the half that was left, so covered in brake fluid I left it for the day and had a shower.

 

 

Day 2 – and I was determined to finish the brake pipe off. It went about as expected, with it being no easier to put a new one on than it was to take the old one off. But after a couple of hours it was bent to shape, threaded around the axel and in place. Again, covered in brake fluid I went in and had a shower.

 

 

Wednesday gave me a stupidly busy day at work so I really didn’t feel like grebbing about on the drive working on the brakes again that evening so elected to sort the fog lamp instead. This started off easily as I found the positive feed from the headlamp switch that hadn’t been plugged in to the fog lamp switch but I couldn’t find the other end that would wend its way to the fog lamps. Once again I found myself tracing cables of many colours all over the car. I found that it was a blue and yellow wire that I wanted, rather than the red and yellow that the Haynes manual had lied to me about and sent me on a wild goose chase.

 

Eventually I managed to trace the cable from the fog lamp to up behind the dash into a big multiplug where it stopped. There was no cable coming out the other side and it didn’t seem like there ever had been one. I don’t think the fog lamp had ever worked. I added in a new wire and made up something that fitted well with the original wiring loom out of slightly squashed Halfords bullet connectors flicked the lights on and wondered round the back to bask in the magnificence of the illuminated fog lamp. It still wasn’t working.

 

On taking the lamp apart it became obvious why as everything inside was made of rust and when I tried to remove the bulb the glass part immediately separated from the metal section. After I had cleaned up all the contacts and replaced the bulb there was LIFE!

 

 

Day 4 -  and the brake cylinders that I had ordered a 9 days earlier off eBay finally arrived. I was miffed about how long they took but they were proper old pukka Lockheed parts and we all know that if it wasn’t made this century then chances are it’s going to be fairly good quality.

 

The driver’s side went on a treat and the one that as removed had a completely seized piston that not even a hammer could move. I looked at fitting the shoes but really couldn’t be arsed so welded up the exhaust back box instead. The metal was so thin that even at the very lowest power settings with a slightly too fast wire feed it was still uncontrollably blowing holes all over the place. Rather than give up on it I carried on and eventually had the holes welded up to a reasonable extent. But there was still some holes so I slapped a load of exhaust paste over the top of all the welded sections and around to make sure any holes were covered.

 

 

Friday I sacked off the car and got resoundingly drunk instead.

 

Saturday I didn’t manage to start as early as I had hoped thanks to having a hangover and a stomach that was going mental over one of the dodgily barbequed meat products from the previous evening mixed with copious alcohol so I slept it off until about 1. However, once up I set to with the brakes, getting the shoes on the driver’s side and pulling apart and rebuilding the passenger side. The drivers side went back together remarkably easily apart from a circlip which holds the brake cylinder to the back plate which was a right fiddly bastard.

 

 

I then went to take apart the passenger side and it all went very well up until the brake cylinder came off where the clip holding it in place snapped in two. I then opened up the box for the second new one and it was the wrong fucking part! Apart from being a wheel cylinder, there wasn’t a single thing that was similar between this and the correct part. I was really rather miffed. This meant about an hour of cobbling together one working unit out of the two fucked ones. This was done using the body and one piston from the passenger side one and a piston , dust covers and the spring from the driver’s side one. This seemed to be ok so I slapped in back in place and threw the new shoes and drum back in place.

 

This morning I got up bright and early to blat down to Halfords to see if they stocked anything resembling the right sort of circlips to replace the kippered one. Of course they didn’t, so I went home and made one.

 

 

Then came bleeding the rear brakes. The passenger side one bled really quickly and easily as it was only the cylinder than was emptied of fluid with just a very small amount having come out of the line. In contrast the driver’s side didn’t seem to want to bleed through at all. Initially I thought it was just due to a major air lock but then found that my assistant couldn’t actually push the pedal all the way down, indicating a blockage. This was eventually traced to the length of original brake line that I had decided to leave in place, and no amount of pedal pumping would unblock it, so I watched the grand prix and then went and got some more copper brake line and made up a new one which resolved the issue.

 

With the brakes now fully fixed I fitted a new check strap where the original had failed and then changed the oil filter, which was super easy and required no tools, as I had bought one a couple of weeks ago and hadn’t got round to fitting it.

 

Now on to the emissions. I started it up and immediately found that the careful* and expert* exhaust repairs were still letting out a fair bit of gas, so I plugged the holes with more exhaust paste and then wondered off and had a beer in the sun shine while I waited for it to set. Once it was solid I ran the car up to temperature and decided that the timing was too advanced so retarded it a fair amount and mucked about with the idle speed. On checking the plugs they still looked (and smelled slightly) like it was over-fueling so I weakened the mixture screw by a couple of turns. All this adjustment had had a barely noticeable effect and even when I turned the screw o make the mixture as weak as possible it still seemed to be over-fueling. I took it for a very quick spin up my road and back and it is still back firing as well, now the exhaust is not leaking the back fires sound like a proper gun shot. What fun.

 

 

I’m going to pop it back in for the retest in the next couple of days, if only to check that the rear brakes are now up to standard. I’m not at all confident of it passing on the emissions side of things and so I have ordered a rebuild kit for the carb from SU and will be giving it a complete strip down and rebuild whether I get a pass certificate or not.

[KruJoe]

Fun* fun* Fun*!

You're getting there though Phil. Keep at it.

[phil_lihp]

That's an impressive list of work, that car is resisting being returned to the road pretty hard!  

[twosmoke300]

I'm hoping that circlip is a temp measure . The originals are a twat to fit . In fact there is a special tool to do them . They should be curved spring steel .