Right Royal Rot

[vulgalour]

I've stumbled across some pictures on the PC of a Princess I went to view as a donor over in Rotherham.  Since the house move I've lost the guy's details, but he had a wealth of other interesting chod (including a silver S3 Allegro with Paprika interior) some of which were for sale.

 

Even by my standards, this Princess was too far gone to restore.  It did have most of the bits I needed for mine like the front wing (already a replacement on this car) and straight front metal, a few bits of trim and a valuable running E series 6 cylinder which I could have sold to recoup my costs.  He did want more for the car than I wanted to pay, but since I was at the time in a bit of a pickle I was prepared to pay it... 

 

Then there was Drama and 2 house moves and all sorts of other things and since then I've lost his details.  Shame really, he had a good eye for interesting old cars and quite a neat collection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm thinking I'm going to put more pictures of rotten Princesses in here, it makes me feel better about my own.

[Craig the Princess]

Actually looks better than mine.

[brickwall]

That one is simply coming apart by the hour.

[vulgalour]

@CtP:  Trust me, the pictures are flattering!  A good 2" of each arch appeared to be filler (apart from the one replacement), the front valance was rot, filler and underseal, the roof had rot holes in several places, the floors weren't brilliant from what I recall, the lower rear quarters were going, the interior had a smell all its own... it wasn't that good at all.

[vulgalour]

This looks lovely, I was excited to go and raid it for parts.  Again, this one was found thanks to a tip off from a friend I know through the internet... he might be on here as Ratchet, I'm not sure.

 

 

Anyway, the car was in Liverpool and I spent the day ripping as much stuff off it (carefully) as I could, I got a huge amount of spares from it.  There was to be a return trip to pick up more as the trailer was full and the day was dragging on, but a miscommunication meant the car got crushed before I got chance to go back for the rest, including the displacers.

 

 

What you can't see is that you could put your finger through the bottom of the doors and your whole hand through the bottom of the wings, which proved useful when liberating the front bumper.  The trim was in great condition, but the bodyshell was dead, the brown hid the rot extremely well.  Also, someone had put another car on top of it and wrecked the roof.

[Skizzer]

Did someone mention rusty Princesses?

 

The time has come to admit to owning this.













But what to do with it? It can't be restored without destroying its prototypeness.

Far better, I think, to preserve it as a sculpture to commemorate British Leyland's failure. This was, after all, BL's glorious 1970s vision of the future. We're now in the future... and just look at it.

Sam

 

 

http://autoshite.com/topic/11944-protowedge/

[vulgalour]

This one was somewhere in East Yorkshire, I think... I can never remember.  Anyway, this was when my displacer went and I was on the hunt for spares, I found this one on eBay and got in touch with the yard.  They were very accommodating and if I could remember the name of the yard I'd tell you as they come with the Vulgalour Stamp of Approval for being top blokes and not charging extravagantly.  They even helped me with the forklift and to lift the axle into the trailer, you can't ask fairer than that.

 

Unfortunately I didn't have a camera with me to document the rot, this was easily the most rotten Princess I've ever encountered.  From outside you could see the carpet inside the car, something like three layers of it.  Most of the car had been hand painted badly to try and treat the rot but it hadn't worked.  When you got inside the seats were not only soggy but also crumbly and you could feel them moving with the floor which was mostly no longer attached to the sills.

 

It's a credit to the Princess' rigidity that the car was rolled in and out of the yard and that it didn't banana when lifted on the forklift.  Every edge had about an inch of rot, it was really quite something.  It was of use for some rare bits of trim like the stainless window surrounds, but there wasn't a good panel left on the whole thing.

 

The only picture I have is this one taken from the advert.  That funny pinkish colour is accurate, formerly brown it had faded to that with the roof and C pillar painted first silver and then green, both of which had faded and showed through simultaneously.

 

It was the most spectacular example of automotive decrepitude I've ever had the good fortune to witness in person.

[chaseracer]

 

More chance of getting an MOT on the skip...

 

[Lankytim]

There's something about a tatty Princess isn't there? Maybe it's due to my age. When I was young these were a typical old giffer type banger and I don't ever recall seeing a tidy one. Same with Marinas. Once gracing showrooms and proud owners driveways, then gracing a pile of grotty cars in a breakers, then total obscurity. Seeing a mint restored example almost doesn't seem right to me.

[vulgalour]

Last one for now, because the other pictures I have are ones other people have taken.  I thought 2013 was to be the last year of the rotten Princess, but in 2014 I bought, with actual cash money, this orange slice of joy.  Another tip off from another friend, Captain Slow in this instance.  It seemed pretty solid, I nearly swapped it for the beige car... until I started poking the crusty looking bits.

 

 

£250 delivered.  That's slightly under the going rate for a condition 3 Princess and probably too much.  But the wealth of spares this car would yield meant it was worth it to me, there was very little left when I'd finished picking all the bits off it.

 

The doors were a work of art.  Where they look rusty they are, where they look solid there's a lot of fibreglass.  They are still repairable and will be repaired, but only because good doors are so hard to get hold of.

 

It was the high* quality repairs that stopped me saving this car and instead turned my focus on the beige one as it needed less work.  The sills were full replacements, but attached with the same level of care.

 

My wheel arch on this side is bad, but not as bad as this.

 

 

It's not chocolate, it's fibreglass, rot and Finnigans rust treatment.

 

 

Some of the repairs to this car were spectacular.

 

It was the sheer extent of the rust that was most surprising.  Anything structural had gone, anything not structural had gone... the car needed so much work restoring it was just completely untenable.

 

 

Petrol tank.

 

So yeah... this one ended up as a big pile of spares and a small pile of scrap, as you'll know from the build thread.  It does prove that the rumours of Princess' capacity to rot are not entirely unfounded!

[vulgalour]

@lankytim:  There is a certain appeal to a shabby Princess, I've learned that much at shows I've taken mine to, but it's frightening how close 'shabby' is to 'utterly fubarred' on these cars!  Like yourself, I can't recall seeing any lovely looking wedges in my youth, they all seemed to be crumbling wrecks that somehow just kept plodding along, then one day there were none.

[DSdriver]

I worked on the press advertising for the launch of the Princess. I was younger then.

[New POD]

My wife remembers getting in the rear seat of a friends dad's brand new princess to go with the friend on some family day trip. They got an amazing 1/3 of a mile when she threw up due to travel sickness.

 

She was taken home, and they went on the trip, and apparently the friend threw up after 30 mins both on the way their and on the way back. Was the hydrospastic suspension really really rubbish, or is that just a myth?

[Taff]

My dad had three of them and an Ambassador as well. I learnt to drive in a brown '79 with (I think) the 1800 motor in it, which he then chopped in for the Ambassador (burgundy 1700cc, if I recall. That sound right?)

 

Several times, I had the pleasure at the tender age of 17 to drive them from Bath to Leicester up the Fosseway.  To be fair, having learnt to drive in one, doing a three point turn in a Metro on test was a piece of piss.

 

Fast forward 6 years and Dad rings me. A mate of his is flogging a Princess and could I go with him to look at it. The owner had it from new, 85000 on it, Zeibrited from new, couple of dents. I spent an hour going over it and couldn't find fault with it. £495 he got that for.

 

To be fair, I used it for towing once or twice. It remains the only car I have ever driven who's performance wasn't effected by having a Cadillac on a trailer attached to it.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

In early 1975 I was at school in Bromsgrove and for a week I spent every break time and lunchtime with my face pressed against the fence watching an endless cavalcade of exciting wedge shaped luxury cars as they stopped in the big layby opposite to swap drivers. Presumably dealers,press etc on pre-launch jollys from Longbridge, which was only a few miles away.

Fast forward to 1982 and I hired a 1.7 HL Auto Ambassador from a place just off Marylebone Rd , for work. I remember a bloke in a Cortina Crusader shouting across in a traffic jam asking what it was as they'd only just come out.

 

This thread is making me feel REALY old.

[vulgalour]

I do wonder at the travel sickness thing, I've heard the same complaint levelled at the Allegro.  I wonder if it's something to do with individual cars and how the suspension is set up.  Put the tyres to factory stupendo-low pressure and have a tired or freshly pumped hydragas system and they do have a peculiar ride habit, but stick a bit more air in the tyres and let the suspension settle and they're fine.  I've only felt slightly car sick in mine once, but that was when I had remoulds, knackered TRE, low suspension and was feeling a bit under the weather, I suspect I'd've felt queasy if I were in something more antiquated and conventional like a Cortina with the same issues.  

[dugong]

*cough*

 

 

 

What about the car I bleedin' well found you in Altrincham?

[vulgalour]

MY BAD!  I thought I'd already put that one in here.  That was a great car, you could see the inside from the outside... the suspension was really good on it too and I didn't chase it up.  The doors (EDIT: and bonnet and boot and possibly some other bits) from that car made it onto the Philibusmo wagon of DOOM and WOE.

[danthecapriman]

Great cars, and a shame so few are left now.

I remember a neighbour had an S reg princess, he was an elderly guy and he'd had this thing as long as I could remember. Eventually he stopped driving and the princess went into his garage and stayed there for many years. Then one day the old boy passed away. Shortly afterwards the princess was dragged back out of its garage. Unfortunately the garage was very damp from a leaking roof and the car had been covered in old carpet in an effort to protect it. The carpet did the opposite! Soaking up all the wet and holding it against the bodywork. As they dragged it out the thing basically disintegrated and was taken away in a big pile! A shame really as when it was on the road it looked pretty solid, and well kept.

[Bren]

As an SD1 owner I am curious as to what the spares situation is like with the princess? I Would imagine pretty sick indeed.

[vulgalour]

Spares situation is that most mechanical things can be got thanks to parts binnery.  However, body panels are not being produced, nor are suspension components, so it's all NOS on that front and the supply is steadily drying up, even more so now that people have started to save Princesses instead of just binning them.

 

Whenever I find one being broken I get over and raid it for parts if I can.  2013 was a good year for that, raided three of them and in 2014 I broke a fourth taking parts from it that I normally wouldn't have been able to.

 

There is a need for outer sill and floor repair sections, lower door skins, front wings and rear arches but nobody is as yet producing them, nor I suspect ever will as there just aren't enough Princesses left to warrant the expense.

 

I'm just thankful I don't own an Ambassador, spares supply for body panels on those is even worse.

[Uncle Jimmy]

Remarkable thread, like watching some horrific disection taking place. I did a welding marathon on a '70s Fiat a couple of years back which seems like a solid car now.

[michael1703]

The coke can makes it look like the magnetic police light they stick on the roof in starsky and hutch