Dicky’s Disastrous Debris Austin A70 PICKUP 28/4/25

[Angrydicky]

Well it’s here. It’s fairly rough but just look at it!

The cab interior is nice, headlining is all there, seat isn’t too badly ripped and the dash plastics are good. It even has its original rubber mat which I’ve removed for safekeeping ahead of the floor repairs. It’s in surprisingly good condition due to it being about 3x the thickness of the rubber they used on the saloon mats.

[Angrydicky]

On 27/03/2025 at 06:56, Spottedlaurel said:

What an amazing thing, and it's gone to the perfect new home.

Any clue as to where it started its life in Essex?

Colchester.

[SiC]

How do you clean a headlining light that without damaging it?

[Angrydicky]

3 hours ago, SiC said:

How do you clean a headlining light that without damaging it?

You don’t!

[Matty]

1 hour ago, Angrydicky said:

You don’t!

Inside and out it looks just right. The challenge i suppose is doing the repairs without the need for significant paint. It just looks so right as is.

[SiC]

I'm not I could live with that amount of dirt in an interior!

[Matty]

1 hour ago, SiC said:

I'm not I could live with that amount of dirt in an interior!

Hoover it out and give the seats and steering wheel a wipe and it'll be reet 👍😆

[Angrydicky]

Christ.

It’s 75 years old and unrestored and someone’s fussing about the original headlining being a bit dirty?

[Asimo]

If it originally had black wings, would they have been the rubber ones?

[Stinkwheel]

That’s properly nice, as in properly

[Matty]

3 hours ago, Angrydicky said:

Christ.

It’s 75 years old and unrestored and someone’s fussing about the original headlining being a bit dirty?

I feel he was being a bit light hearted. 

It's a bit like not looking at the mantelpiece while you're poking the fire. I drove that triumph of my Dad's half a dozen times before I looked up and saw it didn't even have a head lining!

[junkyarddog]

What a fabulous machine!

Just love the patina.

 

[lesapandre]

15 hours ago, Asimo said:

If it originally had black wings, would they have been the rubber ones?

Not on these. It was the early Morris Minor Post Office vans that were so equipped.

[captain_70s]

What a lovely old thing.

Cloth headlining I assume?  Probably not cleanable to any major degree, likely as much nicotine staining and discolourisation as dirt.

[lesapandre]

Special bodied (Italian?) A70 convertible at a  motorshow somewhere - probably in Europe. 

[lesapandre]

On 30/03/2025 at 21:30, captain_70s said:

What a lovely old thing.

Cloth headlining I assume?  Probably not cleanable to any major degree, likely as much nicotine staining and discolourisation as dirt.

Probably best to give it a very gentle dusting with a soft brush like a paintbrush or somesuch. 

Restored cars as opposed to conserved cars lose so much character and detail otherwise.

[vulgalour]

That looks even better in daylight.  Hopefully the headlining can just be tacked back up where it's dropped and you're good to go on the interior.  I'm amazed at how not-fucked the interior plastics are, I assume it's the prolonged storage periods that have helped out there.

[Angrydicky]

First up is the roffle Honda PC50 I won from @reb, formerly owned by @DodgyBastard passed onto a friend of mine with much more bike skills than me. These are the most recent pictures he’s sent over. I think you’ll agree he’s done an amazing job in a relatively short space of time.

From this:

To this:

It’s a runner too. He stripped down the engine completely, replaced all the seals and gaskets and refaced the valve seat which was quite poor. He said the 2600 or so miles on the clock was definitely genuine as there was hardly any wear on anything and even the tyres were the originals. 
A good bike that had been let down by a really shit hammerite paint job and years of poor storage.

 

[Angrydicky]

He’s had a little pootle about on private land, he reckons the carb needs a bit more fettling and the brakes are dreadful (I think that goes with the territory really).

 

[Angrydicky]

As for my own bike project, the 1952 New Hudson Autocycle it’s been away the last two months having new cables made. Eventually I got the call to say it was done so I fetched it using a vehicle that was complete overkill for the job:

Stopped to check the straps and saw this vision in brown parked in the Layby 😎

The owner was mowing the grass further along, one of life’s winners clearly.

Anyway, after getting it home, I fitted the throttle and decompressor cables, chucked some premix in it and had a go at starting it.

Had some problems with dirt getting into the carb so cleaned that out and blew through the jet and it fired up!

Although it was running, it was reluctant to rev up and kept cutting out. I had a fiddle with the very basic mixture control and managed to get it pretty good:

Yes it is a bit smoky but the engine has been out of use for who knows how many decades. I might have overdone the oil as well as later I checked the plug and it looked pretty oiled up. I mixed the fuel at 25/1, a friend tells me that with modern 2T oil you should be able to go down to 40/1 with no adverse effects. But I wanted to be a bit careful with it as I’m running the engine in and also it’s very old!

Anyway, I’m chuffed to bits with that. Even if it’s now refusing to start. #britishheritage

[wuvvum]

When I first resurrected the Mobylette I ran that on 25:1 - better slightly too much oil than not quite enough, especially in an engine that's been dormant for a while.  That was similarly smoky.

[wuvvum]

I do love the sound of a lazy old two-stroke though.  Instead of the angry wasp noises of modern 'strokers it's more like a morbidly obese bumblebee that's just awoken from a nice long afternoon nap.

[Zelandeth]

Just do be aware that if you go TOO far with the oil, you're actually leaning out the fuel mixture so can overheat things - which seems a bit counterintuitive at first, as adding a bunch of extra oil sounds like it can only be a good thing.

Sounds good though!

[plasticvandan]

40-1 semi synth is what I use on all my old strokers. The 16.1 days of engine oil mixed in are long gone.

[Angrydicky]

My dad and I took the Somerset and the Mayflower out for a little PC-style back-to-back photoshoot in the Lincolnshire Wolds, as the weather was beautiful.

These cars were direct competitors at the time and both sold about the same. 
They both have their plus and minus points- the Somerset has more performance, but the Mayflower handles better and feels better quality.

Both cars are running well although the starter motor jams occasionally on the Somerset so whoever is driving has to stick it in 4th gear and rock it to free it off. 
The Mayflower has an oil leak from the steering box where the stator tube for the trafficator switch is sealed with an olive. I have tried nipping it up but it hasn’t really helped, I suspect when that was all apart to fit the new wiring loom they either replaced the olive with the wrong one or damaged it in some way.

There is another Mayflower inbound as well although only a temporary addition. The Mayflower club were made aware of a Mayflower and spares for sale from the estate of one of the chaps who founded the TMC back in 1974. His two sons had decided to sell the house, eight years after their father’s death so the garage needed to be cleared out.

I mentioned it to a good mate of mine who had been looking on and off for a Mayflower for a while so we both drove down to Bristol to look at it.

What we found was a car that had clearly been mint condition when it was last on the road (1998 according to the tax disc in the windscreen). The paintwork is beautiful, the interior retrimmed to an extremely high standard and there’s no evidence of previous welding or any rot at all. The underside is pristine. All the chromework is perfect and the bumpers have been covered in wax to protect them while it’s in storage. Apparently, the old chap had some kind of water leak in the engine bay he was trying to fix, he’s taken the heater hoses off and the heater valve is in pieces, there’s a new one with it(not sure if it’s correct yet) but usually all they need is an O-ring.

It’s being transported to Lincolnshire for me to do the work (as if I needed any more cars to work on, but he is paying me!) hopefully it’ll need little more than a jolly good service, all new brakes, hoses, fuel tank/lines and a good clean. 

I will be heading back down to Bristol on Sunday to collect the spares on behalf of the club, there are some really nice bits there. Unfortunately, I’ll be driving my parents extremely boring modern SUV as tomorrow my faithful old Rhonda 620Si is going out on loan. My best friend’s car (18 plate diesel Micra) FTP’d shortly after leaving work, he does about 30 miles each way so that wasn’t very convenient for him. It dropped onto three cylinders and threw up the EML. I thought an injector or wiring but the garage it’s in at reckon it’s the ECU!?! Which costs £1000 and is a main dealer part only, and it’s on back order with a fortnight’s lead time on it. So he gratefully accepted my offer to lend him the Rover until he’s got his car back. At which point it’ll be getting chopped into WBAC as he’s sick of the sight of it.

He has driven the Rover a couple of times before and really likes it- he says it’s smooth and comfortable and has much better visibility than a modern due to the thin pillars and big windows. He needs something reliable to tide him over and you can’t get more reliable than a 90s Honda Accord (which is what it is)

I’ve got plenty of other cars to use so I’m not too fussed. At least using the Outlander for the Bristol trip will mean I won’t need to take the trailer down there as it should all fit in the back.

[Mally]

I rode a New Hudson as my first 'motorbike'. I was 8 at the time and thought it went very fast!

[Angrydicky]

38 minutes ago, Mally said:

I rode a New Hudson as my first 'motorbike'. I was 8 at the time and thought it went very fast!

I’m a 6ft 16 stone bloke, I’ll be lucky if it’ll move with me on board!

[lesapandre]

Mayflower was a clever little car - very nicely packaged and in many ways a more modern design than the Haustin. That interior is particularly airy and well done.

They exported them into the US (hence 'Mayflower') and the Commonwealth but it must have been a bit hobbled by that small flathead engine - the first sustained run down a Freeway would have been a real challenge?

Such a shame there was not more parts and design sharing between brands at that key early post-war moment - when British cars made some real export headway. A Mayflower with an OHV A or B series would have been very usable.

Instead all these little cars were challenged by VW who won the import battle in the US and then Holden is Australia. 

But Austin was a real decent brand in the US in the late 1940's and I think they sold a few Mayflowers initially. I recall they shipped cars back though after they failed to sell - but may just be a rumour.

Australian ad:

Both are lovely notwithstanding - what an epic collection you have. ❤️

Hope this inspires others to keep this era of cars alive.

[Angrydicky]

Where were we? Let’s have a quick recap.

Been playing with the pickup and after a few hours managed to get it running!

The previous owner had it running shortly after he purchased it in 1979, and changed the oil and filter, but was unable to drive it due to the clutch plate being rusted to the flywheel. He tried to free it off without success. More on that later.

I did what I always do with a long dead classic, and put a battery on to see what still works and what doesn’t. Happily, most things worked including the trafficators, and it did crank over but the starter solenoid kept jamming and it also wouldn’t crank from the dash button.

Changed the solenoid for a nos one I had ‘in stock’ which sorted the cranking issue, cleaned the points, and borrowed the cap, leads and rotor arm from the saloon which gave us a spark!

Adjusted the valve clearances which to be fair weren’t far out. Good oil pressure was already showing on the gauge, with a small amount of cranking. I decided to leave the oil in there until I knew what the engine was like as the oil was really clean on the dipstick and it had never been driven with that oil.

Stripped, cleaned and rebuilt the carburettor. It wasn’t too bad. Ultrasonic tank is handy for this. 
The previous owner told me he replaced the fuel pump and starter motor in ‘79. Well, the starter seems healthy but the fuel pump was jammed solid with filthy old petrol and grey, lead deposits from the old ‘full fat’ four star it last ran on.

Stripped it down and rebuilt using a genuine AC kit, six of which I recently acquired with a large quantity of Austin A40/50 spares I won at an auction. I’ve already used two of them!

The petrol tank was going to be bad. I drained about two pints of black, stinky old petrol out of it. The fuel line was rotten at the back where they always go, for some reason Austin made the front half out of copper and the rear out of steel. No idea why. Anyway, I cut the pipe near the back, attached a length of 1/4” rubber fuel hose up into the pickup bed(through a conveniently chewed rat hole) and connected it to a lawnmower tank.

I chucked some oil down each of the bores in turn, put the plugs back in and gave it a churn. 
After quite a bit of popping and spluttering I eventually got it to run on about one, maybe 1.5 cylinders. Slowly, the others chimed in as the oil freed off the rings and it seemed to run really well! It’s very noisy obviously as there’s basically no exhaust left (just a few rusty remnants hanging there) but seemed ok.

However, it wasn’t all plain sailing. The water pump was pissing water out almost as quickly as I could put it in. Anyway, flushed with success I took advice from a friend of mine with freeing the clutch. He assured me that this method works “9 times out of 10”.

First thing to do was to get the rear brakes working. I removed the seized master cylinder so the pedal was operating the mechanical rear brakes only. They did sort of work, but one was binding. It was good enough for now.

Then, I jacked the rear wheels off the ramp using the jacking beam. Started the truck in 2nd gear, holding the clutch pedal down. I ran up to about 20mph then braked hard, and as it came to a stop, the engine stalled.

I kept starting the engine and repeating the process. Must have done it about 11/12 times when finally I braked, the wheels came to a stop and the engine didn’t stall. I was expecting to hear a bang as the clutch freed but I didn’t hear anything. I attempted to select some gears and all went in happily without grinding. Happy days!

Had a little run up the drive. It actually wasn’t too bad! Clutch is a bit juddery in reverse if you’re not careful but it’s far from the worst I’ve tried, all the gears select happily and the engine pulls well.

 

[Angrydicky]

I took the radiator over to the local place in boston who flushed it out and found it was leaking in about three places. Time for a recore! They turned it around in 24 hours which was fantastic. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of the water pump. I posted it off for recon and the place I use, it turns out, were in the middle of moving workshops and nothing was done on it for about four weeks. Annoying but what can you do. In the meantime I got tired of pushing the heavy old pickup with its binding brakes so I had a brainwave and pushed it back in using the rovers towbar against the front bumper. All was going well until the towbar slipped under the bumper (due to the slope outside the barn) and stoved in that lovely original number plate. Well it was an excuse to remove it, repaint the backing plate and flat the corrosion off the aluminium bits with 1500 w&d- looks loads better I think.