Dicky’s Disastrous Debris Standard 12 update 5/5/25

[N Dentressangle]

Brilliant. What a gorgeous truck.

[Angrydicky]

In the meantime I decided to address two leaking core plugs by replacing the lot (they’re cheap enough) and I was glad I did, look at the state of the waterways in the block! Lovely. I spent ages with a little extendable magnet getting it all out. The main front to back waterway was blocked about half way down and I rodded it through with a big screwdriver.

I was surprised it didn’t overheat worse as I’d had it ticking over for five minutes without any sign of overheating.

Eventually got that to a standard I was happy with, and fitted the new core plugs.

Finally got the water pump back and reassembled it all with new fan belt and hoses. Had a couple of minor leaks on the heater hoses but a bit of tweaking and the leaks soon stopped which was great news. I then refitted the radiator.

Got a few of the other old crocks out as the weather was good. 

[outlaw118]

Top work Rich!

How often do you come "home"? I spotted an A30/35 on a service road off the 127 by the Shell garage IIRC London bound, may well be too far gone, but may have some bits? 

I've forgotten the exact address, but you'll know where I mean!

[N Dentressangle]

Nice work on the core plugs. Many soggy cornflakes.

That nutmeg Princess is brilliant. Want.

[Angrydicky]

1 hour ago, outlaw118 said:

Top work Rich!

How often do you come "home"? I spotted an A30/35 on a service road off the 127 by the Shell garage IIRC London bound, may well be too far gone, but may have some bits? 

I've forgotten the exact address, but you'll know where I mean!

Cheers Bob!

Not often back in the manor to be honest, maybe once or twice a year visiting friends and that’s about it. Is it the shell by the Hovefields traveller site? That’s Southend bound but I can’t think of any other shells in the area. Unless it’s more sort of Romford direction. Be interesting to see if anyone is passing that neck of the woods and fancies grabbing a picture.

[wuvvum]

Didn't realise you had two Mayflowers in the fleet!

[Angrydicky]

7 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Didn't realise you had two Mayflowers in the fleet!

One belongs to a friend and is just here having some work done 👍

[outlaw118]

22 hours ago, Angrydicky said:

Is it the shell by the Hovefields traveller site? That’s Southend bound but I can’t think of any other shells in the area. Unless it’s more sort of Romford direction. Be interesting to see if anyone is passing that neck of the woods and fancies grabbing a picture.

It's altogether possible it's not a Shell, but it's definitely Southend-y rather than Basildon-y.

Seeing as The Office seem to be completely incapable of giving me a decent tranche of work in one area, doubtless I'll be back down that way soon, will get MOAR FAKTS M9

[Angrydicky]

Shout out to Spilsby Motor Spares today.

Really good independent motor factor, very helpful and friendly staff. I went over there today in search for a pair of new wiper blades for the Princess. One of the old ones had almost disintegrated so the time had come to do something about it. @vulgalourand others will attest to how impossible the correct wiper blades are to find for Princesses.

I was planning on buying a pair of blades and maybe replacing the pins with little nuts and bolts but as luck would have it they actually had the correct pins in stock and happily fitted them to a pair of new blades for me.

The new blades are slightly shorter than the original 20” jobs but it makes no difference whatsoever. 
Cost £24 or something so I’m pleased with that.

[vulgalour]

That's a bit of a score.

[Angrydicky]

A couple of years ago we decided to take the 1935 Standard 12 off the road as the gearbox was noisy and pissing oil out. I was recommended a local retired engine/gearbox rebuilder who specialised in prewar stuff. 
I took the box over to him. He stripped it down, found a few knackered bits, the worst being a fairly complex gear (with teeth on the inside and the outside) where about half the teeth were stripped off it.

He said he would struggle having something like that made. He said really he needed another box to cannibalise.

I put the feelers out and fortunately managed to find a box that came from a 12 that was unfortunately banger raced about ten years ago.

The gearbox was a complete unknown, the car it came from had last been on the road in 1967 apparently. It did turn by hand and felt smooth though. It had plenty of clean oil on the dipstick.

I delivered this over to the chap doing our gearbox. He found it was slightly different (it was from a slightly earlier car) but the bits that were knackered in ours were good in this one. He made one good out of two and then we promptly installed the gearbox on the bench for the next 6 months. While the car stood in the corner of the workshop getting steadily buried in stuff.

Dad suddenly announced last week that he wanted to get the Standard back on the road as there was a VE Day celebration at the village hall and they were looking for classic cars to attend. As this one actually saw WW2 it seemed ideal. The only problem was although we had the foil trays with nuts and bolts it had been so long since we stripped it down we couldn’t really remember how it all went together.

Anyway, we managed to figure it out and after about three hours the gearbox was in and bolted up. Helps massively having a 4-post ramp and transmission jack.

So the next day ‘Poppy’ fired up and reversed out of the workshop under her own steam.

Put some fresh petrol in it, replaced the rubber fuel hose in the engine bay that had sprung a leak, and gave it a good wash and polish.

Took it down to the petrol station and added some more fresh petrol to dilute the stale stuff in the tank. It’s running very well and the gearbox is superb, what a difference!

As an aside we discovered some more history of this car recently in an old Standard club mag from 1990.

I bought it in 2017 from a mate in Cumbria who acquired it locally as an unfinished restoration project. It had no number plates but fortunately the chassis plate was there and the dvla told him the number was MSJ 262. He got it up and running but never did very much to it, not least because there was quite a lot missing. It was clear a lot of work had been done on it, most of it to a fairly amateur standard (which is normal with fairly cheap classic cars) but we didn’t know much of the history of it. Apparently the last bloke bought it to restore but had a heart attack and never really did anything with it. The previous owner on the logbook was a film company in the northeast.

I managed to find the original registration through a website, which was a Yorkshire number, WF 8392. At that time, it was on some ghastly new Audi SUV but it’s now on retention. Anyway, using that I contacted the Standard club and they said they had record of it being owned by a member in Leeds in the 1980s but due to that bloody GDPR they wouldn’t give me any info.

You can see the Mini boot hinges in this picture, which it still has fitted. The original hinges were hidden inside the boot and are missing.