1980 Austin Princess - 18/09 - Welding progress

Hey, if anyone wants what's left of the shell when I'm done with it, I'm happy to sell it to them for whatever scrap turns out to be. This would look unbelievable mounted on a Rangey chassis or similar.

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Started early today so I could finish early. Getting the wheels off was a bit of a challenge as the driver's side were dogged up so tight even the 4' breaker bar struggled and passenger side wheels hadn't been off in such a long time that the nuts had started to rust to the studs under the nut covers. Got there in the end and I now have a spare set of steel wheels to refurbish with tyres on that need binning.


Got the bonnet off and I'm deeming it scrap/repair panel material. The rusty hinge mount had a seized bolt, the head of which sheared off, and the rest of the bonnet is reasonable but not great. Distributor and side repeaters removed easy peasy and had another go at the front trim and headlight fixings to no avail, going to have to get the drill on those.


I wanted to liberate the windscreen if at all possible, they're made almost entirely of unobtanium. Luckily, in some ways, the windscreen seal was perished on this car and letting water in so it was a fairly simple task to cut through the seal and carefully lift the screen free. The rear screen put up more of a fight, mainly because I wanted to save the exceptionally good seal. Again, rear screens and seals are made of the rarest of materials and well worth preserving and I'm glad success was had, even if it did take three of us to liberate it safely. The glass has been put in a Safe Place but I'm still terrified of breaking it. These are being kept in stock because I know the rear screen at least needs to be removed and I don't want to risk having no screen to refit.


With the screen out I could inspect the rear surround and I'm delighted to report that it has good solid metal where the beige one isn't so clever. I'll cut these sections out as they may make repairing the surround on the beige car easier when I get that done.


You can see on this side what happens if you do nothing about the rust you can't see under the vinyl trim. There's still enough for the repair I need to make though.


Bottom on the driver's side is on its way out.


These little round trim clips I haven't been able to find a supplier for. Since I'm putting the C pillar top trim back on I'm going to keep remove them. These are one of those fiddly little items you need and can never find.


Bottom of the passenger C pillar had a rusty patch, once the vinyl and waist trim were removed it became a hole. There was another hole lurking completely hidden from view under the vinyl further to the front too. Again, the beige car is good here.




Once useful discovery is that if I can get to the rivets on the beige car the rear vinyl trim on the parcel shelf can be removed without taking the rear screen out. I had assumed that the vinyl tucked into the screen seal as it did elsewhere but since it doesn't that's going to be easy to resolve. I also removed and kept the two white vinyl C pillar trims that tidy the small piece of metal between the removable trims and the rear screen seal.


Headlining out, complete, without damage. The wires holding it up are really substantial. I'll be taking a pattern so I can make new headlinings and the one from this car will be cleaned and put with the HLS for the new owner to experience the joy of fitting.


Front driver's side corner has a practically new set of pads and a very good disc, there's barely any wear at all so I doubt they did more than about fifty miles on it. The track rod end has utterly disintegrated and of no use. The brake hoses look in good condition and the inner arch plastics are reasonable if not perfect.


Passenger side brakes are a different story, they've seen a lot of use and I'll likely only save the caliper to refurbish on this side and the hoses which again look in reasonable order.


At the back the rear axle proved fairly easy to remove. The rebound strap mount on the inner arch is good both sides so I'll chop those out in case they can be used to repair the HLS. The brake hoses came apart nicely, and everything looks healthy and, for the most part, as though it's been apart in the not too distant past. Dropping the axle was a doddle, no seized bolts or any of that nonsense and the only problem thus far has been very tight hydragas unions, I didn't want to battle those today so that's a job for tomorrow. Best of all, the pivot shafts are free moving as they should be which means I can remove and regrease them before fitting this axle to the beige car.


That was about all I had the energy to do today, but it's a good chunk more sorted. There was a really healthy amount of pressure in the hydragas system, the pipes look in excellent shape and all the spheres are good. I'll inspect the rear drums but may end up putting this axle straight on to the beige car with the brakes and everything as they are after checking it's all working properly. End of play I dropped the bonnet back in place and we'll do this all again tomorrow.

No, it's not sad! Think about it. This car was destined for the oval or to rot in obscurity in a barn or to be squashed for however much the metal weighed to get some cash. This fate is far from sad, and breaking the car in front of the red one might make it buck its ideas up a bit.

Hi Mr Vulgalour, it may be worth looking at some of the bigger mini spares websites for those riveted trim clips, they look the same as those holding on the Fablon trim on my clubman estate. Unsure if size is the same though, but it may be worth checking out ?

Sounds like a good plan.

I have. Bresco are my first port of call for fixings but the last few times I've checked they've had nothing similar. They do appear to have the waistline clips I need, I just need to check the measurements so I get the right size for the lower C-pillar and boot trim.

I think I'm getting dragged along to that whether or not the beige one has an MoT, my other half is in the restoration business and is planning to attend in his GT6 I think. I can't rightly remember. As long as I don't have to drive in/near Birmingham I don't care what the plan is.

Bit more work on Orange Slice today, in part to make it look like I'm actually doing something and because I needed to use one of the axle stands it's sat on. Three of the doors are salvagable and worth keeping whole rather than stripping bare so I took those three off. I also unbolted the trailing edge of the wing I'm removing and found the rivetted patch on the bottom is actually a big piece of lead sheet.

Passenger front door is pretty good. It's had some clumsy stonechip repairs all over the door as have the others, but on the rot front it's not too bad. These doors do seem to survive the best on Princesses.


Driver's door is slightly worse than the one on the beige car presently. I'm keeping this one in stock as it's repairable, but it's a bit far gone for me to be comfortable selling it to someone as a replacement unless their door is utterly ruined.


Rear driver's door is okay but needs more work still. This is fairly standard corrosion from what I've witnessed before. Beige car's one of these is much better so it's another one I'm keeping back to repair at a later date.


With the Orange Slice back on one wheel, I trundled the beige car down the drive to get the rear bearing and brakes sorted. I was hoping to get both sides done but the weather decided otherwise. Delightful array of decrepitude on display here.


Princess Safari edition never got past prototype phase.


With the hub off I could have a look at the rear brakes on the passenger side, made sense to start here as this is the bearing that had failed. The new brake shoes look barely used even by new brake shoe standards and I reckon I was lucky if this side was doing anything at all. Tweaked the adjuster to get them to grip well enough to make the hub difficult to refit and while the handbrake and footbrake is improved it's still not good enough. I'll repeat on the other side, I wonder if it's the quality of the shoes more than anything at this stage, they were very cheap and comparing them to the ones I collected from Derby they look to be of questionable quality when side by side.


The old bearing was very easy to remove and unsurprisingly sloppy. The new one was surprisingly easy to fit, even though I had to be careful-old-school with a hammer and a flat blade screwdriver to ease the inner and outer bearings into place with plenty of fresh grease. Once I got the old bearing out it was evident someone had repacked it with grease, presumably to get a bit extra life out of it, so I cleaned all of that out. I also cleaned the grease out of the hub cap which, according to the manual, shouldn't be packed.


Put the wheel back on, started to jack the car up off the axle stand and then noticed it crawling back. WAY too late I realised I'd forgotten to put the handbrake back on after fitting the hub and the car gracefully fell off the jack, knocked the axle stand over - without causing even a scratch, thankfully! - and stopped only when it had squished my new pot of grease.


I've been overdue a stupid moment like this. and after a bit of tweaking I could get the lid back on the grease pot so no harm done. Annoyingly it then bucketed it down with rain so I had to down tools rather than doing the other rear bearing and brake. Until I can get the car to hold on the handbrake on the steepest part of the drive I'm not going to be satisfied with their efficacy, it will almost hold now rather than just point blank refusing so I reckon I've made some improvement.

Did I just miss something there?

No, I posted something about your brakes - then realised I was wrong -doh!