1980 Austin Princess - 18/09 - Welding progress

Yup, you hear all sorts - especially about engines with alloy heads which have inserts of some sort, but no guarantee of unleaded compatibility. For example, the standard Imp engine is supposed to need an additive, but I ran without happily enough, and that was blasting on the motorway quite a bit.

I'd be tempted to suggest seeing how it goes. If it lasts 6,000 miles before the valve clearances close up, well that's a year of driving at the end of which you could have the head converted. OTOH, it might last indefinitely. Who knows?

That's the approach I'm going for, anyway. I realise that I might need to have some head work done at some point, but I'm aware of it, and it doesn't worry me: I've always got another head to bung on in the meantime. It's perhaps not the most professional approach, but hey.

Lead doesn't dissolve in petrol iirc. Might be worth somebody adding what the symptoms of the valves recessing are just so you can look out for them.

Very briefly, valve seat recession causes the valve clearances (exhaust especially) to close up. I know that checking the clearances on the O Series is a bit of a pain (IIRC the cam bearings are held down by the cam box so you need to make up some wooden blocks to hold the cam in place while measuring), but it might be worth taking some readings now so you have a baseline to compare to.

If the seats have some "lead memory" then they won't wear for a while, but will eventually start to do so at an increasing rate.

Symptoms of closing up valve clerances: less low-end torque, more of a propensity to rev. Eventually there will be no clearance and you'll start to lose compression as the valves don't seat properly. That obviously loses power across the band and causes a misfire (which you'll probably only notice at idle - I certainly thought the other cylinder picked up at revs).

If you undertake a long/fast journey with tiny valve clearances the valves might get hot enough to burn out - this is where a hole gets burnt in the valve or seat. This is usually accompanied by a distinct 'pop' as the valve burns, and that cylinder will lose compression.

My road tax ran out today and sadly, the money pot is empty for a little bit so I'm going to have to keep her on SORN for a little bit. Boo. Not the end of the world, I had a run out today that put things to the test. The first job to do was to make sure I had more petrol in the Princess as I was running low and, as far as we're aware, all the stations within driving distance were out. Not to worry, I'm not using the Polo at the moment and I know he has fresh fuel in. My brother also had the great idea of using the old Princess pump to get the petrol out quicker. So the pump was hooked up and my two jerry cans pressed into service to transfer the fuel.

Pumpy, pumpy, 5 litres...


... pumpy, pumpy, 10 litres...


... pumpy, pumpy, same noise as I had on the motorway that time, 12ish litres.


Great, that made the fuel needle in the Princess move to a point somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 full. More than enough to try out the fuel pump properly and do some errands. Turn the key, starts first time. Haul the yacht off the drive and, as we're setting off, notice some smoke coming from the bonnet. Stop, have a look... ah, fuel pump was leaking around the spacer. Not to worry, we had some gasket stuff that was splurged on and cured the oil leak instantly. We pressed on and I pulled into the first convenient MoT place along the way to pop the bonnet as we still had a bit of smoke, but nothing to really worry about. Looks like oil had got into the the exhaust paste on the downpipe and on the downpipe itself, causing a few wisps of smoke but nothing fire-causing. The biker I pulled up next to seemed most bemused by me hopping out, popping the bonnet and fanning the wisps away, but he didn't say anything.

Set off again, no more smoke, no more smell, no more leaks. Arrived at my parents with the intention to spend a couple of hours getting the exhaust reseated to eliminate the blow on the downpipes and the centre joint. My first time ever driving up onto metal ramps, with a handbrake that doesn't really work and a car with an interesting habit of continuing to move after it's stopped meant I got the ramps balanced on point before they and the car rocked back to the level. Bloody terrifying! No harm done, thankfully, but not an experience I want to repeat.


Gave us a chance to get our first proper look underneath as we now had a flat surface and greater clearance. Turns out the bushes on the selector box are actually okay and the play is in the main selector rod to the gearbox.






This is the worst bit that we can see under the car. I'm hoping to get the car undersealed or at least waxoyled anew before winter this year.


Everything else looks nice and solid, with the odd bit of surface rust that just needs a wire brushing and reseal to be spot on again.




Next job was to remove the exhaust. Originally I was going to help with this, but my hand and wrist were still playing up so I was watching and learning and pointing the camera at things instead. These are the downpipe clamps before they were cleaned up.


The exhaust is a big one, and the boxes look like new. I don't know how old this system is, but it's barely seen any use at all. For a tempting few moments I wanted to convert this into a magnificent floor lamp with the plug at the tail end and two round bulbs at the downpipe end... I thought it might work better as my exhaust, so it didn't come to anything more than an idea.


Nice shiny Bosal boxes.


This seam was blowing after I stuffed the exhaust into the verge outside my drive. One of those things where you don't know you've done it until it's far too late.


With four people wiggling and hammering the exhaust we got it free. Barely any paste, some surface rust and angle grinder marks.




This was cleaned up with the wire brush before fresh paste was applied and the whole thing refitted, without a blow.


The other problem area on the exhaust is the down pipe fluted sections which we knew from trying to fix the blow without dropping the exhaust the first time, were pretty mullered.


Luckily, Dad's pretty handy with a pair of pliers and got them to resemble something like the original shape.


Then these too were cleared of any paste and wire brushed clean.


Because of the angle of the exhaust previously, I was scraping it when reversing off my driveway. The chrome trim happily came off in my hand when we were moving the exhaust bits about. Initially we considered cutting the end off the pipe, but instead we left it to see how it would all fit first.


Turns out it fits much better. I'll get a before and after pic up eventually, but I don't have one at the moment. The exhaust refit was actually a massive ballache. With two people under the car and two people guiding things and holding clamps over the engine bay, it was moved around and finally seated properly. More exhaust paste was knocked off the exhaust manifold and another attempt made. Finally, we went from this...


to this...


Which it turned out was good, but one of the seams blew. Clamp and collar came off, new paste applied, things were jiggled and it was refitted. Car started anew and all the blows were gone completely. Sitting inside the car it was quiet, I could hear the radio without any electrical interferance and the previous cabin vibration was almost completely gone. Of course, the tuning was now off slightly again, but nothing a minor tweak can't resolve. It was... marvellous.

The job had taken not the estimated 2 hours with 1 experienced and 1 learning person but 5 hours and 4 people to do. Obviously, it's not a job we want to do again! I needed to get some glamour shots of the car for a club thing and it was now too late to go and find a place so I borrowed the nearby garden for that, I'll show the pics in a sec. But first, my brother and I had to ferry some things back to his place so the Princess was loaded up and off we went. It was so quiet! We both couldn't stop marvelling at the near silence of the cabin until we started to hear a little putter. After 3 miles the putter was a blow again from the downpipe that had been such a problem to seal initially. It's okay though, my brother is going to fettle with this at some point and sort it out, he's got a few more tricks up his sleeve yet when it comes to exhausts. No more oil leaks from the fuel pump, a nice amount of power without pops and farts from the engine, a lack of cabin vibration... the car felt much, much newer with that sorted out.

To finish off this update, here's some glamour shots taken in poor light. They give a sense of how good the car is looking now with all this TLC and I'm not ashamed to admit I'm actually proud of her.












Tune in next time, same Bat channel, same Bat time!

re: Fuel (I realise I didn't reply to the comments above). Unless any problem presents itself I think I'll continue to just put unleaded in and not worry about additives. People have been pointing out sensible things about the design of the engine which mean it's probably okay and since I'm not hooning around everywhere at a billion miles a minute like a deranged Audi 'driving' rep, I'm unlikely to have problems on that front.

monkeytennis: Thanks for the heads up on those. Dad's on the clamp finding mission to see if he can find an alternative in the same vain that's specifically for the Princess/O series with that tip off. It's entirely likely there's a similar but Mini-tax-free option out there.

___

I know, thinks I, the weather can't be that bad today it's only been a bit drizzly and I can flat back paint in the drizzle. House is a bit cold this morning, I'll have to put a nice warm..







... maybe I'll just stay inside today.

Mister Bunny's response to the weather was much the same as mine.




I was hoping that the pictures I'd got demonstrated the better fit of the exhaust, but it's not as hugely apparent on digi-film as it is in person.

BEFORE


AFTER

Took my son to the Motor Heritage Centre and Gaydon today and saw this=





Sorry about the curse word picture,hands must have been shaking with excitement!!

Man with a plan! Make it happen chap.

deathstar: Glad you enjoyed the read

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Update time!

I'm still trying to find out how water is getting into the boot. I think it's coming through the trim holes in the pillars but I'm not 100% sure, I'm going to do some leak testing with kitchen towel and a watering can to find out when I have a dry day. In the meantime, I'm just mopping out the water whenever I see it and when there's a dry day I'll get the drill out and make some drain holes before rust proofing and painting it so it doesn't get worse.




Exhaust was blowing again so we tried to fix it. Only the passenger side down-pipe to manifold join is actually blowing, so I only split that side.


Removed the clamp and cleaned up the old paste. The top of the clamp all the way around is soot covered as the blow starts at the join on the clamp on the wing side and then creeps around until the whole join is going. Since we had the time, we did this properly rather than bodging it.


Once everything was cleaned up, we got the trolley jack under the exhaust pipe... well we tried but the bump on the garage entrance meant we didn't have enough room. Got the factory jack - which is very well designed - and found the ratchet has gone in the handle so we had to bodge some tools together to serve as a handle.


Once everything was in place, the join was pasted up as normal and then the trolley jack used to get the pipe seated properly and held in place so you don't have to have a billion pairs of arms to hold everything together.


Because we knew the exhaust would blow again we tried to take some extra precautionary measures, getting the aluminium tape and wrapping it around the join after it was all seated. More paste was then applied to the clamp before applying that too.


Once everything was bolted up and the the car run up to temperature the blow was gone, which was great... for a few miles. Then the blow was back again. I didn't have time to redo it before the club meet and just pushed more paste into the worst of the blow that had appeared but of course this was never going to work and by the time I got home again it was blowing just as bad as ever. I'm waiting on some new cast clamps arriving that my Dad has ordered which may solve the problem as it could be the current clamp is shot. It could also be that the downpipe is buggered on the ends because of the previous bodgery that we documented. I suspect this exhaust will continue to be a headache for some time to come.

At the club meet, I got to meet a slightly newer Austin.

I've just read through this, and had a reasonably thorough skim through the thread for your Polo.
I'm torn between the two, on the basis that the Austin seems like generally the better car, but the flamboyance of the work on the Polo and the originality behind some of the ideas (such as the seats) is great.

I think on the whole I prefer the Austin, mostly because I have a natural predisposition to root for the underdog, and history has been kinder to Volkswagen. Either way, keep up the good work, and as someone on a low budget, thanks for the inspiration!