jonw
Part of things
Can open a Mouse with a File
Posts: 768
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Love this thread. Reminds me of the mini.....
Ref your fuel pipe. That could have been due to ethanol reacting with the pipe.
Keep the updates coming.
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Suzuki SV650R The good
Triumph T20 The Bad
BMW G650GS The Ugly
Matchless G12CSR The Smokey
Toyota Hybrid One pint or Two?
Ingredients of this post
Spam
Drunken Rambling of author
Bad spelling
Drunken ramblings of inner voices
Occasional pointless comments
Vile beef trimming they won't even use in stock cubes
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May 17, 2012 12:26:57 GMT
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sciclone: I've not thrown much money at this, just time. Previous owner bodges and lack of proper maintenance are the real problem rather than it being a money pit. I knew what I was letting myself in for when I bought it, much like many an Alfa owner  jonw: The RAC man, when he removed the pipe, said something along the lines of "Ah, it's one of those stupid silicone jobbies" so I'm guessing it's not a new thing for it to do what it did. There's a healthy traditional black rubber pipe in there now.
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Playing about on Photoshop with some pictures of Lotus wheels. This is why I need a set eventually.   They'll probably stick out a bit more than in the above shots, but they're the perfect design for the car. Eventually I'll be investing in a variety of shiny metal wheel trims and hub caps too so I can change the look. Still not lowering her though. |
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retrolegends
Club Retro Rides Member
Winging it.....Since 1971.
Posts: 3,726
Club RR Member Number: 94
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Oh yes they hit the spot!
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1974 Hillman Avenger 1500DL1992 Volvo 240SE1975 Datsun Cherry 100a flying custard1965 Hillman SuperMinx Rock N Roller1974 Austin Allegrat Mk1 1.3SDL1980 Austin Allegro Mk3 1.3L1982 Austin Allegro Mk3 on banded steels2003 Saab 9-3 Convertible 220bhp TurboNutter1966 Morris Minor 1000 (Doris) 2019 Abarth 595C Turismo (not retro but awesome fun) www.facebook.com/DatsunCherry100a |
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ant318
Part of things
Posts: 109
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Thought it was yourself that I spotted during the week. Looked good cruising along whichever motorway i was on
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Having seen how those wheels fit on a maxi, and how princess/amdasodor wheels fit on a maxi, I can safely say they will be king-ding-a-ling.
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May 20, 2012 10:08:41 GMT
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Playing about on Photoshop with some pictures of Lotus wheels. This is why I need a set eventually. They'll probably stick out a bit more than in the above shots, but they're the perfect design for the car. Eventually I'll be investing in a variety of shiny metal wheel trims and hub caps too so I can change the look. Still not lowering her though. There's a set for sale on here:- retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=pfsw&action=display&thread=128609 |
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1953 Minor (Long term project)
PT Cruiser
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MK2VR6
Posted a lot
Mk2 Golf GTi 90 Spec
Posts: 3,329
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May 20, 2012 10:34:22 GMT
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Are you going for a full repaint eventually? Would be worth doing the prep yourself if that's your sort of thing, then paying someone to give the whole car a lick, so paint match is something like it?
Anyhoo, every time I see your car, I can't help but think of John Shuttleworth with its younger brother:
Just spotted this early development clip whilst looking for the above:
And check out 1m40s on this one:
Keep going! ;D
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Last Edit: May 20, 2012 10:38:22 GMT by MK2VR6
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May 20, 2012 12:47:30 GMT
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Those Lotus wheels look superb on the Princess! I'm surprised about just HOW well they work  I think there's a plan...  Btw: how do you not end up with microscopic scratches in the paint? It seems to always happen to me when I paint something... All appears smooth as silk - and after the paint has dryed for some days - all full of sratches from sanding...  |
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May 20, 2012 14:00:50 GMT
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retrolegends: You can blame MysteryMachine, since I first saw his Elite the shape of it put me in mind of them working on the Princess and I'm glad the Photoshop is bearing me out on that one. bmcnut: That's reassuring. They should be an easy swap. moggyman: I know, but what little spare cash I have is tied up paying for other things so I'm going to have to pass on them, which is a damned shame. @gsi: Thank you, always worth being reminded of Mr Shuttleworth now and again... and Terry & June. TurboDieselWeasel: I'm not a pro so this is just amateur experience speaking, but I've found that I can reduce the swirly scratches if I wipe the panel regularly with water as I'm working. I use a lot of water when I'm sanding back the paint as it makes the work quicker and cleaner. The one thing that doesn't show up in the pictures is the faint swirling the polisher has given the panel, but that seems to come out when I apply the polish. Also, make sure you're working in a circular motion rather than straight lines, that seems to reduce the appearance of the scratching. The finer the paper you use, the less intrusive the appearance of scratches will be too.
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May 20, 2012 14:07:34 GMT
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ant318: It would be the M1, I was in mini-convoy with my Dad's burgundy Carina to the Motornutz monthly meet over in Rotherham. Much more pleasant trip than last time, which was the same route but with a loudly blowing exhaust.
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ant318
Part of things
Posts: 109
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May 20, 2012 20:31:35 GMT
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ant318: It would be the M1, I was in mini-convoy with my Dad's burgundy Carina to the Motornutz monthly meet over in Rotherham. Much more pleasant trip than last time, which was the same route but with a loudly blowing exhaust. I thought it was I was the volkswagon Luton randomly flashing hazards |
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I wondered what the hazards thing was about, slightly worried something had fallen off my car at one point XD
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May 21, 2012 14:56:08 GMT
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As and when you do get those Elite/Eclat alloys I am pretty sure you will have one of the nicest looking Princess' out there...! You have got this car up to such a good standard that I doubt there will be a better looked after one out there (of course there will be but I've yet to see it!) that is used as often as yours... Double thumbs up to you sir, what a corking motor... |
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***GARAGE CURRENTLY EMPTY***
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May 26, 2012 20:24:59 GMT
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Thanks Grifter  Not really been using the car much lately, I've not been very well, but I'm back on track again now I hope so I've been doing some work on her. First of all, I need to go back to the 24th and relate some of the issues we've been having with a couple of people cutting through the garden. Up until recently, no damage has been done apart from some pretty lame attempts to break into my corrugated tin garage. The car was parked in her usual place and wheelies bins scattered about on the night of the 23rd to make it clear in a passive-aggressive sort of a way that it's not on cutting through the garden. I came down the following day to find that this:   Okay, so they've moved the wheelie bins, no big deal. They probably couldn't squeeze down the side of the car, there's barely enough room for a leg.... oh:   Previously they'd broken the aerial but it was still attached, just, so I'd left it alone. This time they'd snapped it clean off and placed it in the bonnet-wing gap. They've also bent my door mirror up, pulled one boot badge off and tampered with the other one, and made another attempt at getting in the garage. Not a happy bunny about that. That lead to me constructing this. Eventually this wood will be turned into a proper gate, but for now it's an ugly barrier that makes noise if you try and dismantle it and is pretty impossible to get through. I'm happy to report it works, but it hasn't stopped them making yet another attempt on my garage. Thankfully, the police are aware and proactive about catching the guys in the act as it's a group of about 4 people that are causing the grief.  Next week the drive gates get rehung since I've got to wait to have enough manpower to lift the bloody things back in place. They were removed to get the Princess on the drive, but some modifying to the drive set up means they fit back on now and I want the added security again. So, what else has been happening? Well, Scoobypete from here on Retro Rides very kindly posted me a casette that I've been wanting. Happy days!  Found my missing badge at the foot of the drive, bent and covered in mud. Housemate straightened it out at some point without me knowing, I just need to clean it and refit it at some point.  I also fitted a new aerial. I couldn't find the wire coathanger I know I have somewhere, nor could I find one in the local shops, but I did spy this garden ornament for 50p. I will state that this is a temporary state of affairs, and was mostly done for the grin. Most amusingly, the reception on the stupid wire flower is better than on the original telescopic jobby. It works, but it's not here long term (I hope) as I want to fit an automatic aerial instead.  Other than the above, I've been doing lots of sanding on the top half of the doors which, in the case of the front door, were pretty badly finished.   The paint did cut through nice and smooth with no problems, it just took a long time. It even polished up okay which means the top half of the passenger side doors, both rear quarters and the boot are now done all bar a final going over with some finer finishing stuff.   Also tackled the roof. I thought this panel would take me a long time to do but it hasn't been resprayed. I gave it a quick going over with 2000 grit but there wasn't much point as it was already pretty smooth, so it mostly just got the G3 and polishing machine to bring it up to a fantastic shine. There's a few spots to remedy, but they're tiny things that you can't see unless your nose is almost on the paint so they'll wait for now.   My brother coerced me to blitz the rear pillar that's nearly done too, just to see how well it comes up. Obviously being a metallic paint with no lacquer or keying back before polishing means it's a bit orange peely, but it does look smarter than it had and helps make this side look a bit more unified until I get around to finishing the brown off in one go.  We are getting there.  In other news, I've resealed the tiny oil leak from the gasket for the fuel pump. The last time we sealed it we rushed a little bit, this time I took my time with it and it hasn't shown any signs of leaking at all yet so hopefully that will hold. I also discovered the source of the ticking noise from the engine - now that the exhaust isn't so noisy - is the spark leads breaking down, so they've been bumped up the list. |
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May 28, 2012 21:12:50 GMT
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Today I did some stuff on the Princess again. Went out to do a few errands with the thought of buying some spark leads at the back of my mind. Checked out how much for a new set at Autosupplies and dropped off some flyers for the Motornutz show in August, they did me a full set of leads for about a fiver, last box they had on the shelf too. Time was getting on but I thought I'd see if I could catch the garage over in Whaley before closing time, which is when the Princess decided she didn't want to run smoothly at all, driving like I was in the wrong gear. I pulled into the hospital car park and changed the old leads...  For the new leads...  Which improved things for my trek out to Whaley - garage was closed by the time I got there - almost until I got home, at which point the rough running started to appear again. My brother pointed out that I hadn't tightened the spark plugs, and with that done she was running excellently again and the ticking is gone. The new leads are a lot tidier too, the lengths seeming to be a lot more suitable for the gaps they're bridging. I did have a concern when I got back. I looked around the car, as you do, and noticed the driver's side front wheel was at a funny angle. My first thought was 'it shouldn't look like a Herald' and I was quite alarmed. The angle of the wheel was much more pronounced than it appears to be in the picture and was a different angle to the other three wheels. I only noticed it when I got home, until then whenever I'd parked up it looked normal. I'm concerned because I've seen a couple of pictures of Allegros and Maxis with front wheels folded under the car but I can't remember what caused it and I obviously don't want it to happen to me.  A look underneath doesn't highlight any damage to any components or anything loose, nothing looks bent when compared to the other side. The wheel nuts are secure and there's no play in the wheel.  I had helpers to refit my monumentally heavy drive gates so we had to get the Princess out of the way and a trundle up and down the drive seems to have put the wheel back to a more normal angle. I suppose there's a slim chance that it's just the angles of the drive, but it really was very pronounced with the wheel leaning over visibly onto the outer edge of the tread. The wear on the tyre doesn't indicate anything abnormal as that's nice and even all the way around and the car has had no noticeable pulling to either side when driving or breaking, there's been nothing to make me think anything was amiss, so maybe I'm worrying about nothing?  While I was investigating under the car I was also surprised by some damage to the front valance/wing area. I have no idea how I've done this. It looks like I've hit a rock or something going by the scratches in the black and the chunk of missing paint but I don't recall having hit anything at all and I've not been using the car that much of late. It was certainly damage free when we did the exhaust. I'll chase out the surface rust and bend it back to shape again, but I'd love to know how I managed it.   |
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May 29, 2012 19:01:53 GMT
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I think I have been worrying about an optical illusion on that front wheel, as Laurence over on the princess forum pointed out, I should assess on a flat space. So I did, and this is what I saw.     All seems even and healthy and, it being a warm day, the car is sitting slightly higher than normal which is one of those oddities of the suspension on these. Still haven't got around to getting the Polo back in one piece because the garage is like an oven and it's that sort of weather where you do the slightest thing and are just knackered from the hot. I really wish I wasn't working the hours I do at the moment, I'm missing out on the cooler mornings when I could get stuff done. So, general update on the health of the car is that overall, things are good. I've still got to get around to fitting that steering rack gaiter, which I will likely do at my parents' this coming weekend. After that's been done I can get the tracking checked and get my wheels balanced properly, but I see no point doing tracking and balancing until the gaiter is done, especially since I'm not using the car for more than very short 2-8 mile journeys at the moment. My three weeks off work (1 week holiday, 2 weeks bad health) has crippled me financially, which means I can't do all the things I want to, especially when it comes to going out for day trips and the like in the Princess. I'm going to have to let some things go too, which I'm not thrilled about, but Stuff is something that comes and goes, more Stuff will appear in the future for me to enjoy, and they do say all good things come to he who waits. My to do list on the car is thus: > Paint - finish flatting and polishing, so much of this to do still. > Passenger side steering rack gaiter to fit. > Tiny oil leak to resolve. Might be fuel pump gasket again, but could also be rocker cover gasket, not 100% on this one. > Tracking > Balance wheels > Reattach boot badges > Check rear drums. Handbrake will hold the car on most inclines, but not the steeper ones. Possible that rear drums aren't balanced and need adjusting. > Waxoyl underneath (£60 at a friend's garage, saves me getting it in my hair and eyes) > Few small weld patches, nothing serious, probably nothing that would fail an MoT. > Replace/repair driver's door window mechanism It's all niggles. I'm hoping that I can get all the above resolved before September so that my MoT is nice and easy. |
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Jun 14, 2012 22:34:05 GMT
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Do you know, I'd forgotten to add the latest trials and tribbles. Not much has been happening in the world of Serendipity because - touch dashboard - she's been perfectly fine and given me no grief at all. Seriously, it's bizarre, this is a 30 year old Austin and she's doing daily duties as reliably as any other car, it's great! Awesomely, these arrived in the post for me, at my favourite price. Originally I was looking for a black with red reflector set for the Polo but since I'm not using atm and the Princess is all about period originality, they suit her much better. Thanks go out to Kinkersaab for their generosity, once I'd put them on they looked like they'd always been there.  The only shot I have of them in situ was when we went to sort out a replacement camera for my brother.  The same day, my new wing mirrors arrived which are going to look absolutely stellar when I get hold of the correct sized drill bits. I think they're the most ridiculous period mirrors I could have got hold of, but they should make seeing behind me a lot easier. I hope to have these fitted before the end of the month.  My brother tried out his new camera on the way back, it's quite good.  Even when I was throwing the Princess around a roundabout or two and he was complaining that it was hard to hold the camera steady, it could take pictures of boring Micras with ease. I was trying to get rid of a Ford Focus behind me that had a badly aligned HID headlight that was shining directly in my eye. Fog lights and erratic-seeming breaking (got to love that squidgy pitch-happy suspension!) made him back off a looooooooooong way and disappear down his first available turning.  Every day is an adventure in the Princess, of course, and I'd mentioned this little incident elsewhere. The driver was okay, just a grazed wrist, but his Golf and the barrier on the corner didn't fare so well. Be careful out there, folks.  |
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ChasR
RR Helper
motivation
Posts: 10,297
Club RR Member Number: 170
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Jun 14, 2012 23:16:54 GMT
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Ouch with regards to that Golf! Back to more pressing issues, those wheels really do suit the lines of the Princess . |
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Jun 24, 2012 21:43:26 GMT
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I had some things I wanted to do on the car and although it took a while to get motivated, eventually I did and refitted my PYE deck which, as it turns out, is the worst sound system known to man. Disappointed I was  It sounds shockingly poor, none of the dials on the front do anything and noise only comes out of one speaker. The replacement belt - the smallest we could source - is okay for the first few minutes but then it seems to stretch and shrink at will judging by the noise coming out of the speakers. Not a brilliant start to proceedings but it did help me eliminate another part of the wiring as the root of my gremlin. Here's what's what with the wiring for the tape deck, done at some point in the car's past. First, there's a replacement flasher relay from a Nissan of some description. This provides a blue wire that has to be screwed into the underside of the dash so it earths on the metal there, even though I'm pretty sure it's not an earth wire. If it's connected to anything else, my indicators don't work. The green wires join the steering column bit of the wiring loom.  Then there's the tape deck plug, which has one red wire marked Battery + that rejoins the wiring harness...  ...and one black wire, that doesn't connect to anything, and apparently doesn't do anything either but is marked Battery - which means it's probably an earth. It is not, however, the root of my electrical problem.  I want to reinstate all of this wiring properly, but I'm going to have to wait until Dad gets back from holiday as I'm not confident with wiring. So, after setting the tape deck aside (but retaining the speakers) I turned my attention to the rear of the car with the multimeter. On the passenger side, there's this odd little chocblock that the earth terminates in, but the circuit is good and it's doing it's job according to the multimeter.  The earth wire runs back along the loom and comes up into a spade connector for the driver's side cluster before rejoining the loom and disappearing over the wheel arch and behind the rear seat somewhere.  The wiring loom has been hacked about a bit, probably to fit the fog lights, and it's not a great job. The earth cable under the electrical tape has had the casing split, and that allowed me to test the wires inside which, when I could get the probe to connect properly also showed a healthy circuit. I went back to the spade connector and there's no circuit there at all, which is odd since it's in parallel with my two other reference points, both of which show a good circuit. The reason I hadn't tested this before was that I didn't really know what I was looking at or how to do it and lacked a good amount of confidence with it. I had a bit of a natter with Dad about it and he's suggested I try fitting a new spade connector here as it's possible there's a circuit running through the earth cable but the spade connector has somehow become isolated from the circuit, leading to the peculiar habit of the lights. All the shops were shut today so I couldn't buy a new spade connector or new fuses, but a look in the book also revealed that the fuses in the box aren't actually all what they should be so that will get rectified too. Some progress made at least. Tomorrow I go shopping for fuses and spade connectors and see what happens. Thankfully, I've made nothing worse from investigating things today, but disappointingly I didn't make anything any better. Oh, and my horn works again after I swapped two identical fuses around, which makes very little sense to me. |
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I think there's a plan... 
It sounds shockingly poor, none of the dials on the front do anything and noise only comes out of one speaker. The replacement belt - the smallest we could source - is okay for the first few minutes but then it seems to stretch and shrink at will judging by the noise coming out of the speakers. Not a brilliant start to proceedings but it did help me eliminate another part of the wiring as the root of my gremlin.