1980 Austin Princess - 18/09 - Welding progress

Wow. Just sat and read this from the beginning, always been quite partial to a wedge.

Great work.

As BT says.... the good ole' marigold dizzy cover. Works a treat.

;D - I like simple

Metallic Green sounds good,used to be common on Allegros as I remember.

I'm not in the finest of moods this evening and it's not just because of my twisted/sprained/otherwise fubarred knee (I swear, my body is actually made of cornflakes) but because of my parents' neighbour. Today, I went to visit the folks to drop some stuff off and get Dad to decypher the electric window motors I bagged recently and to put the working light cluster on I had also baggified. Was out in the back garden nattering with Dad and heard the neighbour come back, shortly followed by a horrible thud and the sight of the Princess lurching down the drive.

Suffice to say, I used some choice language. The neighbour was mortified and I was so furious I was just shouting all manner of horrible things, Mum cooled it all down by taking me indoors with the promise of a cup of tea, and it worked. A little later when I'd cooled down and stopped stomping about we actually discussed things like rational people and decided both cars could be repaired for less than the cost of excess on the insurance and that the neighbour would pay. Had my parents' neighbour been a knob, a gentleman's agreement would not have been reached, but he's actually a really decent fellah and knows precisely how much the Princess means to me, and has even helped with repairs and fettling. I cooled down a lot when I realised it was me being the , not him, and that it was a bit unfair of me.

So, what happened? Well, I'd parked in a different place to usual leaving enough space for him to get his Corsa B down the drive without having to get me to move the car. I have this knack of blocking him in or out when I visit my parents as the drive is a shared entrance. Unfortunately, he was paying so much attention to the side that his wife's garden was that he didn't realise how close he was to the Princess until much too late.



The drive is on an incline until you get to the bottom, which, combined with the weight of my car, meant she moved a lot more than the low speed of the impact would normally create. He can't have been going more than a single figure speed, I doubt it even registered on his clocks. First thing to do was check my boot opened and closed okay, which it did.


Next, have a look at what damage has actually been caused. Inside, it's no worse really than when I reversed into the house that time, bumping the other side.


The light cluster on his Corsa was smashed by the swage line on the Princess, his bumper leaving a black mark further down the corner. My bumper has bent his rear valance and broken the trim clips for his bumper and arch trim and possibly bent his floor pan. I also broke one of his bulbs.


Difficult to photograph, but this side gained a large shallow dent which, after I'd assessed everything, popped out almost completely with the slightest lean of the hand. When I get the bumper off this should pop out completely with relative ease.


It's given me some work to do. Yes, I could book it in at a body shop but I think it would be cheaper and more useful if I get a set of dollies and repair it myself. One should always see an adversity as an opportunity if at all possible, and getting some useful tools out of an accident would be a favourable option for me. This is not going to be an easy repair, it's a very complicated area of the car in terms of curves so it's likely I'll have to use a little bit of filler to get things really smooth here. I have done a similar sized repair with some bits of shaped wood and a ball peen hammer years ago on a Ford Sierra, I'll have to see if I can remember how I went about it when I tackle it.




It wasn't a complete wash out today, Dad managed to help me decypher the electric window motors so we know how to plumb those in. Unfortunately, one of the switches is broken so I'll be taking that apart to see if I can fix it. We couldn't test the motors, but I have no reason to believe they won't work. The dodgy light cluster has been replaced and now my lights work properly, though I do need to clean it up and swap the good lenses over.

Tomorrow, I'll make a start making this corner weatherproof at least, a lot of the paint has flaked off and when I tried to remove the loose bit of pinstripe tape, it lifted most of the run and some of the crappy respray so I now have a decidedly patchwork thing going on. Got to look worse before it looks better I suppose, now just to decide what colour I'll go with.

The Corsa got a broken light cluster, broken clips for arch trim and bumper, bent valance and possibly a bent boot floor. I think I got off fairly lightly really.

As do I. After having driving lessons in various types, I redubbed them the Coarser.

Hey fellah.
Sorry about the prang - always a blow to the solar-plexus.
I follow your thread with interest because I own O series Morris Marinas - so many of your trials under the bonnet are the same as mine.
Anyways - just wanted to alert you to the fact that the fuel pumps are a perennial source of leaks because they distort with age - and sealing them against the head is virtually impossible. I have tried to face the joint surface by filing the pump housing, but never been totally successful.
I managed to accumulate several new pumps, and that has been the answer. Well - I do have 9 cars...
Good luck with repairs.
I always console myself in the knowledge that whatever goes wrong - it can be made even better next time.!
Cheers.

Sometimes, what starts out as something unpleasant ends up being something useful. This incident with me being reversed into is one of those things, as much as I was (and still am a bit, if I'm honest) annoyed about it, being bumped has actually done me a bit of a favour. I'll explain why in a bit, but for now here's what I've been up to today. I was hoping to get the car back in one piece and painted, but there simply wasn't the time so I'm provisionally off work tomorrow if the agency (or anyone else) calls so that I can get this finished.

I'm nothing if not impatient when it comes to fixing things at times, and the same is definitely true of the dents on the Princess. Having a look around the place I found a wooden handled scrubbing brush that I usually use for cleaning tyres which had the right profiles to use as an impromptu dolly/drift. It was narrow enough to allow access to the worst of the dent, and a suitable curve to match the corner of the car. It was also wide enough to serve as a suitable flat surface for the larger shallower dents so that I didn't end up going all Arts and Crafts on the bodywork.

Initially, the dents were easy to get out to the rough shape required, the time consuming part of the job was fine tuning to eliminate use of filler as much as possible. I don't think I did too badly.






A lot of the paint had already cracked, knocking the dents out only cracked it more so I knew I'd have to strip a lot off to repair this corner. I set to work with the paintstripper and while it worked I peeled off the brown vinyl stripes on the sides.


A couple of applications of paint stripper, scraper and wire brush were needed to clear a large enough area to get the dented bits back to bare metal, this too was time consuming.


What I found lurking under the paint was a large patch of flash rusting. I wonder if this is down to the bad respray which is lifting off all over the car? It could also be down to poor previous prep work. I also found some very pink filler in the back corner, something I've learned usually means someone has done a fast bodge repair and used excessive hardener just to get the job out faster. Thankfully, the metal is solid overall and I've not found any further cause for concern yet.


All stripped back, I wiped the panel down to clear any residue of paint stripper off and let it dry.


Found I prefer the car without the brown stripes, so I worked around it and removed the rest.


Also found more problem areas, like this paint lifting under the driver's door handle which appears to be applied directly over road dirt.


And this area on the other rear wing where the paint lifted off like wallpaper with the vinyl tape. For a brief, horrifying moment I thought the paint would come off in one complete sheet on this corner. I also found more blistering on this side of the car and I have just given up hoping to salvage this respray, it's appalling.




Last job for the day I managed was to get the bumper brackets from this...


...to this, with the help of a hammer.


Now that this paint is buggered it does give me an opportunity to change things a little more to my own taste. Don't get me wrong, I like the beige, it's very suitable for the car, but given the opportunity to personalise something I generally always will. This leads me to what options were available to me and I found myself coming back again and again to this sort of thing.




British Leyland did two purples I like which were Aconite and Black Tulip, the latter is too dark but the former should be perfect for the Princess, especially with the brown interior. The Princess was a dynamic, interesting and unusual car so I never really understood why people had them painted in such dull, conformist and boring colours. For tonight I've applied Kurust to the bare metal and tomorrow I'll set to with sandpaper and filler properly before adding paint to get things watertight and depending on the cost, I'll either patch in with beige as a temporary measure, or try out the purple to see if it looks as good in person as it does in my head.