1981 Austin Princess - 11/08 - Sold!

ianmac: I hope I don't disappoint then!

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We have still not got the engine running. However, today has been a day of trying to determine why the engine won't run rather than more cleaning. I've only had the car for 3 days so I'm not expecting miracles. I'm flat broke until October so buying anything is off the cards too, I have to work with what's to hand. One big advantage is having two Princesses in this instance because I can swap known good items from one to the other.

On my immediate shopping list is one spark plug and a second hand battery as these are the main items that are being swapped between the two cars to try and diagnose issues at present.

First thing I did today was get the carb off the car. The fuel line in was full of fresh fuel from our first attempt to fire up the car, but the carb was full of stale fuel and sediment. I gave the whole thing as good a clean as I could without having a parts/dish washer before rebuilding it and refitting it to the car. The first problem was the metal circlip on the top of the dashpot internals pinging off and me not having a replacement - on the HL, this is a rubber O ring rather than a circlip - and the second was the fuel return pipe being so old and brittle that it shattered on removal.


Happily, I could just swap the dashpot from the HL to the HLS easily so we had a working carburettor for the purposes of engine checking. Next we removed the old spark leads from the HLS and replaced them with the leads from the HL that I'd kept just-in-case and knew worked. The old HLS leads do have some corrosion in the connectors and some electrical tape on one of the leads which doesn't instill a great deal of confidence.


Spark plugs were removed and found to be heavily sooted. These have been cleaned in the meantime and will eventually be replaced but they'll have to do for now. The internals of the carb were quited sooted up too, hinting at some pretty rich running which probably hints at another problem that's been disguised rather than resolved.


10,000 miles and 16 years ago the car did have a service of some sort. This is the first fragment of service history I've been able to find.


At some point we also jacked the car up to see if the factory jacks worked (they do) and to put the car to her proper height. After this was taken the car was let down and sits only slightly lower than the HL did when I collected it, there's no sign of a list to any corner and it does seem to just be low on fluid rather than having any inherent suspension issues which is reassuring.


The sill on this side is scruffy but actually quite solid, should just need a scrub and repaint and maybe a few localised sparkle-stick areas to be MoT ready.


Unlike the tyres.


Removed the rear view mirror plinth from the car and Dad showed me how to pop the mirror back into it without breaking anything. The lens is very fragile and will ideally want replacing, but it's nice to have this all back together and in the car.


Even managed to not destroy the sticker when I cleaned this part. There's another sticker underneath the one you can see but I didn't make any attempt to get to it.



We have a known issue with the wiper motor, it seems to work however it wants to regardless of the stalk setting and the only way to stop it is to pull the fuse. The blower fan also works but that does at least appear to be controllable. The headlights work on all settings but the indicators and hazards don't. We didn't test the reversing lights. Gear change is acceptable with the engine off, not been able to check with the engine on. Brakes work well enough for the drive but will need an overhaul before being used on the road. Handbrake seems to work well. Clutch seems okay, but the level of wear is unknown. Floor pans are definitely solid and appear to have never been welded or needed welding. Exhaust looks in good order but we don't know if it blows on account of not having the engine running yet. Driver's window regulator needs rebuilding, it doesn't really work at all. Rear driver's side door now locks and unlocks. Driver's door won't lock/unlock with the key, reason unknown.

On the engine front we now know a bit more about what works and what doesn't. We suspect there's a compression issue and possibly a snapped piston ring on account of abnormal behaviour with the oil filler cap visibly pressurising and depressurising when cranking. No compression tool at the moment so I can't check what's amiss exactly. Two core plugs on the battery side of the engine have been gummed up with araldite for reasons unknown. By swapping items between the two cars we know the coil and leads work. We also know the coil ballast resistor/suppressor thingy for the HLS is missing.

So the car will crank on the starter motor. But there's no spark from the coil at all. We ran out of time to apply a multimeter to things today, it's been a bit hectic, but that's the next job to find out where the electricity is escaping. Earth points and wiring routes look the same as the HL and there's no obvious signs of damage or corrosion to wires or connectors but a multimeter will tell us more on that front.

The engine will likely need a rebuild, that's okay and to be expected given the information I was given about the car. Parts for the 2 litre O series aren't too difficult to obtain and there's even a local firm that I'm told specialise in engine rebuilds of any variety for not obscene amounts of money so I might be going that route.

My immediate plan is to get a compression test, buy a second hand battery, a spark plug and an O ring for the carburettor. I'm going to see if the local hydragas specialist will come out and pump up the suspension for a nominal fee, he's only about 4 miles away, and we'll go from there.