1980 Austin Princess mild custom - 1951 Lanchester LD10

Holy curse word! £370 for a loom!!

In the hot rod world a full 12 fuse universal loom is not a lot more than £120.

So here's the thing - making your own loom up can be rewarding but its mind numbingly tedious - to do it right you need the correct tools and there not that cheap and has Glen states there are so many other things you could be concentrating upon in order for you to return the car to the road - all of us on here would like to see that happen - and you are very capable of doing so - its always very easy to loose interest when things go wrong - then the damp dark cold weather comes along and well I don't need to preach - you know the rest - you've been there and done it several times and have all the T shirts etc along with the rest of us - I'm going to throw a little incentive your way - Has I've already stated I have a set of brand new 16" tyres at the barn that I'm pretty certain will fit your rims - I've put your name on them - they came to me on Jowett rims on a car I purchased that I have since sold - they are just gathering dust doing nothing and they are yours FOC - I don't want anything for them - hopefully that's saved you £150 + (I think they have inner tubes with them - I need to get them taken off the rims) - I don't need any thanks etc but I would like you to order a new wiring harness for the car - my sincere apologies for the arm up your back approach etc and please don't be offended by my offer - You will have a lot more fun with a new harness and a wiring diagram than any attempt at making up your own loom that I can assure you - Either Glen or samta22 are heading my way at some at some stage in the near future so getting the tyres over to you wont be an issue either

I did say there were lots of differing opinions... I've seen issues with both soldering and crimped connectors and over the years have used both, the important thing with either is to support the cable properly, if it vibrates they both break eventually.

As for making or buying a loom it depends on your mindset, if you want to treat it as a learning excercise and a hobby make one, I enjoy doing so, if your pushed for time or are worried about the prospect buy one.

Unless you want to experience the joy of destroying connectors, incorrectly crimping things and then wondering why they fall out, realising you cut that wire too short and have to solder a gap or wrapping and rewrapping a loom twenty times until everything is so sticky that you no longer need any kind of cable clips, then I would wholeheartedly recommend getting a complete loom from somewhere else.

I had to modify part of mine (fitting new fuel injector plugs and extending some wires), and that was plenty. And I actually like working on the electric side of things.

goldnrust: You put it better than I could myself. There's no rush on this project, it's something my partner and I are enjoying working on together as and when our spare time permits. It's always good to save money, and we do want to do that, but we'll do a bit more research into what's actually involved in buying the parts, etc. and then make a decision on if we want to go pre-made, or scratch built, for the wiring. Either way, the wiring will get done, just to make the car safe.

---

Our first arrival of the day was some useful literature. Also a tweed jacket I fancied, always buy off-season, it's much more affordable. I was surprised to find the correct book for my specific car on eBay for £10 delivered, and delighted at the battered appearance, perfect for the car.


I then spent another couple of hours on this today. Acquired some black T-cut to use after the regular plain T-cut and get rid of the white-ish marks wherever there was texture or panel edges. My first job was to spend some more time with the sandpaper smoothing the worst of the surface rust off that front wing. It revealed some excellent layers and texture, and even some paint that almost held a shine.






I managed to get the wing as far as looking a little shinier than the flat paint on the other side.


A little bit more time and I had the other wing done, a significant transformation.


When you're doing this sort of job, it can sometimes be a bit difficult to remind yourself just how much you've done. I like to leave an area in the middle of refinished areas if I can, so I have something to come back to for a sense of achievement and to keep myself on target with progress. It also makes for excellent before and after photographs.


After about an hour and a half's graft, I had both front wings, the bonnet, the infill panel behind the bumper, and both engine side panels done. I was giving it three or four passes with regular T-cut until the fogging was gone as much as possible, and then finishing with one or two passes of black T-cut which really helps deepen the colour and draws the eye away from the worst of the scratches. Some of the scratches on the panels are really very bad, I'm not sure what the goal was by whoever was doing it. Wherever the original paint has survived it takes a shine very quickly and is a joy to work with.





Another half an hour or so and I had almost a quarter of the roof done. Unfortunately there's not a lot of space in the garage and even less light, so I couldn't go further than this. I also did what I could reach of the scuttle.


Now we really just have to wait for the spark plugs to arrive so that we can try and drive the car. Partner and I do not want to push this car again unless we absolutely have to, Made a start cleaning the engine bay too, didn't get very far thanks to the heat. There has been some rewiring, it's not terrible on the face of things, it just doesn't look great. We assume this had been either rotted original wiring, or mouse damage, or both. Either way, it reinforces our desire to rewire the car.


There's some nice plates on the bulkhead.


The bonnet release is the bonnet mascot on this car (some readers will already be aware of this clever little feature). The front stud/bolt is missing entirely so we'll need to replace that.




All in all, a satisfying few days of work. The only other item of note is that there are signs the car had a roof rack fitted at some point, dimples and wear on the gutters right where you'd expect clamps to be. It's very unlikely we'll fit a roof rack to the car again ourselves.

General consensus does lean towards "if you can buy one ready made, do" when it comes to wiring then. I missed that whole conversation while I was typing up the post. Other half and I had a look at what tools we need, connectors, space to lay out the old loom to copy it, and the new loom to build it, trying to get our head around any modifications that might have been made to the existing loom that we don't need to keep... and so on.

We were leaning more towards the 'buy a ready made one' and honestly, @grumpynorthener's offer of tyres cinches the deal. Getting new tyres on is just above getting new wiring for the car and was going to be the next reasonable spend since we'll need inner tubes, fitting, etc. and our arms have been collectively twisted here. It's hardly even a decision.

Now, new wiring isn't going to happen immediately, it will still need saving up for, we still need to settle 100% on the extras (we're at about 90% certain on what we want) for the loom and all that, so it'll be a month or two probably. We're being a little cautious, as is everyone, since we're both on slightly reduced income due to Covid and buying the Lanchester in the first place was something of a gamble.

This here is a prime example of why I keep these threads. Opinions other than my own help inform decisions, and often bring to light things I would otherwise be unaware of. We are currently very much in the honeymoon period with this old car and it is bringing us both a great amount of joy just sitting there doing nothing. Eventually it is going to throw up something frustrating, it would be very strange if it didn't. There must be a reason the car was parked up in '84, we just haven't found it yet.

Buying a loom is a good move.
I've only built one loom, on a sit up and beg ford, so simple apart from the relays and fuses I added.
It wasn't that hard to make something that worked well and would be long term reliable, but it did look out of place.
I should have bought one.

I'm sure all 3 or the cars next owners curse me regularly as I wired the whole car in red or black 😂
Such a simple car though so pretty obvious what was what.

I haven't looked at the loom that's available, but if it is made to look sort of period then even better.

Having messed about with a car with a dodgy loom in the past, I can only say that a new loom has to be the best choice, an iffy loom can give you intermittent problems all over the place, ive also been sitting in a car when it had a fire behind the dash. You don't want that. For the money it costs a new loom will give you many levels of goodness.

I really like the way this is going, the work youve done so far is great, that rear seat has come up lovely.

Remembered to do a light test while it was dark. Brake lights are currently inoperative, probably bad connections somewhere, they were working on sidelights when we got the car. Managed to persuade the front sidelights to operate with a bit of a wiggle and a bump. Semaphore active too. The semaphores are quite visible in the dark at least and seem to illuminate the edges of the car, making it more visible too.


Headlights (which look much brighter here than they are in person) and the other more orange replacement semaphore in action.


The instrument illumination is quite poor, it wasn't much better than this in person. The numbers did seem to glow a bit in person, I don't know if that was an illusion or if they actually do have a glowing property. Suffice to say, I couldn't see a thing on the dials regardless, even with the Oil and Ign lights extinguished to allow the instrument lights to appear more bright.