1980 Austin Princess mild custom - 1951 Lanchester LD10

Once dried out it shouldn't be to difficult to track down the leaks, an assistant outside with a hose or watering can and you inside with a torch. Worked for me on various cars.

I did consider that, but the door card is dry. We'll see tomorrow if my latest attempt to fix it actually worked. For now, here's a new vid. Contains tea shelf.

We spent a wet winters afternoon back in the day finding a leak on a Maestro, and as xfu990 states, it was the roof gutter.

Seem to remember pumping sikoflex around the screen to try to get a seal, others swear by Captain Trolley's sealant (I just swear at it because it never worked for me)

Also have a look if it's had a new clutch cable sometimes the bulkhead grommets don't go back quite in the right place, or any other grommets on the bulkhead of course

Arbomast will be good for your rear light cluster too.

Forgive my ignorance - can Arbomast be used to "top up" a slightly sun baked seal as a temporary solution?

Arbomast is one of the best suggestions I've had on here, never had it fail to fix a leak since first using it on the Renault 6 I used to own. Fantastic product.

Everyday is a school day, thanks for sharing the info on Arbomast, most useful.

The next video will be going up on Tuesday the 5th of January. All video uploads after that will be on Tuesdays and I'm aiming for a maximum of 1 per week, and a minimum of 1 per month. Depending on how much content I actually have available, and how popular the uploads prove to be, will dictate how often I upload, it's a part-time thing after all.

The next video will go into more detail on the leak hunting, how it's done, and how confusing it can be, what worked and what didn't. In the meantime, here's some update to tide you over until upload day rolls around. So, I did think the water was coming in through the seam on the a pillar to sill panel under the door seal. by the looks of the black paint that's been applied, someone else thought along these lines too. The seam was a bit gappy (there's a few factory seams like this, just seems to be a case of cba from new) so I loaded it up and smoothed it out as best I could with some seam sealer and, once dry, plonked the door seal back on.


Then it was a case of waiting for some rain, which came along fairly promptly. Had my attempt to seal up the rear light cluster worked?




Initial signs were very promising, until I checked the light cluster itself.


I also found water was still getting into the front so I removed the door card. The drain holes in the door were clear, and the moisture membrane looks to have never been disturbed so it didn't look as though the water was getting in that way. I did find out why the front door speaker on this side (and probably the other side, I've not looked into it yet) wasn't working which is that the paper cone has failed and water was getting onto the connections. I unplugged the speaker and plugged it back in and now it works again.




With all that done, I started putting tools away and found I'd gained an assistant. Showed willing, just a little slow.


Buttoned everything up, left the car again and the weather dutiful rained all over everything and I found water was still getting in. I was fairly confident it was getting past the seal on the rear light cluster now but not sure about how it was getting in at the front so decided to load up the one spot where the roof seams meet the windscreen seal with some Captain Tolley's Creeping Crack Cure. A lot of product disappeared into the seal so my gut feeling was that this was the culprit. Sure enough, some rain later and the product had reappeared inside the car and since I knew where I'd put it in and now know where it got out I can somewhat confidently say that it's the windscreen seal or bonding that's failed which is letting the water in up front.


Because I was fed up of bailing out water every time I wanted to use the car, I stuck the Lanchester's half-cover on. This proved successful at keeping the rain out and since it covered the two suspected ingress points, I felt like I was on the right track. Then Storm Bella happened and broke the cover, so I had to sew that back together again and bail quite a bit of water out of the car.


Then it was a case of waiting for products to arrive. Covid restrictions and the festive period meant everything was delayed until today, when most items turned up. This included some butyl tape which I used on the rear light cluster. My other attempts at making a seal for this had failed because the seals weren't fat enough. I used two layers of tape and that might have been too much. Hopefully it will fill wherever the void actually is in the cluster and prevent further water ingress. Up front I used some Arbomast sealant. I then took the car for a drive to try and warm it up and dry it out before leaving it overnight to see whether or not it lets any water in... it probably won't rain now, unlike every other night just recently.




It's a slightly messy job with the Arbomast, I'll clean off the excess once I know I don't need to put more in, the stuff is non-setting so it's quite easy to clean up at any point after the fact. There was quite a large void behind the windscreen trim on the driver's side so I wonder if the bonding material on this side just wasn't adequate. Fingers crossed that this solves it, Arbomast is usually really good stuff for this sort of job. Another arrival was the Metro head restraint trims because I was fed up of the passenger one rattling. The car didn't have any trims on this side so it was the metal bars of the head restraint rattling against the metal socket inside the seat, the plastic trim acts as a bush and sort of locking mechanism so the restraint is adjustable. I managed to break one of the trims, but luckily the seller had one left so I've ordered that and will replace the broken one when it arrives. Case of me being slightly hamfisted and the plastic being very old and fragile.


nother item to arrive was the seed bulbs so I could sort out the one telltale that had failed. Happily that was just a blown bulb and was the only bulb in the dashboard that wasn't working.




Someone mentioned that the clock looked like it wasn't illuminated. Now, I was pretty sure it was but it didn't go brighter or dimmer when you turned the lights on so I thought it best to see what was actually going on with that. Looks like whoever did the fuse repair also did the bulb repair here and there's an LED soldered in place of the bulb holder. Funnily enough, I do have the bulb holder for this, it was in the car, and the new bulbs I've got are a direct fit. Once I dig out the soldering iron we'll undo this repair and put a proper bulb and holder in there.


Another exciting order to arrive was the new headlining material and glue. The board in the car is in reasonable, if not perfect, condition and since the Maestro is a hatchback I'm hoping removal of the board will be fairly hasslefree. Trying to get moulded headlining boards out of saloon cars is a horror all its own. I went for a generic pale grey rather than anything exciting since the more exciting options I could find weren't the sort of material I wanted to use.




Shock absorbers also arrived today, as did the front bumper corner that was feared lost in the post which actually arrived two weeks late. No fault of the seller on that one, just a victim of seasonal circumstances. Plenty of good content still to come on this car. Annoyingly, since resolving the rattling head restraint I'm now aware of the rattling aerial, something I hope to resolve when I have the headlining out since I should then have good access to it. I imagine a trim clip or bit of foam, or something of that sort, has come loose and is allowing the aerial housing to rattle inside the A-pillar. I've got a valve cover gasket on the way to cure the one oil leak I know the car has. I also suspect the manifold gasket might have failed which is the cause of the blowing exhaust noise I can't pin down. If the gasket has blown out underneath the manifold where I can't get in to feel for exhaust come out, that would explain it, especially since the car quietens down considerably once warm. Gaskets are plentiful and cheap, happily. Everything needed on this car seems to be plentiful and cheap, it's so nice to be able to so easily find things.