1980 Austin Princess mild custom - 1951 Lanchester LD10

@everyone: big thank you for putting up with my ups and downs. With your help and support, and a little luck, we'll get there with the ungrateful little green toad.

djefk: I'm my own worst enemy really, I shouldn't set myself up for so much info all at once and stagger it instead.

jonw: Like the BBC, I seek to educate and entertain. When the Renault does run I think I will at once be very happy with it and swear at it a lot. It'll be a special moment. For now, we're pretending it doesn't exist.

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I am as happy today as the Renault made me unhappy yesterday.  That's very happy indeed.  Today was an opportunity to do some good with the Princess since I'd booked a chap to come out and sort my suspension out and see what else I could do on the car to make things a bit more finished and complete.  Inside the car, the rear seats have a little bit of vinyl trim that goes on the body beside the seat base, you can't see it when it's fitted but sometimes see painted bodyshell when it isn't.

 
At the front, I finally got the A pillar kickplates in and the fresh air vent pipes reinstalled.  I'm still missing two strips of black carpet for the inner sills, not vital at the moment and easily resolved with just some black stuff which I'll do eventually.

 

 
All of the glass got a clean inside and out and everything got vacuumed and dusted inside the car which I haven't done for months.  It does need a full deep clean, for now it's just nice and tidy.  I got the lower section of the dashboard fitted bar one or two screws and managed to get the bracket for the large ashtray that lives under the switchbank to fit properly so that's also ready to go in now.  There's no wiring behind this piece so it made sense to fit it since it's quite a large item to have flopping around the place.

 
I'm really happy with how much tidier the interior is looking now, almost like a real car.  On the outside, Mike was busy fitting my new number plates.  I'm really pleased with how the rear one looks, it makes so much sense of what the various lights are doing and looks far better than it did in my head.  There's some more work to do on the paint and the exhaust tailpipe needs tweaking a little, other than that I'm really happy with the back end of the car now, even the foglights I wasn't certain of before.

 
Mike also fitted the front number plate once we figured out how to use the original Princess brackets that needed a slight trim.  This I'm also delighted with, it's really tidy and clean and the numberplate is both visible, discreet and sits now lower than the sump.  Absolutely perfect.

 
You may have noticed the car is sitting a little higher and level.  That's because the suspension is now pumped up.  I had the opportunity to drive around the yard to resettle the suspension part way through the job and it but the biggest, stupidest grin on my face that I just couldn't get rid of.  I'd forgotten just how quick the Princess could be but certainly hadn't forgotten how fun it is.  The brakes are better than I remember too.

 
This does mean I can update my list!
MoT list update:
> connect fog lights
> connect number plate lights
> stick number plates on - DONE
> make hazard switch work
> make the indicator lights work - DONE
> pump up the suspension - DONE
> fit the new tyres
> fit a new washer jet pump
> tune the carb.
> find the loose steering component

I liked your most recent post, but I feel I must type "LIKE" as well!

This maybe way way back in your thread but what's your ultimate goal with the paint?

Awesome! Keep it up!

Princess progress again, folks. First thing to illustrate is how much lower than the number plate the sump is. I'm really happy with how much lower the car looks on the front than it really is and the number plate location is a big part of that visual trickery. Rust is just some surface where the paint was thin from an unfinished job and outdoor storage, I'll be rectifying that soon.




Found the central ashtray in the garage today and got that back in place.




Tried out the various bits and bobs to see what would work. For one brief, brilliant moment, everything did! Apart from the horn and two of the dash binnacle illumination. The main beam telltale is almost invisible, the lens is a really dark blue.







I wanted to see what the lights looked like properly at night and was impressed at just how huge they look on the back end. I should be pretty hard to miss. They're like rocket boosters, which pleases me.








Apart from the aim being off, the new halogens up front are pretty good too with a noticeable difference between dip and main beam.




I replaced the side repeater that wasn't working, the one I removed just sort of fell apart so it's no wonder it wasn't working. The new one went in really easily, one of the quicker jobs on the car.




Dug out the mk1 screen wash bottle from the spares stash and was going to use the matching pump I had but the connectors were wrong, so I used a brand new pump Mike gave me last year which is a proper match. The pump needs fastening down but I now have working washer jets again. That's an MoT job off the list!






Removed the mechanical fuel pump to reseal it and found all but about 5mm of the bottom of the spacer block was actually sealing really well. The spacer block isn't deformed or cracked and bonded so well to the pump itself you can't remove it without more force than I was willing to put in since it's working fine that side. I tried fitting a thick paper gasket to stem the oil leak from this that has plagued me since fitting the mechanical pump, the only failure of this alteration really since it's perfectly fine as a pump at all speeds. Time will tell on this one.




Splashed some purple on the front wing to try out the full length two-tone. I do like it, the car looks really long in profile and it takes a lot of that visual weight out of the nose end of the car. For now, this is what I'll go with. Finding the best line over the arch flare was tricky.




Finally, I swapped the old boot lid on in favour of the green one that didn't fit so well. Stripping the paint was proving really difficult because it's ludicrously thick and barely anything touches it apart from the most recent respray I did some time ago. I decided to try out the alignment and had it fairly close I thought so went to just shut the boot to, but not on the latch, when it shut on the latch. Now it won't open. I've managed to shut tools, the manual and spares in the boot too. The lock works on the key but won't release so I'm not really sure how I'm going to fix this problem without damaging the boot lid. I've tried various prying, leaning, hitting, wiggling and easing of the boot lid to no avail. I'm not sure I'm small enough to fit through the cross-brace holes behind the back seat to get into the boot to release it from inside, it's not a job I'm looking forward to.






I believe I've found the cause of the electrical gremlin too. After having everything working, the horn stopped working properly, then the indicators gave up, then the rear heated screen switch wouldn't illuminate. Fuses are fine, what wiring I can see without dismantling the dashboard is also okay. The Princess did this when I bought it five years ago, in almost exactly the same way (I don't recall it blowing fuse #5 back then), and it was down to dirty switches and connections in the dashboard panel itself so I'll take the dashboard out and give everything a clean and check over. Hopefully that's all it really is.



MoT list update:

> connect fog lights
> connect number plate lights
> stick number plates on - DONE
> make hazard switch work
> make the indicator lights work - DONE
> pump up the suspension - DONE
> fit the new tyres
> fit a new washer jet pump - DONE
> tune the carb.
> find the loose steering component



P.S. the suspension stayed up! I was quite nervous going into the unit given this car's habit of consuming displacers, so that was a big relief.

If I can get to the two nuts holding the hinges in I can open the boot lid the wrong way and release the lock that way, I think. Tricky, but doable. I did try and bouncing on the lid thing, it didn't work, it's more like it's just got jammed at a funny angle, even though it's not at a funny angle.

The boot will be split to match (there's a picture a few posts ago) while the front will stay full beige. If I two tone the face it doesn't work because the line down the side doesn't carry around onto the front naturally. Ideally, I'd paint the face black and hide it all behind a curved fine tube chrome grille.

Well, the gasket has reduced the leak to a slow occasional drip. I can live with that for now. A better gasket and sealant may well resolve it.

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Mike has some spare time this week which has coincided nicely with my spare time too, we can really crack on with a lot of jobs. First one today was a bit of a car shuffle so the Micra could get out of the way of the lift and the Princess could take up residence. On going outside the car started running a bit rough, then dropped a cylinder, then died. Had a look at oil was puddling all around the spark plug under the distributor. Pulled it out and cleaned it up, checked there wasn't excessive oil coming up from under the plug (ie: knackered rings), and checked that it was in fact coming from the distributor instead. Looks like this has reached a critical point and on removing the distributor, the old O-ring which I can't remember replacing was very hard and flat like plastic.


Fitted a new one which makes putting the distributor back in difficult so that should do the trick.


Then got the car up on the ramp to have the first real up close and personal look at what the score is. I was aware of some oil leaks, quite a bad one on the passenger side. This was slightly embarrassing because it was just that I hadn't tightened the oil filter properly, at least it was easy to resolve. Lots of degreasing to do now.


All the while I've had the car there's been a leak that I've suspected was where the selector rods go into the gearbox. I've never been able to get the car on a lift at my leisure so it wasn't until today I could actually prove my theory true. Not quite sure what I need to replace here to stop it leaking.


The copper exhaust stay was checked out too. It's held up fairly well but is now tearing so I'll get this replaced with a steel bracket before the MoT since it's easy to do it with the car on the lift.


Long term readers will know I had to replace a lot of air and rust with fresh metal and will hopefully understand my being nervous about having a proper look under the car to see what I was still going to have to deal with. I have to say overall I was pleasantly surprised. The sections I've repaired, particularly the giant orange patch, are substantial but other than that it's all pretty solid. The underseal needs redoing, which I planned to do anyway, as that's seen much better days. Overall, it's not that frightening under here. My only concern is the state of the rear displacers, something I can't do much about since they're exposed to all the curse word and made of steel, not BL's best design decision that. All I can really do is give them a coat of rust converter and paint I think since they can't be dismantled to have the casings properly protected and repaired if needed.






Found a bit of bodge and/or dirt hiding on the inner wing where it closes the tool compartment section of the boot. An easy repair with the car on the lift but not one that's need for MoT so it can wait for now.


With me in the car on the lift and Mike underneath we tried to find where the play in the steering was. Nothing amiss underneath so the car came back down and as I was manipulating the wheel, Mike could watch the universal joint under the pedals and see it was just a little loose. A quick tighten of the nut and bolt and the play is gone. That's an MoT job and a previous fail item off the list!


The other big job was getting the boot open. The rear seat had to come out, which was easy enough, then the backing board had to have the rivets holding it in removed. This allowed much better access than I'd expected to the hinge bolts and the boot catch, removing the boot lid was very easy as a result. I can't get the catch out of the boot lock though, we can't figure out how it's got stuck the way it has so some fettling will be in order.

So close to having all three vehicles roadworthy!!!

I am of course assuming you've got the Renault licked once you go back to it with a fresh mind. Keep at it.

You can tell how modern a car is by how many cup holders it has. The Princess has three cup holding locations, it is therefore very modern.




Mike and I have been trying to get to the bottom of the problem of the weird electrical issue that has manifested. It's probably the car demonstrating pre-MoT nerves. Or a problem with the earth. Anyway, we got the fog lights working today after I dismantled the dashboard and the switch bank and cleaned it all up. Thing is, they only worked with the heated rear screen switch, not the fog light switch. Thinking I'd just got the connectors muddled I swapped them around and now they don't work at all, the fog light switch won't even illuminate where before both HRS and fog switches illuminated as normal. I do not understand this at all.


The high level brake light was installed too and tested. It works very nicely. Then the main brake lights wouldn't work.


Then only two brake lights wanted to work.


So we took the backs off the inner light clusters and all the brake lights work normally. The indicators are working properly again too. The hazards won't work because the relay appears to have died. The only loose wire found anywhere was the earth wire that connects between the bulkhead and the back of the radio. It's still blowing fuse #5. The wiring seems to check out but clearly something, somewhere, is wrong. I'm putting this down to it being sat doing very little for three years because the problem seems to be wandering around the car and affecting different items seemingly randomly.

I have had problems with the electrics on this car in the past, just never to this degree. Fuse #5 blowing is a complete mystery, there appears to be no cause for it though obviously there must be. The bulbs in the dashboard that aren't illuminating are perfectly fine, so it's odd that they won't light up. The rear lights do and have all worked so it's odd that occasionally they don't and not always in the same way. Normally you'd expect a loose connection or some corrosion to cause an issue like this but as far as we can find there's nothing of the sort and there aren't that many places to check as the wiring is, for a car, pretty simple. I do know it's not because some things have been modified from standard as we have had everything working without a problem, there's even photographs to prove things are working as they should. The fuse blowing has only started happening after this push to get the car MoT ready too, which is what makes that one extra odd.

I don't know, it's all very strange and mysterious because electrics. Mike's determined to figure out what the problem is and I'm going to try again to learn how to interpret the arcane symbols known as wiring diagrams and how they translate what you see in the physical plane.