1980 Austin Princess mild custom - 1951 Lanchester LD10

[vulgalour]

The fabric is amazing and matches the car really well. It wouldn't look that out of place in any number of budget 90s Italian hatchbacks in fact. Should be the quickest and easiest job to do so likely one of the first I tackle. The car came with a name as well as all those spare bits and pieces, it's the sort of car that's bound to end up with a name really, so this one is called Penelope and I'm okay with that.

@grumpynorthener:  It had the feel of a nice quiet little service station that people had just stopped caring about, which was kind of sad.

[vulgalour]

Hooray!

20170711-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



It had, annoyingly, got stuck in gear on the trailer so pushing it off was a bit frustrating.  It came out of gear again once it was off the trailer, typically.  After having a bit of a poke around the car and being deservedly ribbed/mocked for taking it on I cleared all the Stuff out of it.

20170711-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



The only item missing is half of the front passenger seatbelt which, if I remember rightly, were from a P6 with the Austin's original belts going in the back.  I'll just put the rear seatbelts back in the front, I never have rear passengers so I don't need rear belts and the car is old enough to be legal without them.

20170711-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



With everything organised and only a few bits of rubbish got rid of I could get on with inspected thing bodywork.  I know the car has already had some work and I know it needs work and, overall, there were no surprises.  It's what I'd consider borderline now I've had a proper look at what's what.  It's certainly good enough to be sorted out and about what I'd expect if I went out with money and actually tried to buy one.  I'd far rather take on a car whose problems I can see than one whose problems are hidden.  First port of call was under the back seat.  There has clearly been work here before to the subframe mounts, some of which I will be redoing as I'm not entirely happy with it.  It's solid, it's just not particularly weather tight so it needs a bit more fettling to be sorted.

20170711-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



On the passenger side the lower rear quarter has had a repair of the sort I dislike.  It's a lot of work to pull all of this out and won't see any real gain at this point so I'll leave it until the outer sill on this side needs doing.  The other repairs look a bit ugly but they are nice and solid and they don't look to have been done over grot so I'm comfortable enough with that to leave it for another day.

20170711-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



The inner rear quarter on the driver's side is finished much nicer and doesn't need any attention.  No real point snipping off the welding whiskers here either, they don't do any harm.

20170711-06 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



Under the seat on the driver's side has had work and will need investigating a little further to make sure this is actually okay.  This is the only bit that gave me any cause for concern on what I might discover when I dig so we'll see what happens when I get to this bit.

20170711-07 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



The reason for the cause for concern is what I found on the driver's side sill-to-floor join.  I knew this part was in need of repair and a panel is available for this area so it didn't bother me too much.  What I wasn't that thrilled about is that someone has fibreglassed this to hide a small problem which has inevitably made it much worse.  It's been this way for a long time, it was an odd find considering it's had full sills on in the past, it's such an easy fix when you're doing the sills I don't really get why you'd bodge it like this.

20170711-08 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



20170711-09 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


On to the front of the cabin next. The A pillar on the passenger side has already been repaired, and has had a bit of work on the heel board near the subframe mount and a small patch on the inner wing.  The driver's side has a hole that needs attending in the A pillar, seems perhaps a little soft around the subframe mount and may need a repair to the lower half inch or so of the inner wing.  Fairly normal stuff for cars of this age really.

20170711-18 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



20170711-19 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



The passenger footwell is in surprisingly good shape.  There's something sticky in the footwell, no idea what it is as it's odourless and colourless, just horrible.  Can't figure out where it's come from either.

20170711-10 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



I also found out after washing the car that water is getting through from under the dashboard somewhere.  I'll need to take the dashboard out to find out why.  There's still a few things disconnected so it may just be as simple as a missing rubber plug.

20170711-11 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



I'd already reckoned on potentially needing to replace the driver's front floor pan as it's a little on the tender side.  A go over with the vacuum confirmed this when I sucked some of the floor up the vacuum pipe.  It's a bit far gone for repair and since the panel is available it makes sense to replace it.

20170711-12 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



20170711-13 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



Got my first proper look in the boot too.  The repair that's been started will get chopped out, cleaned up and put back in again.  I want to reconstruct this area in a slightly different way that it's been done here.  Again, the welding looks worse than it really is and the pictures are not flattering.  The rust is fairly localised to the seam at the back and most of the boot floor looks in quite good shape.  I may end up dropping the rear subframe to clean this all up easier, we shall see.

20170711-14 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



20170711-15 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



20170711-16 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



Once inspected I could put everything back.  I'm missing the little nut/wheel for holding the spare wheel down, other than that everything seems present.  I'm also not sure if the boot seal is correct, though it is watertight.

20170711-17 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

[vulgalour]

That's all that needs doing inside the car.  There's not a lot of car so the work isn't as daunting as it might be on something larger.  In the engine bay, there is of course the missing section of wing.  The 'trumpet' is also missing so I'll need to replace both of those.  The outer wing this side needs to come off for repair/replacement anyway so this is going to be relatively straightforward to sort out.

20170711-20 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



20170711-21 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



At the front there's a repair needed to the subframe mount.  The other side has already been done in the past.  Looks an easy repair, providing care is taken with measurements.

20170711-22 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



No attempt was made to start the car.  While we did have a spare battery to hand, and could have got some fuel, because of the section of wing that's removed some of the wiring has also been disturbed and rather than trying to figure out what was going on with that, attention was turned instead to rust inspection today.  I'll have a look at the wiring and attempt to start the car once safe to do so.

20170711-26 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



I really like the very basic dash in this car.  I do have a higher spec dashboard which is in very nice condition, I just like this spartan one better, it seems to suit the car more than something fancier.

20170711-23 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



Once everything was inspected that could be I made a start putting things back in the places they live so I don't lose them.  A new carpet is going to be needed as the old one is fairly trashed, modern reproductions are available.

20170711-25 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



20170711-24 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



All in all, it's a bonny wee thing and while it definitely needs work and probably isn't worth restoring financially, I shall enjoy at least making the attempt.  Nothing looks impossible on this one, or particularly awkward.

20170711-27 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr



20170711-28 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

[vulgalour]

Since I wouldn't be spending time getting the car running today I decided to give it a much needed wash instead.  The paint is utterly shagged and... I kinda like that.  I also found the Reguvis mirrors I used to have on the Princess, they've since had the bad paint removed from them so are back to their factory black plastic finish.  These are really nice mirrors to drive with and considering the one mirror on this car is not that great and I've seen this Reguvis mirrors on other ADO16s, I'll be installing them once I've sorted the front wings out.  I'll be sure to place them slightly better too than in this picture.
20170711-32 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


The car scrubs up okay.  It's obviously cosmetically challenged, to say the least!  I'm okay with that, it's got character.  Eventually, I plan to repaint the whole thing in Aconite which is a similar purple to the one it is now.
20170711-29 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

20170711-30 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

20170711-31 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Once again, my thanks to Joe and his dad for assisting and for everyone else that has brought this project to me.  I hope my updates will entertain.

[astranaut]

I really like that, and really isn't that bad corrosion wise, seen a few newer cars with much worse. Nice alternative to a Mini

[MiataMark]

That's going to make a great little runabout.

[vulgalour]

I'm trying very hard not to get ahead of myself. There's some slotmags in the unit that aren't on anything at the moment that I believe are the same PCD... it's a slippery slope, I need to fix things first.

[blackpopracing]

You do have the oddest taste in cars, lol.
Slot mags, yes could look OK if not deep dish.

[vulgalour]

Isn't the offset on these something absurd like 55? You can't really have any dish up front, I mean look how far that hubcaps sticks out! You can get some on the back. I've been told 14" is the biggest wheel you can fit without serious arch fettling too.

[darrenh]

a bit of me is thinking "that austin is so cool"

the other bit of me is thinking you got rid of the renault because too many projects were crushing morale.

out of the frying pan, into the fire ?

[vulgalour]

I got rid of the Renault because of the stupid engine and yes, too much to do. The Austin popped up when there was a lot less to do, with both my other cars fully road legal and not throwing any time consuming things at me for a while I could comfortably take this one on.

The frustration I was having above all else was all three of my cars when I had the Renault were parts nightmares. The Princess there's barely anything for that isn't engine related, the Rover kept having different things fitted to what was listed for it and the Renault combined both of these issues together. It wasn't ideal.

With the Austin all the mechanical parts are readily available and all the repair panels are readily available. Most of the bits I need are very, very cheap too. There's very little I need to buy, unlike with the others, and while the front floor pan is quite expensive, everything else isn't so it shouldn't be that much of a money pit either.

Most of all though, I took on the Austin because it's a car I've wanted for ages and it was free. An opportunity like that doesn't come along very often so I grabbed it while I could. If I come to regret it later, well, we'll deal with that when I get there.

[79cord]

Dubious previous repairs certainly are not encouraging but it is a stylish interesting body with much more common long-lived mechanicals (in Britain).
Fold down rear seats?
I'd have thought more of an indigo & bottle green tartanish cloth would be the only way you could get a green/purple striped cloth to have a hope of looking reasonable...
Though I like to believe you can get away with anything if you do it right.

[vulgalour]

I like tartan, and I'd likely get a nice purple-green tartan if I hadn't been given the fabric with the car that I have. I already have a green-themed crochet blanket I made ages ago so I reckon that'll find it's way into the car

---

Since I'd like to get this running this week if I can I've been trying to get everything reinstated and find out what might be amiss, if anything. There were several earth points to reattach on the inner wing with the chunk cut out of it. You can also see two thick brown-and-white wires with nothing attached to them. I've not investigated this further yet, there's nothing they obviously attach to that's still in the engine bay or the stash of spares, so I'm not sure what those are for at the moment.
20170712-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

20170712-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

One of the wires for the coil had pulled out of its spade connector, so I crimped a new one on. Unfortunately the bolts that hold the coil clamp to the bellhousing have been cross threaded in the past so I need to retap those before I can fit the coil properly.
20170712-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

20170712-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

I'm not 100% certain this spring is installed correctly for the clutch slave cylinder. It seemed correct. I'll need to rebuild that cylinder too, the rubber boot doesn't look too clever and clutch operation is a bit hit and miss.
20170712-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

I found a purple and a black wire in the engine bay that didn't go anywhere and chased them back inside the car where they also didn't go anywhere. I assume these are from the radio that was fitted and since removed. Thankfully they hadn't been spliced into the original loom and had been routed very neatly so were easy to remove and have gone in the spares in case they prove useful for putting a radio in the car. In the process of chasing these out, I removed the dashboard. Annoyingly, none of the manuals I've got show exactly how to do this for this particular dashboard so I just had to figure it out on my own. I also found out the car has two ignition barrels, something I'd failed to notice until today. I'd like to return it to just the column barrel rather than the one in the dash panel so we'll have to see what I do about that one.
20170712-06 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

With the dash out I thought I might as well investigate the heater box which was a bit wobbly. There's a few loose things here and there, entirely expected since the car has been worked on recently and I knew bulkhead work had been done. I was also hoping to find the water ingress, unfortunately that wasn't to be as there's no obvious point it's coming in. What does need doing is a little bit of welding under here as a couple of the mounting points for the heater box are missing. It's the usual rust story for this area from what I've seen of other projects and much of it has already been sorted out so I just need to do a little bit of finishing work.
20170712-07 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Once home I sorted out the various loose fixings I'd got, some of which I know the destination of, some I don't, and some I'm sure are from an entirely different car. The ashtray bracket is present in the car, the ashtray itself needs glueing back together. Incidentally, this is exactly the same ashtray as fitted to the later Princess/18-22/Wedge, had I known that when I was trying to find a replacement my search would have been easier.
20170712-08 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Engine bay is looking more organised now. I put the water sheild thing back on and after a lot of headscratching finally found out where the washer jets were located. I've never seen the strange hidden jet arrangement these have before, for a while I thought someone had blanked them off for some reason. I reattached one of the detached pipes to the back of the dashboard pump too. The rubber hoses are in surprisingly good shape, I always expect them to be hard and perished on a car like this.
20170712-09 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Picked up a pair of 11" wiper blades for a tenner from the local autofactors. Luckily the bayonet fittings from the old wipers swapped onto the new ones. This is better than the sponges I had on there temporarily.
20170712-10 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

I ran out of time to do any more at the unit so I brought the rear door cards home with me to see if I can get the speakers out of them. I didn't have time to remove the front ones, I'll try and do that tomorrow. Once these and the parcel shelf are removed I can order enough board to make them new and some scrim foam before recovering them all. I may have to do the dashboard too, it turns out the sticky stuff in the passenger footwell is actually glue, it's all over the back of the dashboard where the fresh vinyl is applied and just oozing off which is annoying because the green vinyl retrim is a really nicely done job and one I was going to leave alone.
20170712-11 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

The fabric that came with the car for the retrimming work is a bold design and not one I might have chosen for anything else. I've not decided if I'll use it the usual way or the reverse side yet, both sides really suit the car far better than you might expect. I'll probably do the parcel shelf in plain green vinyl since fabric on a parcel shelf tends to fade very quickly.
20170712-12 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

I'll be going in tomorrow and hopefully getting to the bottom of those wires and getting some things to light up. The engine turns freely and appears to have reasonable compression so I'm optimistic it will run without too much effort.

[vulgalour]

Public Service Announcement

Photobucket. Yep. I've been using them for about five years, happily paying until this last 12 months or so when they've been a bit rubbish and now they've gone and shot themselves in the balls. Unfortunately, this puts me in a bit of a metaphorical house fire. Luckily, my photographs are all backed up and kept in order so I won't lose them. Unluckily, they really need the context of a build thread.

Some time between December 2017 and April 2018 my account will go from affordable £2pcm to stupid £400pcm. Obviously I'm not going to pay for that. In fact, Photobucket's stunt is so stupid that as soon as I've re-linked and re-hosted the Rover and Princess threads, I'll be stopping my subscription with that company.

As a result, you may see some of the posts on this thread go dead in a few months. At present I'm working on salvaging the Princess thread I have on autoshite since that's the longest running location and will be the easiest point of reference to update all the others. Unfortunately I reckon I'll run out of time to update some of the other build threads for the rarer cars like the Renault 6TL and Xantia estate I've had.

I'm really quite angry about this. Photobucket have made such a peculiar decision with this, it's commercial suicide. What's worse is what it's done to quite a lot of obscure, useful information. More and more I'm reading threads where the photographs that illustrate the point clearly and succinctly are completely gone. To see so much information gathered over so many years and which people have used so frequently just disappear is, quite frankly, incredibly upsetting.

If I'd lost everything on a free host - like the one I'm using now; Flikr - then I wouldn't be so angry, bandwidth costs money, that's facts. It's that plenty of people were actually paying a small, competitive fee every month and putting up with some really curse word service and now many of them have lost all of their photographs, some of which are of much greater personal worth than some tutorial illustrations.

Any new images are obviously going up on the new account, so you won't see the Austin pictures vanishing or any of the Rover and Princess updates from this point forwards. I think I'll end up wearing out the ctrl/c/v keys over the next few weeks/months.

[vulgalour]

I had caught that, it's just not the solution I need for the build threads. It's good for everything else and I do make use of it in other places on the forum.

[Rob]

the spring on the clutch slave is totaly correct

[darrenh]

Jul 13, 2017 10:45:53 GMT vulgalour said:

I had caught that, it's just not the solution I need for the build threads.

not the forum uploader solution, theres another one where he has made some code to make retrorides turn the photobucket speedos back into their original images, while still being hosted on photobucket

of course that means people still have to use photobucket to make the fix work, which is a paradox

i'm with you on this one, i've always wanted control over my photos and hosting

[vulgalour]

Today, we took a look at sorting the wiring out. The wiring diagrams in the books come close to helping but fall just short, this car has a slightly different wiring loom to any in the book. It's not clear if this one started with a dynamo or an alternator either, the wiring diagrams confused rather than clarified this particular point. There has been some tinkering with the wiring in the past but surprisingly, no actual bodge. The ignition switch in the dash is non-original and the column ignition has anti-tamper fixings which will make changing that challenging. I'll leave it as it is for now.
20170713-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

At the moment it's a case of figuring out what's been disconnected for welding work and what can be just removed temporarily as other things are worked on. The heater box was proving a little annoying flopping around in the car so that was taken out. The pipes had got caught around the accelerator pedal linkage too which was a bit annoying. With that and the control panel removed there was a lot less parts and cables flopping around in the way.
20170713-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

There is still coolant in the system so rather than have it spit it all out we bypassed the heater hoses so the circuit is fine for testing. Then it was on to fault finding. The starter motor that was in the boot was actually fine while the one on the car was completely dead, so those were swapped over. The solenoid switch under the bonnet worked when one of the brown/white wires was reconnected which allowed us to spin up the starter. However, the car then started to earth through the choke cable, which was less than ideal. That was removed and the bellhousing-to-wing earth point cleaned up which cured the earth issue. The throttle cable was also removed as the peg end that goes into the pedal assembly was jammed in the bulkhead and on trying to remove it I managed to damage one of the sheath ferrules. I'll replace both of these cables if I can, I imagine they're standard parts.
20170713-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

20170713-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Mike and the wiring diagram managed to decipher and relocate almost all the wires. We were left with one brown/white cable that didn't have an identifier and a dead ignition switch. After some multi-meter work we figured out where it went after doing some brainstorming and checking the shape of the wire to see where it wanted to sit and then everything was connected.
20170713-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

At the same time we learned why it spat brake fluid out on collection day. It wasn't a burst pipe after all, it was a totally missing brake line. This was presumably removed when the inner wing repair was started.
20170713-06 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Earlier in the day I'd put some water in the washer bottle and tested the manual button. They work, which is one less job to worry about.
20170713-07 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Fuel was also got and after a while of cranking we got that through to the filter. Going to need a new filter or three to make sure no gunk gets through into the carb.
20170713-08 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Then it was the big one. We now theoretically had everything connected to fire off the ignition key so we turned the key and...
20170713-09 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr


HOORAY! Great success. We've got headlight, sidelight, rear running lights and wipers all functional. Indicator relay seems to have died as it's silent so we have no indicators and we can't test the brakes at the moment. There's no fog light, hazards or reverse light to test. I also forgot to check the interior light.
20170713-10 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

20170713-12 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

After some more testing we found there was no spark at the plugs. This could be a number of very basic things like the coil or the points or the condenser. Happily, the engine does crank very willingly and sounds quite healthy doing so. I'm very optimistic about this one. Mike dug out a NOS coil with a suitable listing on the back of it so we're going to try that on the next visit.
20170713-13 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Just ran out of time to do more work on the car today. It will be running very soon, of that I have no doubt. The other job I'd been doing at home was the rear door cards, last night I misted them with water and left a large concrete slab on each card. Today they were very nearly completely flat so I'm going to deem those salvagable which saves me buying new board. To fix the speaker holes I can use the board from the back of some old art supplies. Cut one circle to fill the hole so it's level with the old card.
20170713-14 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Then use a full A4 board on the back to hold everything in place before a scrim foam or layer of fleece and finally the new fabric to cover them. Very nice easy job to put right and will improve the interior no end when done.
20170713-15 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

[hohocc]

Very interested to see how you go on the door cards. I've got some Hunter door cards that were similarly butchered 29 years ago by some teenage fool, oh hang on that was me... Anyway would like to tidy them up sometime!

[vulgalour]

hehe, well when I get onto those I'll be sure to update. I've got to figure out what I'm doing about the parcel shelf, someone has cut holes for a pair 6x9s in it! The bathroom carpet that was covering them turned to dust when I removed it from the car so I can't very well reuse it.

----

Right then. I said I'd have this engine running today didn't I? Mike had gone into the unit ahead of me and retapped those threads in the bellhousing, he'd also tested the old coil and found it was indeed dead and so had installed the new one. The last thing he'd done was clean up the points in the distributor cap. When I turned up we then went through the basics and found we had weak spark at the points and no further. A quick check of the points gap, which was book-perfect (a first on any car I've worked on, this is usually messed up) and a clean of the surfaces and we had a nice healthy spark. A press of the starter solenoid and...



WOOHOO!


Not only does it run, it runs really, really sweetly on the dregs of whatever's in the tank and one jerry can of fuel and with ignition components of unknown age. The oil in it is still as clean as if it were put in yesterday and even the air filter is in reasonable condition. There is no engine work to do. There's no smoke. There's no leaks (beyond the usual A series rocker cover ooze). This... this is a BIG thing and I'm incredibly pleased because the biggest chunk of stress for me in any project isn't going to be. We did only have one issue which is that the ignition key no longer starts the car for some reason, so you turn it to the on position, open the bonnet and press the solenoid to get going instead. This is fine for now, but will need investigating before the car is in proper use as I reckon that particular novelty will wear off pretty quickly.

Bodywork next then, since there's NOTHING ELSE TO DO.


*ahem* There might have been some hammer action in a few places on the wings. Nothing serious, it was just less messy to knock out filler than to use the flapwheel or anything else. To be honest, I'm surprised how little filler there is in the car, even were you can obviously see it there's barely anything by old Austin standards. I decided to start on the front wings because they're the most visible part and, potentially, the most difficult since they need to look at least a bit nice. It also means I can find out if I need to replace them whole or repair them. The driver's side one is very, very bad, even where there isn't rusty holes the metal is very thin. There's not much of use on it.
20170714-03 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

So I chopped it off. I needed to do this anyway to do the inner wing repairs.
20170714-04 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

While everything is undersealed and that has saved a fair bit of the car, the trumpet is completely toast. Only one bit of fibreglass added right at the back of the trumpet, so it's relatively free of bodge, it's just done what they always do. Going to be a chore to remake this if I can't source a replacement, it's a funny shape.
20170714-05 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

At the front the subframe mount isn't as bad as expected. There's a lot of good metal still here, for all it looks brown and there is a hole, I gave it a good prod and it's nice and solid for the most part so that should repair quite well. Where the inner wing meets the valance needs a little tickle with the welder.
20170714-06 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Where the inner wing meets the A pillar is similarly better than it looks. The old underseal had lifted and trapped moisture, on scraping it off the metal is surprisingly sound underneath with just a small bit at the bottom needing attention. This was a very pleasant surprise, I was expecting horrors.
20170714-07 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

The closing panel on the wing has holed. The replacement wing I've got has done the same, just not as bad, so I'll repair the panel before fitting it. The bit in the foreground is a wing stay, presumably to give the wing some rigidity, they're very flimsy once they're off the car.
20170714-08 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

There's nothing more I can really do on the driver's side until the inner wing panel arrives (thanks Rich from ado16.info for that) so I moved on to the passenger side and hit all the suspect areas with the flapwheel to see what I was dealing with. The trailing edge of the wing was better than anticipate and the headlight bowl much worse. This wing isn't too far gone so I'll be repairing it, which is just as well because the replacement I've got for this side is incomplete. When I can afford to I'll put a pair of new wings on the car, for now repairs and second-hand panels will do fine.
20170714-09 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Got the bumper off too so I could inspect the front end. There is rust, obviously, but there's also a lot more metal than I expected to find. I have everything I need to repair the areas that need it, the necessary bits came with the car. I'm not de-bumpering this one, though it would be easy, as I prefer them with the bumper.
20170714-10 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

More poking and this big lump fell off. A lot of metal still underneath this massed patch/clump so there's still stuff to work with and I've got a spare piece on the donor wing. It's a classic turn of the century repair when newspaper was falling out of favour; fibreglass resin and aluminium mesh were at this time competitively priced with the more traditional materials and began to take precedence.
20170714-11 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

20170714-12 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Much procrastination later I eventually took a deep breath, got the angle grinder, and set to work. The bottom bit of the wing I can salvage from the front lower corner of the wing I chopped off which will give me most of the profiles I need to rebuild where the wing meets the sill. It's a really complicated set of shapes to try and make from scratch.
20170714-13 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Bits chopped out of the donor wing and offered up. Measure twice, cut once, works really well if your measurments are any good. I ended up having to put a bridge panel in for the headlight join because I'd cut it perfectly 2mm too small on the top. Well done me. I don't have another wing to chop up and since I plan to replace these, this is an adequate repair. I'll say one thing for ADO16 steel, it's a pleasure to weld compared to 70s Renaults, 80s Austins and 90s Citroens! In fact, even though this job went less than perfectly it's some of the most enjoyable fabrication I've done purely because of the quality of the steel I was working with.
20170714-14 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

20170714-15 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

While I waited for that to cool down I checked the time and realised I'd run out for today if I was going to get the place tidied up so I had a quick whip around with the camera while I was tidying to see what I might have missed. The driver's side wing/face bumper support panel was made entirely out of a sheet of fibreglass, luckily I have a good section of this on the replacement wing that needs minimal repair.
20170714-16 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

All of the headlight bowls are knackered. I'll be ordering a pair of plastic ones to stop the rot.
20170714-17 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Mike made and fitted a blanking hose for the missing brake line. This is temporary until I've replaced the inner wing, there's no point trying to make a pipe if we don't know what route it should actually take and this way we keep the braking system free of any dirt getting in from work I'm doing on the car. I also identified the missing bonnet stay screw so that's now fixed in place properly.
20170714-18 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

Before I started the tidy up I applied the first skim of filler and draped the spare wing in place just to see that it was something like right, which it is. I'm not looking for perfection with this repair, I'm just looking to make it tidy and when I'm done I'll paint it with the purple that came with the car providing it's still okay.
20170714-19 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

20170714-20 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

You know it's been a productive day when your rust pile is this big.
20170714-21 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

I am pretty happy about this little car right now. Yes it's rusty, but it's really easy to sort out. In fact, of all the cars I've worked on to date this is the easiest in every regard. I'm not frustrated by it, I just want to give it a big hug and tell it everything is going to be fine. I can see why people really liked them.