1980 Austin Princess mild custom - 1951 Lanchester LD10

[darrenh]

60 watts !! sixty ! 4 was considered fruity for oem headunits in the 80s!

what happens when you press the metal button, plays master of puppets ?

p.s might be time for a new retro headunits thread in general?

[vulgalour]

Placed an order with Woolies recently for some new door seals.  I was going to order original spec fuzzy ones but at £200ish to do all four that was well beyond what I had to play with. Instead, I ordered some plain vinyl ones which, as it happens, I actually prefer now I've fitted them and at a quarter of the price it was really a no-brainer.  The reason for replacing the door seals was that all the old ones were just coming unravelled and my spares were no better. In places the foam seal was breaking up, split or missing which was less than ideal. They've never let water in, but could be contributing to some of the wind noise so it felt worth doing. I don't imagine I'll ever have to replace them in my ownership.




The first seal I fitted (on the right) has the best join. The other three just refused to make a smart join no matter what angle I tried to cut the seal at which is quite annoying. There's probably a special guillotine type tool that allows you to make the perfect cut. In the future, if it bothers me (which I don't think it will), I can buy another roll and use these seals as a template to cut to length more accurately I suppose.


Here's both of them fitted and you can see what I mean about the corners. I know the theory of what shape to cut them and how, just turns out I couldn't do it in practice.


I also priced up carpetting. To do the whole cabin and the boot I need 6 metres of 42" width carpetting which is coming out at £200-300, again rather more than I want to pay. I really want a coloured carpet too, ideally royal purple, and so far the only supplier I've found of that is in America and has no prices listed.
The next nearest option I've found is the Mulberry colour offered by Woolies but that's not the colour I want. Black... well, going by how limited the UK supply is when it comes to colours, black is probably the route I go.

The other thing that arrived today was the throttle return spring. The old one had an overstretched section, it never stopped the car being driven but now I've fitted the new one it has highlighted how lazy the response was with the old spring.




Today was the first day I took the Rover out for errands instead of the Princess.  This wasn't because I didn't think the Princess was capable, far from it, I just fancied a change and what a change that is! Only 14 years separates these two cars and yet it feels like a much greater distance. The Rover is quicker off the mark and has less wind noise and is a lot easier to get going quickly since there's no need to fanny about with the manual choke. The brakes are better (mainly because everything is new, no doubt) and the handling far more precise but the car runs out of puff much quicker and you have to work through the gears a lot more, it's also not as smooth a ride. The Princess has virtually none of the interior trim rattle the Rover is plagued with and even with the still-blowing exhaust it feels a more comfortable and relaxing place to sit. The controls feel quite archaic in contrast, especially the massive 16" steering wheel and while the steering is a little more vague you can sail around with confidence. Where the Rover will scoot off the mark rapidly, the Princess needs winding up a bit and where the Rover gets buzzier and reaches a sort of power plateau, the Princess just keeps chugging along and doesn't feel to have that same cut-off of power. Gear selection in the Princess isn't as pleasant as that in the Rover but you have to do it less frequently and with the exception of 30 zones where the car wants to be in gear 3.5, the gearing is perfectly fine. Certainly, the Princess never feels in want of a fifth gear while on the motorway the Rover definitely feels like it would benefit from a 6th gear or overdrive.

One very noticable thing piloting both cars is that the Rover is looked over, it blends in even at the ripe old quarter of a century it nearly is. The Princess attracts a lot of attention, traffic is more patient with you and generally you have more room and time to drive which is incredibly welcome since it can be hard work at times to keep up in modern traffic because of just how old fashioned the controls are.

The main difference for me is that the Rover gets boring quite quickly. There's something I can't put my finger on with the Princess that makes it a pleasure to drive, even though it's technically the worst of the two by quite some margin. The Rover feels focused on the driver while the Princess seems focused on the passengers and their comfort, perhaps it's a reflection on the eras the two cars were built, I'm not sure whether or not they could be considered in the same sector since the Princess is really a size up from the Rover. Ideally, I suspect a Rover 600 or possibly even an 800 would be a fairer comparison to the Princess and perhaps a 1500 Allegro would be a fairer comparison to the Rover.

That's just some thoughts on the two at any rate, suffice to say I'm very happy with them both and I'm glad I stuck with them.

[varelse]

Beige or cream carpets? Then If you don't like how light it is, use purple fabric dye.
I'd be inclined to do that, and have purple or dark floor mats rather than an entire dark floor.

[darrenh]

Apr 19, 2017 17:34:32 GMT vulgalour said:

The old one had an overstretched section,

err, you mean "progressive rate" its clearly been sports refined

Apr 19, 2017 17:34:32 GMT vulgalour said:

There's something I can't put my finger on with the Princess that makes it a pleasure to drive, even though it's technically the worst of the two by quite some margin.

the word you seek is character.

[vulgalour]

I'd not thought of dying beige carpets, that could be an affordable option. I don't really like pale carpets in cars, they're really difficult to keep looking clean if you actually intend to use the car.

Maybe I ought to clean that spring up and sell it on as a Special Tuning Progressive Throttle Return Spring? Do you think I'd get £LOTS if I claimed it was for a Mini?

[kevins]

Old land Rovers are the same (mine was a series 2), by every rational measure of a car they are awful, but somehow driving them puts a massive smile on your face.

[vulgalour]

Rather foolishly I decided to try and fix something today.  Namely, an attempt was made to replace the dead original fuel pump with a lovely new one.  Removal of the old pump is quite easy, if a little messy because of how the tank is set up.  After disconnecting the flexible fuel line from the tank you then have to release the locking ring.  For some reason my tank wouldn't drain out of the fuel hose but was happy to just gush out all over the place as soon as the sender seal was freed.



A stack of funnels, a chair and a big metal can caught most of the fuel.  I'd estimated there was about 20 litres in the tank and I've saved probably about 18 going by the weight of the fuel can.



Once the petrol had finished draining it was a simple matter of removing the old sender, which was as fiddly as these jobs ever are, and inspecting the pump.  The old pump is completely dead.  This could even be the original pump.  It's the bit with the black mesh bag on one end and the red top the other.


The new pump is slightly longer and for an SD1.  It's a tiny bit longer than the original pump so the brackets on the sender had to be tweaked a little for it to fit.  Tested, found to be working and ready to go back in the car.  This was all going really rather swimmingly.  I'd even bought a brand new sealing ring, gasket and fuel relay so I could drive the car home when we were finished.


Only... the tank won't seal now.  Mike and I tried and tried to get the new and the old sealing rings to sit in place properly but they kept coming unseated.  Something was wrong.  It all got a bit drastic because to access things and see properly the tank had to come off, a job I hadn't planned to do yet.  Luckily, it's only 5 bolts, none of which were seized, and having a gearbox jack and the lift made really short work of a usually unpleasant sort of job.  It's a HUGE tank on the Princess, Mike's feet there for reference.



With the tank off the car I could clean up the sender hole properly.  There's suppose to be three little dents with lips on that the sealing ring locks under, gradually tightening as you knock it around.  The top one had been messed about with a long time ago before I even got in here and is almost completely gone, which meant whenever you knocked the ring around the metal would straighten out too far and the ring would come unseated.  The only option is repair, Princess fuel tanks are not manufactured so I'm stuck until it's done.  There is a local company that specialises in this sort of work so we'll take the tank to them tomorrow and hopefully they can repair it for a reasonable cost.  If they can't repair it then I'll have to see if I can get the section from an MGB or Mini tank, since it's the same, and get that welded on in place of mine.

It's not all bad.  The boot floor and tank are actually better than I expected and not in need of a lot of work to get tip-top.  I now know how easy it is to remove the tank for when I do the boot floor repairs too.


You can see in the above picture that the left hand bump stop is missing for the rear displacer, this was causing some banging  which was annoying and won't be doing the displacer any favours.  The reason it's missing is that the rubber came unbonded from the steel so the steel plate needed unbolting and the spare I salvaged from the orange car I broke a while ago fitting in its place.  This was quite an easy job and the bolts didn't cause any grief, which was a pleasant surprise.  Bump stop reinstated.


Until the fuel tank is repaired the Princess is grounded, hopefully not for very long.  The fuel pump replacement is a job I've been meaning to do for years and I always knew there was a risk it would go wrong so it's not entirely surprising that it has, just annoying that it did.

[darrenh]

it would be mad not to take a knotted wheel, deox gel, rattle cane of stone chip to that boot floor on that 4 poster, before you refit the tank?

or does floor need welding?

[vulgalour]

That'll be getting done later this year, or sooner if some welding gas appears. Bit short on funds at the moment after the last round of spending so I could have done without the tank needing a repair really.

[shedvan]

Keep the faith Mike

[darrenh]

fair enough, cant argue with the economics. i say this in the most self deprecating way possible, not in any way judgement of the princess. but i'm suffering bad at the minute due to complacency of having 12 months MOT and laissez faire attitude to repairs a few years ago, which would've been at the time just man hours and elbow grease to sort out

rust waits for no man, another 8 or 9 months of atmosphere is gonna hurt you, be that moral or GBP !

[blackpopracing]

At the very least buy a pot of Kurust and paint over the bare/rusty metal. This will stop further rust for a year or two.

[vulgalour]

Oh I know, the rust is a Bad Thing (tm) and complacency with the floors way back when I started did cause issues later on. Thing is, this time around I shan't be running the car in all weathers or waiting years to do it, I'll only be a few weeks or months before there will be welding gas so I can get the little bits under here sorted, freshly painted and undersealed all in one go. It's just tricky for me right now as I'm limited on both time and funds to get work done. Replacing the fuel pump was not supposed to result in me having to get the tank repaired, it was supposed to be a quick job because everyone else that's done it has found it to be a quick job. Trust muggins here to have the one car that's been knocked about in all the wrong places and for yet another simple job to be a long-winded one.

Don't worry, I shall fix all that rust you can see, and some of it you can't, and it'll all be fine. I just have some slightly more pressing jobs to get through ahead of it first. If I get more time and funds spare next week and the fuel tank repair is going to take a while then it would be an ideal opportunity to get it all done.

I'll do my best, as always, and we'll get there.

[blackpopracing]

Ps,
Bummer on the tank, why do simple jobs always turn into big jobs?

[vulgalour]

The good news is that the tank has been inspected and can be repaired. Unfortunately, the piece I need to do a proper repair might be tricky to find so I'm hoping one of my readers can help. I need the rivetted on piece that the sender goes into and serves as the clamping ring for the sealing ring you knock around. It looks like this:



The one on the Princess is identical to that found on the MGB tank. It is also the same as some classic Mini, some late Land Rover and possibly Allegro. I only need this one small part, not a whole tank, and a rotten tank might even yield this part for me. Providing all three of the locator lugs are intact and the metal is in reasonable condition it will be suitable for my fuel tank.

I'm putting out feelers where I can to try and find this part, I hope someone out there has one.

[darrenh]

i was literally going to reply before even reading the text that it looks alarmingly like the throat on land rover level sender, 3 legged bayonet fitting

this is a picture of the tank on my 1984 land rover ninety (2.3 petrol) or what the daily mail would incorrectly call "a defender"

[darrenh]

further delving, my harddrive throws up a better pic

[vulgalour]

That's exactly the jobby. Your picture illustrates it much better, you can see the three tabs that hold the slip ring and sender in place. On mine one of those tabs is barely even visible so as you knock the slip ring around the remains of that tab straightens out and the slip ring and sender all pop out of the hole.

I also found the same ring is fitted to late Maxi tanks. None of the cars that use this part have it as a separately available bit, I'd have to order the part directly from whoever makes the tanks and since I can't find out who that is, I can't do that. Having a brand new one to fit would be perfect. Having a brand new fuel tank would be even better but that's not going to happen.

[VW]

So whats to stop you just drilling 5 holes in the sender and in the sealing lip of the tank and screwing it in?

[vulgalour]

... nothing.

I'll have to double-check I can do that but you may well be a genius.