1964 Austin Westminster MkI - On the move again 04.06.24

[omnipod]

Scandinavians (especially norwegians) have to look after their cars as new ones are so eye-wateringly expensive. My daily, a passat from 2001, cost me the thick end of 10 grand (yes 10 000 english pounds) just over a year ago! and that was a cheap povo 1.6 so you can imagine the prices of new cars here.
Car rationing was only lifted here in 1960 and even then it wasn't easy or cheap to buy a car. Before this time you had to get permission to own and drive a car. So my 1964 Westy was probably very rare, very expensive and very well looked after. History lesson over.

Managed to get a couple more pieces of the jigsaw back in place today too.



Struggled a bit in the beginning as there was no way of lighting the work area with my hands and body in the way and I couldn't see the join I was supposed to be welding....

so I came up with this solutiuon, an LED headlight torch which I wrapped round my welding torch supporting hand, worked a treat.





My OCD won't allow me to do anything else but douse this whole car in waxoil when I eventually done welding.

[Davenger]

That's flippin genius

[omnipod]

Holy caramba, yet another few months whizz by and time down the workshop limited due to summer hols, work, kids... yup generall everyday life, BUT i have managed a few hours here and there and progress has been made, just not as much as i would have liked.

Firstly i slapped the carburettors back together (yeah OK, many days careful OCD reassembly) and put them back on the engine, and took them off again when the throttle spindle jammed in the carburettor body, scratched my head a bit, fixed the offending carb and then put them on again.

Reassembled



Reattached



As i might have mentioned before it is things like the carb linkage that just make me smile like a maniac, a world away from todays electric sensor controlled throttles. Not even a throttle cable. I must admit that it took me a few goes to get it working properly though.



A new battery was purchased and after an almost nasty moment when i 'forgot' that this car is positive earth it was time for the first start up in about two years.



It lives, the back box is missing so sounding a bit louder than usual but it is finally mobile again.

So party over and it was time to turn it round and get ready to sort the body work out on the other side.

Wheel arch with underseal, pass me the scraper.



a tedious hour or so and a lot of it was gone :-) With the added bonus of actually not finding that much rust, much better than the other side was anyway.



Now like most of you fellow RR'ers i have a tendency to let my mind wander while my car is immobile and start thinking about other stuff i really shouldn't, like new wheels. The Austin's PCD is 5x5" so there isn't really a lot of choice out there, the most common change for these is Rover P5 rostyles but meh why follow the crowd and besides the chances of finding a set of those over here is practically zero. So after good google session the most likely candidate was wheels from a Chevy Astro van. So i waited and waited and waited until a set came up for sale and 400 Kroner (40 quid) later i owned a set of grubby Astro wheels just to see if they would fit. Original wheels are 14" with a negative offset of about 30 and these chevy ones are 15" with zero offset.




As you can see to give me a break during the tedium of underseal scraping i took 10 mins to try on the wheels.

So? waddaya all think, does it work, i know it would have been easier to judge if i had lowered the car down again and actually got the rims into the arches but i'm an idiot and didn't think.



couldn't resist a quick spray of black to the wheel centre just to get an idea of what it might be like.



So the car is mobile again i have trial fitted the 'new' wheels - mojo is high.

[mk2polobloke]

Absolutely top notch work there mate, the welding and repair sections you've made are excellent. I assume you'll give the car a full repaint in time, hopefully in the original black?
'Not sure on wheels yet, as you said without tyres and sitting on the ground it's difficult to comment.
I know it's all been done before, but I do think though this would look fantastic lowered on a set of banded 15" steels with fairly low profile tyres.
COOOOL.

[omnipod]

As always time has whizeed by and i haven't much to show for the last 6 months, although i have bought another car so there is some excuse. I finally gave in and decided i had to remove the wing if i was to banish the rust once and for all. It's a shame to take apart what is really such an original solid car but I just wouldn't have access unless the wing came off. So off it came after first having to remove the door to reveal not such a bad inner wing, it did require a couple of small patches but nothing bad at all.




It was at the footwell i was most concerned about where the wing joined the outrigger and floor panels.



I wasn't disappointed, more digging required the rusted outrigger to come off as well as a section of the floor and the end of the sill, inner and outer. The outrigger came off to reveal a rusty chassis section, so more cutting out there too.




The upper part of the floor and the chassis section patched.




Time to get on with putting the end of the sill back together.




cardboard template for the new outrigger....




transfered to steel.



and welded. There is still a floor patch left to do inside but i might well cut more out so i can see inside more of the chassis and outriggers.

The next step will be welding back on the good bits of the outer sill i cut off and making up new patches for the bits that are rusty.

[Lopez]

Really impressed with your methodical fabrication and repairs. Like you say, tonybmw has genuinely given a huge number of people here the confidence to actually try making a repair panel or two - myself included.

Keep up the good work!

[mk2cossie]

nice looking repair work there ;D
and i think the chevy wheels work quite well, although not convinced with black centres tho

and i know what you mean about the engineering on the older cars, with all the brass parts. just shows up how hastily new motors are made

[bmcnut]

Epic wheel fitment. Epicker car.

Wibble-tastic.

[les509]

Think the wheels will look good if the centres go gloss black. Polished rim ftw. Rozzies have been done to death, but they look so good on them. Love your car bud.

[omnipod]

Thanks for the comments, i'm not sure about the wheels myself either, luckily it's not a decision i will be needing to make this year anyway, there is no way i'm getting time to get it on the road before winter. I'll press on with the bodywork as fast as family commitments allow (child number 3 due next week ;D ) and hopefully i'll have a complete car by next spring. Just have to hope the panel beating / welding the mojo keeps as high as it is now.

[antopipac]

Great work!
I love the way you use old computer components as tools to assist your welding endevours

[wilko]

Still loving this, wheels are awesome! Keep up the good work!

Slightly O/T question - how on earth does a 2001 Passat still cost £10,000 in Norway? Do you have to pay tax on 2nd hand cars?

[contractman]

Nice car and good quality work

[omnipod]

Am I allowed to just sneak back in here after my last post on this thread, a short 3 years, 2 months and 23 days ago without an explanation? Probably not.
So, a couple of weeks after my last post mini-Omnipod number 3 arrived on the scene, which in a roundabout kind of way led to 3 house moves, including 4 months back in the UK, and eventually a relocation to the South coast of Norway, 450km away from my car in Oslo. Of course this also meant job changes for both me and Mrs. Omnipod. So quite an upheaval, moving once with 3 kids is a ball ache, 3 times is just stupid. All this faffing about of course has meant little time for car derived pleasures, especially when the car in question is all that way away.
Still, littlest Omnipod is now 3 and we are all settled. I eventually managed to find a workshop and a storage space close to our new home so the time was right to finally get my Austin back from its, very expensive, hiding hole in Oslo.





I must admit to not actually being able to live without a retro for all this time so I cheated and bought a Triumph 2500TC (I’ll need to start a thread for this too). So the Triumph is currently sitting (in lots of pieces) in my workshop space and the Austin is now stashed away in storage, so it might still be a while until I manage any work on it but at least it doesn’t seem as impossible as it did before.

[grifterkid]

Looking good, these cars are superb...!

Do hurry up and tell us more about your Triumph please...!!!

[79cord]

Good to see the thread again. & car still looks great!

[darrenh]

hardrive magnets !!

[georgeb]

This and the Triumph thread both bookmarked. A lovely brace of motors there.

[CaptainSlog]

What has happened with this?

Bookmarked in hope of an update - came here from your 1975 Triumph 2500TC thread.

[omnipod]

I still have it and it still runs and drives.... but to my eternal shame I haven't managed to get any more done with this car yet. The Triumph project, which was never intended to be a project, has taken waaaay waaaaay longer than I had ever imagined, I also picked up the Alfa along the way so have really fallen into the classic ahem classic car trap of too many projects not enought hours in the day.

In all honesty there isn't really that much more to do (yeah yeah i know) with this one and it is next in line for revival but I will have to get it moved to the workshop once the Triumph is finished which IS going to be early 2018.

Here are the last pictures I have of it taken last year but I have driven it since, the brakes now need sorting though too :-(
Still hope springs eternal that this too will be back on the road, dare I say 2019?