Practically Classics Forum

Best make sure I keep the beige one out of sight of the two of them then just in case.

Interesting read, are you getting the shell taken away for scrap when done?

Yup, the orange shell will be off for scrap to recoup some cost. I've got to take the front end off for the beige one and the bit that goes between parcel shelf and boot opening for the red one to make repairs that bit easier, but the rest of the shell will be got rid of. Oh, and I'm taking the brand new outer sills off the shell too because it seems silly not to.
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Bit more work on Orange Slice today, in part to make it look like I'm actually doing something and because I needed to use one of the axle stands it's sat on. Three of the doors are salvagable and worth keeping whole rather than stripping bare so I took those three off. I also unbolted the trailing edge of the wing I'm removing and found the rivetted patch on the bottom is actually a big piece of lead sheet.

Passenger front door is pretty good. It's had some clumsy stonechip repairs all over the door as have the others, but on the rot front it's not too bad. These doors do seem to survive the best on Princesses.


Driver's door is slightly worse than the one on the beige car presently. I'm keeping this one in stock as it's repairable, but it's a bit far gone for me to be comfortable selling it to someone as a replacement unless their door is utterly ruined.


Rear driver's door is okay but needs more work still. This is fairly standard corrosion from what I've witnessed before. Beige car's one of these is much better so it's another one I'm keeping back to repair at a later date.


With the Orange Slice back on one wheel, I trundled the beige car down the drive to get the rear bearing and brakes sorted. I was hoping to get both sides done but the weather decided otherwise. Delightful array of decrepitude on display here.


Princess Safari edition never got past prototype phase.


With the hub off I could have a look at the rear brakes on the passenger side, made sense to start here as this is the bearing that had failed. The new brake shoes look barely used even by new brake shoe standards and I reckon I was lucky if this side was doing anything at all. Tweaked the adjuster to get them to grip well enough to make the hub difficult to refit and while the handbrake and footbrake is improved it's still not good enough. I'll repeat on the other side, I wonder if it's the quality of the shoes more than anything at this stage, they were very cheap and comparing them to the ones I collected from Derby they look to be of questionable quality when side by side.


The old bearing was very easy to remove and unsurprisingly sloppy. The new one was surprisingly easy to fit, even though I had to be careful-old-school with a hammer and a flat blade screwdriver to ease the inner and outer bearings into place with plenty of fresh grease. Once I got the old bearing out it was evident someone had repacked it with grease, presumably to get a bit extra life out of it, so I cleaned all of that out. I also cleaned the grease out of the hub cap which, according to the manual, shouldn't be packed.


Put the wheel back on, started to jack the car up off the axle stand and then noticed it crawling back. WAY too late I realised I'd forgotten to put the handbrake back on after fitting the hub and the car gracefully fell off the jack, knocked the axle stand over - without causing even a scratch, thankfully! - and stopped only when it had squished my new pot of grease.


I've been overdue a stupid moment like this. and after a bit of tweaking I could get the lid back on the grease pot so no harm done. Annoyingly it then bucketed it down with rain so I had to down tools rather than doing the other rear bearing and brake. Until I can get the car to hold on the handbrake on the steepest part of the drive I'm not going to be satisfied with their efficacy, it will almost hold now rather than just point blank refusing so I reckon I've made some improvement.

yet more progress, you have to be happy with that. You have an orange slice, a slice of mild cheddar and some red Leicester. How many more wedges do you need before you have the whole cheese wheel?

Haven't got anything blue yet, though I did come across that very ripe soft one in a scrapyard a while ago.

Good job, be sure to get some pics of the car being taken away. Thats the dirtiest type of car porn

Welshie wrote:Good job, be sure to get some pics of the car being taken away. Thats the dirtiest type of car porn

and you lot think im a little odd

rich. wrote:.....

and you lot think im a little odd

Odd? Bollocks man, you're nowhere near odd enough. Some oddening up is needed.


I've missed my fix of ADO71 action.

Vulgalour, in your 5-12pm post of yesterday (2nd April) you showed a picture of the rear brake assembly and commented that despite adjustment you did not think they were good enough yet. Now it is entirely possible that I have misinterpretted the photo (old eyes!) and British Leyland may indeed have designed the assembly that way, but one of those linings looks back to front. Usually, to get a slight self servo effect from the lining contact area and pivot geometry, the lining area is arranged to assist in the forward direction (i.e. as a leading shoe). The shoe on the right of the photo should surely have the lining nearest the brake piston. Is this possible from the axle shoe set you started with? No offence will be taken if I'm talking rubbish . Oh, I really enjoy your Princess exploits and I am looking forward to hearing how the Renault shapes up

JPB wrote:

rich. wrote:.....

and you lot think im a little odd

Odd? Bollocks man, you're nowhere near odd enough. Some oddening up is needed.


I've missed my fix of ADO71 action.

thanks for the vote of confidence mate