Practically Classics Forum

I was called up to the garage today to inspect the works on the beige Princess and to offer some reassurance as to what should be done. There is a lot of air where there should be metal, but it's not as bad as it might be. I am, however, very glad we have decided to investigate and sort this as more bodgery was found.

From day one I knew about a blob of fibreglass in the front floor pan, driver's side. What I didn't know while I've been driving around in the Princess for about two years is that it was actually a skim of fibreglass resin on the outside covered with a skim of underseal. On the inside it was a skim of bodyfiller over that, then a patch of metal, then another skim of fibreglass before a skim of underseal and then the carpet. The original small rusty hole was not cut back to good metal and it had been left to fester. There's one reason for the fogging up inside the car I guess. This has been labelled as important, but not priority at present. Apologies for the poor photograph, I'm relying on my camera phone as I think I've accidentally packed my camera in a box, I certainly haven't been able to find it since the last round of packing/unpacking I've had to do.


The priority, and the reason I was called to inspect, was the rear floor pan that I'd failed the MoT last on. They've had a very good dig and found the floor is actually solid fairly quickly so a massive patch isn't required, the outrigger is still in good shape and the inner sill not as rotten as originally feared. There is a bit of rot further towards the front of the floor pan just ahead of that strengthener you can see, this too was unexpected, but I'm glad it's been found now, that will be properly explored and patched too. Luckily, I have good sections from the orange car to repair this.


Here's another clearer shot.


In order to find out how much needed to be cut out so repairs could begin - today's planned job, foiled by the undoing of bodges - the chrome arch trim had to be removed. At the trailing edge where I'd tacked a quick repair in all was relatively well, my repair was never great but it was good enough to see me through until I got a welder, so it's lasted precisely as long as I planned it to.


Once cleaned up it's not too appalling, pretty average if not slightly better for a Princess in this area. Good.


The back half of the arch too was in reasonable fettle. Since the arches are getting the inner lip rolled to accomodate the Lotus wheels a smidge more comfortably, some of the frill on the return edge (not really visible here) isn't an issue.


What was an issue was the leading edge, a good portion of which came away with the chrome arch trim. Some proper repair work was clearly begun, and it looks like some of the leading edge was welded, but then for whatever reason a whole load of pink fibreglass resin and bodyfiller was daubed in. What was concerning is that the trailing edge of the sill had a massive bash in and wasn't attached to the bodyshell, neither was the adjacent bit of wheel arch, the whole lot held to the body tub by filler which had let go, trapped water and happily rotted the corner out where I couldn't see. The chrome arch had held it all together and hidden it from view until we got to the point we're at now.


Suffice to say the chrome arches aren't going back on. There's a lot of very good metal in this arch, even more in the other arch we'd already stripped back for the repainting, so it's worth repairing it. Not going to bother trying to source a repair panel - there was one for very little on eBay recently - as we've plenty of suitably shaped metal lying about the place and a chap wanting to practice panel beating.

Because of the amount of welding to be done, it is no longer viable to do a patch-repair on the beige paint, we're going to have to remove so much paint to do the repairs that I might as well go back to a colour plan I wanted with some adjustment. New plan is a complete HLS style satin black roof and an Aconite purple body to compliment the black velour interior and really make the Lotus alloys and chrome work shout out. This is especially achievable as the rear screen is coming out to get the top corners of the surround sorted and all the doors are coming off to get the bottoms repaired properly.

It is going to take a long time and I shall be without my car for a long time. But what a car it should be when I get it back!

Looks like the Princess and I shall be reunited sooner than anticipated. Unfortunately, vital work to the waterways where the Princess currently lives means her garage and shed of spares have to be demolished, along with most of the drive that gives access. Thankfully, after several false starts, we've hired a beavertail for tomorrow to collect as much spares in addition to the car itself as we can to get her up to my new place up in Stockton-on-Tees.

The Red Princess also is facing eviction and things had to move a lot faster there. Happily, that's happening on Sunday too as her new owner is going to pick her up and take her home to a place a mere handful of miles from where I collected her in the first place, only this time she runs, hasn't got a manky interior and has considerably less rust in the removable panels.

The Xantia has had to come off the road. Although I did lots of research into potential insurance costs before moving, something happened between the research and me actually moving that moved my premium for the Xantia up to a ridiculous £1500. My housemate only pays £550. So since he's looking at selling his Porsche and likes the Xantia which is very well suited to his needs, he's going to take it on and run it while I still get to enjoy working on it and keeping it clean. Wait, this doesn't sound like I'm getting a good deal at all here!

Anyway, what I now have is access to a fledgeling classic car restoration business that I'm volunteering at until I've got some of my skills up to the standard they need to be and I can figure out which of my skills will save the business the most amount of money. Rather than practice on any of the shop cars, it was suggested I tackle the Xantia's only problem areas of rust. The Xantia had two areas I wanted to address, the first was a small rust scab on the rear arch, something I'd treated before moving house but which had come back shockingly fast which led me to believe something was up.  A blitz with the flapwheel and the outer arch just sort of went ker-poof in a cloud of rust dust leaving me with a rather large hole to repair.  I cleaned this up, made a repair patch and found I'd somehow got the template wrong so had to make a second patch but didn't get to repairing it today.  Fiddly thing to make and I couldn't get the shape exactly right, but what I've made is a close enough fit to the original profile that a light skim of filler will help blend the repair in neatly.  The gaffer tape was a temporary thing to protect the hole from the weather as we weren't sure if it was staying in the unit or going outside before I got to finish the job.
 

 
The other part was the door jamb section, which I'd already cleaned and hadn't got worse.  There was some thin metal to cut out from the outer skin, but the inner skin was absolutely solid.  I gave as much as I could of it a go over with the dremel, flapwheel and then rust converter to keep it nice and solid before making a patch to fit the surprisingly small hole.  Had some issues with the welder playing up, but I think that's down to needing to clean the earthing clamp and earth location (used the door latch).  Yes, I remembered to disconnect the car's battery!  I was a bit miffed that the patch moved a smidge as I was welding it in and the top of it stands proud.  I don't especially want to entirely redo it, I just want this solid, but there's a chance I'll go back and redo it at a later date.  Splashed some Hammerite on it just to prevent any flash rusting, I'll clean this back before finishing off the job.
 

 
Not my best repair work in all honesty and needs a lot more dressing back. Unfamiliar tools and workspace and being somewhat rusty on the welding front meant I only acheived an okay repair. I will of course remedy this in the near future and the Princess has plenty of holes for me to practice filling with metal.


The plan, as it stands, is to go through the Princess nose to tail and sort everything structural and mechanical that needs doing. There's a bit of work on the former, not so much on the latter. At a much later date we'll sort the paint out but I can see her being patchwork for a while longer yet. In the meantime my transport will probably be an excellent little Peugeot 106 that a friend has offered me once he's got a small van for work sometime in mid September. So for now I have to rely on my legs and my housemate's Porsche (that I do not like) for getting about. Thankfully, I don't need a car as much up here so it's not too much of a problem yet.

Today we drove down to Derbyshire from Stockton-on-Tees in possibly the least comfortable beavertail ever built. Still, it did good on fuel and was competent at hauling Princess.

Was glad that we could hire a self-drive vehicle, several trailer options fell through, most of which were man-with-trailer deals. Reason for the self-drive being better was that the beige car not only had a flat battery, but all of the spares had to be packed and the driver's seat bolted in. This was all done while the dregs of hurricane Bertha were rattling about the place. The new owner for the red Princess also arrived and more problems arose with that... full story at a later date.

One big annoyance was that after getting the driver's seat bolted in, as I got out of the cabin there was a very audible and perfect 'pop' before the side with the replacement sphere slowly began to sink. Unlike before, there was no puddle of green blood under the car and in fact the fluid that's disappeared isn't really visible aside from one tiny little drop hanging off the bottom of the displacer I'd replaced. I suspect the inner diaphragm has blown and filled the gas side of the unit with fluid. I can hope it's a bust union or pipe but I know it's going to be the sphere and I know that's going to be a nuisance to source and afford. I've not even driven the car on this replacement sphere so it smarts just that bit more than it might normally.

Other than that, once some charge was put in the battery she fired up as reliably as ever and trundled out of the sinking garage - there's some serious flooding issues, the garage and shed are actually all moving because of the saturation of the ground - down onto the road and had the good tyres swapped for bad so the red Princess can be safely driven away before loading her up onto the beavertail. Unfortunately I couldn't hang around to help out with the red car because we had many miles to drive and a deadline for returning the truck. I really wanted to help out, but the amount of time it took to pack and load and swap things meant I had no time left.


On the way back we stopped off for some much needed food.


I've been seriously impressed with Little Chef lately and this one was no exception to that. Superb service, polite staff, excellent food and not a bad price tag, an actual pleasure to sit down for something to eat. Anyway, there was something interesting in the car park so obviously we parked next to it.






Then it was a very, very boring drive back in horrible weather. Even as a passenger this particular truck was hard work, I don't think the seats were designed for human beings to sit in.


Just miles and miles and miles of this. Horrible.


13 hours after setting off this morning, the beige one is now safely tucked up next to the newer floaty bus and over the course of the coming week I hope to get stuck in to the work needed to get her fixed. There's not a huge amount to do, but I'm going to tackle as many of even the small jobs as I can before she returns to the road... it may get a bit out of hand.

We have daylight, we have motivation, we got our arses down to the unit to get sorting and inspecting the Princess. Got the (knackered) tyres pumped up and the car emptied out so I could see what was what. I also had a short drive around the yard to get a feel for the suspension. When the last sphere went it was very hard and bouncy on one side, but now apart from a slight list to port it feels much as it ought.

The car also hasn't dropped any further than this, which is considerably less wonky than when the last sphere (I'm calling them spheres for the sake of convenience) blew on me.


With everything out of the car, the suspension came up a bit and doesn't look catastrophically low, just like it needs a pump up on one side. There's also no hint of hydragas fluid under the car anywhere. I even looked in the pocket at the front where the front spheres live and there's no evidence of hydragas hiding in there. This really makes me think it's an internal failure in one of the units.


After bouncing each corner, the front passenger corner is very, very hard. After jacking the car up to inspect underneath and letting it down some bounce returned but it quickly became hard again. The rear corner on the same side feels exactly as it ought with good travel still. The car also sits a bit lower on the front corner, whichever way you park it.


All is still good on the other side, the rear arch gap is, amusingly, spot on, though the front is about 2-3" too large.


When I was under the car I looked for damage. There is some water and oil sprayed about which is from the broken thermostat housing/cap and the fuel pump starting to leak oil again after the car has been stood for a while. I did notice some fairly fresh damage to the hydragas pipe which appears to be slightly crushed on the bend but it didn't appear to be leaking.


At the back, where there was one small drop of hydragas fluid, there's nothing evident at all now. Everything back here is dry as a bone, but as you go further towards the front of the car the pipe gets wetter so I'm wondering if some hydragas fluid leaked down the length of the pipe to the lowest point, which would be this unit.


Had a look at the flexi hose too and that is nice and dry, there's no sign of any split or swelling and the union to the sphere also appears dry. Of note is the lack of any hydragas fluid odour at the back of the car, there is an aroma of it to the front.


I will inspect this more properly but I think it means dismantling portions of the car to do so now. I'm suspecting the front passenger sphere instead of the rear passenger one now. I do have a spare on what's left of the orange car, I just have to hope I can liberate it before anything happens to the remains. If not, at least front spheres are easier to acquire than rear ones and aren't handed.

Have a pretty picture to finish this update with.

its nice & sunny where you are

Urgent help needed ! Follow Philbusmo in the red one lads ! Epic.. http://autoshite.com/topic/17788-dead-a ... ices-help/

Phil made it as far as Loughborough in the Princess, who is now safe and secure. He then caught a train home at an exhorbitant fee and will be collecting the Princess with a transporter or trailer at a later date so she can be fixed.

After a three day battle to sort out the problems I hadn't been able to, Phil and my brother managed to get the red Princess working really well. It's a car that has fought all the way. Shortly after fitting new thermostat and overflow caps the radiator exploded, this turned out to be caused by a blockage in the water pump (I hadn't replaced this, didn't get that far) area made of almost pure limescale build up. They managed to get the car's original radiator fixed enough to work only to have the alternator conk out. The replacement alternator was no better so they ended up fitting a Mk2 Fiesta alternator which, surprisingly, works quite well. The electrical gremlin was a missing in line fuse and an issue with the rear cigar lighter. The also had to fight with the brakes, which did not want to release the bleed nipples, amazingly all of them freed off and they could bleed the system. Eventually they had a car that could and would drive and stop rather well, allbeit with a very rorty exhaust from a serious blow and some mystery smoking which the car hadn't been doing.

Then, on the motorway, there were some running issues and Phil stopped three times to adjust the timing to attempt to compensate. The third time, at Donnington services, he found the head gasket had blown water-to-compression and that was that. The AA wouldn't recover him as he was driving to a pre-booked MoT (perfectly legal) and while he was insured he couldn't tax the car without the MoT. He did the only thing he could which was to put a shout out on the excellent Autoshite forum and someone set off to rescue him at 10pm and accompanied him back to the Princess' current resting place with many short stops to pour yet more water in.

These things are sent to try us, but I have every confidence that if anyone can pick up where I left off with the red Princess, Phil is the man for the job.

Without sounding negative, perhaps the tale is a warning for others who think that it's a good idea to take an unknown and dormant car for a nice long drive instead of the expense of getting someone to deliver it! Yes, I know it's expensive to have a car transported and that Vulgalour has done lots of work on it, but think of what could have happened to such a car.

On the positive - it shows that there are some great people around in the "classic car world" (or "Old Banger Society"), who are willing to put themselves out to help someone in distress. I wonder how many "ordinary" car owners would help a stranger who's newish car has a serious problem. Remembering when I hit the cobble with the last Golf, not very many at all!!

Nothing ventured, nothing gained! But yes, the idea was floated that a trailer/transporter was more sensible but countered with "where's the fun in that" and I can't really argue there. We should all be permitted to be young and stupid/brave at least once in our lives.

But then I made sure the Princess was trailered up to me... only after I'd ascertained it definitely couldn't be driven, of course!

A genuine question here..
Whilst we all know its ok to insure a vehicle and drive it to and from a pre-booked mot appointment, if, as in this case, they obviously missed that appointment due to breakdown (unless he garage was open passed 10pm) where does that leave you legally should you get the car drivable? if you get pulled by the rozzers on the way home - then what?

Kev