Practically Classics Forum

Award yourself a thoroughly deserved day off! Nobody would begrudge you some time to sit back, relax and collect your thoughts.


Take time to absorb the scale of what you're achieving, not only the actual work - though that's awesome in itself - but rather the fact that you, by saving an ADO71, are one of a select band of restoration enthusiasts who can see the quality, the style and the dynamic prowess of a largely forgotten car through all of the cosmetic and structural challenges that time and neglect have placed in its way.

My own encounter with Princess ownership - AVG99T - was a very late example of the B series engined variety that had some of the detail touches intended to be seen only on the incoming O series cars. It was Pageant Blue, not the Tahiti that most mid blue 1800s wore, drank oil and petrol in very similar quantities (by which I didn't mean that it was incredibly good on fuel ..) and yet was much enjoyed for its comfort. I found a Reliant Kitten estate that I simply had to own, so swapped AVG for that with the part-time trader friend who had the kitten on his pitch. Now although I never regret obtaining another four wheeled Reliant, one of my main "what ifs" concerns that wedge and whether I shouldn't just have kept it and forked out cash for the Reliant.
And that, right there is why my vicarious pleasure, in seeing your car being preserved, is so massive.

My biggest and only real fear with Princess ownership is displacer failure. I'm very nervous about the replacement I'm putting on and about the fact I've been completely unable to find a replacement anywhere except for one that popped up online for £ridiculous. That suspension system is fantastic, it's just the lack of parts support and an inability to refurbish broken units that makes it such a risk. If I hadn't had three displacers go in three years I'd be less worried about it, I'm sure. That and the fact that when replacements do appear they're usually a three figure sum, untested, second hand.

Right, another day at the unit for me working on the Princess. Didn't quite get all the bodywork done that I wanted to. That said, the bodywork I have completed exceeded my expectation and I'm rightly or wrongly quite proud of what I achieved. First, a picture of my lovely complete manual aerial I mentioned in a previous update.


Then the sill I suppose. In an ideal world I'd replace the whole thing, it's been replaced in the past anyway. There's some areas of pitting that I've just cleaned and left alone, there's still enough metal there for it not to be an issue and I can fix it later. At the front there was a section that had holed quite a lot so that got cut out. Liberated a patch from the sills I'd taken from the orange donor car - the sills on that car looked like they hadn't seen any road, or at least not a great deal, and were still in really good condition.

First patch I measured twice and still cut wrong. Only just had enough to do a second patch of the right size. Cut back to quite good metal, certainly not that easy to get what was left of the cutting disc through it. Identified a little pinhole near the sill trim fixing hole too which got a little blob of weld. The welding itself went far easier on this too, good access and thicker steel really helped.


I'd already spent some time cleaning the whole sill back, removing all the paint and underseal that would come off. Some of the steel has little black stains on it, presumably from rust, that don't want to shift and I didn't really want to go digging just now.


Ground it all back with a new flap wheel and was very surprised at just how well I'd done. Identified a couple of spots that I'd not quite caught and put some fresh blobs down.


Once that was ground back I was faced with the best bit of welding I've ever achieved. This puts me a bit ahead of where I was with my welding and a lot ahead of where I was with putting repair panels in.




Gave the whole thing a coat of primer when I was happy with it. You can just see the diagonal repair line towards the back of the sill that needs a second fill. Before I do final fill, stonechip paint and top coat I'll check the bottom rail is nice and secure.


I'm delighted with that, it turned out so much better than anticipated. Before I tackled that I took all the horrible respray off the top section of the rear quarter to give it a fresh coat of primer and paint. There wasn't any filler hiding but there was still so much paint on there it was as if someone had skimmed it with filler. I used Halfords aerosol for this and the finish is reasonable. There's no lacquer or flatting or polishing, this is straight out the can.


Here's the difference in colours too. On the left is the proper Champagne Beige and on the right whatever the car is repainted in.


The front wing didn't get repaired today, I ran out of steam. I'm hoping to get that done next weekend. I'm really close to having this side of the car finished now. The rear door seal I'd lost reappeared when I discovered it hiding in plain sight so that got fitted today too. Got the battery charged but didn't get around to fitting it to the car to attempt a start up again.

vulgalour wrote:
Once that was ground back I was faced with the best bit of welding I've ever achieved. This puts me a bit ahead of where I was with my welding and a lot ahead of where I was with putting repair panels in.

It's called practice . When I start the yearly patching up for the MOT it looks like an incontenent pigeon that had been binging on curry flew overhead.
After a few hours, a whole lot better

Another weekend, another bit of welding on the wedge. There's very little welding left to do now. Started by finishing off the leading edge of the sill as I hadn't done the return edge. Bit of snipping and bending and then I zapped it up after this.


Spent an absolute eternity removing the respray (well, resprays, it's been given a rubbish blow-over at least three times on this wing) off the front wing to get to the rust and cut it out. I didn't have the time or inclination to strip the whole wing back, I'll do that another time when I finish repairing the dents. Patches required were tiny.


Then I just sorted of got into the job and forgot to take any pictures. The spare sill end section I had was suitable for the lower wing repair but not a perfect fit, still isn't really, but it's very close and saved me a lot of time. I've still got to clean up, de-rust, stonechip paint and underseal the inner arch. Another job that can wait a bit longer.


I did get the filling on the sill finished well enough and a coat of stonechip paint on there which should hopefully increase the survival rate of the panel.


Splashed some purple on the rear arch to cover some bare metal as the car will be going outside again probably tomorrow.


Put a quick coat on the front wing too. No masking tape, just a quick fog in to work out where I want the colour split to sit. The purple is perfect and an easy off-the-shelf acrylic aerosol to get hold of cheaply so ticks all my boxes. I didn't have enough time to clean up the rear quarter and get the lower half of that painted, all in good time.


Later tonight or tomorrow I'll get the top coat on the sill. Hopefully have my starter motor - turned out it was a cog that's slipped out of alignment - back soon too so I can get the car moving under its own power again. The biggest challenge now is definitely removing the really bad respray, the paint clogs the flap wheel, doesn't seem to be affected by paintstripper and only really comes off when you apply heat enough to soften it and can then peel it off in sheets. Nasty, nasty stuff to remove.

Today the Princess went outside again, not because she was evicted from the workshop but because it was safe to put her outside without fear of the bodywork deteriorating. Technically speaking, all the structural bits that needed doing for the MoT are now done, there's just the occasional little cosmetic patch to put in all over the car that are little more than an hour or two's work a piece. I'll do each cosmetic bit as and when I've time and materials to do the panel they're a part of at the same time.

With several coats of purple on the sills over the stone chip paint I was satisfied that the car could come back down onto its wheels again. The difference in how the sill looks now compared to the flakey, rusty mess it was before is quite remarkable and almost completely invisible. I was going to refit the sill trim but have misplaced the rubber seal that goes between it and the bodywork, I'll also have to drill some fresh fixing holes that I accidentally welded up.


The other thing I did was tidy up the colour split on the front wing. This is by no means finished as I've still got a lot of paint to remove on this wing and a fair amount of panel work to complete. I'm not sure if I like the sharp split of the arch or if I preferred it with a wider fogged band but I am sure I like the sharp division between purple and beige at the waistline. I'll also be adding a fat-and-thin silver coachstripe to the purple section after mocking up today with a scrap of gold I had in a spares box.


After inspecting my spare passenger door I found that not only has it never been repaired it's also in excellent condition. Once I've repainted it I'll swap the lock and get that fitted in place of the current door which has signs of bodge and wob and welding I'd like to undo and put right. With the scarcity of parts and my desire to improve my fabrication skills I reckon restoring the spare set of doors is going to be worth the effort.

Rummaging through the spares boxes I found three rear axle mounts, two of which are hopefully better than the ones currently on the car. I also found I still have a spare axle crosstube which I'll get stripped and repainted and two sets of brand new rear brake shoes, though I only remember getting one set.

Next is to wait until the starter motor comes back, get that fitted and then crack on with mechanical stuff. Once the car is reliably running and driving yet again it'll be a lot easier to get it in and out of the unit than it was pushing it out today.

Little bit of fleet news. The Corsa now has its original radio installed in place of the aftermarket Alba. I'd sourced this radio specifically for the car as the original goal was restoration (still is, really, even though it's in daily use). It's a surprisingly good little radio and it's restored the function to the dash-top pod that displays the pre-select and radio frequency when you're listening to the radio which is a neat little feature. The odd problem with the door becoming the radio on-off switch when opened and closed turned out to be the windows. When you wound the front windows all the way down they would pull the speaker connectors and unplug them fully or almost fully. Then, when opening or closing the door the connectors would meet or part with the speakers. A re-route of the wiring has cured this problem and now the radio works in the conventional manner.


The Corsa has also been fitted with a new idle control valve after the original was found to be stuck in one position which has cured the first start and idling issues it had. The bias valve for the brakes may well be faulty too, there's something amiss with the brakes but investigation is ongoing there.

Only other little update is the Renault engine is now on the engine stand. Bit of a faff as there's some disparity in size between tiny engine and big stand. A lot easier to work on and around the engine now so I can focus on getting those pistons unstuck far easier as well as taking up much less space in the unit.

Alba? Bin fodder! That o/e Philips is a far better device, just watch out for the tape eating antics that these can exhibit as a result of the takeup being driven by a toothed nylon gear rather than the far less brittle rubber idler tyre as used by pretty much every other maker apart from Philips and B&O-branded Philips tape transport mechs. They don't always let go but quality of the moulding was variable so if it still plays without issues then chances are it'll last. Philips' designs are famously bonkers but they rarely made a bad sounding piece of equipment.

It's always satisfying - to me at any rate - to see a car with its original radio in place and working. The (JVC-built) factory r/c in the car seen to the left of my posts still plays perfectly in both directions and sounds absolutely amazing. None of that lossy compression for me, ta, even though the interior of a moving car is the one place where mp3 material is a close runner up to a FLAC-sourced recording made on SA tape.

It's rare that an aftermarket radio is better than the original both in terms of aesthetics and performance. Haven't tried the tape deck in the Corsa's radio yet, Mike tends to listen to Mp3 rather than cassette and we need to figure out where the cassette adaptor thing is so he can do that. I'm happy enough with the factory radio-cassette in the Xantia, especially since digging out my old tapes I recorded sometime in the late 90s, makes a change from whatever the radio stations are puthering out at you.

Princess has a Radiomobile radio to go in, nice looking bit of kit that works as far as I know. It also has a PYE tape deck that's in need of a belt and a period graphic equalizer. Sound quality is not going to be a strong point in the Princess, it's all about accessorising XD

The Renault has no radio, never has, and never will while I own it.

Couple of jobs done on the Princess today. First was taking off the old fuel filter which had definitely seen better days. It's been on there a while now and I do mean to get one of those nice glass-and-chrome ones, I just can't resist how cheap these things are and they do the job well enough.


New one on and churny-churny until it had filled and fed fresh fuel to the engine...


... and I could churny-churny because for £35 my starter motor was refurbished and now works so well it's rather caught me by surprise. The starter has always been a bit slow, I'd put it down to the car just being old, turns out it was already on its way out when I bought the car three years ago. The refurbished item wasn't repainted (at my request) and they even cleaned up the bare alloy bits. Did a cracking job visually and in terms of performance.




Four bolts later and it was back on the car. Another fiddly nut for the power lead and I had a working starter motor.


The car was willing to churn and the refurbished motor wasn't now killing the battery as it had before. Usual routine undertaken of cleaning electrical contacts and checking fuel was getting to the engine when I found the car wouldn't fire until I finally diagnosed the issue as being that I'd got two of the three wires connected to the coil in the wrong order, that done the car fair burst into life with a heartening willingness and even idled reasonably well. Planned to spin the car around when an almighty screeching started up.

Obviously I was concerned about this and at first thought I'd fitted the starter motor wrong somehow. Checked belts, checked items for heat, looked for obvious damage and started the car again. All was as it should be, no screeching, so stuck it in reverse (which it was reluctant to do) so I could turn it around in the yard. Drove back about 2 yards before an almighty screeching began again.

Very worried now I went through everything I could, started the car and left it out of gear to wait and see if the noise would manifest. Absolutely nothing did. So I gingerly put it in first gear and attempted to drive forwards the two yards I'd given myself. Queue a clutch that was squealing and slipping like a pig on ice.

Just as well I bought that new clutch kit then.

Put some brake fluid in the bores on the Renault. Noticed that some came straight out through the bottom where it should so I'm cautiously optimistic that it will unstick with some patience.