Vulgalour's Vehicles - 10/03 Ignition Switch Woe

[vulgalour]

Princess

14th August 2016
Could it be?  Is this an actual update of things that have happened with this car?  Why yes, yes it is!  This is posted on several forums, so I may repeat myself a little while I fill in the gaps for those forums I haven't updated.
 
The running problem was narrowed down to three causes, the first being the brand new condenser on it's way out (after about a mile of use), the second was that the ignition timing was way off and the third was that the plugs were in the wrong order.  Forums are super for flushing out helpful people and it was one such that came along and diagnosed this and sorted it and got the car running in about half a minute if that.  So big thanks yet again to Scaryoldcortina.  Reason for the timing and plugs being muddled was me getting into that terrible spot where you know there's a problem and you try and fix it only to find whatever you do makes it worse and then you can't remember how it all was to start with.
 
In turn, that meant I could finally move the Princess under its own power which is vital for the last bit of welding.  The clutch is now VERY noisy and doesn't work very well, it's been less than great for the past four years and I do have a new clutch kit to go on so I'm hardly surprised it's finally given up.  The duff condenser makes running rough but works well enough to get the car in and out of the unit until the replacement component arrives.  The brakes work.  I pumped up all the tyres and wobbled into the unit this afternoon so I could actually do some work on the old boat.
 
It was actually fun, even though nothing is really as it should be, to trundle around in this car again.  After using the Rover for the past year the Princess feels enormous, and very slow, and the steering feels quite heavy.  Still, we got in and Mike helped me remove the doors for the job ahead.

 
I spent most of today just cleaning back the mess that was the old sill.  It had been sort-of-welded along the bottom edge and tacked once every 3" or so (except for the 6" either side of the B pillar where there was NO welding at all) on the top edge and then SMOTHERED in filler. There was so much filler it had oozed between the old line of the original sill and the replacement.  It took a very long time to get it all back to good metal.  Also removed a big chunk of filler from the sill-to-arch join which was hiding, unsurprisingly enough, some holes and thin metal.  This area was up for replacement anyway and will be part of the next stage of repair.

 
The other area is the sill end.  I'd already repaired what I could inside the car but I now need to let in some smaller pieces for the sill rail, the sill closing panel and the inner arch.  I also need to rebuild the outer arch where it had rotted away.  None of this is particularly complicated, it's all just fiddly little patches.  I'll be making it structurally good rather than pretty because most of this won't be seen when the new sill goes on.

 
Finally, an overview of what I achieved.  The old sill had gone very thin and was much more damaged than the driver's side (which I'll need to replace in the future, but can stay put for now since I've already repaired it).  Happily, the inner sill with the exception of the above is absolutely solid and cleaned up very nicely, I was actually quite surprised there wasn't any creeping rot hiding in here.

 
I am quite busy with work but my schedule is more manageable this week so I'm hoping to get a bit of time in every day to do a little bit of repair work this side until the weekend when I hope to fit the full outer sill and get it painted.  I'll also repair the door bottoms and sort out the blistering paint - which started showing itself as micro-blisters 4 years ago and so far has always been down to excessive use of filler - before they're refitted to the car.  I'm not worried about perfect paint and finish, I just want to eliminate as much rust and rot as I can while I have things in bits.

[vulgalour]

15th August 2016

Got a tiny bit of free time to do some more on the Princess.  Started by making the repair sections for the back end of the sill which is mostly just the closing panel and a small section of the lower rail.  Went quite smoothly and while the welding isn't the most attractive it is strong enough to hold the patches firmly to the car.  The welder doesn't seem happy and I don't know why.  Sometimes it welds lovely and then you'll go to do the next bit and it just doesn't want to know, as if it's on a whole different bunch of settings.  Pretty frustrating really so it slows me down a lot.

 
With that bit sorted I could move on to fitting the outer sill.  Except I'd left the drill and the drill bits at home and since I want to spot weld the bottom of the new outer sill on for the whole length in addition to the other welding to attach it that put the brakes on that side of things.  Not wanting to waste my time I instead took the angle grinder to the back panel for the inner light bucket on the passenger side.  I ordered a new pair of lights last night that will fit so I thought it best to get these in ahead of them arriving.  I've not welded the bucket in yet, just made the hole and pushed it into place to check it all looks as I want it to, and it does.

 

 
Still unsure about the number plate solution.  I've got some ideas but none that really grab me as the ideal solution yet.

[vulgalour]

16th August 2016
Got the outer sill on today.  I hadn't intended to, but Mike needed to move the Toyota and to do that he needed to move the Princess and I wasn't happy doing that until the outer sill was attached. There is now substantially more welding holding this sill on than the one that came off so I deemed it safe to put back on its wheels.  I still need to finish the seam welding, I just ran out of time to do more today.

 
Unfortunately, I had to chop the bottom of the front wing off to get access for the leading edge of the sill.  This may be a good thing though as it dislodged a chunk of some sort of brittle foam stuff that had been squirted into an unseen area and allowed me to repair a section of sill rail the wing attaches to that I wasn't aware needed doing.  The piece I removed isn't great and has been repaired before, I'll do what I can with it.  I'm definitely in the territory of really needing new front wings on this car, I just have to make do with the ones I've got for now.
 
I made a start on putting the front end together and stopped pretty much straight away.  I'd forgotten that the driver's side aperture needs a bit of work on the lower rail for the trim to fit properly, it's only out by about 0.5mm, but that's enough to be a little too snug for the trim.  I'll manipulate the metal to make things fit properly when the headlights and their associated brackets are refitted.  Fiddly work that I just haven't felt motivated to do until recently.

 
 
There's lots of little jobs after this sill now, nothing that's insurmountable and most of it actually fits well with the free time I do have so I'm hoping I can make some good visual progress over the next couple of weeks.  I'm not setting a date for 'completion' on this one, or even road legal, because that will just make me panic about not getting it done.  It'll be done when it's done and not a moment sooner.

[JPB]

Ooh, I'm strangely drawn to the Daihatsu. I've been having unclean thoughts about [Daihatsu's] amazing Atrai seven seater lately, all imports but capable of being turned into a small guest bedroom and they even did a 4x4 version. It's an aka of the Toyota Sparky but less common and I still need a second car to share the regular workload with my Toyota which I've now owned for fifteen months, used daily, never had to touch apart from routine servicing and the addition of the new exhaust manifold and system back in spring.
I couldn't make Seaburn this year unfortunately but aim to be there for the show at the venue on the Monday of the English/Welsh bank holiday at the end of this month.

I'm going to start the catch up on what is probably the most boring of the lot, the Rover 414 I use daily. Cracking car, I'm enjoying it muchly, there's never much to say because it just works all the time....

Yep, that echoes closely the way I feel about my Liftback. It's only just turned 85,000 miles and the narrow head 4A-F engine is well known for its ability to cover upwards of 300,000 (just see the tales of longevity on the Geo Prizm forums over in the States).
Don't get me wrong; I'll always have a taste for older stuff too, but back in the early eighties, twenty six year old cars would have felt distinctly old fashioned whereas now, that Rover, my Toyota and similar cars from most of the big factories are no less easy to live with as the new stuff that pollutes our roads with its high-waisted, overly heavy, much too complex approach to the task of moving the masses.
Good to see inside the Wedge's sill area, not too bad at all by the look of it and it's certainly safe to say that a great many far less structurally sound examples would have scraped through their MOTs in the eighties.
I remember the timing chain case access dodge from the eighties when it would also be found occasionally in the (unitary construction) R5, whose engine went that same way round right up to the introduction of the later Supercinq with its newfangled transverse motor, they never seemed to drop to bits for the want of that central chunk of bulkhead so yes, as you suspect; the Six is certainly strong enough to be modified in that way.

[vulgalour]

That little Daihatsu is a really surprising little car. Amusingly, it gets confused for a Mk1 Sierra because of the front end with its sunken headlights. It's equipped with a 1600 transversely mounted fwd engine and one of the best gearboxes I've ever used. The seats are quite comfortable but could do with better side bolsters because the car can corner much harder than the seats will let you. Controls are nice and easy to see and use, even with the indicator being on the right hand stalk and it just seems to want to rev all the time. It doesn't matter how briskly or how fast you drive it, this little car always just eggs you on to go faster and use more revs, it's ridiculous!

Best of all, my brother got it for free because the previous owner didn't want to fork out for the head gasket failure to be repaired. Nobody wanted to take the poor little thing on so my brother scooped it up, did the head gasket and then had a weird breaking down issue that turned out to be two temperature sensors throwing the car into panic mode. Of course, he only found out it was these two sensors after replacing just about every item under the bonnet and something like a dozen AA call outs, baffling a whole string of experienced roadside mechanics. He's stuck with it and has it has his second car, which has proved really useful. Annoyingly, very recently a taxi hit-and-run the poor thing when it was parked outside my brother's house, stoving in the rear passenger door and damaging the arch on the same side. No structural damage, thankfully, but doors are incredibly difficult to source for this car and the one he did find in Germany he couldn't get because the seller refused to post it to the UK. So, if you know of anyone selling a rear passenger door, a pair of front wings and tailgate window seal please do let me know and I'll pass it on as those are the things the car most needs to be its best.

[vulgalour]

Amazingly, my new lights arrived yesterday, much sooner than I was expecting! The pre-wired 5mm LEDs look to be of decent quality and not afflicted with hair-thin wires, picked clear ultra-bright ones that light up red so they'll blend with the bodywork better and be more visible when lit (in theory). They weren't the cheapest out there, but neither were they the most expensive at about £6.50 delivered for 50. Next job will be working out how many and at what spacing they need to be before I fit them to the C pillars


The other lights were a very good guess. I'd worked out the size I wanted so they'd match the way the 2002 ones fit, and the sort of style I wanted. I didn't want something that looked brand new, everything on this car I want to look like it might have been done when the car was new. That doesn't mean I'm being super period correct, but it does dictate the 'feel' of things I do. It's a bit of a nebulous concept really. So, those lights. I mocked them into place with some tape just to test fitment and first glance appeal so the angles and depths aren't exactly as they will be.





I'm happy with that. They look how I want them to and when I've fiddled about with angles and light depth and all the finishing on the light buckets they should look like they belong there too. I'm looking forward to getting these properly installed and wired up now. We'll see how far I get with finishing the sill this weekend as to how much I get done on those lights.

[vulgalour]

Today I got the seam welding finished on the sill, cleaned back and the first bit of filler down. Tomorrow I might finish the filler work, we'll see how the other jobs go.


After cleaning up the front passenger door, which appeared to be the best one on the car rust wise, it turned out to be not great. A long thin patch was needed to the underside of the door (the one on the right) to compliment the two larger patches already under there. This bit isn't seen so I'm not too worried about how it looks so long as it's solid. I can always go back and redo it at a later date if I need to.


The corner of the inner skin had disappeared, leaving the outer unscathed, so rather than put a rust trap back I just welded the inner skin to the outer, letting the outer skin folded edge keep the strength required for this bit of the door.


The outer skin just needed one small patch where it had blown. A little bit of panel dressing is required before I fill this to smooth it out. Not a bad job though really.


I did take off the paint on the door - and there was a LOT, this car has been resprayed at least three times before I got it - I hit a big patch of filler on the top corner. Underneath the massive patch of filler that ran for the half the length of the door from the swage line to the window was just a shallow dent and two scores that match the damage on the front wing this side that was similarly treated. Easy enough to put right with a small quantity of filler this time. Difficult damage to photograph, it's that insignificant.


That means the sill and the front passenger door are now ready for a little filler work and paint, two jobs that have needed doing the whole four years I've owned the car. Fun fact, when they did one of the repaints of the car they didn't remove the front door or even clean off the dirt that was there and just painted over the top of it!

Tomorrow I'm aiming to repair the back door and the front wing bottom, do a good amount of filler work and possibly even lay down some paint on the panels so they can all go back on the car. That will then be this side finished bar the small amount of work needed on the rear arch.

[vulgalour]

Another day, another bout of rot busting. I thought it'd be neat to just take the paint off the rear passenger door and get the rotten corner welded up. I mean, how difficult can that be? It's not like those microblisters in the paint can be hiding any horrors like OHMYGOD EVERYTHING IS FILLER DUST.


Get real tired of this routine. Not fantastically surprised that there's way too much filler in this door where there's some more gouges in the panel. I know there's nothing on the rear wing this side as that's already been taken back to bare metal so at least I can leave that alone. The filler in the bottom of this door was dug out a couple of years ago too and given a liberal dose of red oxide which served well to keep things pretty much in stasis. With the door off the car it was far easier to clean it up and see what I was dealing with. No worse than expected on the outside really.


After a couple of hours (no really, it was pretty tough going on this panel compared to the others, loads of filler and paint to fight through) I had the outside of the door back to bare metal so I could finally see what I'm dealing with. You can hopefully see the black lines where I marked the gouges with a marker pen since they weren't showing up on the camera.


Part of the reason the door bottom had rotted out is a previous repair. I'm guessing this bit of metal shoved in between the door frame and outer skin and welded along the bottom edge was to give a platform for filler. Caused more problems than it solved this.


This corner on the inside was no worse than when I cleaned all the filler out a couple of years ago and red oxided it. If nothing else, the theory of red oxide being great for protecting metal has certainly been proven with these doors.


With everything cleaned back I could see there was a lot of the inner door frame I needed to replace. It's not holed yet but I'd rather just deal with now so I don't have to pull the door off again.


Better view of the door cleaned up.


After some time I'd worked out what shapes I needed, what needed cutting out and set to on repairing the door. I got Mike to help as I needed to fit the door to the car to check the bottom edge was correct so that I could fold the new outer skin repair over it. The welding went moderately well, the welder seems much happier lately for some reason, and the flapwheel did its magic to make things look good pre-filler.


The only hiccup with the whole process was that I'd overestimated the amount of metal I needed to fold over so I need to trim it down before finishing off, I'll also tidy up the welds for the inner frame pieces I've let in.


I ran out of time to get the metal work on the door finished today. Trial fit suggests it's going to sit better than it did before, the bottom edge and corner look to line up better with what's on the car now so I'm cautiously optimistic this will look quite tidy when it's got the filler required and a top coat of colour on it all.

[vulgalour]

Decided to make use of my free time at the unit again today rather than the garden as the garden is pretty soggy and not good to be digging in. I put the last few spots of filler needed on the sill so I can paint it when I've done the final sanding before the doors go on. I also took that surface rust off the C pillar and gave it a quick and messy squirt of satin black. I'll repaint this fully when the rear window comes out, for now it's just better protected against the elements.


I'd already pulled the tatty vinyl trim off the B pillar which doesn't now match anything on the car. After cleaning that all back it was given a good amount of primer and top coat and is now satin black to match the window frames and C pillar properly. The paint mellows quite a bit when dry, it looks nearly gloss before it's fully gone off.


I also finished a couple of tiny bits of welding needed on the rear door bottom and then trimmed and folded the door skin over. Every tutorial and blog I'd read about door skin folding made it look like an easy job so either it's not or I was making work for myself because I found it quite a lot of work to fold and bash it to a tidy finish. Still, it's done and given some seam sealer. The repair to the lower edge tidied up surprisingly well, I knew I'd done it fairly tidily but not as tidy as it ended up being so I'm pretty pleased with that. I've not used any filler since this won't be seen and I'd rather avoid filler in any areas I can that don't need it so I just gave it some seam sealer over the weld line and will chuck a load of cavity wax inside to protect it all. I've also drilled the drain holes required in the door.




Then I had to call it quits which was quite annoying since I'm very close to refitting the doors and tweaking panel gaps now before paint. I had an appalling night's sleep and I seem to have got some sort of bug which put the brakes on pretty much everything. I'll take it easy and see how the rest of the week goes, I may just have overdone it a bit lately.

[vulgalour]

An update a day... I should probably have condensed this all into a single weekend post or something. Never mind! It's all good stuff, it's nice to be making progress on the Princess again after so long of being unable to. I finally decided what I'm doing about the Lotus alloys finish after trying out a few ideas that didn't work. Rather than polish them completely or get them powdercoated, I'm going to paint them gloss black (possibly metallic) except for the lip on the central dish and the outer rim which helps make the wheels look bigger and appeals to me more than the factory Lotus scheme on these.


Surprisingly, the plates I ordered from www.a1showplates.com arrived today too, slightly personalised to go with the rest of the car and look a bit more finished. They're in a modern font rather than something absolutely period correct, just because of what was available and the fact I'm happy with them. Nice quality plates, very fast service and about the same price as getting plain generic ones locally even with the delivery put on top. I'm very happy with these and I can see why A1 have so many positive reviews out there.


You can also see the mirrors I ordered, these also came very, very quickly. They're better quality than I was expecting and a little larger too. I'm glad of that, the extra size makes them the size I wanted and means I should be able to actually see stuff in them. The stems are metal rather than plastic with the head being chromed plastic. Depending how these look on the car will depend whether or not I paint them satin black. It's quite a large chunk of chrome, satin black would be much more forgiving of their size, we'll see how they look fitted. One nice thing is that the cowling on them recesses the mirror so far back that they should stay really clear when driving through the rain, something the original door mirrors weren't very good at doing.


When whatever this bug is I've got goes I can see about doing some more on the car. At the moment I'm stuck at home feeling very sorry for myself and working at half-speed on commissions. Being ill is really annoying.