Princess 2 - 14/12 Lotus ON

[Jonny69]

I'll come back later when those stingy bastards at Photobucket let you have some bandwidth so a small number of your friends can look at your photographs.

[Vulgalour]

@J69: I've found with PB I pay them an occasional £1.98 for unlimited bandwidth and it works out cheaper than subscription. I've got some folders I really need to delete but strangely deleting content is even more clunky than adding it... I'm sticking with PB for now, I'm not so keen on the other providers just yet.

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Now, I know there can be some problems with the brown forum on here, but let's put that behind us and just enjoy the following chod update anyway.

Yesterday I had a little adventure and headed over to Malham in North Yorkshire for the Generic Rubbish Vehicle Event also known as Shitefest 2013. The Princess performed flawlessly for the 220ish mile round trip, I am pleased to report. It was an event well worth attending as I got to meet some top people and see some vehicles that I found genuinely interesting and exciting. Exotica can be shiny chrome and massive engines but I take a certain delight in the more wabi-sabi end of the aesthetic scale, if you'll allow me a little pretention in terminology.

It's a bit of a trek to get over to Malham from near Chesterfield so I welcomed the opportunity of convoying with good friend and fellow chod botherer, Sam Skelton. We met up at Woolley Edge - a services that was disappointingly lacking in any sort of woolly edges - by which point the Princess had already attracted the attention of a young guy with a nice looking camera who politely asked for photographs of the car and an older guy who checked Howmanyleft.com on the spot to inform me there are only 3 1.7 HL Princesses left on the road. Sam and I set off after a quick natter and route confirmation with me taking the lead until we had to pull off somewhere so I could get a drink and clear my cold-befuddled head a bit. Sam took the opportunity to jetwash the Montego because when you're heading to an event held in a field that normally houses sheep you want your car to look its best.



Onwards we drove until we found the event field without too much drama... apart from the Mondeo that wanted my side of the road and nearly drove into me, which was fun. Parked up in the field of (abandoned/broken/discarded) dreams.


I had taken a bootload of stuff with me, including some spares from the BMW 518 that my brother had (now gone, victim of the rust and the weighbridge) and Sam suggested I turn the Princess into a Teutonic barge.


There was more chinwagging until we decided we ought to head off to the pub. Pubs are serious business. Me driving, Sam in the front passenger seat taking the picture and my other half Mike lounging in the back. They see us waftin', they hatin'.


We arrived at The Falcon which is a superb and tiny pub in a superb and tiny village. This was a really beautiful part of the UK, I have a lot of time for it. Mr Ian Seabrook was kind enough to take a rather flattering snapshot of the Princess who looked at once at home and completely out of place.


Mr Seabrook also took this picture without me knowing. It illustrates the pub you should seek out rather well should ever you be in the vicinity. It was worth the brake cooking and first-gear-hills trek over the moors/dales/mountains. I can comfortably say my new brake shoes are nicely bedded in now, especially if the smell my brakes were producing was anything to go by.


After a delicious bit of food in very pleasant surroundings, Sam, Mike, Joe and me piled into the Princess and headed back to the field a slightly flatter, less terrifying route since Joe is a local and knows the area well. We avoided the killer sheep that leaped out at the car for no good reason and stopped near a big hill I've forgotten the name of but I'd remember if you told me. Mr Skelton was once again at the helm of his DSLR to take a picture of one man and his wedge.


We made it back to the field without any real event. Bonnet up so people could marvel at the weirdness under there and I wandered around with my camera in hand thoroughly enjoying myself.




But I didn't have all the fun. I could regale you all with the stuff that went on, but this is the Princess thread so I'm sticking to Princess-only content. I made a fellow Autoshiter almost wet himself with excitement by handing him the keys to my car. Top bloke, drove the car like he was a part of it and I almost felt bad having to take the keys back. Thanks again to Mr Seabrook of this picture of a very happy man in a very brown car.


There was a Soviet Princess at the meet too. It was amazing, I loved it a lot as did a lot of other people there.



Annoyingly, while the Princess was supremely well behaved for our day out, this morning she decided she wanted a break. Fair enough, I did as many miles on the Saturday as I'd normally do over a fortnight and some of those miles were pretty tough hillclimbing ones that I'd never normally willingly inflict on myself, let alone an elderly and cherished friend. By way of reward, she politely informed me today that first gear would be difficult to obtain and reverse is only available when the engine is first turned off... some advice leads me to believe at the very least my clutch hydraulics need flushing and at the worst I need to rebuild/replace the cylinders/seals if air is getting in past them. What's strange is that the Princess went from being completely fine clambering up hills and bombing down the motorway and expressed no signs of having problems, was left overnight at rest and then decided it had an issue on starting up the following day.

In the meantime, I shan't be using the car until I've flushed the system at least but thanks to this horrible cold I think we could both do with a bit of a rest for a couple of days.

[Vulgalour]

Feeling far better today and the sun was shining so it was time to crack on with bleeding the clutch. Weirdly, the gear selection felt improved, but still wasn't that great and reverse was recalcitrant but since I was going to bleed it anyway this was a none issue. I know I haven't done this job during my ownership and I have no idea when it was last done.

Got the tools together. Turns out the reservoir for the clutch cylinder is very difficult to access and ideally you need a flat sided funnel to get in there or a funnel with a very long spout or something. We made do at any rate. Bleed nipple was happily not seized and didn't try to shear off or anything so that was a relief too.


Decided to flush the whole reservoir to eliminate any old fluid. The first pedal pump just evacuated air and absolutely no fluid so that would explain some of the problem. After that, the fluid that came out was decidedly unhealthy looking.


Once flushed and everything done up again the clutch is feather light with the biting point somewhere near the floor rather than about a quarter of the way up the pedal travel. I have no idea what age or condition the clutch is in the car as I have no history, but with the way it now behaves I'd say it's probably fairly new.

Next thing to investigate and adjust is the handbrake which now hardly works at all though I'm experiencing no issues with a lack of performance from my foot brakes. Hopefully it'll just need the cables readjusting/replacing. I don't get excessive handbrake lever travel, but there is simply very little effort from the handbrake itself, it's back to as bad as it was when I first got the car.

[Vulgalour]

Balls balls balls balls balls.


Happened between 10am and noon, I'm reliably informed by my Dad. He said there was a little puddle and no list when he went out and a wonky car when he came back. Did I say balls yet?

Looks like it's burst a sphere but not the one I expected it to if it were going to.




Balls.

[Vulgalour]

Jacked the car up to see if it might just be a pipe... nope.  Fluid just pours out this end of the sphere, I'm not entirely sure how, but it's like someone turned a tap on.  Doesn't seem to be a great deal of pressure behind it.
 

 

 
Now the car sits even lower on that side.  Super.

[Seth]

You see, what you need is a car with metal springs. These new fangled hydro-whatsits are all well and good for the funny French voitures but there's nothing wrong with a proper British automobile that uses centuries old cart technology.

[Vulgalour]

Today my Dad and I trekked over to Yorkshire to pick up some valuable spare parts. The donor in question was this phase 1 '77 Princess 2200 which originally was brazil metallic, a lovely purplish-brown with a gold fleck to the metallic. Or at least it was lovely once upon a time but had since been repainted lilac-brown with a 4" emulsion brush and the roof was painted a combination of silver, white and olive drab. The whole thing was rotten from nose to tail, there wasn't anything in the way of bodywork I could use at all. The interior was much the same with a dead carpet, worn out seats and a great deal of sun and water damage. The brown dash and centre console were tempting as was the early brown steering wheel but my funds would only stretch so far and, sadly, it wasn't quite that far.


Never mind, the main thing I wanted was a displacer but as it happens it was easier to drop the whole rear axle. Some well placed bolt cutter action saw the axle removed complete with 2 healthy looking spheres, complete hubs and cross tube. This will probably turn out to be something of a boon as it'll mean I can more easily refurbish the axle before refitting it to the car and it gives me some great spares to add to my growing stockpile. It's not an easy thing to lug about on your own, but I managed it with a little trolley and someone to help guide it to a safe place to let the fluid drain out before I can get on with properly stripping this down. Axle looks to be in reasonable condition and the car itself had obvious signs of plenty of mechanical work being done to keep it in good health, sadly the same could not be said to be true for the interior or bodywork.


What I was pleased with, and what ultimately cleared my bank account out, was the wealth of spares I did secure from the car. I would have liked to have taken the front and rear screens, bumpers, tow bar, light units, steering wheel and interior brown plastics but both my funds and the time were limited so I spent an hour or so collecting this little lot.


It's difficult to tell what's there, so here's the rundown:
Towing mirror - fits on the driver's door of the HLS as a temporary solution
Full boot carpetting - not all original, but matches well enough
Rear light lens interior covers - both cars sorted now
Interior sunvisors and catches - ideal for the HLS, if incorrect for the year
Pair of complete sidelight/indicator units - very useful spares
Driver's front door window regulator - no need to weld the dead HLS one now
Phase 2 window winder - replaces the dodgy one on the HL
Handbrake gaiter - replacement for the missing item on the HLS
3 Wheel trims with centre logos - spares and replacements for damaged existing ones
5 chrome rim embellishers - I already have 1 good one and 1 bad one.
Spare wheel cover - that's one for each car now
Gear knob - good thread, should replace the thread-stripped one in the HL
Radio fascia - Hoping to fit to a modern unit for the HL dash
Windscreen stainless steel trims - rare, worth grabbing
Rear screen stainless steel trims - rare, worth grabbing
Parking Aid - it's giffer-tastic!
3 C-pillar interior courtesy light lenses - only need one, but spares are handy.

Should keep me busy for a while at least. I salvaged as much as I could afford to and in all honesty there wasn't much more on the car that would have genuinely been of use to me. I feel comfortable having parted with £140 for all that, and it gave me the opportunity to have a poke around a phase 1. I didn't get any photographs at the yard as I didn't have my camera with me.

[Vulgalour]

The weather is appalling here today so my plan of spending a few hours stripping down the axle ready for fitting it to the car were thwarted. I got as far as freeing off the union for the hydragas pipes to the rear spheres. Pretty much every other nut has a good inch or so of paint on it so they're a bit stubborn and it's difficult to work on this sort of thing when the sky is trying to drown you. Overall, the axle does look pretty sound with plenty of paint keeping the vast majority of any rust build up at bay. The perishable rubber components are in pretty good health. The stubs of the rebound straps actually help with moving the axle around so I'll leave those attached, that's the actual reason, it has nothing to do with the fact that I can't budge the nuts that hold the rebounds strap brackets on because they're welded on with paint. The spheres are nice and dry and while there is some surface corrosion, it doesn't appear to be anything more than that so I'm hoping they'll clean up well and be servicable.


With the pipes off I can see that one of the braided sections has split. Interestingly, it's split near the sphere so it is possible that the hose on the HL has split too and that's what's caused the loss of fluid and pressure. I'm hoping that is the actual fault and not a blown sphere but obviously I shan't know until I have the HL up in the air again to inspect. Looks like I've got a bonus length of undamaged metal hydragas piping and one servicable braided hose off the replacement axle so far, so that's an okay start. I've also got a set of 8 good chromed wheel nuts that will clean up well, just a shame they're the wrong fitting for the Lotus alloys I have waiting in the wings still. I'll likely clean up and keep all the various unions on these pipes as I can imagine them being a useful part to have in the stash.


Weather got a bit serious so I busied myself cleaning the worst of the muck off the interior parts and sorting out which stuff to put in/on which car to reduce the amount of storage space it was all taking up. The boot carpeting cleaned up remarkably well and is a combination of original and owner pieces. Unusually, the non-original bits of carpet are actually cut to shape very well so should provide useful patterns and still be usable in the cars. Dropped one of the spare courtesy light lenses in the HLS and the majority of the boot carpetting since it'll finish it off well. The tatty but complete carpet trim for the bit between the rear lights has gone in the HL along with the spare wheel cover but I've not fitted them yet, they're both trim items that are tricky to find as nobody seems to keep them. Spare rear light covers went in the HLS too, but I've misplaced the screws to fix them in properly. Disappointingly, the toolkit was missing from the spares car I visited, I had hoped to get another jack ratchet handle and possibly another jack. I have this desire to own four factory Princess jacks because I'm sure it'll serve some practical use at some point.

The only other thing I got fitted were the rim embellishers. I've got 7 embellishers between the two cars and some are very good while some have holes in them. The best four got put on the HL so they take up no space but it did highlight that I should really get different weights fitted to the wheels to make them look their best. I like the embellishers, they smarten up the wheels considerably.


It's a clean, lean(y) wedgy machine.


It really does look comical when you come onto the street, as I mentioned before, jacking the car up to inspect the actual fault resulted in a loss of fluid and a proper lean. It amuses me because of the thought of a Princess on hydraulics, but it also makes me sad because my car is so obviously broken looking.


I'm told the weather is set to get even worse over the next few days so I'll likely not get much done on this axle refurb for a while which is really quite annoying as the longer it takes the longer I'm grounded.

[Vulgalour]

Axles are heavy. I don't know why this keeps surprising me as a thing. In an effort to make the axle easier to move and refurbish I made a concerted effort to strip it down today and found a couple of good reasons beyond prettifying it to do so.

One side was in pretty good order with a decent amount of grease packed into the bearing and the hub nut tightened suitably. The condition of the drum internals this side was also pretty good. The other side, which looked like it had a replacement outer drum as it wasn't painted red like everything else, had no grease packed around the bearing as it should and the hub nut was massively over tightened. On opening the hub on this side it looked like one brake shoe had been replaced but the other hadn't due to one being much more worn than the other and there looked to be a fairly new cylinder.

Because I wasn't sure if the hubs were handed, I made sure to take a couple of reference shots. The metal brake pipes were retained and the unions taped once everything was removed so I didn't get any mess into them. Corrosion is actually very minimal thanks probably to the copious layers of paint that have been applied since '77.


This is the properly maintained hub with even brake shoe wear and a dusty but tidy appearance to everything inside.


I was expecting the nuts and bolts to be fairly stubborn, but either I'm getting better at this or they weren't too bad as the hubs came off in relatively short order, reducing the weight of the axle by about half and making it a lot easier to lug about. I did eventually find a spot that needs welding but given how thick the metal is I expect I can do this with the stick welder I've got to good effect. I managed to shear one of the bolts on this bracket even though everything is well marinaded. I wasn't initially going to remove the arms from the axle but it will make refurbishing everything easier and will mean that there'll be minimum chance of rust returning.


The other side is nice and solid, I gave everything a good stab with the screwdriver.


Once I find the wire brush that's gone walkies I can crack on with refurbishing the bits I've removed while the nuts and bolts on the axle marinate in storage since it's now lightweight enough to actually move to a place that's not outdoors. Providing weather is suitable and I have enough free time, I'll have another go at dismantling the rest of the axle.

[Vulgalour]

Finally, after a temporary weather induced rage quit on my part, I got the axle stripped down to managable chunks ready to be refurbished. The 8 bolts that hold the end brackets onto the cross tube were all seized up so badly that I just resorted to attacking them with the angle grinder which made very short work of them. Fitting new nuts and bolts admittedly adds a little expense and time to the refurb but that's not necessarily a bad thing if I want this to last.

I found another hole on the other side of the bracket that had the bigger hole. This will obviously need repairing and I'm considering dropping off the stripped cross tube with a company that can repair and repaint or powder coat it so it's as good as it can be.


Here you can see why I stood no chance getting those bolts out. These washers have a pair of threaded holes in them that are completely rusted up, the fact I got one bolt out was pretty amazing really when I saw how bad these are. There is some evidence that these were originally spot welded to the cross tube bracket, but none of them were still attached. I'm not sure what my solution here is going to be yet.


I mustn't forget to reinstate washers like this when I do rebuild this bit, wasn't a chance of them surviving when I chopped the heads off the bolts.


First real problem I found was the difference between the mounting brackets. These brackets fit to the ends of the cross tubes and I think they bolt to the underside of the car. They should, as far as I know, be a matching pair but one has half the bracket missing which is probably still attached to the breaker. Not sure how I missed this, but I did. It looks like a very simple bracket so I could probably get a new one made up to match, but how would I then go about bonding it to the rubber mount?


Getting those brackets off is pretty important as it allows you to remove the arms from the cross tube. I haven't attempting to strip the arms down further than they are. I'm concerned that if I damage the bushes in the arms I won't be able to get replacements and rebuild everything, though I'm aware that it's the best way to get rid of all the corrosion and make sure everything goes back together like new.


The only other issue with the HL is that the petrol tank seems to have a minor leak so I need to drop that and find out what's going on. I had hoped it was condensation or something from the car being stood, but water doesn't dissolve underseal and leave little spots of it under the car like petrol does. I'll drop the tank when I drop the axle and do both together. At this rate it's going to be easier to get the HLS on the road, I can see this job with the HL dragging on a bit.