Keeping the patina on an old classic car.

I've started a facebook group for the owners of classic cars who would rather use them than keep them locked away or take them to shows on a trailer. If you have a car you've restored on a budget,where you've adapted parts,sprayed and welded outside don't be shy,be proud of what you have achieved.

If you have a car that you've restored without spraying and chroming to within an inch of its life,join the Oily Rag restoration group. The link to it is here.

Ebay. Some good days and some bad.

I have found ebays sales are slow one week and then pick up only to slow down again..
I've started listing some tools on a new page on the Baconsdozen Imperial Tools web site. A lot of people seem to chose Chinese tools made cheaply and ebay is full of them. The tools I sell are of higher quality and are more expensive as a result but in tools (like life) you get what you pay for.

Polishing stainless steel.

I bought a metal polishing machine (grinder with cloth wheels) and the compounds etc. I had a go at polishing the seat trim and the kick plate on the drivers side. It came up quite well,I think I need a bit more practice, so I'm looking round for other bits to polish.

Cleaning fouled spark plugs.

Some people say there is nothing in a spark plug to wear out.That might be true but they do eventually get covered in a layer that can short them out so that they don't spark.This gives a misfire at best or stops the engine at worst.These plugs I removed from my V8 engined P5b Rover. The choke mechanism was faulty and the engine was running on a mixture that was too rich.

 Using a combination of a solvent and oven cleaner it is possible to make the plugs almost as good as new.This avoids using a grit blaster (which most of us don't  have) and avoids any grit or sand being left behind to damage the engine.

No wire brushing or need for machinery and fancy chemicals. Details are on a spark plug cleaning page.

Rubber door seals on the P5b.

I was getting fed up with the wind noise and rain coming in around the doors of the Rover P5b.
Door seals are available but very expensive for what are really just bits of rubber. I made some out of some sections I bought to repair the door seals on my transit.
These give a double seal around the door and fit inside the original door seal housing.

The new seals were glued together at the corners and the wind noise and the rain are now kept on the outside of the car.

Fairway Owners,a new forum to share experiences etc.

There is a new forum for the owners of fairway taxis. These old london taxis are now virtually all in private hands after the politically motivated decision to remove them first from London and then other cities streets.
If you have one of these and want to meet other owners and share hints,tips and maybe spares etc or just say hello,the link is here

Although these things are very reliable and clock up huge mileages they are prone to rust and whilst most repairs are simple there are not many garages who seem prepared to work on them.
I have done many thousands of miles in my own fairway its moved furniture and engine spares and transported two big dogs to the beach.my London taxi web site.

Welding the floor on the transit.

I took the rubber mat out of the old transit motorhome and found some holes in the cab floor. After taking the plug out of the back of the alternator and disconnecting the battery I started to weld the holes.

The holes in the floor pan were localised where water coming through the heater vents collects under the rubber mat. These were cut out and the edges squared off.A plate was then made to accurately fit in the holes,supported in place and but welded to the floor

The patches were then painted with red lead paint. For a neater job the welds could have been ground down flush but the floor is covered anyway and the patches hardly show underneath when painted over.

.The passengers side wing never fitted well.It stood very much proud of the leading edge of the door.New wings are unobtainable so I cut a thin section from the mounting flange (left pic) and then pushed the wing in and welded the edges back together. The door and wing now are much closer and the welding strengthened the door hinge area.

Welding front spring shackles on Mk1 transit.

With an MOT looming I thought I'd have a crawl underneath the transit. The front shackles had been welded some time ago (in fact a fair few years ago,time flies) I thought I'd attack them with a hammer. The original repairs still seem OK although a bit 'messy' so I ground down the welds and found one had not really taken right at the front so did it again. Under the old underseal the rust had started to get a hold so I took it all off and redid with old fashioned red lead.

The shackles looked a bit improved afterwards but while underneath I noticed a weak point on the floor,it probably doesn't matter for an MOT but still doesn't look too good.

Taxi tantrums,the worlds most reliable car starts playing up.

I had a problem with the old taxi. The problem started as a minor one with the car being hard to start if parked facing uphill. gradually it got worse,I traced it to air getting in via the top of the priming pump on top of the filter.

I cut the top off and welded a plate over it (I think the diaphram was leaking).

. This got the thing running but air still got in and only by revving the engine hard every few minutes would it keep running it was also down on power.
Eventually I rigged up a temporary system using a squeeze type priming pump and a couple of inline filters. This seems to work well,so I've decided to leave it alone for the time being.

Welding up the fairway doors part two.

The rot cut out left a bigger hole over half the door skin to bottom

is missing
After welding in some plates the seams were skimmed over with filler.

Welding up the back doors on the fairway taxi taxi

The door skin on the old fairway taxi was starting to come adrift. I took the door off and turning it upside down found the bottom of the door had all but vanished.
Even the thick metal that holds the door seal had broken up into pieces. I made a couple of sections to weld in,the repair wont last for ever but I did find even on ebay doors for these are hard to find and/or expensive. The doors like the rest of the vehicle rot badly,water comes in through the very poorly designed seals.

Car boot bargains,they just keep coming.

Went to a car boot this sunday. Julies car boot near Yarmouth. I did a stall to get rid of some stuff but came back with a load more.

I bought a compressor,a spray gun,tyre inflator and an air line. Also some old cast iron seat ends,an old but nice and solid petrol engine compression tester and some odd spanners. The spanners will go up for sale on the web site. I think now ebay seems to have shot itself in the foot again and choked off many small sellers that car boots are now going to be a better place to find the odd bargain. certainly for selling smaller items ebay is no longer as attractive for buyers or sellers as it once was.

A bit of woodwork on the car .

One problem that the rover P5 and P5b have is water coming in at the ends of the windscreen and rotting out the metal behind and spoiling the trim especially the ends of the dashboard.
The wood fillets in the corners discolour and delaminate. I removed the wood from the drivers side nd the back of it was pretty badly damaged. the screws securing the panel are hard to locate but on this fillet they had started to give up the ghost anyway.

The area behind the panel was in reasonable order,some surface rust treated with fluid film. The panel was repaired and then fitted back in. Originally I had removed it to replace the furflex trim around the doors. This is secured with tacks to some strips recessed into the door openings.

Sound proofing the Rover P5b.

I noticed when I took the radio out of the rover that some of the soundproofing felt had been removed from the dash panel area. I took the radio and the panel it fits into out and replaced the missing material.According to a couple of people I spoke to there should be more material behind the glove box and I have replaced this too.

More car boot booty.

Took a load of stuff to the car boot,I'm clearing a relations house. I bought a couple of old computers and was amazed to find they both worked (I only really wanted the case of one) I also bought an old drill powered drill sharpener. I've never had a lot of luck sharpening the smaller drills with a grindstone but this did a perfect job on the one I tried.
Result!

MOT on the rover p5b. No tax and no tax disc.

I took the rover for its MOT today and it passed with no advisories. Due to its status as a historic vehicle (a reminder of when this country had a thriving car manufacturing industry) it qualifies for free road tax. Its tax disc is marked as no payment made. The EU in another interference in English affairs are proposing to do away with tax discs,our weak government will go along with this as they allow the Germans and others to do more damage to this country in peacetime than they ever did in war.
How long before these parasites want old cars off the road ?

Repairing and restoring.some old leather car seats

The seats in my rover p5b were pretty grim but I had a secondhand set also in very poor condition to practice on.
They had been painted and were very hard and cracked,the first thing to do was rub them carefully with thinners to get the paint off.

The seat back was bad,cracked and creased.

I experimented on another scrap seat and found most cracks were actually in the painted surface and they could be smoothed with fine wet and dry or a wire wool pad.

The front panel of the seat was heavily painted and stiff,most of the paint was removed with thinners.

After much cleaning with an alcohol based cleaner the dye was rubbed into the cracks and then a fine coat sprayed on,the improvement to the leathers texture was most noticeable.

The seat after a thin sprayed coat of dye.I found the dye too thick to spray with an air brush and used a spray gun (gravity feed type) and set on minimum it gave a very fine spray.The seat still has to have another coat (maybe) and then has to be sealed.

Rover p5b featured on another site.

My Rover p5b is featured on this web site. The heading picture isn't very flattering but the article hopes to encourage anyone thinking of having a go at using a classic car to do so.
I hope it does.

Curing the thirst of the V8 in the Rover P5b

The tick over or idle of the Rover had been lumpy for some time and setting the carbs didn't seem to help. I went through the ignition replacing and repairing but no real difference.
The fuel consumption was pretty horrendous and the car would tick over albeit it a bit more lumpy even when cold without choke.
I pulled out the starter valves.these act as a choke on HIF6 carbs letting through a rich mixture. One was pretty worn but on one carb the O ring had broken up completely. I replaced both and although I still have to reset the carbs the V8 now idles slowly without trying to cut out or foul its plugs.

Is the doggy in the window still for sale?.

The shop is now for sale by auction but the business will carry on . Patti will soon have to find another place to sit in.

Patti also enjoys a car ride and is quite content to sit in the van and watch the world go by when we go to an auction or car boot sale .