1968 Austin 1100 Mk1 (Take 2)

[fried onions]

Worried the calipers maybe seized up.

Not something to worry about even if they have. Those twin-piston fixed calipers are far less hassle to sort out compared to the later swinging singles.

Yes, they are a doddle to repair. I think the later ones were more economical to make but need attention every 5 or so years.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I had to laugh on AS with that dreadful purple thing you managed to offload. The ill fitting Rover 25 seats made me spit tea all over my Mac screen.

That heap will never be a good car again. It is destined always to be rubbish.

[SiC]

It never would be a good car. The fact it even survived this far is a good and pretty amazing thing in its own right.

Also the fact that it should go back on the road make me happy enough.

[SiC]

I suppose I should update this thread. Progress slowed down to an almost crawl after personal life events, work and lack of mojo taken its toll.

Finished cleaning up the locks.

Oiled and greased the window mechanism. This had rusted off at the end but luckily the roller doesn't go this far, so still serviceable.


Hoovered out the rust in the bottom of the door and filled with dintrol


Put all back together


Door card back on. Like most door cards, this was missing a good few of its trim clips to hold it on.


Then did the same for the other side. Exterior door handle needed adjusting slightly as the key didn't quite have enough travel to push lock/unlock mechanism.


Also went to the trouble of taping up the insides to prevent water ingress.


Back together


Steering wheel wobbled a bit and after a bit of investigation, it appears the nut was finger tight. So got out my biggest bar and tightened it up.


Still some lateral play in it. Guess this is normal??

Then krusted and painted the subframe mounts. No after pictures as I'm shocking with paint.


Finally adjusted the new handbrake cables.

Only things left is to fit the new seatbelts and tune the engine up!

Someone has painted TDC in the viewing hole.


Unfortunately it doesn't look like it quite lines up correctly.


I'll double check with the timing light but if it's close, I'll leave the distributor as is. Going by the new leads, garage receipts and like, I think it's been adjusted recently anyway.

[DodgeRover]

Glad to see progress.

Hope all is ok now with work, life, home and family

[SiC]

Hope all is ok now with work, life, home and family

Not really but the world continues spinning...

[SiC]

Put my new automatic seatbelts in last night. I'm sure some will think it's sacrilege to replace fixed belts with retractable, but those fixed belts really aren't very comfortable. Almost like they exist purely to tick the requirement of front seat belts but they know really most users will leave them adjusted right back and not use them...

Also pulled out the carpet. Whoever put the car carpet in obviously decided it was far too thin and put regular old carpet as backing. Unfortunately somehow it's got wet under there and it's kept it wet. Probably where it was sat outside before I got it into the garage. So wet carpet sat there for over 3 months or so. Paintwork on the floor has bubbled into water filled blisters. I'll get this running and driving, then probably sand it back and then put fresh paint down.

Seat belts just held on with some straight forward bolts.




New belts went in as easy as you might expect. I chose Beige coloured belts and when they came they looked nothing like beige. However in the car they look a pretty good match. Match coloured belts with interior certainly isn't an extravagance that certainly BMC would have done out of the factory!


Now a case of finally dropping it back down, getting her started and tuned up. Initially I'm going to do a few laps up and down our cul-de-sac to see how she runs. Then venture out briefly onto the main road to get to back roads for a bit of light pottering around. Hopefully with everything that has been checked and done, she shouldn't have any excuse to embarrass herself.

[panhard65]

Seeing that seat belt reminds me of going to look at a 1100 for my sisters first car back in the early 80's. It had inertia belts I remember as when I pulled it the reel pulled out of the floor. How any of these things survived I will never know.

[Eddie Honda]

I'm sure some will think it's sacrilege to replace fixed belts with retractable

Of course it is! Those Kangol Magnets were ace.

Had to think twice.about the colour of the new belts. My 1972 had a pair of Britax Autolok 3 (those you could never pull out on a hill because the ball had rolled out the middle of the saucer) and they were grey, (very coarse weave) however they invariably changed colour over the years to beige with 40-a-day being smoked in the car.

[fried onions]

May I have the old static belts please?