[Vulgalour]

The 1100 is sat waiting its turn really at the moment.

Clutch - it's letting air in somewhere but not letting fluid out. Suspected either collapsed clutch hose (£8ish to replace with new) or failed master cylinder (£100ish to replace with new). This is the only thing preventing the car from being driveable, it still starts and idles really happily when you chuck a fresh battery on it. Annoyingly, you can bleed the clutch up to almost-operational and then another press of the pedal just undoes all the hard work you put in bleeding it. This one is going to be a nuisance to resolve I suspect since it's not showing any obvious component failures.

Bodywork - Mostly, this is waiting on the clutch. Since the only way to move the car is to push it and the indoor space needs to be available on a daily basis I simply don't have the time to do anything on this front at all. The only panels I know I need to buy to sort the bodywork are the intermediate and outer sills and for good ones of those - I'd rather buy good for the fit than faff about with cheap, badly fitting ones - I'm looking at about £300. Other things keep eating my savings at the moment so I likely won't be able to place this order until next year. I've decided to leave the sills until everything else - floors, arches, inner arches, subframe mounting points, etc. - are finished since they'll be easiest to do with the rest of the car nice and solid.

Suspension - now the Churchill pump is restored I can replace the broken schrader valve with one of my spares. I'm waiting on my suspension fluid order arriving so I can do that.

[220 GSi turbo]

The clutch problem is most likely to be the master cylinder: the seals will have turned to something resembling jelly.

The good news is that repair kits are quite freely available: not 100% sure it is identical to Mini, but something else from that era, with the same bore size, should suffice.

A little tale from my past ADO16 experience: I used to look after a beige 1971 Morris 1300 for an elderly gent and for one MoT, it needed a new front brake hose.

I duly fitted the hose, bled the system and took the car for its retest, which it passed. As the tester reversed off the ramp at the end of the test, the pedal went straight to the floor Being a friendly old-school tester, he put the car back on the ramp and we bled it once more. Perfect pedal!
Got off the ramp and put the car outside the workshop, brakes failed again after a couple of applications.

The next day, I took the master cylinder off and stripped it: the seals had turned to something resembling jelly! A good cleanup and a new seal kit restored full braking performance for the rest of its life (until underbody rot finally got the better of it)

[Vulgalour]

unlikely to be the seals, it's only just had new ones put in and all the internals checked out as healthy, so far as we could tell. It's possible a seal isn't sealing, but it means dismantling it again to find out. I'll do the pipe first, see if it's any different, and if not we'll get the master cylinder apart again and see what's going on. That said, knowing my luck with cars we'll go to bleed it and it'll be fine for no reason or something completely unrelated will have broken spectacularly, also for no reason. I'm sort of resigned to this nonsense now.

Hydraulic brakes and clutches are super but sometimes, just sometimes, I think mechanical systems are probably less hassle ;)

[Julesmat50]

Hydraulic brakes and clutches are super but sometimes, just sometimes, I think mechanical systems are probably less hassle ;)

Not convinced I'd like to go back to rod operated braking systems but I would agree that mechanical clutches do have one huge advantage in fault finding, as in they either work or they don't. None of this wishy-washy "works for 2 mins then doesn't or a few days then has issues" nonsense. Fluid systems may be easier to operate and smoother, but the list of potential problems is huge by comparison.

[ROVER Cabby]

Thanks for the updates mate.

[Vulgalour]

A few days ago up here in the Northern Wastes.

[Vulgalour]

I was away for the festive period and on my return, decided to get on with the clutch replacement in the Princess. This is a job best described with this emoticon

Got a nice family photo with the 1100 and Mike's Six.


Currently the Princess looks like this.


Because to do the clutch you have to drain the oil and coolant and drop the whole engine and gearbox out of the car to get the clutch housing off because of the combination of the remote gear assembly, gearbox in sump and the engine bay being about 4" too narrow to do everything in situ. It's a right palaver. Lifting the whole lot out the top is much more difficult and requires the exhaust, gear selector rods and driveshafts to be removed, so dropping it through the bottom is much more sensible. Hopefully have this all back together next week.

[ROVER Cabby]

What a ballache.

[Vulgalour]

Princess got sorted and has been used daily since. MoT later this week on that one. Some 1100 news in the meantime...

First, the good news.

https://youtu.be/_ezN6sHa4r8

That's Mike sniggering behind the camera. If you're wondering, the clutch is a bit stuck on at the moment so driving it around the yard is an interesting experience. I managed to get a first-to-neutral gear change and a first-to-second (surprisingly scary speed change in the space!) gear change while the car was running which is an improvement. I can *almost* select all gears when the car is idling now, but still have to select first before starting the car. Once driving around you can take your feet off all the pedals and just steer, it chugs around as if it's an automatic. I would have chugged about for longer had I more free time and I reckon with persistence this clutch will free off properly just chugging about and attempting to change gears.

Now the bad news. This tiny little drive has highlighted that my fears about the driving position are valid. The seats and suspension make it more comfortable than a Mini, but only just. The other issue is the offset is so bad, when I went for the brakes in the video so I didn't hit the Vauxhall, I stabbed the accelerator at the same time, which was particularly alarming. I am completely the wrong shape for this car and so it is with some regret that I can categorically say the 1100 is not a car for me. Just driving it in circles in the yard left me in some back pain that I've been free of completely since piloting the Princess and 414 about daily over the last year or so and I have no desire to inflaming that particular issue.

Still, you can now see it drives, runs and stops quite happily, even with a sticky clutch. Now just to find it someone who can take all the parts I've bought for it and get it back together again.

[Vulgalour]

To draw a line under this one, I've now agreed to sale and it'll be off to pastures new in a few weeks. Someone has been hoarding brave pills and decided this will be their first restoration project. They'll certainly know how to weld by the end of it! Should be a rewarding project for them all the same, especially since it's now MoT AND tax exempt.