1968 Austin 1100 Mk1 (Take 2)

[captain_70s]

When I had a Dolly 1850 on the go I acquired an entire functioning engine to keep as a spare just in case the first ever needed to have it's head off...

The stupid waterpump/thermostat housing design was enough of a nightmare to sort out for me...

[fried onions]

Funny to see cloth covered wiring in a car of this age.

[MLOR]

As promised photos of the kit of little hole saws that fit over the stud and cut down thro the corrossion.
This set is sizes for a Ford Side valve engine, they came a variety of kits for different engine makes.
This set must be from the 50s or so.
I doubt you will find them except at autojumbles etc but it gives you the idea.
There are probably modern hole saws that you could leave the centre pilot out to do the same thing for you.

P1010721.JPG (650.35 KiB) Viewed 3744 times

P1010722.JPG (648.55 KiB) Viewed 3744 times

P1010723.JPG (585.02 KiB) Viewed 3744 times

HTH

[MLOR]

Funny to see cloth covered wiring in a car of this age.

Seen cloth covered and cloth braided as late as 1979 on Land Rovers.
Think it was what was already in stores somewhere in the system.

[Hooli]

As promised photos of the kit of little hole saws that fit over the stud and cut down thro the corrossion.
This set is sizes for a Ford Side valve engine, they came a variety of kits for different engine makes.
This set must be from the 50s or so.
I doubt you will find them except at autojumbles etc but it gives you the idea.
There are probably modern hole saws that you could leave the centre pilot out to do the same thing for you.
P1010721.JPG

P1010722.JPG

P1010723.JPG

HTH

I often used to think something like that would be useful, I had no idea they'd ever existed.

[DodgeRover]

As promised photos of the kit of little hole saws that fit over the stud and cut down thro the corrossion.
This set is sizes for a Ford Side valve engine, they came a variety of kits for different engine makes.
This set must be from the 50s or so.
I doubt you will find them except at autojumbles etc but it gives you the idea.
There are probably modern hole saws that you could leave the centre pilot out to do the same thing for you.
P1010721.JPG

P1010722.JPG

P1010723.JPG

HTH

Innovations like this and the manufacturing of them are why we used to rule the world! I wonder when it all went wrong.

[SiC]

As promised photos of the kit of little hole saws that fit over the stud and cut down thro the corrossion.
This set is sizes for a Ford Side valve engine, they came a variety of kits for different engine makes.
This set must be from the 50s or so.
I doubt you will find them except at autojumbles etc but it gives you the idea.
There are probably modern hole saws that you could leave the centre pilot out to do the same thing for you.
P1010721.JPG

P1010722.JPG

P1010723.JPG

HTH

Innovations like this and the manufacturing of them are why we used to rule the world! I wonder when it all went wrong.

Obviously a dissertation length answer to that one. However a short answer could either be a) around Thatcher when rot was sufficient to be the deathknell, b) we still are world leaders in some areas of innovation.

As someone who works in a high tech startup that's had nearly half a billion dollars investment to develop AI and HPC accelerators, my preferred answer would be (b). I've been involved with the Bristol high tech scene for coming up to a decade and seen other companies succeed in real innovation (with plenty of failures of course). Just that innovation isn't as widely known.

To answer (a), once the auto industry started dieing, investment in tooling and such decreased. Other countries (such as Germany, Japan, etc) has manufacturers increasing their volumes + quality and they ended up with a lot of local producers of such machinery. Admittedly a bit of a simplified answer to the direct question on tooling and manufacturing equipment.

Some of my colleagues and ex-colleagues are former R&D engineers from Renishaw. For those that don't know, they are one of the world leaders in Metrology equipment (science of measurement). Their big cash cow and market is automotive. Engines are one of the last major precision made mass-produced product that needs extremely high tolerances. But with electrification of cars, their equipment is becoming in less of demand as making electric motors don't require such tight tolerances. It could well be that in the future we loose the ability to produce parts to fix modern (>1980s) engines.

[SiC]

Funny to see cloth covered wiring in a car of this age.

That surprised me too. Thankfully it's just braiding and underneath it is PVC insulated cables. The braiding had protected the PVC cabling pretty well from degradation and is in decent condition.

[LynehamHerc]

As promised photos of the kit of little hole saws that fit over the stud and cut down thro the corrossion.
This set is sizes for a Ford Side valve engine, they came a variety of kits for different engine makes.
This set must be from the 50s or so.
I doubt you will find them except at autojumbles etc but it gives you the idea.
There are probably modern hole saws that you could leave the centre pilot out to do the same thing for you.
P1010721.JPG


P1010722.JPG

P1010723.JPG

HTH

Innovations like this and the manufacturing of them are why we used to rule the world! I wonder when it all went wrong.

I think with the onset of asset stripping and the machinations of people like Hanson and White. They were then followed by such as Simpson and Mayo at Marconi, who managed to destroy GEC in the blink of an eye. Get rich quick financial engineering has been the bane of British industry, not excluding events like Robert Maxwell and his destruction of the Mirror pension fund.

[AMCrebel]

The blocked oil filter light was a feature of BMC cars for a few years. Minors had it for a while and then the feature was dropped.

It appeared in Autumn 1964. You can tell on Minis and Minors with the big speedo: previously there were three dash light. Red ignition, blue main beam, amber oil pressure. After that there were red and blue plus two orange lights, one for oil pressure, one for blocked filter. Minis and Minors continued with the two amber lights long after the oil filter sensor was dropped.

This 1100 has two amber lights.

Blimey! I remember wondering what the two amber lights thing was as a kid but I had no-one to ask as no-one in our family had a clue about cars.