Austin A70 Hampshire

[59Impala]

I watched the BBC1 series 'Ten Pound Poms' last night which is about er, poms emigrating to Australia for a tenner. Anyway it's set in about 1956 and one of the vehicles that makes street scene appearances is a dark blue Hampshire, probably Antrim Blue as per the model version that we both own. Nice to see something like that, some other nice old vehicles too.

[angrydicky]

Took the tyre back to the place that fitted it. He fitted a new inner tube and said the old one had just failed. Apparently they are all made in China now and it’s impossible to get decent quality tubes any more, so dodgy ones are quite common. Hopefully I won’t have any more problems.
I decided, that since my 3t trolley jack is ridiculously heavy and takes up a lot of space, I would try out the car’s original jack and see if it would do the job if I needed to do a wheel change by the side of the road. Happily, it does work well, it was a bit sticky but is much better now I’ve greased it. It takes a lot of winding but both wheels are off the ground in these photos. It slots into a jacking point on the chassis outrigger and you have to remove the seat squab and a rubber grommet in the floor to use it.

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I had a lovely, long drive out in it on Saturday. Went up into the Lincolnshire Wolds, around the lanes to Spilsby and back. At one point I got stuck in a traffic jam and was idling for a few minutes in hot weather. I had no fuel starvation issues I was pleased to report! It ran really well, the only problem being an occasionally sticking throttle. So when I got back, I took the linkage apart, greased it all and adjusted the bit I’d got slightly wrong when I had the carb off. It’s transformed now, much easier to push down and easier to get smooth gear changes.

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Fatha_AD had a go in it and was quite impressed. I took the opportunity to be chauffeured!

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I’m very pleased with how it drives. I think we should be on for the Austin Counties Car Club national which is just under three weeks from now. I spoke to the organiser yesterday and he is very excited about this car! There are three Hampshires booked in this year, mine, his and another black one owned by a chap from London.

Then I took it to the Stickney autojumble. Got loads of interest as usual! I can’t take it anywhere without attracting attention.

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I also picked out the lettering on the dash knobs and used a dab of brush cleaner on a rag to take off the excess. It took a few attempts but I got a decent result. These original knobs are like gold dust, the repro 3d printed ones are white rather than ivory so stand out a mile as replacements. The originals are normally in very poor condition but these have survived remarkably well for some reason. Trip meter reckons I’ve done 210 miles since getting it back on the road, but I think it’s a bit optimistic.

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I’m doing a 60 mile round trip in it today to go and visit Miss_AD, as my Rover 600 is having some paintwork done.
The more miles I put under its belt the more confidence I’m building in it.

[Hooli]

That looks a lovely way to travel.

[mercrocker]

It sure does, and in a lovely environment. Just superb.

[Asimo]

Marvellous.
That is all. Carry on.

[angrydicky]

I drove it to Miss_ADs place. She has recently moved house and the removal men couldn’t be arsed with the last few hundred boxes so chucked it all in the garage. Inevitably, she soon started complaining she couldn’t find stuff so I offered to go and help her pull the entire contents of a fairly large, and completely stuffed full garage out onto the driveway, sort the boxes to go into the house from the ones that was being temporarily stored in the garage, and put it all back in. Having seen how much was in there, I reckoned it would take the best part of the day with the two of us working on it.
I parked the Hampshire on the outer drive, next to the pavement, as I knew we’d need the entire driveway.
Unsurprisingly, it was an absolute magnet. Two old boys in a Montego estate (2.0 D Countryman no less) pulled up to have a look and I was stuck chatting to them for ages. Not long after they’d left, another old boy on a beautifully patinated early 50s AJS did a u-turn to come back and inspect it.
We then had a steady stream of passers-by stopping and asking questions so it wasn’t easy to get the work done. Must have easily had eight or nine people want to chat about the car.
We went in for dinner, and would you believe it, had two (completely separate) blokes half an hour apart knock on the door because they wanted to chat to me about the car.
I’ve never owned a car that gets this much attention. It’s amazing.

[angrydicky]

Today, I did a bit more fettling. First job was to get some proper antifreeze in the radiator as up until now I’ve just been running water in it. The reason for this was that due to the poor condition of the water pump casting and a couple of shit jubilee clips I had difficulty getting the bottom hose to seal. Confident there were no more leaks, I tried again to free the seized drain tap. I soaked it in penetrating oil and I got the tap moving backwards and forwards a bit when the bloody thing broke off. Then I did what I should have done from the start and unscrewed the whole thing from the bottom of the rad.
What came out looked pretty rusty. This was understandable given the length of time off the road, but it has been backflushed several times already. I had the rad recored which took care of the overheating issues.
I filled it back up with the correct mix of ethylene glycol and rainwater.
The heater is surprisingly efficient and this week as it’s been cold (up until now) I’ve used it until the cabin gets too toasty and I’ve had to turn it off.
The steering box was still leaking. I’ve already replaced the oil seal (it only has one) and that was dry. I thought it was coming from the gland but where the wires to the horn switch go, there’s a little brass olive in there but on inspection that was sealing perfectly. That meant it had to be coming from the lid.
This isn’t particularly easy to remove in situ as it’s close to the underside of the front valance. It’s held in place with four 1/4” Whitworth bolts. There is a spacer, with a gasket on each side, then the shims which, as the box wears, you remove to take up endfloat and eliminate up and down movement in the shaft. I’d already removed five of the eight shims that were in this box to sort the endfloat.
The problem looked likely to be the ancient gaskets. I had just enough gasket paper left to make two new ones, which I then used a smear of jointing compound on to make sure. I also cleaned all the surface rust off the spacer and the shims, then put it back together.
The added thickness of the new gasket paper, and the sealant, had thrown my adjustment out and I had excessive endfloat again. I had to take it off and remove all three shims to get it back somewhere close to how it was. There is a tiny bit of ‘float left but nothing that’s going to cause it to clonk over bumps.
I filled up the steering box with oil, took it for a drive then parked it over cardboard. So far, dry as a bone which is a right result.
While I had it up on the ramp, I took the opportunity to give it another grease up, so went around and greased the kingpins, clutch and brake pedal shafts and all the other myriad of grease nipples on a car of this age.
There was a really annoying rattle from the LH instrument cluster which contains the ammeter, oil pressure and fuel gauges. I could see the glass was loose in its surround. I tried jamming different pieces of rubber in but that didn’t work, so I took the dash knobs and fascia off again to get access to it, I took the surround off the cluster and discovered a thin rubber seal which is supposed to hold the glass tight against its surround, had deteriorated badly.
I took the glass off the original with the seized up oil gauge but the seal wasn’t much better and it was rock hard and brittle, it fell apart when I attempted to remove it.
After hunting around for some suitable rubber to make something, all I could find was an old piece of wing piping. I cut a long thin strip off the strip part of the piping, and after a bit of adjustment, it fitted perfectly. I folded it into the groove,and refitted the glass. For the first time it felt as solid as the speedo. I put it back together and took it for another run, and not having the most annoying rattle has made it much more pleasant to ride in. All we have left are the sunroof, which only rattles when it’s closed, and the gear lever shaft where it passes through a bronze bush on the side of the column. The bush is worn so there’s a slight rattle there but it’s nowhere near as annoying as the instrument one.
I smelt petrol yesterday on the way back from the Co-op so pulled over to investigate. There was a sign of petrol leaking past the float bowl gasket but when I pulled over it had dried off.
On returning home, I dropped the float bowl, cleaned out a bit more rust that had made its way through and settled in the bottom of the bowl. Removed the needle valve and, after rummaging through my spares found a Zenith rebuild kit for an unknown application which had the right size washers to adjust the valve height. Added an extra washer which has the effect of reducing the fuel level in the carb. Adjusted the mixture again and now I think it’s running better than it’s ever done with no more petrol leaks.

[mercrocker]

I’ve never owned a car that gets this much attention. It’s amazing.

I can tell you as a car-fixated 7 year old in 1966 that even 60 odd years ago seeing a Hampshire was an absolute Red Letter Day in I-Spy terms. You just did not see them. I had heard of A40 Dorsets and never clapped eyes on one of those either despite distant relatives telling me they had owned one.
But it was only when I found a well out-of-date car book in the school library that I even knew these A70s existed.

Growing up in Hampshire, I was obviously interested to know that "we" had a County Austin and resolved to spot one, having carefully noted the salient differences to the still-abundantly common Devons. I could differentiate a Hereford from a Somerset a mile off, so believe me, I would have seen one had it been visible!

I just never did, not until decades later at a car show.....

[angrydicky]

That’s brilliant.
No one on that day managed to identify it correctly. The bloke with the Montego estate thought it was an Atlantic. He said there’s someone he knows who lives in the same town with three Atlantics. I mentioned this to my old mate Mark (who owns five Atlantics!) when I rang him the other day and he said there is someone in Lincolnshire with a few, and he’s chatted to him at a counties rally before, so perhaps it’s not BS.

[angrydicky]

Steering box still dry. Been running this around as my main car while the Rover is away having its paintwork done.
It hasn't missed a beat. 400 miles done so far. Went up to north Lincs last night and back and loved every minute.
The speedo is pathetic though. At 'about 50' it's bouncing between 30 and 70. Any ideas on what might be causing this?