Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Vulgalour]

Left a little present out for the local scrap collectors since a couple of them have been really polite and professional when enquiring about potential scrap here. I'm sure one of them will be pleased to find it.


That means that the bodywork - apart from the bulkhead - is now off the chassis. It wasn't a difficult job since it was all quite rotten. For reasons of reference, I took both sills off whole since this will help me understand what shapes to make for ours when I do the considerably smaller repairs they need. Having both the sills off the donor gives me a rough sketch of how things should look and will mean I can make oversized panels and trim to suit easier on our car since I've got something that I can work with 'on the bench'. It also meant I could take the B pillars off at the same time without trying to remove them separately. The other item the sills have is the carpet edge trim weather seal pieces which our car is missing, these should also be easier to remove and retrim/remake when the time comes to doing it on our car.


Our battery box needs some small repair so I liberated the one from the donor car since it's also very repairable. It basically needs the thin steel side panels remaking and the whole thing painting, the sturdier parts of the framework are in excellent shape still. I can also sort out a battery clamp properly a lot easier with this off the car too.


There wasn't anything else to save this round since I was focused more on dismantling the scrap to get to the next pieces I'd like to remove. Not a lot to go now, happily. I'll be happier still when the back garden looks less Steptoe & Son.


Shall we have a look at the chassis then? Overall, it's in pretty good shape at least as far as I can see at the moment. It's not perfect, understandably, and does have some localised issues. I was expecting a lot more rot and issues than there are. Obviously all the jacking points are knackered, and have had a variety of repairs over the years. I had hoped there'd be at least one whole jacking point I could use as reference but there isn't, I'll just have to figure it out from what's on our car and start from scratch with them.


On the rot front, there's some in the front of the chassis rails ahead of the crossmember, and a little bit in the side rail under the driver's seat. These do look repairable if you can work in suitable thickness steel and do seem very localised. The rest of the chassis has some pitting as you'd expect but it doesn't appear to have any particularly thin or frilly bits. We'll see how it goes as I remove the rest of the items still attached currently.




The body mounts appear to be in good shape, though the same could not be said for the bodyshell where it mounted to the chassis, in some places leaving behind good chunks of itself as the remains were lifted free.


It was nice to finally be able to sweep up the massive pile of dirt under the car and have things looking tidier. Not many more things to remove now to be down to just a bare chassis. I'll be happy when I get the driveway cleared and the spares tidied up so attention can return to the other Lanchester.

[Vulgalour]

Yesterday I hosed the chassis down to get the bulk of the dirt off and make it easier to strip the few remaining items of value to us. It looks much the same as it did in the last photo. This made stripping off the next few bits somewhat easier since I could see where the fixings, or what was left of them, were. Most of the items I want off the bulkhead are now off, there's very little left to remove here.


That meant today's small haul is the wiper motor, some wiring harness P clips, the copper fuel lines, the fuel reserve cable and pull, and the bulkhead trim panel. Somehow, against all logic, the bulkhead trim panel has survived with little more than some surface rust on the rivets and a bit of surface mould on one edge. Given how this car was stored and how prone an area this is to getting wet, it should be little more than mush.


Still to remove is all the rear running gear including the leaf springs and lever shock dampers, the front suspension and hubs, the main battery cable, all of the brake mechanisms, and what's left of the wiring harness. That should then leave us with a chassis and bulkhead awaiting its fate at the hands of the DVLA.

Since I'll have a spare pair of rear wings, and at least two good spare steel wheels and matching hubcaps I've been considering getting a modern lightweight box trailer and dressing it up with Lanchester parts so it looks age appropriate. I'm not really tempted to use the back half of the chassis from the donor due to the weight of it, far easier to make a modern trailer look old than build a modern trailer entirely from old parts.

[Ray White]

I couldn't resist posting this. While perusing the private ads. I came across this rather charming BSA,,,,,and look what's in the background!

https://www.carandclassic.com/car/C1570059#&gid=1&pid=4

[badhuis]

This car
https://www.carandclassic.com/car/C1570063
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a car stops being fun when it becomes an investment

[Ray White]

[Vulgalour]

They are both rather lovely, for their own reasons.

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It's been a busy day today, doing my best to get more of the donor gone through. The wiring harness that runs through the chassis was proving difficult to remove so instead I removed all the other wiring which will be hopefully useful for reference for later. The battery cable was also removed, it's not really in good enough shape to use again but is complete so like the wiring harness will be very useful for reference when ordering parts to make a new one.


Some smaller items like clips and bits of the chassis ID tags that had self-removed were rescued, as was the brake light switch. Amazingly, the one on the donor car isn't seized and only has minor surface corrosion, even the rubber gasket is in good shape. Once I've cleaned and tested it to make sure it's good, I'll be fitting that to our main Lanchester in place of the dodgy plastic switch that doesn't seem to work.




All of the front suspension has now been liberated, along with the main front-to-rear brake rod. I had intended to then remove the rear axle but I was done with fighting rusty bolts and skinning my knuckles so changed tack.


With the front suspension removed it was very easy for Pat and I to pick up the front of the chassis and just move it to the new location. The only thing that made that difficult is the rear wheels won't roll. This could be a lack of weight so it's just easier for the ancient tyres to skid than roll. It could be that because I've removed the handbrake cable and mechanism, and the front-to-back brake rod that the brakes are on, or it could be that this was the first time we'd tried to roll the car forwards and something is broken meaning the rear wheels only roll backwards. I don't know. It didn't matter anyway, because there was so little weight we could just drag the thing to the new spot to free up the garage and get the good Lanchester out.


The main reason I wanted to do this was some metal drip trays I'd been keeping on a stack of wheels had fallen off without any input from anything, apparently, and I couldn't get in to sort it out without getting the Lanchester out of the garage, which of course I couldn't do with the donor blocking the way. Turns out some of my plastic storage boxes are collapsing, had shoved against the stack of tyres moving them far enough that the metal trays fell off. I suppose I better spring clean the garage then.


Much better! I've relocated the tyre stack, shuffled all my rubbish... er... valuable and rare spares.. about and gained a foot or so of extra width and length to the useable space in the tiny garage. That's quite an achievement. I even threw some things away! What I didn't do was go through every single box and organise things because the boxes are fragile, I only had so much time, and I can't afford the racking I want to put in the garage to solve my storage issue. The good Lanchester is way easier to get in and out of the garage now we've got that extra space to play with, and I can get to stuff easier too because there's room to walk down the side of the car at last.


Good Lanchester out of the garage and I'm happy to report no signs of active woodworm, moths, or other pests. Aside from some dust, all looks well. As a little treat and to keep them from getting accidentally damaged, I boshed the three trim rings that came with the donor car on our car. These rings will get the oxalic acid treatment followed by a coat of lacquer or similar to keep them from completely dissolving. It would be nice to find a fourth scruffy one to match, for now these will do.


Looking forward to being able to dig into KKV again soon and get things moving once more now the donor car is properly out of the way. Still more to remove from the donor of course, there's just less pressure now since we've got to wait up to another month before we can chase the DVLA about the V5.

[Ray White]

Great work. There are doubtless other Lanchester owners who will appreciate anything you have that you don't need.

I have found motivation again!

[Vulgalour]

Glad to hear your motivation is back, these longer days are definitely helping if nothing else.

Really hoping that some of the Lanchester bits are going to be useful for other folks. Trouble is of course the number of people with a Lanchester that are also in need of parts we've saved is going to be pretty tiny so I expect we'll have things in storage for quite some time. Also doesn't help that so much of it is really quite robust so it's probably accidents rather than wear that leads to replacement.

[Vulgalour]

We are finally putting things back on the car instead of taking them off. The main thing to reinstall was the waterpump, to do that it needed the engine mount to be replaced which until recently has been an issue. Happily, the donor car came with what appears to be a NOS engine mount. It isn't an easy job at all to replace the engine mount, the radiator had to come out, the water pump would have had to come out had it not already been removed, and it took Pat on one tool and me on another to get everything in. You also have to jack the engine up under the sump - cast aluminium and not finned so it's strong enough for the job - so you can align everything. The old engine mount came off in three pieces, which it shouldn't do.


The new one slotted in quite nicely and once installed we found the engine sat a good bit higher and now had some wiggle to it where before it was completely solid, which makes sense since the rubber part of the old engine mount wasn't really doing any damping of any sort. After that, the water pump could be reinstalled, the top hose put in place so it's not floating about in a box, and the radiator slotted back into its hole. The new fan belt was also dropped on.



Finally, the dynamo was reinstalled loosely. The stuck nut that had caused an electrical connector to shear proved to not be stuck at all once the dynamo had a spanner taken to it and undid quite easily by hand. Not sure what that was about but since nothing else was wrong with the dynamo before it made sense to drop it in the hole today so it's another thing that's not just knocking about in the boot. At this point I'm only interested in restoring and sprucing up parts if they need repairing, if they don't need repairing they can stay scruffy until further notice. Access to fit the dynamo is appalling and I hated every minute of it, in case you were curious.


Now, if I can just find the time to get caught up with my video editing queue and absolutely trashed upload schedule, perhaps they'll get up to somewhere near where we are in real time soon.

[Vulgalour]

We have news from the DVLA regarding the donor car.

The car does not exist on their system, which we already know, but since we can prove existence of the car we could get a V5C for it. We would need to contact a suitable car club - DLOC is likely the best candidate - to confirm the car is what we've said it is. Then the DVLA will issue a new V5C with a non-transferable reg marker on it. If we were restoring the car this would be ideal.

However, if the club chosen refuse the application we do have an alternative route of applying for an age related plate, also non-transferable, through the usual forms.

For us, that means the end of the road for the chassis. Unless someone out there desperately wants a bare chassis with a non-transferable reg we shall be chopping this one up and disposing of it.

[Ray White]

[Vulgalour]

The club only needs to confirm the existence of the car, and provide records to prove it if they can. For some clubs that's easier than others, and for the Lanchester I'm pretty sure the registrar could actually do it.

The roadworthiness bit comes when you transfer the plate itself. It's supposed to be that you can only transfer a plate from an MoT'd/roadworthy vehicle.

In this instance, it's more hassle than it's worth for us to try and save the plate so we shan't be going any further with it. I imagine if you found a stash of Lanchester mechanical parts that needed a chassis, this one would be ideal for that, then you could stick whatever body you wanted on top and be on the right side of the law. You'd have to really want to do that, especially given how much easier it would be to just wait until an LD10 came up for sale. It's quite surprising how often LD10s have come up for sale over the last few years, especially considering how few are now left.

[Rick]

I always thought you needed a complete car in order to get a registration back that had expired? I've known people start to disassemble a car then apply to get the registration back, then having to bolt it back together so that it resembled a complete vehicle before being inspected? Maybe things have changed since then!?

RJ
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[Ray White]

Before I bought my (imported) MG TC the vendor had to get the MG car club to confirm to the DVLA that the car had been restored to their satisfaction in order to get issued with an age related number.

[Rootes75]

Over time I've had to get a couple of my original registrations back. In both instances the cars were in bits and they weren't even inspected by the club reps.

I had to put together a folder of all the documentary evidence I could find and photos of the cars in the state they were and then send it all on to the clubs. They then dealt with it from there.
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Various Rootes Vehicles.