1949 Austin Sixteen - Recommission

Deffo taking it to France next week! Want to come along as riding mechanic?! 🤣

That is just amazing - sitting here open mouthed at the wind-out front window

Its nice to see something harder to get bits for than a 60s Vauxhall!

The car has wind defectors fitted to the top of the door glass 



The 2 front doors were lacking these but they came with the car 



I cleaned the glass up and used a little glazing bonding to fix them back into their channels 



The front offside also has a vertical wind deflector fitted - it gives the car a little more presence when you view it from the side 



The car came with a matched nearside one too but sadly the bespoke brackets which retain it are missing - these are cupped and not that readily easy to fabricate - with this not being essential to returning the car to the road I'll leave this off for now but keep looking for something for that maybe easily adopted / fabricated to suitable brackets 



The paint finish on the nearside of the bonnet was odd in appearance - sort of fogged to the centre where something had been left on it and marked the paint 

 

Along with this spotting that was mainly on the front of the panel work but also some on the rear nearside 



Only way it would come off is through abrasion - so the affected panels received a quickish machine polish - nothing special just to remove the spotting 



Far from perfect paint but it looks pretty decent from a stand back - several of the larger areas where a light grey primer was showing through have been touched back in but I've left most of the smaller areas to blend with the overall patina on the rest of the car 



Seats have received nothing more than a wipe over - the fronts certainly have that lived in look - I've glued up several areas of hanging loose trim on the interior but not done anything to detract from the aged look of it 



In comparison to the fronts the rear seat looks like its hardly been sat in 



Several loose ends / finishing jobs undertaken - I thought I would just check on the anti freeze - of which the contents are 'nul points' - just rusty coloured water - whilst I hope that we are several months away from freezing conditions again - I'll drain the system this morning and ensure that the coolant system is properly protected - more later 

Though spent many happy hours playing here, including winding the screen in & out!

Certainly are - I'll take some pics & post them up later 

I attempted to drain the radiator from its original drain plug only to find that the drain plug had been replaced at some stage in the cars life with a overly long rusty bolt - I should have known better too it was barely breathed upon before it was leaking from the boss on the base tank 



Radiator out job then 



Why oh why must people resort to such bodges - I can understand the get you home / bide yourself over for a short period whilst its properly sorted but shortcuts like these ask for nothing but trouble at a later date (Unfortunately that later date normally ends up a few owners down the line) 



Removed the boss & cleaned it up - removed the bolt & shortened it - then once the boss was resoldered to the radiator - refitted the shortened bolt with a new fibre washer 



Straightened up the cooling fins on the rad - this easily done with a little care with a flat faced but blunt instrument - I normally use a screwdriver blade with the corners rounded off on it - I also blew the fins clear of debris from the rear with compressed air and flushed the radiator through with the hosepipe until it ran clear - Then back flushed the engine block before refitting the radiator 



Once refitted it was filled with a suitable antifreeze mixture and the engine run up to temperature - checked for leaks 



Spare wheel - the tyre is ancient and crossply - I wouldn't even run it on a wheelbarrow 

 

The 4 road wheels have been fitted with 16" radials quite recently - although budget tyres they will do the job - on the downside they have been carelessly covered in overspray 



New tube & radial tyre fitted to the spare 



Problem now is that radial tyres are wider than crossplys (radials were not commonplace when the car was new) and the spare is a very tight fit to the spare wheel enclosure (I have the same problem with Javelins) So the spare goes into the boot for now 



Some pics of the front armchair seating 



And the rear with the armrest down  

Thank you, GrumpyNorthener, for the seat pictures ❤️

Thanks Chris - excellent to read

Air filter clogged? Worth trying?

Fuel pump delivering?

Sticky float?

Crap WiFi!

Thanks

Matt