Duke's 1971 Wolseley 18/85

Duke O Smiley

Well lads, its nigh-on-time I've showed you one of my cars in here, and what better way to leave an impression of prestige* and class* on you all than with my Wolseley. They're classy motahs, right?

I got her in April just gone. It had been up and down on the classifieds for weeks and I had been doing my best to stop myself from calling, but after falling out of love with my A35 (a story for another day), I finally gave in, picked up the phone and in a half hour of phoning, I had hit the road for Slane to see her. I was greeted with the following when I turned up to the vendor's house:





She was a wreck, and any man of fit mental health would have walked away. Perhaps offered to take her to the weighbridge for the poor guy trying to offload it. That isn't what I done. I put my put my foot through a few places in the floor and had a poke around with my fingers on the sills. I waved a couple of notes in front of the guy's face and she was mine. All mine. A 1971 18/85. Mine.

So after a few sleepless nights she arrived on a low loader. We helped get it off and into position outside my parent's house, said our goodbyes to the recovery guy and he expressed his deepest sympathies. A couple of neighbours came out to see what all the fuss was about before slamming their doors shut in absolute horror. But I was the owner of a 71 18/85.







So the first port of call, as ever, is to her it into the shed and get it running. T'curse word with everything else until I can hear that power plant pur. And it did, with sfa effort too. She came with no exhaust, but even still it was sweet as a nut for something that hadn't run since 1989 previously. I was but a tear in my father's eye then.

So she runs. Top. A quick tune up, a (not so-) new exhaust made up, fresh fluids etc and a new battery and that was that. I could concentrate on the bodywork side of things. The fun starts here etc.

Surprisingly, when she was stripped back to underpinnings, things were really not as bad as they seemed. As a matter of fact, the rear floor right back to the boot, was like brand new. Literally, like new. The only bit of the floor that actually needed work was the passenger side foot well, it was totally shot. The rest was seriously solid and just needed attacking with a wire brush. So I paid a mate to weld in a bit on the floor, new sills and do a bit of repair work to the door bottoms and both front wing bottoms. So there we go, that was the structural side of things sorted in a weekend for the price of a few crates of Bulmers.







Afterwards then I started stripping her back on top to prepare for paint which wasn't much hassle bar fiddling around with the little chrome bits hoping not to break them.



FF a bunch of boring stuff and here she is, primer'd and ready to be painted.



FF AGAIN to yesterday and we are here. Not exactly a pristine job given that I don't exactly have a spray booth in here, but here she was, a little over a month of ownership, looking fine as hell:



And of course no fine British motor vehicle would be complete without a period set of driving lamps, for navigating your way through those pesky peasant dirt tracks



And the interior all jazzed up just today. Only the finest, softest materials [CarpetRight]for her ladyship.




TL;DR - DUKE FIX CAR!!!1

Interslice

Can't see the pics Duke. Could be just me

Duke O Smiley

Interslice wrote: »

Can't see the pics Duke. Could be just me

Sorry, I was messing around with flickr last night and I don't know what happened. Should be fixed now I hope

166man

I mean Im not sure this is a pretty car......but it's damn cool and fair play to you for doing all that work...!

Interslice

Duke O Smiley wrote: »

Sorry, I was messing around with flickr last night and I don't know what happened. Should be fixed now I hope

All good now, cheers. Fair play on the job man. Some turnarond! Good write up too. Actually read half of it without the pics but didn't want to ruin it on myself . Can't beet a good build thread and a cup of tea!

Duke O Smiley

166man wrote: »

I mean Im not sure this is a pretty car......but it's damn cool and fair play to you for doing all that work...!

She isn't as pretty as the 1300 thats for sure. Actually it isn't really pretty at all but I just love it - whats not to love about a 70s British luxo barge....is it a wonder they were defunct 4 years after!?

Interslice wrote: »

All good now, cheers. Fair play on the job man. Some turnarond! Good write up too. Actually read half of it without the pics but didn't want to ruin it on myself . Can't beet a good build thread and a cup of tea!

Cheers, its good fun this, therapeutic nearly. Not usually one for project threads/ write ups but I was a bit bored, plus I'm always buying new stuff its hard to commit to one! :P