• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Looking for old parts catalog(ue)s with listings/part numbers for early 1960s Vanden Plas 4 Litre Princess

Share this page

Racer-X-

Racer-X-

Senior Member
Country flag
Offline
Especially interested in suspension parts, bushings, tie rod ends, and other parts needed to restore this one to "drives like new."

I already found World Wide Auto Parts in Madison WI ( > World Wide Auto Parts of Madison < ) and Peter is looking at some pics of our Armstrong hydraulic dampers and I hope will be able to rebuild those. I'm definitely needing all the rubber bushings, a complete set of tie rod ends, including the ones on the drag link, and I'll need to rebush the central steering lever (sort of like an idler arm), and possibly the king pins ("swivel pins" in British terminology). None of my parts sources even list these cars. I'm pretty sure the parts I need exist, there's just no way to find them without a part number to cross reference.
 
Kip motors?

Do the cars have the same underpinnings as the Austin A99 Westminster?
 
BobHaskell said:
Do the cars have the same underpinnings as the Austin A99 Westminster?
Click to expand...

They share the same frame, chassis and powertrain as the Austin A135 Princess long wheelbase limousine (the saloon was slightly different, not sure about the suspension/steering though).
 
Answering my own question with an answer I received on another forum. Moss Motors also may be able to help with this. I'll be calling them this afternoon. They're out in California, so they get in at the crack of noon (my time) out there.

I did make a lot of progress on this one yesterday. I have both sides stripped down and all that's left on the car are the coil springs and lower control arms (currently supported by jack stands). Of course, I don't have the special Vanden Plas spring compressor tool. I'm trying to figure out how to get the spring out without killing myself or damaging anything.

The king pins are really, really stiff and "crunchy." They barely move, and when you pry on them, they feel gritty when they do move. I have a local machine shop that likely can do the king pins.

And the upper control arm fulcrum pins are beat to heck. Someone pounded them out once already with a BFH, and then sawed off most of the mushroomed end and managed to get the nuts back on somehow. When I got the nuts to the point where they released, they came off like they were spring loaded. I'm not sure how I'm going to get them back on. I really need new fulcrum pins. I may have to have some made for this one. I have a machine shop that can do that as well.
 
Back
Top