Project Bentley

[JRS]

Fun day.

Got the interior of the Bentley clear earlier so that there's room for the guy sorting the leatherwork to do his stuff. My friend decides that his XJ8 LWB needs a bit of a run as it's been sat a few days. Halfway along this run, he stops to let the oncoming traffic by (which has priority).

The lady behind him didn't stop.

Cue one buggered up rear bumper, cracked light cluster, and Lord only knows what else until it's investigated properly (hoping nothing, but it was a pretty solid hit apparently).

*sigh*

So, that's two of the cars in his household out of commission. All that's left is a mechanically sound but cosmetically ropey Granada 2.9i estate, and whatever courtesy car he gets from the insurers tomorrow.

 

[JRS]

Nope, not us mate! The car has had no drivers seat in place since Friday afternoon

 

[JRS]

So.....an update.

First off, the courtesy car mentioned in post #28 turned out to be a bit poor, both for my friend's needs and as a tool for getting around Burton. A BMW 318d M Sport - bloody uncomfortable if you're used to a Jaguar XJ8 as your daily hack. This has now been replaced with a 520d estate, which is orders of magnitude better.

Second off, the seats have been worked on. Just a bit.

Remember how bad the drivers seat looked in my opening post? It went from that to this:

Here the cushion is being worked on:

Here it is mostly finished:

The seatback for the passenger side:

The rear seats before a finishing touch was applied:

Now, about that finishing touch....

At some point, it was decided that different coloured piping would be a rather good idea. So here's how that worked out:

Got to give a shout-out to James Bartley @ Perfection Group who did the work. Very professional, very friendly, very talented. I'd recommend the firm to anyone.

***edit***

Tell you what, we got bloody well soaked putting the seats back in. And as soon as we were done, the clouds parted and the sun came out. Bleedin' typical. Still, they're in now and looking a damned sight better than they did.

 

[JRS]

Your guess would be correct.

 

[JRS]

That seat restoration is INCREDIBLE! I honestly didn't think such things could be achieved without an actual re-trim? What's actually involved?

Just a hairdryer by the looks! Did they divulge any of their leather restoration secrets JRS? They do look mighty fine now.

In the case of the Bentley seats here, they started out with a bad previous rattle-can paintjob on them (courtesy of a previous owner I guess) that had deteriorated pretty badly. The remaining paint from that job had to be taken off and the leather cleaned up. The worst cracks were filled in with a flexible filler, and then the seat could be re-coloured.

That's obviously massively simplified - there's a reason why these guys are good at their job, they know the ins and outs of restoring leather in this condition. I can't claim to have picked much up, beyond the fact that it's bloody difficult!

 

[JRS]

Looking so much better than the before shot now. Piping colour works really well.

There must be a better steering wheel that that though? Looks utterly manky compared to the rest of the interior.

*google time....*
Ouch! Plus the wood wouldn't match now.

Steering wheels are a real bugbear for these cars. An expensive bugbear as well.

 

[JRS]

That looks well.

Dont want to be a wet blanket but remember all seat restorations look good at first, time is the test.

Oh, absolutely. But the level of prep and care that went into this job give me confidence that it'll last well.

One question, did he do the piping by hand with a brush? Or mask and spray it?

Mask and spray.

 

[JRS]

That gives me less confidence to its longevity, but still it looks to have come out well.

Well, we'll have to wait and see obviously. As I say, the amount of trouble he went to during the cleaning and prep'ing stage gives me a lot of confidence about it lasting, and lasting well.

And it can't do any worse than the rattle-can job that it was wearing when we picked the car up....

 

[JRS]

How much did he charge you?

Will have to ask the owner first to see if he wants the price advertised, so I'll get back to you on that.

 

[JRS]

Burnsy2023 - we think so.

DiamondMark - I know what you mean, and in a perfect world with funding to match the car's heritage we'd have had the interior retrimmed from scratch (and the body bare-metal resprayed, and the rear bumper completely replaced, and a new backlight....the list is ******* endless ). But so far (about a week or so on from being applied) this masked + airbrushed job seems pretty well stuck, though I suppose it might still be fully curing. At least it doesn't flake off onto my jeans like the old paintjob did by the time we got around to sorting it!

 

[JRS]

So, updates.

1) The car has gone away to have a new alarm/immobiliser/remote unlock setup fitted. The old Scorpion 758 system that was in there has bought the farm - if you tried turning the system on, it completely immobilised the car (disabling the engine, central locking, not arming the alarm setup and generally behaving like a bump on a log) and drained the battery right down. Ah well, what's another few hundred quid?

2) I know some of you have seen that Wheeler Dealers episode where they took an '84 Bentley and 'restored' it. Here is that very same car on eBay:

Linky dink.

Some choice quotes from the auction:

She's had ££££'s spent on her, dont be fooled by the t.v program on the budget that was spent on her. The t.v show spent approx £10k+ not including labour costs, and made a substantial loss in the sale.

A lesson in how TV shows lie through their teeth about certain aspects....

new dash fitted (due to the old one melting during respray in the drying oven after respray).

LOL, cowboys.

Since I have just got her out of the garage a couple of faults; Main beam stays on when dipped lights are on ( could be a relay stuck ) Rear passenger side window motor opens but wont lift ( could be bushes in the motor ) so disconnected after window was put into up-right position(all others work) . Cruise control dont work (never has since ive owned her). central locking works fine, Clifford alarm not working (never has since ive had her)

So it's buggered, then? Actually, to be fair some of those are easy fixes (the lights, the window and the alarm). The cruise control is a bit more on the expensive side, as we're finding out with the Project.

Cost me just over £400 for M.o.t last year & work done was, new bottom ball joint repair kits fitted to both front sides, Steering coupling joint fitted. Since her last m.o.t I, have only covered approx 30 miles in her, the rest of the time she's been in storage.

What did that TV show actually do to this pup when they had it? Because they sure as hell didn't restore it.

Sold it with no MOT as well. I do hope it's gone to someone who knows that this car is about to kick him square in his bits-and-pieces rather than someone who has no idea what awaits him....


***edit***

Oh, and the Jag is still away being repaired so my mate is down to the 2.9i Granada Of Spooky Doom™ and a BMW 520d estate loaner that his wife won't drive.

 

[JRS]

Car is back now with the new alarm system fitted. This system works perfectly, with one tiny, insignificant exception.

The drivers door won't operate on the remote.

*sigh*

We've had the door mostly apart, found issues with pretty much every single bit that we could reach and fixed them, and still no joy. So a phone call to Montague and Co was placed for new solenoids. These are ~£60 each + VAT brand new from Bentley.

We got the whole solenoid pack (both solenoids, casing, arm etc) for ~£90.

Win!!!!!

 

[JRS]

Right, well that was a complete PITA....

So I get the solenoid pack out of the door, and we transfer the guts of the new unit into the old pack since the backplates are different on the two of them. Unit then goes back on the car, and....no joy.

So I get the solenoid pack out of the door again, take it half apart and loosen a few bits off on the lever arms at the bottom. Unit then goes back on the car, and....no joy.

So I get the sol-....oh hell, you see where this is going. Basically, after getting soaking wet in the rain adjusting various bits of the door lock mechanism and trying the locks (making sure to run the engine occasionally to keep some charge in the battery) over and over and over I finally got to the point where I'd adjusted the thing as far in the opposite direction to where it was as I could go. Shut the door, and tried again.

Joy.

I then proceeded to wander down the driveway, shouting "Lo, I am unto a God!!!". The whole Cobra system now works - alarm, immobiliser, remote central locking. And as an added bonus, I appear to have sorted the stiff locking barrel on the drivers door while I was at it.

Damn, I'm good.

 

[JRS]

That's the front door locking mechanism that I now have an almost perfect recall of in my brain. Getting the damned thing out of and into the door ranks up there as one of the more irritating jobs you can do on a Bentley. Especially when it's pouring with rain. I'll try and get some photos of it all in the metal at the weekend.

 

[JRS]

Any chance of a rundown of bills/running costs thus far?

I'll ask the owner.

I think the figure might be getting interesting by now. The car was six grand initially, maybe another grand in bodywork inc labour, bunch of parts and fluids, couple of hundred sorting the seat electrics, a few hundred for the new alarm inc. installing it, the interior leather renovation....the small matter of keeping me tanked up on caffeine in order to work on the thing....

It was too good to be a parts car, and bad enough that it needed some money spending. We can look back now and see just how far we've gone with it, and yet the list of work to do still stretches out ahead. Fortunately, a lot of it now is getting to the stage where it's just making stuff pretty rather than making stuff work (last thing on that list is probably the cruise control).

In an ideal world with a lottery win providing the funds, we'd make it the single best Bentley Mulsanne S on the planet (Blackpool Project style motor, re-trimmed interior, some minor bodywork modifications, Gear Vendors modified 'box for six speeds....). In this world, we're merely having to content ourselves by making it as good as we possibly can without spending a small fortune in the process. And I think we're doing alright.

 

[JRS]

Quick and dirty costs rundown:

Car - £6000
Bodywork - £600 so far (more to come next year!)
Door cappings - £100 but we're re-doing as it hasn't lasted
Dashboard and console wood - £120 with us doing all the removing and refitting
Leather - around £300, we may well be going back to them for some more stuff on both the Bentley and the Jag now it's returned from its little adventure at the repair shop
Track rod end - £200 inc labour
Oils and fluids - Lord alone knows (easily over £100, probably over £200)
Vacuum pipe for making the engine actually work - £150
Setting up the engine after fitting said vacuum pipe - more than a few hours of tinkering
Electrical work - whatever spades cost
Mirror glass - £75
Seat memory unit - £300 in part-ex for the old unit
Seat memory switches - parts cost plus a bottle of whisky

The figures would be even higher had we not done a great deal of the labour ourselves (and if we'd had to buy that ******* seat memory switch panel for over a grand rather than get the old one repaired!). Spread over 2 years it's not actually as painful as it could be. When we get it to the point at which we're happy for it to be seen parked up I'll re-cost it. I suspect the figures will have climbed a bit by then.

 

[JRS]

Here's where I spent most of my time the other week working - the drivers door, getting the remote central locking to work properly.

You can see two of the three rods along with part of the solenoid pack and one of the c/l microswitches there. That circular whole is just about large enough for me to wedge one of my hands into.

Looking at it slightly to one side:

There you can just about see the solenoid pack on the right-hand edge of the large hole, just to the right of one of the tensioning cables for the window lift. I ended up having to get the solenoid pack out of the door by disconnecting the rods and finessing the whole bag of mashings past the tensioning cable. And there's quite a bit of tension on those....

The workshop manual reckons that you have to remove the window lift drive before attempting that job. I say that Bentley is wrong, and we have working remote central locking to prove my point

 

[JRS]

Things inside the car are starting to come together again. We're fitting insulation (which will double as waterproofing) to the back of the doorcards and refitting them now that they've had a bit of a resto to match the seats. The wood cappings on the doors are getting their second paintjob in two years (long story) as well.

Here's how the drivers door looks right now:

It's not finished yet, but it's a lot better than it was Got some pictures of the insulation coming, but my e-mail is taking forever to drag them in.

In other news, my mate's Jag is finally back after some serious screwing up by the bodyshop that had it in for insurance work and the Jaguar 'specialist' (I use the term loosely) that got it running again after the bodyshop flooded the engine. This is a long story of woe and stupidity, and one that I cannot be bothered to type out. All that matters is that the Jaguar is back and the Granada Of Spooky Doom™ can now be taken back off daily driver status.

 

[JRS]

So, I gave up using my internet connection to drag the rest of the photos in. Currently sat with this silly sod....

....uploading the photos of his car from his computer and vastly superior line to the interwubs.

Now, please do note that we are complete amateurs at this 'car interior' lark when you look at these photos!

Central door panel, drivers door, now with added insulating material:

A closer look:

The outer panel, minus insulating material:

And with:

Oh, and the rear door on the drivers side is back together now:

Certainly makes the doors a bit quieter when you shut them....how does the advert go, "just like a Golf"? Makes the central locking quieter as well. The car has also had a reasonable amount of water dumped on it (courtesy of our crappy climate) and none of that water has gotten by the doorcards yet.

Two doors down, two to go. Then some black carpets to match the new colour scheme on the doors and we're back to sorting the paintwork out.

 

[JRS]

Not sure about doing that whole bit in black mate. The red does look good IRL (it'll look even better when we've touched it in to get the last bits of stray parchment colour out of the way), it acts as a sort of bridge to the piping on the seats. Black would probably work better with a lot more black in the interior (say, middle of the seat cushions, squabs and the headlining).