Princess suspension pump up

Many Hydragas cars have the fillers at the rear. The Princess might have them under the boot floor too - I just don't know. In the end they are easy enough to find when you follow the pipes or look at the rear displacers. The pressure needed will be much higher than for the landcrab. On older pumps the pressure gauge may not have enough range, it should work though. Lost gas will only affect the amount of fluid going into the car, the pressure alone determins the ride height (obviously influenced by the weight of the car.

If you want to do the car some good, evacuate to old fluid - it often looks like rusty sludge. But then you'll need to clean the pump afterwards...

If you start wtih an empty system, you can also roughly find the remaining gas pressure in the spheres: Write down the pressure read after every full stroke of the pump. Assuming each stroke displaces the same amount of fluid, the number of strokes counts the volume pumped into the suspension. As long as the fluid pressure is lower than the Nitrogen-pressure in one of the spheres, the pressure will increase quite quick. Once the fluid pressure is higher than the gas pressure, the gas cussion will compress and the pressure will increase noticeably slower when adding volume. So if you draw a curve with the noted strokes vs pressure, the curve will have one or two kinks - each kink represents the remaining pressure in one of the spheres. But there is no way to tell which one is the 'bad' one - usually the front will have less Nitrogen remaining.

Have fun!

Regards,

Alexander

Thanks for all replies, folks! When it comes to hand held pumps, I've used one for years without problem, however it has started leaking now and I finally got a workshop type recently. I believe using vacuum when the system has been emptied is essential, at least my crab went totally different when I evacuated the system with the vacuum part of the pump. The crab at least should be applied 27 inches mercury (?) of vacuum, which is easily done with the pump.

When it comes to the Princess, it sadly didn't make it here as agreed, due to fuel/ ignition trouble:-) I put the pump in the crab and went to see the owner and the Princess. Not a bad car at all, all original. No rust, a bit dull paint though. Great interior and mechanics except a leaking PAS rack and the engine cutting out of course.

Pumping was a piece of cake. Easy access to connectors behind engine. Surely it has higher pressure than the crab, but the pump did the job well. We then took it for a ride to find out of the engine trouble. It started well and ran very smoothly at idle. What a marvellous engine it is, silky smooth! I love the sound of it taking off, too! After some minutes it stalled though, it barely pulled and stalled when stopping, after a while it started all right, but after some minutes of driving it stalled again. I found cylinder 1, 2 and 3 (from right)were not firing! Removing the plug leads there was no difference in the engine's running, though there was spark at the leads. Removing the other 3 leads confirmed that these were the only ones firing.

Strange! I see no other reason than the right carb is starving for fuel, due to a float problem etc. It has twin HIFs, which I'm not at all familiar with. I know the float is at the bottom, so gave it a knock there. After a while it seemed to go away, the problem had occured today when the bloke had pushed it a bit on the highway..

I found too, that the vacuum advance unit didn't work, so I promised to have a look for one (54424167). Also, the idle was adjusted far too high. The gearchange was far from smooth, it changed with a knock. perhaps it's due to the high idle, and perhaps the idle has been turned up to overcome the non functioning vacuum unit.

Anyway, I liked the Princess in some way and now I want one, of course:-) The owner was very thankful and gave me 500 crowns (50 GBP) for my enthusiastic help:-) I've helped him with spares and advice earlier too. He even asked if I would consider the car in the future, as he was getting older and so on:-) You bet:-)

Finally, he was amazed by the sweet idle of my crab (Yes, it has run beautifully all day..)! And believe it or not, he knows of a white mk 2 1800 in a barn an hour from here. Most likely for sale. There are also two 1800 Princesses there.

What a marvellous evening for a BL enthusiast:-)

Regards, Tommy!