Project Marina, Final Wof Fixes

It’s happening, the Marina is finally booked in for a WOF. It’s only a couple of years late, but better than never.

I started the day with a checklist of things that needed to be done before the WOF booking in a couple of weeks. The first was to drain the fuel tank of the 2+ year old fuel because it stinks, and the car is hard to start.

With 18L of new high-octane fuel in hand, I used the drain plug on the bottom of the tank to get as much out as I could. I underestimated how much was in there, so couldn’t completely drain it, but the fuel coming out was definitely yellow, and stank of varnish. The new fuel can mix with whatever was left in there, it’ll be fine.

Moving forward I wanted to drain the filter, pump and lines too. I unhooked the feed hose to the carb and stuck it into a bottle. I disconnected the coil and fuel pump, and turned the ignition on. Using the handy dandy connection under the bonnet, I ran the fuel pump and pumped the fuel into the bottle.

This is what came out

It’s much darker than what was coming out of the tank, and stank. I ran the pump until nice clean fuel came through.

I tossed up wether to drain the fuel bowl on the carb or not, but in the end I removed the three screws and removed the top

And I’m glad I did. The old fuel was rancid, but there was also an amount of sediment in the bottom of the bowl

I used a hand vac pump to suck the old fuel out and used a rag and carb cleaner to clean the bottom of the bowl.

Once I reassembled the bowl and used the pump to fill it with fresh new fuel, I wanted to check the spark plugs. I haven’t checked them since I fitted them a few years ago, and with all the cold running, hard starts and bad fuel, I expected them to be pretty grotty.

Surprisingly they weren’t that bad. One was a bit darker than the rest, all had some degree of black carbon, but none were really fouled.

I gave them all a quick clean with a wire brush and brake cleaner and refitted them.

Since I was there anyway, I thought it was wise to have a look at the points. It’s a good thing I did, as forget the points, this is what I found instead

Yup, the center carbon post is completely missing and the spring has been wearing the center of the rotor down

After some investigating I found the little carbon post down in the bottom of the distributor, under the points, sitting with the mechanical advance.

I didn’t want to leave it there just in case it jammed the advance, so using a small pick and a pair of offset needlenose pliers, I managed to fish it out

I have no idea how long it’s been like that, but it wouldn’t have been doing anyone any favours. Thankfully I’m a hoarder, so I had a replacement cap and rotor in my stock.

I quickly swapped them over and after a quick sand of the points we were good to go again.

With the ignition back together, I tried to start the car, and despite the fuel being fresh, the ignition working, and the choke pulled out to its stop, it wasn’t having any of it.

It was then that it occurred to me to check the choke

Sure enough, with the choke pulled as far as it could be, the jet under the carb wasn’t pulling down like it’s meant to (to let more fuel into the carb).

With some gentle prying it slowly started to move

At this point I stripped the top off the carb too, so I could access the top of the jet. Whilst there, I also found the same excellent piston lift pin that I used to tune the Mini

I thoroughly cleaned the jet and gave it a little WD40 to help it move freely, and now the choke operates as it should. It should’ve been obvious that the lever in the cabin was only pulling out about half way, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had another manual choke.

I cleaned up the piston and needle, and refit with new dashpot oil

Now the car started, easily. It’s amazing what a functioning choke can do!

With the car starting and running well, the next thing to do was an oil change. Of course I had to warm the engine up for this, as I did the last oil change cold and 20W60 flows real slow when it’s cold.

A quick trip to Mexico for a closed road test was needed

It runs and drives really well. The brakes are terrifying, but more use seems to be helping, although a remote booster might be on the cards at some point. A loud rattle present on decel turned out to the hood prop rattling in its bracket and on the air cleaner housing. Easy fix.

It was still flat and gutless though. I had wanted to check the timing for a while, but it’s a pain in the bum to do on these, plus I needed the car at full operating temp, which I didn’t often do.

A normal car would have the timing marks easy to access and see, usually by just pointing the timing light down into the engine bay. Not the Marina though.

The timing marks are on the bottom of the engine, accessible through the front of the lower bash plate

I painted the timing pointers yellow and the crank mark white ages ago, so it was easier to see. The four pointers are TDC, 5, 10 and 15 degrees Before TDC.

The timing when I started was so far off the scale I think it was actually after TDC, not before. The spec is 10 degrees BTDC. I slackened off the distributor clamp and gave it a tweak. The revs picked up and the idle smoothed out. It didn’t take much, but we were sitting bang on 10deg now. I adjusted the idle back down to 500rpm, and tweaked it a little further.

I’m running approx 13-14deg timing now, because I’m a spicy lad that wants more power from his 70s Sports Car, and I’m running high octane fuel.

With the timing where it should be, I wanted to see what the mixture was doing. What better way than to use the lift pin on the carb that I just found? I lifted the piston and the revs rose significantly, indicating a very rich mixture.

Using my handy little SU jet adjustment tool I tweaked the adjustment nut until the revs only slightly rose when the piston was lifted. Perfect.

With that, it was time for another trip to Mexico and hot damn, the car boogies now! Previously it felt really flat, didn’t want to rev and couldn’t get out of its own way. Now it wants to rev, and properly hoofs it down the road (for a Marina anyway). Great success, can’t wait for it to be legal and I can see how it really goes.

Another plus is that although noisy in a couple of gears, like all Marinas (it reminds you it’s doing actual mechanical things), the gearbox shifts lovely, even at high RPM and on downshifts.

Back home, I put the car on stands and drained the oil. It wasn’t that dirty, but it was quite thin and although stuff all Ks, it’s had a lot of cold starts, and it’s been in there over 3 years. Oops.

I decided not to change the filter this time, since it’s expensive, rare, and it’s not really done that much work. I’ll change it once the cars been on the road for a bit. 3L of Penrite 20W60 went in the top and didn’t come out again. Yay

Another quick fix for the WOF was to replace the wiper blades. The old ones are proper plastic, so didn’t really do the job of clearing the glass. I grabbed some Tex stainless wipers with the bayonet fitting

They fit well and look good. I gave the arms a quick scrub with some scotch pad and they look a lot better

Sadly I can’t test them properly as it appears the Lucas washer pump I fitted in Jan has seized and failed. Lame. I have a replacement on order which will hopefully be here this week. Lucas ain’t what it used to be, and it wasn’t that good to start with.

The last thing I needed to do was to clean all the windows and then fit a high stop light to the rear. I didn’t legally need one, but I hate how invisible classics are these days. The brake lights are small, dim and low down on the car, so hopefully this LED unit shining into the eyes of people behind me might give me a chance of them actually seeing me.

I picked up this Hella Matrix unit and really like how it kinda looks period correct but uses modern LEDs.

Fitting it was less than fun. Trying to line up the grey decal on the glass and get it centered and straight, took a lot of tries before I just gave up and sent it.

I flipped the pads on my clamp and used it as a one-man brake light tester

It works well

Standing behind the car seems to be about the height for it to have the hot spot right in your eyes. Hopefully that’s about standard modern car driver eyeline too.

With the help of my wife, we tested the rest of the lights, which did initially show up a dodgy connection on the RH brake light bulb, but a quick reseating of the bulb fixed that.

Thats it. There is only one thing left on the board.

I guess the next update will be after the inspection, where I know it’ll fail. What on, well that’s yet to be seen, but having been off the road for almost 30 years, it could be anything.

It’s been good to finally be doing mechanical work again. I was sick of bodywork.

Slight amendment the next day;

I couldn’t help myself, I wanted to know what the cold start was like now with a working choke, correct mixture and advanced ignition timing.

It’s very good. It has never started like that when cold. Usually it’s ages of cranking, the starter kicking out a few times when the engine tries to fire, a couple of backfires out the intake and then eventually it would rumble into life, begrudgingly. Once it was running it wouldn’t take any throttle until it had warmed up a bit, and the choke was a balancing act (particularly since it wasn’t working properly).

The engine is running so well I need to completely reassess how I use the choke. Apparently this time I had it out for too long and it started to misfire, but pushing it right in, the engine dropped to idle and ran smoothly, like it was already warmed up, and that was less than a minute after starting. I’m very impressed, for a 50+ year old car to start and run like that.
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