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Project Marina, WOF time.

The time finally came. After many years and countless hours of work, it was WOF time.

Before the WOF, the first thing to do was to replace the failed Lucas washer pump. This was completely dead, even when powering it straight from the battery with a test probe. It turns out I bought the pump about 3 years ago, and only fitted it in Jan this year, so way out of warranty now.

I sourced a cheap unbranded replacement locally. This didn’t even get the honour of arriving in a box, just some bubblewrap with a part number sticker on it.

Other than the label, they’re almost identical. No surprise. Both from China no doubt.
I quickly screwed it into place and rejoined the hoses

Finally everything was working again. The new Tex wipers were a bit disappointing, with a very average effort clearing the screen, but hopefully they just need some time to bed in.

I’ve been doing some closed road testing recently to make sure everything is working well, and trying to bed the brakes in a bit too. It turns out, I had done almost exactly 10km since getting the car.

As bought, back in 2021
The day before the WOF, 2024

In my travels I did notice two things. First, the ignition timing was just a smidge too spicy, and there was some pinging noticeable at lower RPM. Not good, so I wound the timing back from nearly 15deg to 10deg, and that seems to have fixed it. It’s a little less keen to boogie now, but it’s still 100x better than it was before I set the timing the other day. Plenty of time to play with that once we’re on the road.

Secondly, the front bash plate that protects the alloy sump from getting its face smashed in, was scraping a lot coming in and out of my driveway, and I noticed how close it was to the road when cornering in the video the other day.

So I wanted to raise it just a smidge in the front. Sure, it looks cool as heck that low, but I don’t want to smash the poor thing to bits.

After MUCH fiddling with the torsion bar trim adjusters, I finally got it to settle at about 10mm higher than it was. It’s lost the forward rake it had, and the sill is about level now, but it brings the bash plate just high enough that it’s not hitting things now.

Finally, just to be cocky, I jacked the rear of the car up and fixed the exhaust leak I had at the join above the rear axle (with lots of paste), and adjusted the handbrake just a little bit tighter. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll pass with no issues now.

The next day I got up bright and early, played musical cars and fired the Marina to life. It was pretty cold this morning, so the engine was a little grumpier than in my previous testing, but quickly sorted itself out.

I backed out, closed the garage, got to the end of my street and turned the corner.Right into the path of a police car full of officers. To say I puckered a little is an understatement, but they didn’t even give it a second look and I spent the rest of the drive to the workshop laughing my arse off at the odds of that happening.

I arrived, parked up and then the waiting began. For the first time in almost 30 years, the old girl was waiting for a checkup.

After a bit of a wait, the tech hopped in, fired the old girl up and took it for a quick road test. Here we go!

Seeing him coming back up the road really hit me, it’s such a cool looking car to see driving around. I hope when I drive it around, I can brighten the day of people on the street too.

He rolls it onto the hoist and proceeds with the checks.

TOOT, yes the horn goes. All the lights worked (a miracle), and the wipers and washer worked. They have a good look around with a torch, checking all the nooks and crannies, near hinges, down pillars, inside the boot, everywhere (I’m not sure they’re usually this thorough on my other cars…)

The hoist goes up, and my heart is in my throat

As it was in the air and being checked over, a young couple picking their car up walked by and the girl commented to her partner “oh wow, look at this beauty!” pointing at the Marina.

The tech is poking around under the car, checking all the usual things. Bearings, suspension, steering, etc. He also did some poking with a big prybar.

After a long wait, I got the news. It’s not going to pass.

Long story short, he stopped the inspection and basically changed it to a pre-WOF check instead of an actual WOF check. A variation of my worst case scenario had happened, he wasn’t happy with the underside.

To clarify though, he made no mention at all of the work I had done. The issue he had was the old shitty lumpy tar-based underseal all over everything. In places where it was chipping off, there was surface rust, and for the rest he wasn’t happy with what it could be hiding (nothing, I’ve seen the other side of the metal, but he can’t check that).

The stuff covers literally everything under there

Very old photos from when I got the car

There were also some other stupid things that I’m beating myself up over for not sorting, like the chassis rails having some rust flakes still in them, visible through the drain holes (from the old floor and rear panel rusting). Despite trying to clean them up at the time, I didn’t do a good enough job.

The other spot he was concerned with was inside the boot, near the hinges

It’s all surface rust and will clean up easily, but I guess since it’s near the hinges he wasn’t happy with it being like that.

There were some mechanical issues, but he wasn’t really keen on going into detail on them after showing me the bodywork issues he wasn’t happy with. He mentioned the RH Rear wheel bearing was noisy and there may be play in the rack.

Overall, I was devastated. It really crushed me, after all that work, for it to fail on bloody bodywork issues. The only positive of it was that it wasn’t the work I did (as I feared), it was the work I didn’t.

I have always hated the underseal, it’s on everything, it’s really clumpy, and it’s uneven and chipping off. It covers all bolts, nuts, threads etc under there too, which sucks to work around. If you try to lubricate anything with CRC, it melts the tar and turns to a hell of a mess. I should’ve really removed it all when I did the floors.

Because he decided to not proceed with the WOF, it also means he hasn’t entered it into the system as a fail, and I don’t have to fix it within the defined 28 day timeframe. I’m thankful for that, because it’d be a pain if the workshops were busy.

So, where to from here? Well, he explained what he wants to see; he wants all the underseal gone, and any surface rust and any uncovered issues to be sorted. He suggested having it sandblasted, treated and then undercoated again in something modern.

I’ve been mulling it over and looking at my options, and I think from here the best option is indeed to have it sandblasted, to remove the underseal I hate anyway, and then have it zinc coated by the blaster. Once I get the car back, I will then paint the underside in a hard wearing single stage paint (yellow, of course). I’m not really interested in undersealing it again, I’d rather have it painted (unless anyone can convince me otherwise? This isn’t a daily and won’t often see rain).

I have some calls to make tomorrow, to see what options are available to me, and the costs. I’m not made of money, but this car has cost me less than any of my other projects (monetarily, it’s a complete time hog though) so it deserves to have some money spent on doing it properly.

We ain’t done yet, there is no option other than pushing forward.

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Rob
Rob
4 months ago

Ahh it’s so disheartening when you think it’s ready and there’s stuff you didn’t think of. My Audi is at Midas right now, failing a WoF on a failed indicator and weird headlight pattern, after I rebuilt and tested the brakes and thought everything was working yesterday.