Project Marina, British Car Day 2025

Finally, after four years of work, the Marina was off to its first car show.

But not before a few changes and bumps in the road.

The first change was that my black personalised plates finally arrived. In New Zealand, “black plates” used to signify a classic car, as all plates before 1987 were matte black with silver machined text.

After 1987 they all changed to gloss white with black text

So to me, white plates on a classic car look wrong. Unfortunately, back in 1995 when the Marina was re-registered, they didn’t retain the old plates and it was issued with white plates of the time.

I have had MEH for a few years now, and it’s been on a couple of cars, including my Vitesse

But it was white with black text, as personalised plates previously never came in anything else.

A few years ago they made it so any car could get black plates, with either silver or (gross) white text. This was a re-design though, giving it a reflective gloss background so “cameras can see it better”, and with the modern font. I had wanted to convert my white plates to this for a while, and when I heard they were discontinuing black/silver plates due to some… technical… issues, I jumped on the chance to finally do it.

After a couple of months waiting, they were finally in my hand and quickly on the Marina

exclamation: meh

expressing a lack of interest or enthusiasm."meh, I'm not impressed so far

They aren’t perfect; I don’t like the gloss black, and the font isn’t right, but it’s the only legal way to have black personalised plates (without the gross white text). Normally I’m strongly against removing original plates from old cars, but since the Marina wasn’t on its original plates, I wasn’t too cut up about it. Shame to lose the 2 letter combo though.

Why did they pull the sale of black/silver? This. In certain lights the black goes silver and makes the plate almost impossible to read. Many people were clambering to get these before they were stopped, as there is a rumour that speed cameras can’t see them… but I’d bet that’s a myth (and a dumb reason to buy them. Kiwiplates themselves probably started the rumour to drive sales…)

Before I could head off to British Car Day though, a couple of things bothered me. First, was the fuel filter. I had noticed it had changed colour to a dark brown since I topped the tank up with more fuel a while back. I was wondered it was full of rust, so I removed it to inspect. It had a noticeable heft to it

Eww.

I cut the filter open to see what was inside

A huge amount of sludge in the bottom of the canister, and the filter material was completely plugged

The good news is that it’s completely nonferrous, so it’s not rust. I believe it’s “varnish”, or dried/dehydrated fuel remnants, that must be coating the bottom of the tank. It dries to a powdery light brown substance, and fresh fuel rehydrates it.

I have no idea how the car was even running, let alone as good as it did. I popped a new filter in, dropped a spare in the boot, and I’ll keep an eye on it.

With the carb possibly seeing more fuel, I wanted to check the mixture as it was a prick to tune last time (maybe due to the filter).

Last time, I tuned the carb by ear as the piston listing method wasn’t working (it would just stall despite it being tuned to best idle).

Before tuning it I removed the fuel bowl cover and drained the fuel and removed the small amount of sediment in the bottom (now I know where that sediment was coming from, the plugged filter)

I tried again to tune it with the lifting pin, and had the same results.

Tuning it to the point where the lifting pin resulted in a slight bump in idle which settles back down again, resulted in the car idling rough and uneven. Not very nice, and I didn’t trust it.

Going back to an old tried and true method of tuning, I pulled the Colortune out

The initial setting, was a nice orange flame. Far too rich

Tweaking the idle to the best by ear, got me pretty much bang on a nice blue flame, which is ideal

I don’t know what’s wrong with the lift pin method here, but the old tuning by ear trick doesn’t let me down.

With the car seemingly running happier, I took it for a quick test drive around the block. Sure enough, the engine was pulling nice and strong and sounds good.

I pull out of an intersection, clutch in to change to second, and clunk, the clutch pedal goes to the floor. I rev match into second, but now I’m stuck in second as the pedal has gone from nothing, to everything, and I can’t push it down.

Luckily, I’m just around the corner from home, so being stuck in second is fine. I pull into my driveway, and have to stall it as the clutch won’t press down and the loading on the gears mean I can’t pull it out of gear. I give the clutch pedal a hard shove, and with a crunch it goes to the floor. I manage to pull it out of gear and roll down the drive into the garage.

As soon as I get out of the car, I can see the trail of fluid. A quick sniff test tells me it’s brake fluid, so I’m guessing it’s clutch hydraulic fluid.

At least it’s not gearbox oil, I guess. Now, this is the day before British Car Day, so I’m a bit low on time if it’s anything serious. I pop the bonnet and sure enough the clutch res is empty. I have a look at the slave cylinder and I can see all its guts have been ejected into the boot. Yay.

It was easy enough to remove, since it had fallen to bits.

Thankfully, all the bits are there and I don’t need to go see what I can find on the road.

This appears to be the culprit. This is the circlip that retains the piston inside the cylinder. It appears the piston forced it to deform and pop out, with everything following it.

A quick rush around a couple of shops and I had a pack of 1″ internal circlips in my hand. You can see how deformed the old one is

Reassembled, with the new clip in place

After refitting, refilling and bleeding the fluid, thankfully it all seemed to be working fine again. I’m not 100% sure on what actually caused the failure. I have a couple of theories, but I’m not sure.

One theory is that the clutch pedal stop was out of adjustment and allowed the slave to over extended, bash the clip out, and explode everywhere. Unfortunately it appears the stop is present, isn’t adjustable, and the pedal does seem to contact it.

Stop here, with the orange arrow

Pedal appears to touch it fine, without too much force

I’m going to look into a small pad to put on the end of the stop, to extend it slightly and see how it feels then. At the moment though, I’m just going easy on it.

So, with that crisis averted, the show the next morning, I should be all sorted.

No.

It was pointed out to me that the patch of black rust convertor at the back of the bonnet looked a bit gross… so I had to fix that

A sanded it back and gave it some epoxy primer

Wait, what about the RH sill though, It’s bugged me that It’s patchy in primer.

I gave it a quick sand, masked it up, primed a couple of extra spots and then shot some yellow at it

What to do while that dries though? Fix this mess on the front guard, which I hate. I stripped the mountain of bog off it when I got the car, and other than hammering it out a bit, haven’t touched it since.

I need to replace the guard, or at the very least the front half of it, but in the meantime, bog.

Damn, what do I do while that dries? Cover the ugly stripes I made on the door when I sanded the primer off. ADHD is hard work.

After sanding the first layer of filler back, I applied a second coat to fill the lows

After that cured, I sanded it back, and gave it a coat of epoxy primer. It’s far from good, or done, but it’s better than it was, and only temporary.

The RH side looks a bit less shite. Once again, far from good, but a bit less offensive.

I then gave the car a waterless wash, cleaned all the glass inside and out, and half dead of exhaustion made my way upstairs and called it a day.

The next morning, we clambered aboard and departed for the show. The old girl fired straight into life, choke disengaged correctly (I wonder if it was sticking from the gummy fuel varnish) and off we went.

It did me proud, like usual, and got there with no drama. I love driving it, it’s such a nice sensory experience, and it runs and drives so good.

We arrive nice and early, and I head to the Morris club stand. Unfortunately, I felt a bit shunned by them, as no one acknowledged us, welcomed us, directed us to park or anything. A pretty average attitude, considering I’m a paid member. I decided to park at the end of the row next to another older Morris, away from their main stand.

No, it’s not the prettiest car there, but it is honest, and rare.

For anyone curious, this is what is in the passengers window. I guess a story appeals to people, as I saw a lot reading it.

We noticed almost immediately that the Marina drew a crowd. People made a bee-line for it, and throughout the day it always had plenty of people checking it out.

So we were very surprised when shortly after we parked, from the other side of the field, we suddenly couldn’t see the Marina anymore. It turns out, someone had moved the car I was parked next to forward, tucking the Marina back

Now, I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate, trying to distance themselves from the ugly car, but it sure felt a bit intentional…

Jokes on them though, as the Marina gained a friend shortly after, and it appeared to be the two most popular cars on the stand. I guess there are only so many times you can see the same Morris Minor in a different colour, yet when was the last time anyone saw a Marina Coupe, or an Ital Estate?!

The Ital was for sale, said it was 1 of 1 in NZ and I’d believe that. I wasn’t aware we even got Itals in NZ.

It’s a tidy, honest car, with some bits needing some love, but over all a good, road legal, classic wagon.

As cool as the Ital is, the Marina front appeals to me far more. The blocky headlights just take away from the friendly face. I’ll tell you what, it was hard to get photos of these two without people in them…

I’m proud that after 4 years of work, the Marina finally made it there. It was always a goal, but the criteria was that the car had to get there under it’d own power, and road legal.

Interestingly, today was 4 years and 1 day since I contacted a random guy on Facebook, minutes after a ratty looking Marina Coupe appeared on Marketplace, with one photo and a vague description.

7 days later, it was in my garage, ready to start a massive journey involving a huge amount of work, far too much time, and many new skills.

No regrets. I love this car and it’s been well worth the work put into it.

Back to the show. It was a great turnout, and some really cool cars were there. I didn’t take many photos, I prefer to just enjoy what I’m looking at these days, but here are a couple of outstanding ones

As a note, I call it “British Car Day” as thats what it started as, but these days they also allow Euros in too.

Casual, road legal, military vehicle

I like these old Mercs. Just big, solid old 80s tanks

The paint on this classic Beetle was amazing. Love the colour

I also loved this little Fiat. It seems today was the day for great paint jobs/colours (excluding the Marina, obviously)

You just dont get colours like this anymore. Such a shame

A nice classic old Brick

and finally, this gorgeous old Multipla (yes, that Multipla)

It was a great show, and I’m looking forward to taking the Marina back again next year. This time I won’t bother parking with the “club”, and as my plan is to improve the car each time it goes there, it’ll be better, faster and nicer.