Full circle into a Marina again. My 73 Morris Marina Coupe

Full circle into a Marina again. My 73 Morris Marina Coupe

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KelvinatorNZ

Original Poster:

565 posts

57 months

Tuesday 11th October 2022
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The Marina is very much in the marmite camp, people either love it or hate it, Which is fine. People are allowed to not like it; there are plenty of cars I don't like either. Though it can be disheartening when you get told that it should be scrapped, or that it would look better with a piano on the roof. The haters are a vocal bunch.

There's no doubt that by 1979 the Marina was getting well past its best before date; it was borderline when it was new in 1971, so there is no surprise that almost anything more modern was better. For its time though, it was no worse to drive than any other early 70s car.

It does amuse me somewhat though that both the Marina and the SD1 (albeit in S1 guise) were available new at the same time, and they couldn't be more different.

KelvinatorNZ

Original Poster:

565 posts

57 months

Thursday 29th December 2022
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Right, with Lucas (my Rover SD1) finally out of the dog house/garage, it was time to give the Marina some love. More to follow, but its finally happening.

Its sill replacement time.


Jhonno

5,077 posts

128 months

Thursday 29th December 2022
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Straight on with the next project! Good work!

KelvinatorNZ

Original Poster:

565 posts

57 months

Monday 2nd January
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Wow, it's almost been a year since Part 1, this project really has been on the back burner.


To be fair, a lot of other projects have come and gone in the meantime, and one in particular (not naming names, Lucas) has taken up months of my time, space and money. That has sucked, when all I want is to drive the Marina.

Well, its a new year, so Happy New Year and all that, and 2023 is the year the Marina will be back on the road for the first time since about 1996.

Anyway, it appears I missed an update. Months ago, back in May 2022 or so, I did actually move onto the Drivers side floor, starting with chopping the whole damn thing out. I decided on this side that instead of doing smaller patches, I would just replace the biggest sections I could. This was the right choice, it's so much easier.


Just as a note, this side has the fuel and brake pipes running under it, so I used a block of wood to space these off the floor so I wouldn't cut or heat them.


I started making up some patches


Everything got a good going over with the flappy wheel of death, and the first patch was started. There were dozens of holes to plug weld to the underfloor supports.


After much plug welding, the first patch was welded in


The sill patch followed. More plug welds, and welding to the inner sill. This had a couple of different angles I needed to match, as the floor slopes upwards at the rear.


I was obviously happy about having some progress after a couple of months of nothing


A month or so later, the final patch was welded into place


A grinder and paint made me the welder I ain't


And with that, the RH side was seam sealed. I still had some touch-ups to do on the LH side, so that hasn't been sealed yet. I did this months ago, so it's pretty dirty now, like the rest of the car.


There we have it, the floors are more or less done.


Due to all the other projects needing work, this was left untouched for a couple more months, until finally, I had nothing else in the garage and dug deep to find some motivation.


It was finally time to address the rather perforated LH sill, as it was never going to pass a WOF in that state.


I had been putting this job off because it's a big lump of pretty serious work. It needs to be strong, and it needs to look tidy. It was daunting.


I purchased a sill panel months ago from a seller down south that custom makes them on professional rollers, so at least I don't need to try and make my own panel.


My workplace is on a shutdown over the Christmas period, so what better time to get off my butt and get chopping?


And that's just what I did.


First, the LH door has to come off. This is easy, six nuts on the hinges and the whole lot comes off. Not even a single cable to remove from the door.


Thankfully the A-pillar area is in PERFECT condition. I have seen some shockers in the UK for rust here.


I got out the air saw and started the cut. I used some spare box section to brace the door aperture, just in case.


I needed to keep that first top step so I could weld the new sill to it.


Opening the sill up showed just how crusty it was. It was packed with rust flakes


I vacuumed the chunks out so I could see what I was working with


The air saw once again made short work of the bottom of the sill


I then used a combo of a sharp dill bit, a flap disk, a grinding disk and a flatblade screwdriver to break all the spot welds for the lip that was still attached. I used a flap disc to take that paint off and expose the spot weld locations, which I then drilled until there was a definite indent. I then finished it off with the grinding disk, until I could lever the strip with the screwdriver and break the spot weld. Some of the factory spot welds were... a bit askew, and barely on the inner sill at all.


I do have one of those fancy spot weld cutters, but it's ste. No matter how much I punch or drill first, the damn thing just wanders all over the place instead of cutting around the spot weld.


The inner sill looks worse than it is. There was a hole at the very end, and I found another weak spot that failed the poky-poky-screwdriver test.


The rest of the sill faired well and is just covered in surface rust and some pitting.


I started with the small hole near the seatbelt anchor bolt. I cut the area out


And then decided the pitting to the right of the hole was looking at me funny, so cut that out too


An appropriate size patch was made up and welded in (excuse the shiny photo, this was after I had covered everything in Brunox)


As you can see above, the rear of the sill was also cut out. I chose to overlap this on the jacking point, for some extra strength.


Before wrapping up for the night I wire brushed everything and gave it a couple coats of Brunox, which is an epoxy rust killer. I'll tell you what, once set it's like brown stuff on a blanket, really hard to get off.


A couple of days later, I set off to the garage with a plan; Cut the bottom of the rear quarter panel off so I could access the inner sill step, which I would need access to when I weld the new outer sill on.


For once I was smart, I thought "hey normally I just cut and away I go, but today, I will grind back all the paint so I have a nice clean surface to work with around the cut". It didn't go to plan.


I started grinding away and immediately struck bog. Lots of bog. Damn.


As it turns out, the whole lower area ahead of the arch was made of bog


Even the arch "lip" was bog


This wasn't your usual repair, using something to back the bog where there is a hole. Oh no, this was "stuff the hole with bog until it's solid". In the middle of the circle, someone had torn a hole, folded the edges back and filled it with handfuls of bog (you could see it looking down inside the inner guard, I missed it the first time though).


Something had hit the arch, bent it in, and left a nice dent. Instead of fixing it properly, that's what they had done.


Initially, my brain just fell to bits, my whole plan was derailed and my toys weren't in the cot anymore. Eventually, there was nothing else for it; get cutting.


I dug the rest of the bog out, cleaned a bigger area of the panel back, marked a couple of lines and got cutting.


Inside, it wasn't bad. The arch lip was bent and twisted


But the rest of the area was fine. The damage is mostly contained to the small section of guard that I removed


The piece I removed was pretty ugly


I don't know how yet, but somehow I have to remake that, including the arch section missing from that piece. It might look basic, but it's got a couple of different angles and a body line in the middle of it. Guess it's time to watch some more YouTube.


Otherwise, removing the small section at the bottom of the guard did give the access I was hoping for


The plan now was to keep moving, and doing what I had intended to do; fix the inner sill and fit the new outer sill. Once that's fitted I can work on the missing section of guard.


As a quick morale booster, I offered up the new outer sill to see how it fits


It looks like it should fit quite nicely with some trimming.


I welded in a new section for the rear of the inner sill, and make a little piece to replace the upper stepped section I had to remove due to rust


And that's where I have ended for today. I gave everything a coat of weld-through zinc primer, and the next step is to make the outer sill fit properly, and weld it in place. It would be exciting if it weren't for the rest of the work that still needs to be done.


As they say, it's got to get worse before it can get better. I hope it gets better. God I hate bodywork.

wolfracesonic

6,095 posts

114 months

Monday 2nd January
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‘God I hate bodywork’ but like photography?smile Great dedication to the cause therethumbup

KelvinatorNZ

Original Poster:

565 posts

57 months

Tuesday 3rd January
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Got the new outer sill welded in today. Looks good.


Welsh Pirate

158 posts

115 months

Tuesday 3rd January
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Thank you for the update - it's really nice to see something like this being saved. It won't be long before a Marina is rarer than an F40 (if it isn't already)!




A.J.M

7,600 posts

173 months

Tuesday 3rd January
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This thread is brilliant.

Some serious attention to detail in the updates.

Good luck with the welding up.

poo at Paul's

13,401 posts

162 months

Wednesday 4th January
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Growing up driving in the 80s, my mate inherited a yellow marina coupe TC. In amongst 1 litre fiestas, it was pretty decent performance. We called it the Flying Banana and loved it!

Jhonno

5,077 posts

128 months

Wednesday 4th January
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Nice work! I'm not shocked to see you found previous bodgery when you opened her up! Can you get a repair panel to cut up to sort the lower 1/4?

KelvinatorNZ

Original Poster:

565 posts

57 months

Wednesday 4th January
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Jhonno said:
Nice work! I'm not shocked to see you found previous bodgery when you opened her up! Can you get a repair panel to cut up to sort the lower 1/4?
Unfortunately not, no one reproduces them and there aren't any coupes being chopped up. It's the downside of the coupe, everything forward of the B pillar is shared with the saloon, everything back is coupe specific.

KelvinatorNZ

Original Poster:

565 posts

57 months

Saturday 14th January
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Did more cutting, hitting, welding and grinding today to fill the holes.



Not 100% happy, there is a high point here, where the patch is joined to the original guard. Not sure if i had the guard out of alignment or something warped when welding (likely the former). Not sure how to fix it, but I'm thinking cut the join, hammer it all back into alignment, weld up again?


KelvinatorNZ

Original Poster:

565 posts

57 months

Monday 16th January
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I tried some finessing with a hammer and dolly, and got it around 10x better than it was


Tyre Tread

10,307 posts

203 months

Monday 16th January
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I admire your determination, skill and tenacity.

I owned 2 Marina coupes back in the early 1980's and loved them but back then they were worth the square root of F all so we patched them up as best we could to keep them on the road as it was the only way we could afford to run a car.

I must have put many pounds of filler into the rear lower quarters, behind the headlights and in the door bottoms.

We used what we had available cheaply which was filler. - Sorry!

I only ever own 2 1300 engined cars but I thrashed them to within an inch of their life and they just took the abuse.

The second one (CKB 998K) got a respray (which cost more then the car was worth) from Black Tulip to Black, wheel spacers, larger tyres, seats from an XJS Jag (front and rear) plus a home made centre console and various other " enhancements".

It's nice to see people like you being dedicated to keeping some of the last Marinas alive and that they are now beginning to be worth something again.

Keep up the good work.




drgoatboy

1,426 posts

194 months

Monday 23rd January
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Great read, thanks for sharing and good luck with the rest of the build.
My Dad had a 1.3 auto marina in the late 80s. He went through a tough spell with money and someone lent it to him for a couple of years. Dark green with an oxide red bonnet. Was truly terrible but we drove all over the place in it and always had fun...

KelvinatorNZ

Original Poster:

565 posts

57 months

Friday 27th January
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At times it feels like I'm playing Whack-A-Mole with the rust, but I am steadily knocking rust on the head and putting new steel in.


I know it's probably not particularly interesting to most, but it is what it is. Once the bodywork is done, I can return to the fun mechanical stuff.


I left off the last post with the no sill, and a blimmin' great hole in the quarter panel.


The first step was to get the new sill on and return some strength to the car.


A quick test fit of the sill, with the door on, showed that it fit nicely


It sits a little high with it only clamped at the bottom, so should pull down a bit when welded. The door is adjustable if I need to tweak the gaps.


Next was to spend the next few minutes punching holes in the flanges. There were dozens of holes, and all of them needed to be punched out and welded. I'm glad I have a proper punch, and I wasn't drilling these one by one.


And finally, after some tweaking of the placement, it was all welded into place. I ended up using a jack under the lower flange of the sill to help align it with the inner sill, since it appears that wasn't welded straight from the factory (which explains why the old sill I removed was barely spot welded along the bottom)


A quick skim of filler along the top edge should make the repair invisible


And some filler to shape the front edge too. In hindsight I should have angled the edge so it matched the guard line, but oh well.


This is where I took a bit of a break from the sill/guard area, as I had found a donor arch section for the rear (from a sedan), and was waiting for it to arrive.


Instead, I moved on to one other area that needed attention; the window frame.


Before venturing further into the story, it occurred to me that I completely forgot to mention that a few months ago I removed the rear QTR glass, because I knew there was a rust hole in the B pillar.


This was a bit of a faff. Being a Deluxe, it didn't get the pop-out windows the TC did, which are easy to remove, so I had to lever the old, hard, rubber seal off and try not to break the irreplaceable window glass.


I started with getting just that section over the lip, and one by one moved the screwdrivers further along until the window finally started to pop out.


Once it started to come out it was quite easy to remove.


This revealed the horrors hiding under the seal


This is the hole I knew about


But there was also rust at the rear of the window


Interestingly, this also confirmed that the B pillars of the lower spec models are already provisioned with the holes for the hinge blocks for the TC pop out windows, albeit with the top one covered in tape


I cleaned the B pillar hole up and bit, and its quite sizeable


So yes, that's been like that for a few months. Moving along, I wanted to repair both of the holes.


I started with the one in the B pillar, as it was more straightforward. I stripped it back until I found good metal, and then using my best friend, the air body saw, I cut a nice square hole


Made up a nice patch for it


Welded it in, and ground it back.


I did have one shocking surprise when welding that in. I didn't realise, but the joint with the quarter panel had been lead loaded, which is where they fill and shape the joint with lead, instead of bog/filler. I only found this out when the lead got superheated by my welding near it, and blew molten lead all over me when I used the air gun to cool the welds. Thankfully I had my welding mask down, and the rest of the lead just peeled off my clothes.


The same was also present near the rust at the rear of the window, so I made sure to grind it all back to bare steel (wearing appropriate PPE, of course; powered lead cant be good to breathe).


The rear rust was much harder to do. I cut it back until I had solid metal, revealing a large hole


And welded in a couple of patches (one for the flange, the other for the curve). It was really hard to grind the welds back, so it's not pretty, but nothing a skim of filler won't fix.


I was laughing with my wife about how hard it was to weld this, as previously all my welding had been low down and I could just put the light I use to see what I'm welding, on the floor or wedge it against something. Because this was up high, and my light is massive and heavy (cordless Ryobi foldable light) there was nowhere to put the light. I mentioned I had been holding the light between my legs, or pressed against the side of the car. My wife looks at me, and asks "why don't you get a little magnetic light?".


It's so simple. I bought one the next day and life has been better since.


Another tool that has improved my life is this power file/finger sander. It's amazing. Way better access than my grinder, and grinds welds down like butter.


I took the recommendation of a local forum to get some "green zirconia" belts for it. I had been using the ones that came with it and they were good, but sure enough, the green ones tear through anything and will wear out before they snap (which is a common issue; The other spares I bought with the tool snap within seconds of trying to grind welds down. They were cheap, but they're useless).


The next day the arch section arrived.


I bought this from a seller that was wrecking a sedan. The coupe shares the same basic arch profile with the sedan, even if the quarter in front of it is different, because there is a door where the coupe doesn't have one.


I started by drilling out the spot welds, to separate the inner and outer arch sections, as all I needed was the lower outer arch


I finally got the spot weld cutter to work. I used a 2.5mm drill bit to drill through the middle of the spot weld, and this pilot hole holds the cutter in place and stops it from slipping around. I did go right through on a couple, but I wasn't trying to save the inner arch anyway


Unfortunately, I did find this arch also had filler in it. Not as bad as my old one, but enough that it was annoying.


I only really needed the very bottom of the arch, so I kept going anyway


After some tidying up, and lots of measuring and tweaking, I welded the arch section in.


I trimmed down the end of the sill, and pulled the top edge outwards, to match the shape of the arch


This meant I could cap the end of the sill. I used the donor sill to get a basic template, and made the panel


Welded into place


After grinding everything down


Next was the hard part, making the filler panel to fix the large square hole. I measured and cut this a few times, and I'm still not 100% happy with how it turned out.


Next, I made the last patch. I had originally planned to reuse the section I cut from the guard, but it was easier to just make a nice fresh new section. I also plug welded these new patches to the top of the sill, from the inside of the car.


And there we have it, all welded in. I had agonised about the damage, and how hard it was going to be to fix, but at the end of the day, although the donor arch helped massively, the rest of the job went quite smoothly.


The only issues I have are that the bottom folded edge of the two patches don't line up (filler will fix this), and there was a raised high point where the panels joined


It is hard to see in photos, but was really obvious in person; it looked like a big raised peak. I wasn't sure how to fix it, so I just took a hammer and dolly to it and now it's about 80% better


The main thing is that I have retained the seam between the sill and quarter, and the swage line above that seam is somewhat straight. I spent ages with tape measures and straight edges making sure that the swage line would be near straight.


That's it, other than some filler and paint, the sill is finally done.


Next on the chopping block was this rust


But on the way there, I poked at the inner guard, behind the wheel... Yes, I should know better.


Well now, I couldn't just leave that as it is.


I also poked around at the rust I was meant to be doing, and made it much worse


Looking at the inner guard, the only option I could think of to fix it properly, was to unfortunately cut the lower edge of the arch off, so I could access the full section


Remember, measure once, cut thrice


But now I could see the whole thing


Which made slicing and dicing it much better


I barely had to cut down the sides, it was that rusty


I cleaned it up


And used the old rusty section as a template to make a patch


The only thing left was to weld in the section of arch I cut out. This was a real mission as the metal was super thin here. Beware, it's ugly.


Awesome folding magnetic light that has made life better. It's wearing a little nappy to stop metal shavings from getting jammed around the magnet on the base


Much better. Just needs some sealer down the side (as it was from the factory)


Now it was time to finally deal with the rust I came here to fix


I did some poking around, and made the target area bigger


Using the air saw I cut the area back to good metal, and carefully split the seam where it was spot welded to the outer quarter.


I made another patch, and clamped it into place for test fitting


And then welded it in. I welded it in from the top as it was easier than welding on my back. Look at that penetration though, and not a single blown hole.


I plug welded the new seam to the old one to make a nice solid flange. I also plug welded a right angle into place to support the spare wheel


Job done. Probably one of the quickest and easiest repairs on the car so far.


While I was there, I wanted to weld up the surplus holes in the rear panel. The car had previously had towbar wiring bodged onto the rear panel, via a couple of holes drilled into it. There were also three misc vertical holes on the RH side by the light


I got rid of the plug ages ago, so it was only the holes left to fill. The towbar might stay, I'm not sure yet, but I don't really intend to tow anything with the car, so I won't be reinstating the wiring for now.


I ground all the paint around the holes back (using spare welding gloves to protect the chrome bumper from weld spatter)


I made a small "round" filler for the big hole from scrap and held it in place with a magnet


A few presses of the trigger later, all the nasty holes are gone



The three remaining holes above the big hole are for the Morris badge.

A quick squirt of some epoxy primer to keep it happy in the meantime, and we are done for the day.


Speaking of, I recently found out that painting over zinc-based weld through primer can be problematic and not recommended. This is a pain, as I have painted over EVERYTHING I have done with zinc-based primer, to protect it. Now I will need to go back and strip it all to bare steel again and paint it with epoxy primer. The zinc primer is good for inside spaces, or between two bits of steel, and that's really all it should be used for. Oh well.


I'm getting really close now. I have to cut out and fix the rear valance, which is very rusty, and then the major rust work is done. After that, it's the boot seal flange, and a couple of "cosmetic" areas that need work, but they can be done at any time, even after a WOF check.


Lucas will be at British Car Day on the 12th Feb, but unfortunately the Marina just isn't quite there yet as I'm a couple of months behind where I wanted to be. Such is life, but I'm happy I'm finally making progress again.

Edited by KelvinatorNZ on Friday 27th January 08:37

Jhonno

5,077 posts

128 months

Friday 27th January
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Great work and dedication! Another enjoyable update..

mercedeslimos

1,451 posts

156 months

Friday 27th January
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Always love Kelvinator's threads on here and RR. Yours and Alex (yoeddynz) make me want to move there just to enjoy the rich car culture there

Bright Halo

2,553 posts

222 months

Saturday 28th January
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Excellent work!
This is the only way these will be saved as the cost to restore by a restoration company would be astronomical and far out way the value of the finished car.
Keep up the good work and thanks for taking the time to document and post on here.

rickygolf83

264 posts

148 months

Monday 30th January
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Caught up on the thread over the few days, mega progress being made and welding coming on strong too beer