Staff Car Sagas
Danny has no choice, he needs to sort the Marina himself
All the latest project news from the PC workshop and beyond.
It wasn’t a welcome phone call. The bodyshop I’d buddied up with to paint my Marina Coupé in time for the 50th birthday celebrations at Gaydon had a problem. It was a new ‘start up’ company and the two gents who were behind the venture had fallen out. My Marina would not be finished for months… I had two weeks before the Marina Club were coming to the workshop to work with me on completing it, so action was required. Clive Jefferson and I grabbed a trailer and went to rescue the shell.
A social media ‘call for help’ saw some interest, but the second bodyshop I chose took one look at the Coupé and said they couldn’t touch it because it had been wax treated and would need steam cleaning. So, I steam cleaned it the same afternoon (thanks to Adrian Pritchard) and then decided the only way to be sure a painted shell was ready for the club to come and play with was to do it myself. Deep breath!
Back at the workshop, I got stuck in with the Rustbuster paint and rust stripping kit. Two days of back-straining, handbuzzing effort saw all the paint removed and scabby rust patches revealed. There were many. The extent of the scabbing problem had only really become apparent now the car was naked. Clean metal pock-marked with patches of pitted rust served as a reminder that, even if a car is covered in paint, it can still
be quietly rusting underneath. A day with a wire brush and some Kurust stopped the rot.
Then I covered the car in Rustbuster’s epoxy primer in an effort to stave off further rust and to give me a good view of the Coupé’s wavy panels and dents. Another intense week followed. At the start of it, the Coupé was a mess. A collection of wobbly surfaces and jagged edges. I was daunted but help was at hand. Reader, Andrew Malyon,
got in touch and offered to come up and help for a couple of days. I almost wept.
Andrew was a godsend. A brilliant bodywork guy and a pleasure to work with, he got stuck straight in with block and filler (you can fill over the Rustbuster epoxy as it is non-porous). It gave me the chance to go and fetch the paint from Ken & Lyn paints near Buxton. The brilliant team have been supplying the finest paints to home restorers for over 25 years and they are famous for giving great advice… I was in need of some.
Paint lessons
Ken recommended Upoxy primer to go over the filler and under his two-pack paint. Upoxy is less brittle than epoxy and, under drying two-pack, will be less likely to crack. Ken also supplied me with a top of the range active charcoal filter mask, in a sealable bag… important because it will only be ‘active’ if the mask is returned into its sealed bag after use. I didn’t know that.
Ken’s paint tips are on page 74, but his advice for safety was interesting. He said that two-pack and cellulose paints are BOTH hazardous to health. He told me never to paint in an enclosed unventilated space. Use a ventilated booth
(either home made or pro) with air flow going from one end to another and suit up with a proper active charcoal mask. Absolute safety is achieved only with an air fed mask, but using an active mask is then next best thing. I decided then I would try it myself.
Thanks to the incredible work put in by Andrew, when I returned, the Coupé was much closer to primer. Andrew had filled and blocked and, after a few hours of detail filling from both of us, and after masking everywhere that needed not to be painted, I Upoxy primed the whole car to create a brown Coupé that looked like very much like a designer’s clay model. It had been intense work, dozens of hours of graft… but worth it.
Now it was a uniform colour again, Andrew and I went checking for imperfections and finding them, dozens of small dings and pits. Another day of work and finally the shell was ready for paint with three days to go before the club arrived.
The next day dawned bright and calm, not too warm or too cold. I walked up the yard to our mate Pete’s place. At regular intervals he converts his workshop into a booth and, today, I was going to use it. Or not. Pete had gone into hospital the night before with a stomach complaint and was still there (he’s fine now btw). No booth, but a phone call to see how he was gave me permission to use his gun. I weighed up my options. I had to get the car painted today so it would be dry by the time the Marina club turned up to fit the engine, rear axle and front suspension with me.
There was also the added complication that
I’d booked Auto Windscreens to come and fit the glass on the same day. I threw a piece of paper in the air… it came back down, a calm day – cloud cover, so no direct sun, 15 degrees… perfect.
I decided to create an exclusion zone outside
the PC unit and paint it right there. Our compressor was just about strong enough to keep the pressure up and Pete’s gun was the business. I flatted the Coupé all morning using 800 grit, then 1500 and then I wiped it down with panel wipe. I carefully mixed the paint (2:1 plus 10 per cent thinners), masked up and got ready. I pushed the car outside and waited for all our neighbours to finish work and go home for the evening. Then I fired up the compressor.
Gunning it
The following half an hour was tough, but I prepared with dummy runs on scrap panels and before that by taking a lot of tips by watching lots of video advice. I laid two dust coats and waited for them to flash off. This helps the wet coats to adhere to the surface and helps prevent runs. It also gives you an idea of how and where you will need to approach each of the car’s surfaces.
Then it was time for the wet coat. It started well, as the good light gave me a clear idea as to where I was laying it on, overlapping 30 per cent on each pass with the gun. I couldn’t stop once I started; I noticed a couple of snots and some insect landings, but carried on regardless. It was when I saw the appearance of some patches of micro-blisters on the flat upward facing surfaces that my heart really sank.
Standing back after the final pass I was… well… put it this way… it wasn’t as bad as I had feared or as good as I had hoped. It would all need flatting back again, but at least it was on and the engine bay was perfect, which was the most important bit. A painter chum examined the blistering and told me he thought it was silicone contamination, probably the result of leaving it outside while the lawnmower repair guys next door were revving up their two-strokes. Two-stroke oil
‘I pushed the car outside and fired up the compressor – time for some paint!’
fallout had drifted over, grrr. But my fault really.
The next day, as my flawed paint job dried, I went to Ashford, to East Kent Trim Supplies to be precise. It’s a family firm run by Stephen and Wendy Calthorpe and they stock all the rubbers for the Marina and Ital, including the Coupé rear screen surround. For years this has been unavailable but, literally the week before I turned up, they completed the prototype rubber based around a rear screen supplied by the club. I would be first to fit it, or rather Auto Windscreens would.
The big day comes
The Morris Marina Owner’s Club and Ital Register turned up the next day, as promised. Chris Weedon, Josh Ward, other Chris, Jono and Martin – heroes all – gave me the appropriate amount of grief for the paint job and then set to work rebuilding the rear axle, front suspension and marrying the rebuilt engine to the gearbox. Worth saying right here they are what a club should be. Expert but not exclusive, fun but not frivolous, helpful but not intrusive, organised but not officious. They make everything easier.
I had employed A-series engine pervert, Matt Tomkins, to prep the block and rebuild the head and he had done a great job – painting the block green as befitting a really early Marina… although Josh informed me that by the second week of production in 1971 (when my car was built) most engines would have been painted black.
The workshop buzzed as Tony and Dean from Auto Windscreens set to work fitting the rear screen with its new rubber, the first time this had been done on a Coupé for years. Then they got stuck into the front screen. Both Tony and Dean are instructors, so they know their stuff, but even they found fitting the early style thick chrome surrounds into the screen a chore. It took them two hard hours of graft to do it… but they did it. Applause all round.
Glass in, the shell was lowered onto the complete engine and ’box assembly and mounts attached I replaced the bushes in the parabolic leaf springs. The two Chris’s completed the rear axle rebuild ready for paint and spring attachment and I fitted the wheels, restored to perfection by Tudor Wheels to the rebuilt front suspension.
As everyone left I started the process of removing all the loose stonechip from the underside and, four hours later, emerged looking like I had been down a mine. Rustbuster epoxy
121 under body paint then went on with a coat of techshield wax to finish… it was midnight.
The following day the Chris’s returned and we fitted the axle to the springs, the springs to the body along with the restored petrol tank, propshaft and handbrake cable. It looked like a car again. However, despite me flatting back the entire shell again and painting the Coupé more successfully this time – in a proper booth – it still didn’t make the deadline. It didn’t get to the 50th party. I was absolutely gutted. Another week and it would have made it but, put it this way, no-one can say we didn’t give it our best shot.
danny.hopkins@practicalclassics.co.uk