Morris Marina tc,
Discussion
Just wondered if anyone on here would admit to owning one in there youth. My aunt bought on when I was 15 years old and even then I thought it handled like a bag of spanners, but it went like stink. Was bright orange with a black vinyl roof. Have`t seen one in god knows how long so can only assume that they all ended up as a pile of rust many many years ago.
Edited by dowahdiddyman on Saturday 1st January 01:06
My great uncle had one from brand new (K reg) also in orange, he only used it as a shopping car to ferry my auntie around in, so the back seats were never sat on. In the end his driving was so bad (he was in his 80s) that he would reverse until he hit something then go forward again. He eventually parked it up with only about 18,000 miles on the clock, and my dad bought it off him for £50 and we set about fettling it back into a nice car.
It went like a rocket, but only in a straight line. It had a wierd quirk where by on its last trip of the day you had to pull out the choke and then switch it off, otherwise when cold no matter how much coaxing it would not start, but if you did the choke trick it fired first time. I used to use it as my first runaround when I was 17, and have fond memories of driving it.
Its days ended my when dad was stopped and waiting to turn into our street and a car rear ended him at full pelt without even hitting the brakes, snapped the back off the drivers seat and squashed the boot flat, luckily my dad was ok apart from a sore back for a few days. Would have made a lovely engine to go into an MGB but she ended up at the scrappers.
It went like a rocket, but only in a straight line. It had a wierd quirk where by on its last trip of the day you had to pull out the choke and then switch it off, otherwise when cold no matter how much coaxing it would not start, but if you did the choke trick it fired first time. I used to use it as my first runaround when I was 17, and have fond memories of driving it.
Its days ended my when dad was stopped and waiting to turn into our street and a car rear ended him at full pelt without even hitting the brakes, snapped the back off the drivers seat and squashed the boot flat, luckily my dad was ok apart from a sore back for a few days. Would have made a lovely engine to go into an MGB but she ended up at the scrappers.
Edited by PAUL. S on Monday 3rd January 14:40
dowahdiddyman said:
Just wondered if anyone on here would admit to owning one in there youth. My aunt bought on when I was 15 years old and even then I thought it handled like a bag of spanners, but it went like stink. Was bright orange with a black vinyl roof. Have`t seen one in god knows how long so can only assume that they all ended up as a pile of rust many many years ago.
Yup, I had one for about 6 months back in 1984.A TC Coupe in some sort of metallic purple colour with a dark bluey purple vinyl roof and a similar purpley-blue shade of brushed nylon interior.
Was hysterical to drive, oversteer, understeer, all sorts of steer....and all at one it seemed or anyone at any given random time..... but all at about 15mph on skinny 145 remoulds
Taught me a lot about driving though.
It did eat gearboxes as well, I was on my 3rd in the 6 months I had it.
Had a bright yellow Marina in the late 80's which was obviously a 'detuned' tc unit. Had the Dollo engine but only a single 1.25" SU so ran out of breath at about 70ish. A very odd experience - it simply stopped accelerating.
Would have loved to have had the money, time and facilities to uprate to twin 1.5" SUs as it was obviously raring to go a lot faster (maybe straight through a hedge?). T'was an emergency purchase after being rear-ended but did me for a while.
Would have loved to have had the money, time and facilities to uprate to twin 1.5" SUs as it was obviously raring to go a lot faster (maybe straight through a hedge?). T'was an emergency purchase after being rear-ended but did me for a while.
Dogwatch said:
Had a bright yellow Marina in the late 80's which was obviously a 'detuned' tc unit. Had the Dollo engine but only a single 1.25" SU so ran out of breath at about 70ish. A very odd experience - it simply stopped accelerating.
Would have loved to have had the money, time and facilities to uprate to twin 1.5" SUs as it was obviously raring to go a lot faster (maybe straight through a hedge?). T'was an emergency purchase after being rear-ended but did me for a while.
Do you mean Dolomite? Marina & Dolomite never shared engines apart from a short lived SPrint engine rally hack & a V8 one.Would have loved to have had the money, time and facilities to uprate to twin 1.5" SUs as it was obviously raring to go a lot faster (maybe straight through a hedge?). T'was an emergency purchase after being rear-ended but did me for a while.
I had an orange one like awg454's, K reg I think, a fantastic car, it had 185 tyres on it with quite a lot of front wheel camber but it handled well and was great to drive. I put a conrod through the block driving past Brentwood and had to change the back axle once and engine twice before I got it working again. Happy memories.
First car - a 1.3 'Super' indeed.... started off driving it round a field when I was 15, then after much welding, an MOT... L-plates on, and away. Thrashed it, played about with porting the head and a larger SU, with reasonable results too - went like stink (well, felt like it) until it either boiled, or the gearbox went pop - to the point where I emptied the local scrappy of gearboxes completely and had the replacement down to about 40min.
Move on a year or so and we're onto a reshelled 1.8TC (yes, using the shell from the one above... my welding turned out to be pretty good), looked rather, err, fetching in Old English White with wide matt black stripes up the bonnet - hmm, yes, like a magnet for Mr. Policeman in fact.
Much tinkering and this time it didn't boil when thrashed (not quite so enthusiastic with the porting this time)... and was quite a good motorway cruiser in fact. Superflex bushes, strut shocks at the front (off a late Ital), less broken gearboxes too. Even played about with a diff from the 1.3 for a bit... a land of axle tramp, wheelspin and suprising acceleration - up to a not too impressive top speed of course.
All ended in a massive write off - they're stronger than you'd think, and 20yr olds are as stupid as you'd think - lesson learned.
Still have a couple of pallets of parts too.
It was fun, proper fun, more memories than you can shake a stick at... rubbish, bad handling, rusty, regular piss-takes and insults a plenty - yep, all of that too.
Move on a year or so and we're onto a reshelled 1.8TC (yes, using the shell from the one above... my welding turned out to be pretty good), looked rather, err, fetching in Old English White with wide matt black stripes up the bonnet - hmm, yes, like a magnet for Mr. Policeman in fact.
Much tinkering and this time it didn't boil when thrashed (not quite so enthusiastic with the porting this time)... and was quite a good motorway cruiser in fact. Superflex bushes, strut shocks at the front (off a late Ital), less broken gearboxes too. Even played about with a diff from the 1.3 for a bit... a land of axle tramp, wheelspin and suprising acceleration - up to a not too impressive top speed of course.
All ended in a massive write off - they're stronger than you'd think, and 20yr olds are as stupid as you'd think - lesson learned.
Still have a couple of pallets of parts too.
It was fun, proper fun, more memories than you can shake a stick at... rubbish, bad handling, rusty, regular piss-takes and insults a plenty - yep, all of that too.
Evangelion said:
The 'pulling out the choke before switching off' trick worked with a few cars in those days; I think it was because the butterfly stopped moisure getting in.
Oh - very interesting! I had this with my first Fiesta, you could never start it unless you left the choke out overnight.Dogwatch said:
Had a bright yellow Marina in the late 80's which was obviously a 'detuned' tc unit. Had the Dollo engine but only a single 1.25" SU so ran out of breath at about 70ish. A very odd experience - it simply stopped accelerating.
Would have loved to have had the money, time and facilities to uprate to twin 1.5" SUs as it was obviously raring to go a lot faster (maybe straight through a hedge?). T'was an emergency purchase after being rear-ended but did me for a while.
The Marina had the BMC B-Series engine, like the MGB.Would have loved to have had the money, time and facilities to uprate to twin 1.5" SUs as it was obviously raring to go a lot faster (maybe straight through a hedge?). T'was an emergency purchase after being rear-ended but did me for a while.
The Dolly's engine was a totally different kettle of fish. It was a slant 4 with a iron block and an alloy head. The valves were driven through shimmed buckets off a single over head cam. Actually the head was very much like the one from an Imp, only bigger (and with funny cross studs). There was also the 16V variant. I never had the top off my sprint's engine, but they drove all 16 valves from a single over head cam shaft, so there would have been rockers there to drive the other set of valves. The Triumph engine was also used in the TR7 (in 2L form) and in a whole load of SAABs.
Dogwatch said:
T'was an emergency purchase after being rear-ended but did me for a while.
Hah - same for my old man. His was a P-plate metallic brown automatic "Super" (not a coupe though) with holes in the front wings so big I could fit my hands through them. Let's just say plenty of chicken wire and filler went into that one 
. I Can't really remember much else except that it smelled funny inside (I was only about 8 at the time after all) 
Lasted 6 months or so till he bought a Mk II Granada, which quite frankly was exactly what was required of it.
Edited by masermartin on Monday 3rd January 13:32
My Dad bought a green 4 door, reg OUG 523P. It replaced a Morris Minor and preceeded a Princess, which tells you all you need to know about my Dads lack of taste in all things automotive. My over-riding memory of the Marina was getting into it after it had been parked all day in the sunshine at Scarborough and wondering how brown vinyl could reach the temperature it did without actually melting. I think I still have the pattern of that vinyl burned into the backs of my thighs.
Gassing Station | Classic Cars and Yesterday's Heroes | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff