What did you do to your Marina today?

[locost_bryan]

Nice pair.

[Mandator]

Oh dear. Kermit is not well.

Yesterday noticed tappet noise on start up which quickly disappeared.
Investigated today to find oil low - very low.
usual suspects eliminated - little oil visible on drive, engine cleanish, sump and rocker cover not saturate, no foaming in water etc.

However rather oily soot deposits on garage door behind exhaust points to internal trouble. So suspect bore/piston trouble or valve guides.
A small amount of smoke but not excessive so more investigation needed. Sigh!!!!

[Mandator]

Sorry!

If you wanted one made up as a spare (I've a spare ring or two) let me know.

Sounds good.

[Mandator]

Hoping to learn more about Kermit's thirst for oil have bought a compression tester & have tested the cylinder pressures.
Doesn't look good. Pretty consistent values, albeit possibly low, across cylinders but two rise when a squirt of oil injected through spark plug port .

Tending to think bores/rings worn and 2 valve guides shot!

[MarinaCoupe]

The oil raising the compression pressure definitely points to piston rings. Just a thought though is the engine a low compression Van/Pickup unit or a higher compression Passenger car unit? Do you have your actual readings?

[Mandator]

The oil raising the compression pressure definitely points to piston rings. Just a thought though is the engine a low compression Van/Pickup unit or a higher compression Passenger car unit? Do you have your actual readings?

Have been told compression reading should be around 175psi. Looks like rings need replacing. Sigh!

[MarinaCoupe]

Hi, I just looked up the compression readings in the BL Marina & Ital manuals for the 1.3s.
Marina/Ital 1.3 1971 to 1984

Saloon, Coupe, Estate
Low Compression engine should show 170 psi (Compression Ratio 8.0:1)
High Compression engine should show 190 psi (Compression Ratio 8.8:1)

Commercials - Van & Pickup
Low Compression engine should show 150 psi (Compression Ratio 8.0:1)
High Compression engine should show 170 psi (Compression Ratio 8.8:1)

Obviously, these figures are for new engines of standard bore, the difference between low compression and high compression is achieved by the use of different pistons (greater or lesser dish in the piston top surface). Of course, this was when new. Every time you have a cylinder head skimmed, you reduce the volume of the combustion chamber in the cylinder head, so you increase the compression ratio, every time you rebore an engine, you increase the swept volume and this lowers the compression ratio slightly. With engines now between 51 and 38 years old, most will have had the head skimmed and/or block rebored at least once, also without dismantling the engine you can't tell which pistons have been used in previous rebuilds, so your actual compression ratio will be different from original standard.

On my old Pickup, I was using an engine from a 1.3 Ital saloon, so high compression pistons (i checked), it was bored +20 thou and the head had been skimmed several times, my compression readings ran between 210 psi and 195 psi, making it really difficult to set the timing and higher compression needs changes to the ignition timing.

There is I think an anomaly in the BL figures, as I can't work out how by using the same pistons, that the psi rating are different between the passenger cars and commercials. The passenger and commercials use the same cylinder head part number and the same gasket part number, so I would expect the same combustion chamber volume and the same thickness of gasket (also adds to combustion chamber volume). It would suggest that the passenger car cylinder heads had a slightly smaller combustion chamber by design or by skimming the head during manufacture, but there is no information on this at all.

Any who - a target psi rating of 175-180 is a reasonable level, variation of 5'ish percent from cylinder to cylinder would be acceptable.

[Mandator]

Thanks for all the info.
As stated elsewhere will prob plump for a rebuild in the New Year.

[marina12]

On a side note the resilience of the A series in that it still works, even when worn, is an advantage. Only had to sort one when oil consumption could be calculated as low miles to the pint; driven carefully wasn’t noticeable, accelerate hard and there was an shall we say emission of haze.

[KwS]

On a side note the resilience of the A series in that it still works, even when worn, is an advantage. Only had to sort one when oil consumption could be calculated as low miles to the pint; driven carefully wasn’t noticeable, accelerate hard and there was an shall we say emission of haze.

Thats what happened to the B series in my first Marina. Ended up using as much oil as it did petrol

[locost_bryan]

Just realized it's been 18 months since the last time I started Ozzy. Flooded first attempt, and took a fair bit of cranking before he finally fired up. Running very rough, probably needs fresh fuel.

[KwS]

Just realized it's been 18 months since the last time I started Ozzy. Flooded first attempt, and took a fair bit of cranking before he finally fired up. Running very rough, probably needs fresh fuel.

Does this mean more progress soon?

[dazza2623]

Collected this on 1/1.
Has been stored for me by friends for many years.
Good to have it back home.

[JubileeNut]

What going in that one? straight 6 or V8?

[ScreamingLordStokes]

Cool.