kws

Fix rust and obtain WOF. VTNZ fail some dumb stuff, but they arent in the game of making things up.

What a cool car, and a great project. Look forward to seeing the progress.

The time has finally come. I couldn't put it off anymore. I needed to cut out the rust. I have really been procrastinating on this work, as I have never really done bodywork like this before. The closest was fixing the rust on the Corolla, which was minor compared to the scope of this work. The main goal was to cut out and replace the steel on any rust that could cause an issue come WOF time. There will still be some more bodywork to do down the track, but once the car is on the road that will be easier to do. So that means I need to cut out the rust in the two front floor pans, the LH B pillar and LH outer sill. When you consider the car has been off the road for 26 odd years, and most of that stored outside, that's not bad! The front floor pans had been badly patched years ago by a previous owner, using rivets, sealant and some tin. The B pillar has a hole in it, behind the window seal, which means that the quarter window needs to come out. And the outer sill is perforated the whole way along, especially toward the rear. I started with the floor pans, as in theory, it should've been the easiest place to start and then build up to the harder sections. The first job was to grab a hammer, screwdriver and chisel, tear off the patches that had been riveted on and see what they were hiding. This big one on the RH side was the first to go. Instead of drilling the rivets out, I used the chisel to just cut through them So, it was covering a patch of very thin metal, with a drain hole that has rusted out. The circle hole is meant to be there, as it is used during the manufacturing process but usually has a steel "paint tin lid" plugging it. Obviously, the hole rusted out, the plug fell out, and it was covered over from there. There is also a recess pressed into the steel, which just acted as a rust trap over the years There are a lot of other small holes and thin metal on this side, so I originally marked it out to cut the whole lot out, but I'm a bit hesitant as finding the spot welds is proving hard due to the rusty metal (and it's spot welded to a couple of different reinforcers under the car). The LH side was a similar deal. A few patches... This one up against the inner sill gave me some concern as it has a big bead of sealant running down along the sill. Sure enough, the steel under the plate is ruined, as is the section of the inner sill where it met the floor. Another rusty drain hole, as well as a couple of screwdriver sized holes next to it (which had their own patch) Toward the tunnel, there was a large patch made up of a couple of smaller ones, which was shaped to fit the indent in the floor panel That one was bad. Big hole under it, and lots of holes poked in thin metal with a screwdriver. There are also a couple of other smaller holes I undercovered. Out came the paint pen, highlighting the extent of the damage. The only thing to do next was to grab the grinder and cutting disc This little brace for the gearbox support was a bit of a surprise. It was also full of rusty chunks from the floor disintegrating. The inner sill needed to be cut out too as that was barely holding together and was full of sealant. To access this better, I cut a hole in the outer sill (which is stuffed anyway) It was pretty ugly in there I carefully removed the inner sill section and peeled it off the jacking point brace Now, a warning. I'm not a professional, heck, I'm barely a beginner at bodywork. I know the basics thanks to a course I took a couple of years ago, but that only covered the basics of welding, not cutting out rust, making patch panels and working with less than perfect steel. I am winging this. I have a semi-decent welder, but had previously been using flux-cored wire, which I swore after welding the Corolla, I would not bother with again (it did the job, and it has a place, but it's just more work for the same result). This time I converted the welder to take a standard 0.6mm (as recommended to me for bodywork) solid wire, and shielding gas. Anyway, so I bought the steel that was recommended to me for this sort of work, which turned out to be thicker than I really should be using; 1.2mm. The original steel is about 0.8 to 1mm. I figure the thicker steel cant hurt in the floor and sill areas, and I will use some thinner steel for other panelwork as needed. The first patch I needed to make up was for the inner sill, as everything attaches to this. I did some CAD (Cardboard Aided Design) and cut the panel out so it was a reasonable fit. I left the bottom a bit longer, as that will get trimmed later when I do the outer sill. I'm embarrassed to show these initial welds, but it's all part of the process. I had been having serious issues with my wire feed, which I fixed after this section was done. I went over this a couple of times to make sure it had penetration and then ended up welding both sides. It needed to be strong. I know, I know, I needed to clean the surrounding metal better. The other issue I had was my gas regulator was DOA and the flow meter didn't work, so I just turned the gas up a bit and ran with it. The welding on the inside was marginally better. I plug welded the brace to the new inner sill section, but also later went around and welded the edges right onto the panel too. The front section of the inner sill is where I started to work out the issues with my machine, and more importantly, technique. There are some better welds here, but far from perfect. Due to the weird shape, I chose to lap weld this patch instead of butt welding it in. Once the inner sill section was in place, the first floor section went down. More CAD, but this took a couple of tries to get a nice tight fit. This has a 90 degree bend on the side to meet the sill. The welding is still a bit ugly, but it's strong and has decent penetration. As the saying goes, "A grinder and paint make me the welder I ain't" I carried on again today, and really started to get into the swing of things. The first patch was to join the previous one, up toward the rear of the car. This is a weird one, as it has to start off flat but curve swiftly up to join the existing floor. I made this section slightly oversize with CAD, bent the flange on the side and then notched it The notches allowed me to gently bend the panel in the vice. Once I was happy with the curve, it got welded in place. The next patch, the one that joins on next to it, was a real pain to make. This had to match the curve of the new patch I just welded in, but also match the curve of the existing floor both on the other side and above it. The easiest way to shape this was to make the biggest bends in the vice and then using a hammer and dolly, fine tune it into place. Some additional finessing was done once the panel was tacked in. This welded in a lot better. I'm reasonably happy with it. There is a small patch welded on next to these, which is just covering the small hole I cut out. Finally, I made a large patch to start filling the area above the exhaust and torsion bar. This is plug welded to that gearbox brace, and then butt welded all around the edges. Unfortunately my poor cordless grinder ran out of batteries as I was cleaning up the welds on this patch, but some weld through zinc primer and that was me done for the day too. I still have that one hole to fill, and then I'll move onto the RH side. I've learned a lot doing this side, so hopefully it will go a bit smoother, and quicker. A second grinder will be added to the collection soon, as using the one grinder for everything is just a real pain in the bum and it's chewing through the batteries. Having a corded one at the workbench for just cutting will help immensely. Having dialled the welder in a bit better, and ironing out some of my issues with that and my own technique, my welds are getting better. That last patch needed minimal cleanup with the grinder. Once that floor is completely welded I'll scuff the whole thing up, seam seal the welds and coat it in a zinc rich epoxy. Everything will be covered by carpet eventually. It will need undersealing under the car again too, but that will come once I have both sides done and can jack the car up to get under it.

Skim of bog, bit of paint, obtain wof. That sounds like a typical VTNZ failure

That one was Shadow Blue. The owner after me remapped it, but i didnt have the funds to do it myself. Yes, the jap spec cars are generally higher spec than NZDM. That one had all the options except sunroof (cruise, xenons, heated leather).

I really liked my MK5. Drove really well. It had decat with kakimoto exhaust, vw sport coilovers (sachs iirc), forge diverter valve, various carbon bits from COX. Adding shift paddle extensions was one of the best changes I made; the standard little buttons are a bit naff. Would've kept it but the risk of DSG failure was always in the back of my mind, and i found it just a bit too civilised. It was fast, but it did everything just a bit too well and wasnt exciting.

So, riding the high of driving the car, now its time to hit the low of the inevitable.... the rust repairs. I kinda wish I didn't start poking and prying at the plates of tin riveted to the floor, but it had to be done. I've cut it all out now and started to weld some areas back in. I wont post photos of that until the grinder and paint have been along to fix things.

I tried searching, but search brings up too many results. If i were to replace the static seat belts in the Marina with an inertia reel kit, do i need a cert? I believe it doubles up the lower bolt with both the retractor and the end of the lap section of the belt, so no new holes need to be made and uses existing seatbelt anchors. The seatbelts would be Securon which meet NZ standards.

My car already has a maxi pump on it,so either is a win

Depends on the build/model of 1750. The later 74 onwards ones were an 025 chassis and they benefit from the same upgrades that the 262 had in terms of space. The early 024 ones like mine are the same shell as the Uk cars more or less.

Absolutely,keen on any e series bits

Thats a great result on the WOF, wont take much to get it sorted out. Also concur with the above, that grille was gross.

In a couple of weeks, I would have owned the Marina for a year. That's a reasonably long time for me to own a car, so I needed something to mark that milestone. I had a goal. I had some time booked off work for the end of Jan, which was meant to be set aside to get the Marina ready for British Car Day. Since the show was canned this year due to a stupid pandemic that just keeps lingering like a bad smell, motivation to do work on the Marina has been low. All the time the Tomcat has been taking up hasn't helped either. For a car that I had intended to only have short stays in the garage for servicing and minor repairs, that thing sure has wasted a lot of time and money. Regardless, it was time to show the Marina some love. Heck, Project Marina wasn't even on the main page of TLP anymore, that's how long it's been sitting. I last touched the car when I moved the Tomcat into the garage back in November. With my time off coming to an end, and only the Tomcat getting attention, I quickly pivoted and set myself a goal; for my Birthday, I wanted to drive the Marina. Not just back it up the drive again, but actually drive it, around the block. Before I could do that I had to get the car a bit more roadworthy. The first port of call was to sort out the rear lights. I got them going a while back but the electrics were as flaky as anything, the indicators weren't working, and the lenses were full of rubbish. I picked up a spare LH a while back, which turned out to be in better condition than the one on the car, so refurbished that and the old one was used as spares. You can see just how dirty the inside of the lenses are. Unfortunately there are a few cracks too After removing all the screws in the back of the housing and careful prying with a plastic trim tool, the lenses slowly popped off one by one. Revealing the horrors within Interesting to note Lucas painted the reflectors silver, not chrome or polish them The lights have a plastic surround, that used to be silver coated on the inside but had worn away. This was also filthy. The housing after a quick clean. I used a citrus-based household cleaner, a bucket of water and my old toothbrush. I took this opportunity to knock some of the mounting studs out of the spare light unit and replace a couple of broken off ones in this housing. Someone had replaced one with a screw they had glued into place (and since broken free). The studs are pressed into a square cutout. A cleaned lens on the left compared to the filthy one on the right. I'll need to replace that corner lens as it's been glued back together many years ago. The plastic frame cleaned up well too. The missing bits were later glued back into place. The standard bulb holders ground by touching the body of the light unit. If the surface they touch is dirty, you get a bad connection. I cleaned all the holes up with a file and sandpaper After all the components were thoroughly cleaned and dried, the lights were reassembled. A little useless fact; the orange corner lens on these is useless, it provides no light. The housing is marked but not drilled for an additional bulb in that location but none is fitted. This bulb is fitted on some lights, but only in the US market on the Austin Marina, where it is used with a red corner lens, as a running lamp. Some have drilled that hole out, fit a bulb holder and used it with the orange lens as an extra indicator, which I will probably do at some point in the future. In order to make them a bit more future-proof, I ran a #10-32 tap through all the nuts and a die over all the studs. This cleaned them up nicely, removing years of rust and crud from the threads. The next job was to actually fit them to the car. Using a combination of the large washers the lights came with, and some smaller ones that fit the space, the lights were mounted with the best gaskets I had. Now I needed to look into the wiring Ages ago, I did some research into grounded bulb holders and found that some Triumph 2500s use a three terminal, dual filament bulb holder of the same size and style the Marina uses (but standard only has two terminals). The three terminal holders have a dedicated ground terminal, so although they can ground through the housing like the Marina ones, a ground wire on that third terminal ensures perfect grounding to the bulb holder. I managed to pick a couple of these holders up, in good used condition. Example photo, not my hand... To use these bulb holders properly, I needed a dedicated ground. To do this I drilled out an existing hole on the boot catch support And after removing a little paint around the hole, installed a rivnut into it This allowed me to make up a couple of wires which would terminate at this screw After a lot of testing with my test light, and reading of the wiring diagrams, I managed to get a tail light working Which resulted in this lovely lit up lens I carried that same work over to the other side too, and managed to get both tail and brake lights working. Tail and plate lamp (lighting up the towbar) And brake lights It doesn't look it in the photos, but the brake lights are significantly brighter. Next was to fix the indicators. These have a dual filament bulb standard, as one side is used for the indicator and the other for the reverse lights. Once again, after much prodding and probing, I had power but I couldn't get the bulb to flash. It turns out the previous owner had modified the wiring and instead of having one of the terminals to light up the reverse lights, he had changed that wiring to being a dedicated ground... but still using the two terminal dual filament bulb holders, which cant ground through that terminal. I substituted a pair of single filament bulb holders instead. These ground through the second terminal only, not through the body of the lamp. This got the indicators working a treat. They still flash a bit fast, but I will look into the flasher unit later. Better fast than not at all. Next on the list was to finally assemble and fit the cluster. This had been just sitting on place with no surround attached and the feed wire for the tacho running around the door jam into the engine bay, where it was clipped onto the coil with a crocodile clip. I started by running this feed wire properly, using the proper coloured wire (white with black trace). I crimped a terminal on and attached it to the coil And then tracing the path of the loom, ran it into the cabin I also fed the speedo cable into the cabin. Turns out this needs to be on the LH side of the reinforcement in the dash with the three dial cluster, as it moves the speedo to the left. Unfortuantely, I had an epic battle trying to fit the speedo cable to the cluster, until I realised that something was wrong. It just didn't go into the cluster far enough. This is the speedo end of the cable. That grey section should be within the silver metal section... So I thought, maybe the gearbox end wasn't seated properly, pushing the cable up at the other end. I rolled under the car, undid the cable and tried to pull the cable inner down a smidge. Well, I pulled the cable down alright, down into my hand. The square end on the left should be in the speedo drive in the gearbox, the other end should be a long cable that goes into the speedo dial. Damn. It had jammed and twisted completely off. Thankfully a while back I saw a NOS speedo cable pop up on Trademe, so grabbed it as a spare I tore that packet open good and proper Mmmm fresh new cable. The instructions state to grease the cable lightly before fitting, so I pulled the inner cable out and ran a bunch of synthetic oil down the outer and wiped the inner liberally with it. Feeding this through the car and securing it into the gearbox allowed me to try and fit the cluster again. This time it was a lot easier. With the cable on the left, I could reach in through the grille opening in the dash and screw it into the cluster that way. For the first time since I got the car, and for the first time ever, it finally had a gauge cluster, and a triple dial one fitted, at that. I'm still waiting on some machine screws to arrive to screw it in, but that's secure enough for now. Finally, I needed to fit the exterior mirrors. These haven't been on the car since even before I got it. The RH side mirror was cracked, so I had a local glass company cut and fit a fresh new piece of mirrored glass. These need a polish up, but they are a gorgeous period-correct accessory. The LH one is mostly useless, but looks so cool out there on the wing. One final check revealed one other issue. I had noticed the past couple of times I had run the car that there was a noise coming from somewhere a the front of the engine. I had bad thoughts that it might be a failing waterpump or alternator. Nope, turns out the drive belt was loose. Why? The adjustment bolt on the bottom of the alternator was missing. I popped a new bolt in, tensioned the belt, and it's been quiet since. To test this I had to start the car for the first time in months. I reconnected the battery (which has been sitting disconnected but not on a charger). The fuel filter was dry, so it took a few turns, but cranked nicely and fired straight into life and settled into a nice fast idle at partial choke. Sorting the engine grounds has worked wonders, I never could have started it without jump packs and a fully charged battery before. With the filter full, it starts on the button, every time now. So, there was nothing left to do but clear the car off, and get ready to take the car for its first drive in about 27 years. Getting back, my wife said she hasn't seen me smile like that for a long time. There was a bit of clutch shudder leaving the garage, but that seemed to go away with some more use and the bite was nice and progressive and at a good point. Otherwise, the car performed perfectly. The steering is well weighted, if a little off center (needs an alignment), but tracked straight and the suspension felt great; No vagueness, no wandering and no bouncing. The engine pulled down low, but felt a bit flat up top (I haven't touched the carb tune). The gearbox went through all the gears nicely, with only a couple of minor crunches when downshifting, to be expected for synchros that have been dry for 27 odd years. No grinding or hard shifts. The blowing exhaust does make a racket though. Although I haven't had a chance to bed the brakes in since the work I did on them, they pulled up nice and straight and didn't require as much force as I was expecting for an unboosted system. The pedal feel is very good. All the gauges were working, including the speedo with its new cable. You'll also note in the video, if you look closely, that the indicators, front and rear, and the brake lights are working as expected. Words can't express how happy I am with how it drove. I expected it should've been fairly good on the road after all the work, but it blew me away with how good it was. I'm hoping this is the push I need to do the serious work on it; the cutting and welding. With the Tomcat finally vacating the garage, there are no more excuses. She's a keeper

Thanks, there are a few of us dedicated owners that love the cars. It seems like a few more people are starting to recognise they arent as shite as the naysayers say, especially now that all the cheap ones are gone from years of hate and neglect. I'd love a 262 conversion, but being an early car I dont believe it will fit in my shell as I dont have the raised trans tunnel or extended front valance.

Well, the time has finally come, it's time to see if the car is roadworthy or not. It's been a long time coming, but it's good to finally be here. It's a milestone; it means I'm confident the car will make it to the testers in one piece, and it might not fail too badly. So on Friday, I rolled on down to the workshop and left the car to be inspected. I've used these guys to do my tyres before, but haven't had them do a WOF yet, so I was hoping they weren't going to be real picky about it. An hour later, I get the call. Its failed. Damn. What did it fail on? Excessive side to side play in the front wheels. It needs new inner rack ends and one tie rod end. Not the worst thing to fail on, and being the only thing it failed on, I was still reasonably happy. I was expecting much worse. I picked the car up and immediately shot around to a couple of parts stores to price up the parts. It seems they all get them from the same place, as they were all the same price, so I picked the last one I went to and ordered them. While I wait for the parts to arrive, I got stuck in. Up on Quickjacks, confirm there is noticeable play in both sides, and off with the wheels. The LH side looked original and still had an old castellated nut and split pin instead of the nyloc new joints come with. I had also slipped the boot off the rack to see what I was dealing with on that end. Annoyingly Rover is dumb and used an inner rack end that doesn't have a locking washer or even flats on the joint to put a spanner on. There was a factory locking method though; a notch in the rack and a punch used to deform the rack end so it locks into the recess. I had to use a hammer and punch to hammer the deformed section back away from the rack With that hammered back, I used a pair of vice grips to grip the joint and then a dead blow hammer to crack it loose. Then before completely removing the inner joint, I popped the tie rod end ball joint from the knuckle. This LH side one was really stuck and took a ton of force and lots of hammering to pop it free. Remember to crack off the adjustment locking nut first, whilst it's still easy to do. The amount of force the tool was putting on the joint can be seen in how deformed the threads are around the split pin holes Eventually it popped free And out it came, being careful not to turn the tie rod end (so I could use it to set the new ones up later) I did the same on the other side too. The inner joints were very loose, and the LH outer joint was stuffed too. The RH outer had been replaced at some point in the past and was still good (and kept as a spare). I then started work on removing the front struts to install my nice new KYBs, only to find the first one I went to fit was DOA and had no gas pressure. Damn. Moving on from that bitter disappointment, I left the car for the rest of the weekend. Monday rolled around, and the parts had arrived. I picked them up early morning. They were a weird brand I hadn't heard of before but looked like they'd do the job I fit the new inners first. I used some medium-strength Loctite and tightened them with vice grips and a hammer, like I did to remove them, as these new ones also didn't have spanner flats. Because of the orientation of the locking notches in the rack, there was no way I could use a punch to lock the rack ends with the rack on the car. Obviously they did that before fitting the rack in the factory. I got a pair of nice new universal boots. I trimmed these to fit and popped them in. I wound off the old tie rod ends, counted the turns, and spun the new ones on the same amount of turns (after checking they were indeed the same length). On went the wheels, and down went the car. A quick test drive immediately revealed that the wooly vague feeling the steering has always had (in the 2 or 3 drives I've done) is completely gone, replaced with an overly darty but direct steering. By some fluke, both the alignment shop and the WOF workshop were able to squeeze the car in that afternoon, so off it went for an alignment. Where I found that the car had 17-18mm toe on each side, instead of 1-1.5mm each side. No wonder it felt darty. Next was the WOF workshop, where they were they were surprised I had fixed it already, and it went up on the hoist and had the play checked again. This time it was a pass, and the new sticker was applied to the windscreen. This gives me six months of being road legal. So almost 5 months, thousands of dollars and many many hours later, I finally have a road legal Rover Tomcat. So, what does one do when they have a road legal car? Take it for a hoon around some back roads of course! My wife and I jumped in and took a drive over some of the local back roads I like to hoon around. The car was running and driving great. The turbo was pulling well, and that diff is great. I can see why despite the cost, people rate the Quaife ATB, it just pulls you around corners, like understeer isn't a thing. It definitely needs those KYBs though... There is a little spot I like to stop at and take photos, so we swung by there and grabbed some. There are no bad angles on these cars. Enjoy. Wait. What is that... So, whilst taking photos of the car I decided to leave the car idling since I had just been pounding on it, and 90s turbo cars need some cooldown time before shutting down. I'd idled it heaps before without issue. This time, nope, she was hot. Not boiling, but very hot. We carefully pulled away and once moving the temps started to drop. As long as I was moving the temps were under control. Stop, and you could watch as the needle rose. I wasn't best pleased. I ran some tests once I was back in the garage, and sure enough, both stages of the fans were working, but it just couldn't bring the temps down. After some research, the most common conclusion I could come to was the thermostat was sticking closed, and since the coolant temp is read just before the thermostat, it was reacting to that blockage very quickly. Well, it was either that or a blown headgasket or blocked radiator. I purchased a new thermostat from Rimmers ages ago, since the car didn't come with one fitted I was going to fit this one to the existing hose, but ended up buying a New Old Stock hose from Japan instead, which came with a new thermostat already fitted. These are a bit weird; on the A/C cars they use a special top radiator hose which has the thermostat wedged into it, and held in place with a hose clamp, hence the two clamps in the photo below, one to hold the hose on the outlet, and one for the thermostat. The first port of call was to test the old and "new" thermostat. I figured the old one could have been from as far back as 1992, whilst the new one was stamped 2012, so it's a bit of a difference. I still wanted to make sure the new one was working before installing that. I popped the top hose off, and removed the thermostat. I put the two into a pot on the stove and raised the temp while monitoring it. The "old" one is on the right. Boiling them showed that both did open, but the new one opened further than the old one. Its hard to tell in the photo, but the new one on the left has a larger gap. After that test, I drained the coolant system of all its foul smelling brown water (I had been running mostly water with a low concentration of anti-freeze in the system to both help clean it out a bit, and since I had planned on replacing the lower radiator hose again). I'm sure I have flushed the system once before with a hose, but it's also had at least two other drain and fills since I got the car. This time I flushed the radiator, engine and expansion tank with water until it ran clear. All of them took a while until the brown stopped. With the new thermostat fitted, a 50:50 mix of coolant was poured in, and the system bled. It came up to temp quickly and the thermostat opened fine. I took the car for a decent drive, making sure to use the turbo to get the engine nice and hot. Once home I sat on the drive for a good few minutes to see what happened, and the needle was rock solid. The low-speed fans came on, as expected, and everything seemed happy. If anything, the needle on the gauge sits a hair lower than it used to when at operating temp, so maybe this has been an issue for a while. It's no use surprise that a thermostat which I believe to be stamped 1994 has aged badly and is sticking. I'll keep an eye on it, but this car is really testing my patience and making it hard to trust it. Hopefully I can just get a few good miles on the clock without any more issues.

It's been months since this poor old thing has had a looking at. The tomcat has taken far too much of my time, but today I did some things, and some things happened. Like this May not look like much, but that was hours of work to fix various issues and make all the rear lights work again.

All the smiles per mile

Tomcat went in for a WOF yesterday. Unfortunately it was a failure. Not a bad thing in the big scheme of things, I was expecting a whole lot of worst case scenarios, and for it to only fail on steering rack ends and tie rod ends on both sides due to excessive play, thats a win. Parts have been ordered and should be here Monday. I kinda expected this to pop up at some point as the steering is really vague and wanders. I was hoping it wasn't the rack. Having removed the old parts already, yeah they are toast. Very loose Ball joints all around and the movement in them was very pronounced when wiggling the wheels side to side. Not sure how it passed the last wof (end of 2020) without being noted.

Cool little car; that motorbike spec pod filter though

In preparation for the upcoming WOF inspection, I needed to make sure everything works, including all the lights. The high stop light is a constant source of annoyance for me as it just doesn't consistently work properly. With the brake light switch now working correctly, I had to make sure the high stop light kept working. I kinda bodged it back together and got it working a couple of months ago but by the time I had it all back together, the damn thing had already lost one of the five bulbs. It turns out, since then, it had lost four out of the five bulbs now, which wouldn't pass a WOF. I removed the lens and pulled the bulb unit out And this is what I was playing with My plan was to replace the whole assembly with LEDs and never look at it again. First, I purchased an LED strip unit designed for motorcycles I connected it to the high stop wiring to check it works, which is certainly did The problem was that it was too small I even went to the extent of 3D Printing an enclosure to mount the LED strip into the casing on the boot lid, but I didn't like that it would have only lit up a small strip in the middle of the lense. The next idea was to salvage the LED strip from a larger aftermarket high stop light I cut the end off it, and fit it into the original housing But with the lens on, it's too direct. It's just a strip of red. The problem with the original unit is that the bulb holders are shite and the circuit board they interface with is corroded and ugly. I tried to clean the corrosion up with the fibreglass brush last time, but this time I just hit it with sandpaper. I've done the RH two, the rest are original. There is also pitting on the circuit where the tiny little contact point of the bulb holder touches it, which means it'll never be good. In the end I just cleaned the circuit tracks and the bulb holders up as much as I could, swapped in some LEDs and refitted that to the car The light coverage is far better, but I don't know how long it will keep working like this. I wouldn't be surprised if it just stops working completely the day before the WOF. I think my plan now is to find some generic T10 bulb holders that have wires instead of contacts, and 3D print a new board to go on the back of the standard reflective housing, which will hold the bulb holders with LEDs in them and I will wire it into the standard plugs. This will remove both the dodgy bulb holders and the worn out and corroded circuit board I currently have.

Blocked cat?

So you put your foot down on the accelerator pedal, and the engine sound doesnt get louder, deeper, or faster? As Torton said, sounds like the throttle isnt opening if thats the case, otherwise without looking at it im at a loss. A slipping trans would result in an increase in RPM with no forward momentum.

When you put your foot down, is there a noticeable change in engine noise?

The Morris Ital had this from factory, those forward thinking engineers

Im pleased to hear someone else is giving KJet a shot. Too many people hear "its impossible to work with" or "dont touch it or you will ruin it" and are scared to work with it, but its not that bad. Im not much of a phone person, but feel free to PM me or email me via https://tasteslikepetrol.net/contact/ Be worth removing your number too, just in case spammers grab it.