goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,880
|
|
Jan 10, 2013 21:36:47 GMT
|
Thanks guys I'd have trouble choosing between a "mailbox" Bertone coupé and a Fulvia but the Fulvia somehow seems more understated, classy and refined. I'd dream to drive one across the Alps Well people do say the common man drives a Fiat, the sports man drives an Alfa Romeo, and Lancia's are for the connoisseur I'm not sure I qualify to own one haha. The more time I spend with it, the more I fall in love with the Fulvias lines, and it more kinda stylised than the Guilia. I'm happy to have the Lancia on the drive as opposed to the Alfa. MJk24, the dash is just right for me now. I can read the dials easily but the aren't distracting bright. Modern cars with too many bright flashy lights inside always annoy me. Don't worry Duncanmartin, I'm a fan of the colour and don't intend to change it any time soon. As for using it as a daily, I've only been doing so for a week and a half and its spent half of that in bits for various reasons but I'm hoping once its sorted out it'll be fine. My dad says the one he owned in the 80s was pretty reliable. It seems from the Lancia forums that a surprising number of people use them daily I'm looking forward to snow! Can pretend I'm Sandro Munari on the Monte Carlo, haha.
|
|
|
|
|
sumpcracker
Posted a lot
Yes, I’m still here.
Posts: 1,751
|
|
|
Nice to see this on here, and i love what your doing with it.
|
|
|
|
79cord
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,615
|
|
|
I'm sure there was a story of Sandro Munari finishing a rally stage/checkpoint tail first in a big Flavia coupe, before they got serious rallying the Fulvia.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jan 11, 2013 14:17:34 GMT
|
Once you get it sorted it will be very reliable and stop costing the bank. I drive mine once a week and the only repairs have been shocks, a rebuilt generator and a tacho repair. The engine is smoking a little at 140k so I've purchased a spare to rebuild. I hate the thought of being with out my Fulvia during the rebuild process.
|
|
1987 Alfa Milano/75 1979 Alfetta Mille Miglia 1976 Alfetta GT race car 1970 Lancia Fulvia 1.3 Rallye S 1968 Fiat 850 spider
|
|
|
|
Jan 11, 2013 14:39:03 GMT
|
Good work on the dashboard, great solution. I had a similar petrol smell problem in the Triumph - caused by poor fibreglass repairs at the base of the tank. Another solid steel tank cleaned and sealed will do you right.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jan 11, 2013 15:06:02 GMT
|
my old honda crx had a few pinholes in the petrol tank. gave the area a thought scrub back to bright metal and coated the area with a few coats araldite/2pk epoxy glue. its petrol resistant, sticks well (obviously) and fills the pin holes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jan 11, 2013 19:06:04 GMT
|
alternatively, empty and dry the tank, purge with inert gas, lead caulk the pin holes
|
|
|
|
niwid
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,744
|
|
Jan 11, 2013 20:39:54 GMT
|
beautiful car
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I saw this and thought of you
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I had a buggy with a holey tank once.
The genius previous owner had sealed it with body filler.
I don't recommend it!
|
|
Koos
|
|
goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,880
|
|
Jan 17, 2013 20:06:24 GMT
|
I saw this and thought of you Ah yes, that's a really nice clip isn't it. I'd been linked t it before by the Lancia forums, it does a nice job of capturing that guys passion for his Lancias and what people like about them. Right time for a progress report! Lets start with the fuel tank. I previously mentioned I'd ground the fibreglass back to reveal quite a mess. There was a layer of fibre glass covering the whole top of the tank and most of it was soggy with petrol I'm now thinking the horrible gooey stuff round the fuel level sender was melted fibreglass resin. I gave the surface a good clean up and slapped a coat of POR15 fuel tank paint on. This dries super tough and is designed for constant petrol contact so won't melt! POR recommend using cloth, soaked in the paint and built up in layers to cover small holes. So that's what I did. The good news is it worked! Since my repair I've not hand a single whiff of petrol in the cabin. It's really not a pretty job, but it just meant to be temporary. I wasn't too worried about making it pretty as it's not visible when the boot floor matting is down. I just wanted it to seal. In that photo you can see the next fluid based problem, I've got water getting in to the boot. I'm also finding puddles in the footwells after every time in rains. Depending on how the car's parked the water from the boot will run down the car, under the rear seat and into the footwells, but I'm not convinced thats the only place waters coming in from. It's definitely not coming in from the scuttle or windscreen area which is good, but the door seals don't look great. Following the path of the water I whipped the rear seats out, to reveal a huge amount of filler/paint/fibreglass dust. Lovely. I was relieved to find nothing but solid metal under the rear seats! With water running from the boot under there I had feared the worst. The water appears to be dripping out of a hole drilled to let wires into the boot, and I suspect must be entering the body structure from one of the rear side windows or the rear window itself. The rear side windows are relatively easily removed, so I thought I'd start my search under the rubber seals. The first piece of trim I removed showed me a likely problem! The trim, which incidentally is polished stainless steel not chrome so doesn't rust, is held on my plastic pegs that clip into rubber cylinders that are in holes drilled in the body work. You can see in the photo that the rubber is missing from the middle peg hole, and the peg was also missing. So basically thats an 8mm hole drilled in the water run from the window channel. I blocked the hole up, and checked the other side also, blocking another in a different place. Since then it's not rained to see if this has helped stop water getting in but I'm sure time will tell
|
|
Last Edit: Jan 17, 2013 20:48:21 GMT by goldnrust
|
|
goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,880
|
|
Jan 17, 2013 20:45:36 GMT
|
Time for my 3rd liquid problem. While I was happy for the car to mark its territory, I was getting bored of it's impressive impersonation of the Exon Valdez I could see plenty of oil round the cam cover, and running down the front of the block so that was an obvious thing to fix. Resealing the cam cover had little effect though. So I got the car up in the air and had another leak hunt. I found another obvious leak, above the oil pump, still near the front of the block. It's weeping from that blanking plug. As far as I could see, I can't remove the oil pump with the engine in place, which is useful. So for now I've had to resort to silicone. The repair seems to be holding, but still the oil drips constantly from under the engine. Time to take no prisoners now. I cleaned up as much of the engine as i could, to I had a better chance of seeing where the leaks were. This time round I identified leaking of oil from the water pump and from the oil filter pedestal. Only a Lancia would leak oil from the water pump..... I was already making an order to Omicron, a Lancia specialist, for carb parts, and while on the phone I mentioned the oil leak from the water pump. The guy from Omicron straight away mentioned an O ring that seals the water pump shaft that is easily damaged, so I ordered one of those along with a selection of gaskets, carb rebuild kits and new carb rubbers. I also got a set of points and a condenser off eBay for cheap. eBay points was a bad idea.... they didn't fit. Luckily the old ones seemed pretty good really and with a clean up and re-gap there was a notable improvement. So today I had some time in the day to start fitting my pile of parts. Firstly I needed to drain the oil and coolant to deal with the water pump issue. While I was at it I figured I might as well change the gearbox oil. With the coolant out I also removed the radiator to get better access to the water pump. Removing the water pump I did find, as the guy at Omicron suggested, a ruined O ring. So new O ring on, with a smear of vaseline to help it slide into place without getting trapped like the old one and a new water pump gasket. I also treated the oil filter pedestal to a new gasket, the oil pressure sender to new copper washers and got a new oil filter. The oil filter is huge! The biggest one I've ever seen! It's about 6" tall and 4" diameter! With the light fading and some small snow flakes fallings I called it a day for today. She just needs filling with fluids again in the morning and is good to drive. I also need to put the grill back on, that said taking the grill off has cemented the idea in my head that black headlight surrounds, as on the Safari edition, would suit my car. Fingers crossed that's all the fluid issues dealt with. Next on my to do list, if that is the case, is to rebuild the carbs
|
|
|
|
eurogranada
Europe
To tinker or not to tinker, that is the question...
Posts: 2,552
|
|
Jan 18, 2013 10:20:49 GMT
|
Personally I love this much more then the safari edition... But as I do myself, what matters is what you want the car to be/look like!
|
|
|
|
goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,880
|
|
Jan 18, 2013 23:02:03 GMT
|
Cheers As you say it's me who's gotta make the choice really, but other opinions are always helpful too. I am a fan of tasteful amounts of satin black against red, I had seen a couple of cool pics of the Safari lights, but in fact going back through the inspiration photos I've collected, almost all of them as S1 cars with a subtly different light set-up anyway. I might try the halfway house first of leaving a chrome ring round the lights, but blacking out the surrounding area. This is how my grill came from the factory, with all its chrome a bit shinier than mine... This is the fully blacked out lights like I'm considering.... Most of my inspiration pics are S1 cars with this grill / lights..... I thikn I need to think longer about whether I'm going to keep the bumpers on or not. But really I've got plenty of mechanicals to sort before it becomes a priority, not to mention the bodywork. Have a couple of other inspiration pics while I'm here... While I like the shiny pics, I do like the look of them a bit used and abused! I'm going to dig mine out of the mini snow drift it's sat in currently tomorrow morning and put some fluids back in it and see if they all fall back out! Then go for a play in the snow
|
|
Last Edit: Jan 18, 2013 23:06:33 GMT by goldnrust
|
|
goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,880
|
|
Jan 18, 2013 23:08:55 GMT
|
Ah-ha! This ones got chrome light surrounds like my, partially painted black, and it looks good. Decision made!! I feel a bit silly spending so much time worrying about how to paint such a small part of the car but I just really want to make this car perfect, just how I want it
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Congratulations on the Fulvia!
In many ways different to the RX-7, but somehow quite similiar.
I would plasticdip the grill, easy to try out different configurations without destroying the actual grille
|
|
Click picture for more
|
|
goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,880
|
|
Jan 19, 2013 22:26:12 GMT
|
Cheers mate I agree that it's that same eccentricity that's great about the rotary as is the way Lancia approach things. @ stroke motorbikes fall into that grouping somewhere too I notice! Still the Fulvia is very different and a different experience for me, it's taking a fair amount of adjusting to, but I feel I'm just starting to reap the rewards now. Still need to learn to how get the most out of FWD though, I feel my driving style is very much still in the mindset of RWD. There's still some oil dripping going on I'm hopeful that it's just the oil that had already made it past the seals I replaced working it way down out through the breather hole in the water pump, time will tell I guess. I braved the snow today to fit my new carb mounting rubber. They commonly split if the carb support bracket isn't properly adjusted and mine looked like it was split from the outside which could be not helping my carb issues. Old VS new, much nicer! Also notice in this picture the nice flat space in the Fulvia engine bay which is great for putting tools and parts while working on the engine. There's also a courtesy light under the bonnet, it's almost as if they planned for breakdowns The bad news is that my old manifold hasn't split all the way through yet, so I'll see no instant improvement in running, which makes the £130 for the rubber mount hurt even more! Still it needed sorting sooner or later and now with the bracket adjusted right it should be good for years. I also noticed while it was off that the port matching to the main intake manifold was very basic and to me looked like there was plenty of room for improvement when the time for more power comes
|
|
Last Edit: Jan 19, 2013 22:27:44 GMT by goldnrust
|
|
|
|
|
Ive had good luck using a product called "shoe goo" (its used to fix running shoes) to seal the manifolds but of course a new one gives peace of mind. Looks like you are getting to know her well. Agreed front wheel drive takes a different technique but you soon adapt, I had a Fiat 128 racer that was blast to drive, I could go in fast and then lift off the throttle which caused it to rotate nicely so I could power out.
|
|
1987 Alfa Milano/75 1979 Alfetta Mille Miglia 1976 Alfetta GT race car 1970 Lancia Fulvia 1.3 Rallye S 1968 Fiat 850 spider
|
|
|
|
Jan 24, 2013 12:43:26 GMT
|
looks like its going to keep you very busy, will be worth the effort I'm sure.
gotta admit the bumperless look and some suitably deep classic alloys and a hit with the stick will really turn this into somehting special.
|
|
84 mazda 323 gt (twr) b6t engine
85 mazda rx7 s3 12a
90 mazda 323 estate
90 mazda 323 estate (for the mrs ;-) )
|
|
unitybonez
Part of things
Blowing Pintos
Posts: 870
|
|
Jan 24, 2013 20:15:59 GMT
|
I almost bought one in '07. I was reallylookin fwd to the little thing, then something else popped up. Are you plannin to lower it any? At the time I had a photochop done with it slammed an inch from the ground on I think minilites on heavily stretched rubber. I know its sorta blasphemy for Lancia enthusiasts but it was amazing how it looked. Wish I could find that picture btw.
|
|
Last Edit: Jan 24, 2013 20:16:51 GMT by unitybonez
Sent from my ouiji board.
|
|