Kev's workshop projects

[KevJTD]

another mixed bag of an afternoon, poor progress for one reason or another really.


started off taking out the heater motor again from the engine bay to fit the heater pipes which i'd forgotten about

all nicely cleaned up ready to fit

next job was the wiper linkage which was a bit of a faff but it went in.
the 2 bobbins that support the front edge are bolted through from inside the car, above the peddle box, not the easiest place to get to

once the wires and cables were lined up where they needed to be the heater blower motor could go back in again which is pretty much complete now for the engine bay until the engine etc goes back in

as Richard brought the keys down to me along with some other parts I tried the door locks before I put the door cards on.....passenger door worked perfectly but drivers door didn't fit the key. odd that, strange if it's had one handle changed but by no means un-common. just strange that there wasn't another key?

so I took the handle off and stripped it all down, sure enough the tumblers weren't kicking up properly with that key.
a fiddly job with tiny parts that are easily lost but I took the tumblers out and lined them up to suit the key, 4 out of 5 are now in use. best I could do, one filed down to suit and once all rebuilt it now works just great.

whilst at it I sorted out the slightly sticky nature of the drivers door opening, turned out one of the rods just needed shortening a little. it now opens and closes as smooth as silk.



I do now have a good few parts ready to fit back on but getting a clear run at it seems the issue just now. must try harder for my next trip up there on weds afternoon

[KevJTD]

started off this afternoon by cleaning up the stainless side trims to bring them back up to a decent sparkle, weren't that bad but always worth spending a little time to make the best of them whilst off the car.
I'd sourced new clips from a guy in Europe somewhere as half of them broke when removing them and what was left I didn't know if they'd survive another use.

the front wing ones I've left off for now as they line up to the side indicator repeaters, those I'll put on before the side trim

fuel flap door got fitted back on, has a lovely little engineered pivot pin that you insert from inside the boot lid, access gained from a little rubber grommet. took me a while to find out how it came off originally but now I know, it is really neat

the stainless trims around the doors got adjusted so they lined up better with each other

accelerator cable and peddle pieces sorted, cleaned and fitted back in place.

little support bracket added to the bonnet hinge area at the drivers side, it's removable on that side to allow the wiper linkage to come out

I cleaned up the boot seal but have now declared it unfit for use due to the corrosion inside the clamping section inside the seal, no point adding corrosion back to it where I've just repaired. I'll order a new length tonight from woollies trim

once I'd cleaned the boot opening I fitted the boot lid back on, making sure to protect the paint with amounts of bubble wrap

the lid I'd removed with the hinge pins for a couple of reasons, makes it absolutely sure that the alignment is spot on again and also saves chipping paint on the mounting bolts which have now still got fresh paint on

underside I'd painted beforehand so it looks as good as the outside, with the damper fitted everything was looking good

quick polish over and the car's starting to look more and more complete every visit

sorry for the poor quality pictures, flash on my camera has always been a bit odd giving spots, must have some dust in it somewhere. my new phone camera isn't really that good at pictures too, guess I ought to look into the settings, appears to be a bit low on resolution.

[Kegsti66]

Isn't that looking pretty?
Looking really good now Kev.

[junior]

That blue keeps looking better and better as more of the car comes together.

Good effort Kev

[KevJTD]

trickling along, little bit more done today....

drivers door card next to be fitted up.
the window winder handle is another example of how lancia over-engineered things whilst they still had the company before the state/fiat got involved

instead of like everybody else using a cheap to manufacture plastic bezel they saw fit to make 2 separate bezels out of stainless steel separated by a spring, in the order shown below

when fitted it gives a lovely smooth action and gives an air of quality

drivers side door cards now all fitted up, window winders at 8 o'clock position as I always like them to be

there is a long bit of stainless trim that goes all the way around the door openings, clipping onto the roof seam and pillars as it goes. quite a nice snug fit, a layer of waxoyl under it should help prevent any future rust issues, tape fitted to the paintwork around the sharp ends to stop any damage

the little trim went on then around the bottom of the C pillar, this side is almost done now apart from the fit the passenger door latch and door card.

[Spacenut]

Looking better every day Kev

How long before the shell is rolling? Does the engine need work, or it it ready to drop in?

I'm loving the attention to detail, really pays dividends on those old Lancias!

Lauren

[KevJTD]

thanks Lauren, steady progress but the shell is almost as far done as it needs to be.

engine/gearbox I collected today actually from Richard. it'll get a check over and a service but as it's a runner it doesn't need anything major.

engine & 'box bolt to the front subframe which holds all the suspension too, we need to have it all in place for 8 weeks time as a new arrival is due then, and it's not a deadline that can be broken...so it needs to be a runner if not a proper rolling shell by then...

discovered another little gem of a detail today about how highly specced the car was for it's day, 4 pot front brake calipers as standard! with the rear disc brakes just how many "ordinary" saloons had that level of equipment in the early 70's?
with the twin carbs, narrow angle V4 engine and cross-flow design it was surely a thing of wonder back in the day

[PETROLHEAD]

And today mate,

Thanks to Richard and your good self, its a lovely little wonder of a thing all over again!

[KevJTD]

engine spent the day in the 147 today as I couldn't be arsed to drag the engine hoist out last night, lifted it out tonight though and took it down the shed to be evaluated

was gonna drop the integrale engine off the engine stand and put the fulvia one on but I'm not sure the casting on the bellhousing would stand the engine hanging off it so at the moment it's sitting on some wooden blocks and propped up with an axle stand.
I have a suitable bit of an old coffee table at the unit which I'll weld an arm or two onto to create a little engine stand for it, bit more stable

I've taken the carbs off as of now and had a look over the rest, Richard has supplied rebuild kits for the carbs so they'll get stripped and cleaned etc ready for the new parts

with it being at home it shouldn't take too long to see it ready for the install, all being well....

engine pre strip down

this shows just how compact the little V4 engine is, head is more of a square shape with pistons over-lapping each other. the valve gear is very interesting, i'll take the cover off this week and show how it all works

the thermostat has taken a little knock which may have rendered it useless but the manifold is coming off anyway so i'll check out if it's just superficial damage. ideally i'd like to change it anyway, well i'll be disappointed if we can't, but it looks to be held in by a large brass nut (41mm AF) inside an aluminium housing......care will need taking for that to come apart without making matters worse!

[Spacenut]

It's a brilliant little engine design - narrow-angle V4 means you don't have the problem of secondary imbalance like the Ford V4 had (horrible engine, that), no counterbalance shaft necessary. I will be interested to see how the valvegear is arranged, do you think it will be similar to cam-in-head engines like the Opel?

The only possible downside I read about was that the intake tract for two of the cylinders would be longer than the other pair. There again, McLaren CanAm engines used different length intake trumpets to equalise the torque curve, so maybe it isn't such a bad thing after all! And you could always connect the carbs in opposing pairs - front right, back right, front left, back left... you get the picture

Lauren

[KevJTD]

the valve gear is very interesting Lauren, I've never seen inside one - just in books so it was nice to see it myself.

note the little extension guides for the central valves which sit between the valve stem and the adjuster, the cams obviously acting upon the rocker shaft directly above them

being a cross-flow design and a V configuration does indeed mean that each cylinder has one long tract, be it inlet or exhaust depends on which side of the V the piston rises to

picture below shows what goes where, meaning that cyl 1 gets a long inlet and short exhaust whilst cyl 2 gets a normal inlet and a longer exhaust tract.

picture below gives a bit of an idea of how the cyl 2 valve is much, much closer to the manifold than cyl 1 valve, wonder how it affects the running? note that cyl 1 is at the chain end....nearest the stud that I broke

the cam wheels and chain appear to be in excellent condition, no wear at all on the cam wheel teeth, the engine is rumoured to have had a rebuild relatively recently so I suspect that a new chain set was fitted then. the cam lobes also look in first class condition, no wear visible and all in good colour

I've cleaned up the broken manifold stud and soaked it in wd40 so will get the stud extractor on it tomorrow, there's enough poking out for me to hope it will come out ok....if not it'll be a drill and tap job

I cleaned out the spark plug holes of all the crud using my little vacuum cleaner, the thermostat i'll try a little heat on at work tomorrow to see if it will shift from the mounting, fingers crossed.....

[Spacenut]

Thanks for the conducted tour Kev, really fascinating! I'm sure there are ways of equalising the inlet (and exhaust) tract, in much the same way as we now use cross-over exhaust manifolds on boxer engines. What difference does it make? Not much, I suspect!

Internal condition looks very good, as you say. Good luck with the stud extraction and the thermostat!

Lauren

[KevJTD]

thermostat housing and manifold I took to work today to separate the water jacket from the manifold, the 4 tiny 6mm studs weren't gonna give up without causing more issues but a quick dose with the oxy/acetylene bottles changed that.

I was going to take the thermostat itself out of the housing but on closer inspection I decided that the brass collar that's threaded inside the alloy housing just couldn't come out without causing irreparable damage

with that in mind I just straightened out the bent end of the 'stat then tested it in a can of boiling water, using the oxy bottles as a makeshift bunson burner under the water filled can.

happy to report that the 'stat appears to work just fine, opening and closing properly.

just now got to clean stuff up and sort out a bunch of new gaskets.

had the afternoon doing a few small jobs on the car but nothing much worth having a picture of

when I got home though I tried the broken stud with my extractor which had been up at the unit, result again as it came out just fine without breaking or damaging the threads in the head.

[PETROLHEAD]

Nice to have a little luck on board mate, well done!


The engine layout is indeed odd looking, and i'd love to hear more about the design theory?

That probably means you Lauren!

[KevJTD]

the V4 design makes for a very compact design mate, more of a square block really.

the cam box cover measures 14" x 11" inc the camchain housing! whole engine inc bellhousing and water pump on front end is still under 20" long

this pic shows the overlap of the cylinders and the tops of the pistons that are angled to allow for the very narrow 13deg V angle but flat surface across all 4 cylinders

[PETROLHEAD]

Yeah i get the the squared V, been around in bike engines quite a while too, but i didn't know it had angled piston crowns, and its the awkwardness of the inlet/exhaust route you mentioned that is a consequence of the layout, but, Lancia must have an explanation for why they continued with it when they already had other layouts working very well was more my query mate?

[KevJTD]

they'd been using narrow angle V4's since back in the 20's mate with the lambda, who knows why they persisted with it other than it being an overly complicated and compromised design

[PETROLHEAD]

stubborn!

[Spacenut]

As Kev says, the idea was to reduce the length of the engine compared to an in-line 4-cylinder, which Lancia did by staggering the cylinder bores. Like Alfa Romeo (and Audi for that matter), Lancia kept their FWD engines longitudinal instead of mounting transversely, so the engine mass is ahead of the front axle. Alfa achieved the same reduction in engine length by using the boxer format.

All the modern narrow-angle V engines have the same justification - when mounted transversely in a FWD car, the length of the crank must be as short as possible, otherwise there would be no room for a gearbox on the end. Golf VR6 is a good case in point. Even the new super saloon "W" engines from Bentley and VW (one and the same of course) are based on the same premise - two banks of staggered cylinders (essentially a pair of Fulvia engines) sharing a common crankshaft. The resulting W8 is in reality only a little longer than an in-line 4 cylinder, and the W12 is only a bit longer than a V6.

My only concern about these engines is that the crank angle on the power stroke could be biased to one side, so the cylinder bores would wear unevenly. I suspect that is why Lancia carefully angled the piston bores, to counter this effect. I wonder if VW considered this in the VR6 and W-series engines?

Lauren

[KevJTD]

I've rebuilt a VR6 engine before Lauren and they have a slightly different way of doing things, still within the confines of a "square" block but the pistons are the normal style of piston so they sit in an offset manner in the bores. so when at the top of the stroke the inner edge of the piston reaches the head face but the outer edge is probably 10mm or more below it, this of course makes it impossible to successfully fit the pistons back in without a special ring clamp, as I found out......one side gets in the bore first of course but that pushes the ring clamp up and off the rings before they've entered the bores. the same would be true of the fulvia pistons despite the cantered over piston top as the ring grooves aren't parallel to block top face
the bores on the fulvia (and VR6 engine for that matter) are made facing directly at the crank rather than straight upright, which I think is what you were getting at if the bore was vertical but offset from the crank position below? the taper on the bores leads to the lower end of the bores being closer together than at the top, which is why they have a seemingly wide spacing at the head end

as we said before, all things are a compromise in some say
I suspect the complexity outweighs the benefits (esp now with transverse being the norm, so overhangs aren't an issue) so the normal route of a 4 cylinder, in-line engine is much easier/cheaper to produce

[KevJTD]

the engine has been perched on a mixture of wooden blocks and an axle stand which is far from ideal, always in fear of it toppling over

so with a spare salvaged coffee table frame and some bits and bobs I set about making something a bit more stable

simple enough, suspend the engine at the angle I wanted it at (in the car it sits at 45 degs to vertical, not the best for working on) on the engine crane then make up 4 mounting points to attach it to the coffee table frame.

the 4 points of contact were made as wide and as varied to make the whole thing as stable as possible, which it seems to have done

it's now much easier to clean and to the necessary checks etc without fear of making a horlics of things. the whole mass of the engine is inside the frame so it in no direction wants to topple over

[Spacenut]

Now THAT'S what I call a coffee table!

Looking great Kev, and yes, that's what I was getting at with the vee angle. Nice to see my concerns have been addressed, but I see what you mean about the piston rings! Is there some sort of slanty ring compressor available for Lancia engines???

Lauren

[KevJTD]

I'd have it in my front room as a coffee table any day of the week Lauren, but Richard will want it in the Fulvia soon I'd guess

I since them found out there is a factory tool for the VR6 engine for the rings, I'd suspect there being something similar for the Lancia engine although I've never had need to remove/fit them so haven't gone down the route.

Richard has today got the full factory workshop manual so I'll ask him to look it up, bound to be a special tool of some sort, I for one would be interested to see it...as I'm sure you would

[Spacenut]

Absolutely!

I would also be interested to know what special tool Alfa Romeo used to fit the Alfasud handbrake cable onto the calipers. I've just taken all the skin off my fingers re-fitting mine. Again.

Still, hopefully this will be the last time I need to go through this painful procedure

Lauren

PS - I can just see the Fulvia engine making a superb coffee table - unlike other vee engines, with the head off the glass top would sit flush across the top of the block...

[KevJTD]

with an hour or so spent at the integrale I came home to clear a few of its parts out of the shed into the much used loft, quite a store room again now even though the sud parts have gone!

started stripping off a few ancillaries off the engine now it's nice and stable, alternator and starter I'll take to the local auto electrician who did a good job on the sud alternator, bearings feel tight in it so makes sense for them to be given the once over whilst out

while down at jims earlier I had a look over some other fulvia engines he has laying around, to see if the crank seals were the normal type or the older rope style ones, happily they were the normal rubber ones

so with the clutch off, which looks in great condition too, the flywheel came off to see what the rear crank seal looks like. good job I did as looks to be a bit weepy.

front crank seal looks a bit better but crazy not to change it at this stage

the water pump fits on the front of the block and is driven by a shaft running through the cam-chain guide. as Richard had a brand new item we thought it prudent to fit it.
handily the cam-chain guide became visible through the opening in the block which like the rest of the internals shows little signs of wear so happy that it's good to go

the water pump itself contains a sender unit which unfortunately didn't want to come out of the old pump, felt a bit odd but seemed to be coming out ok, until I realised it had just pulled apart and left its' threaded part inside the old housing!
a replacement shouldn't be hard to find, know there are some at jims so can rob one off there if a new one can't be found, if Rich hasn't got one

the block is about as far stripped down as it's gonna go now, all seems more than well enough to leave well alone, just a clean down and tidy up then it can start to go back together

[KevJTD]

started to clean down the engine tonight, glad we decided to give it a good check over and clean up, fuel pump bolt was hanging on by a few threads

[KevJTD]

engine all cleaned down and de-greased which came out pretty decent, not much staining on the aluminium sections.

quite a few sections to the engine too by the looks of it, aluminium sections for the bottom end, crankcase area too is aluminium, block itself containing the pistons is a fairly short cast iron section, then again an aluminium head

to paint or not to paint, that's the question.

I made the decision that since we'd made such an effort to paint out the engine bay then we'd better have some paint on the engine too. used my usual preferred stuff, Halfords own brand aluminium high temp spray paint for the aluminium bits, brush able hammerite for the cast parts

I cleaned a few ancillary parts ready for painting, the oil filler/breather unit being one that needed a bit of old crud cleaning out with the parts washer. unfortunately once cleaned and dried it caused all the old rusty bits and bits of the wire wool inside it to become loose after years of being trapped with the carbon, if the unit goes back on like that then little flakes of rust and bits of wire can go straight into the sump, not to be desired!
that jogged my memory of an article in the Lancia club mag some years ago about this very thing being an issue, sure enough omicron do refurbished units opened up and re-packed with fresh stainless steel wool. i'll have a go at opening it up and seeing if it can be saved before throwing it away

tappets are now set, a full gasket set is on hand to change the crank seals, water pump painted to match the engine so will at least be able to start putting things back on.

the alternator and starter I've dropped off to be checked over, starter should be fine but the alternator had all but seized up. the same place that did a great job on my old sud will sort them out ok, I hope

[KevJTD]

crank seals front & rear now changed, rear one was pretty awful being rock hard, suspect the engine overhaul that it appears to have had was done in situ so the front seal had been changed but not the rear one, at least now it won't leak

the cam housing cover it'd polished back to something like clean again, taking off the powdery corrosion and using some wet&dry paper to smooth it out a little. was going to paint it as per the rest of the alloy bits but I liked the shine so although we've not talked about how it should look I took the decision myself to get the paint that the car's done in and hand paint the Lancia emblems, then lacquer the rest of it.
up to Richard now as to whether it's acceptable or not....but easily changed

water pump bolted into place,

fuel pump I stripped the top out to check for any dirt, did have some in the inlet filter so worth checking.

inlet manifold all fitted up with the new gaskets, with sealing paste due to it being water fed too

carb adapter plate fitted up again with fresh gaskets, carbs themselves have got rebuild kits to go in so we're nearly there as far as the engine refresh is concerned

the alternator & starter motor came back from the auto electricians both having an overhaul so good to go

[alfachris]

Looking good mate

[Kegsti66]

Looking good Kev.
I am with you on the rocker cover.
Natural polished up look with highlighted lettering.
I am not clued up on Lancia, so I don't know how it would have been originally. There didn't seem to be any sign of a crackle finish.
Car will look a gem when it is finished.