Before Covid hit, I began inquiring about purchasing a 1926 Lancia Lambda from its longtime owner. I’ve wanted one for a few years now. But, there are probably less than 10 in the US, and bringing one over from Europe or Australia seemed daunting and cost-prohibitive. So, after selling off an old Porsche and many other Porsche parts. I decided to make the car mine. It is a Series 6 with known history dating back to the 1960s when it was imported to the UK. The owner purchased it in 1971 while living in England, and reportedly used it as transportation for him and his family, and then drove it from London to Rotterdam for shipment back to the US. The above photo was taken outside of the family home, shortly before the car was disassembled in the 1980s. It has now been apart for over three decades.

The car’s current state of affairs. One major caveat about buying this car was not only the fact that it was largely disassembled. It was the location. Northern Maine, about as far north in the Continental US one can go.

The longtime previous owner of nearly 50 years helping me load up the spare engine.

Diving right in. Stripping the doors and fenders for media blasting.

The engine was partially disassembled when I purchased the car. It looks to have been rebuilt once before.

TheV4 engine block.

Getting ready to remove the water jackets.

More on this project soon. Hopefully.

I’ve been in the depths of thread repair for various projects lately. This job involves a 2.7-liter 911 engine we are rebuilding to modified street specifications. It is well known that Porsche’s 911 magnesium engine cases have a tendency for “pulled head studs.” The fix – precautionary or not – involves the installation of a Time-Sert (or, Casesaver) for each of the 24 head studs. There are many ways to approach this job. This one probably takes longest. Mainly, because a Blake co-axial indicator on a 10mm stud is used to locate true center of each hole. From there, I drill the engine case to an appropriate depth for the new insert.

With each stud hole aligned in the mill, I also counterbore the cylinder spigots and stud hole with an endmill. This can’t be accomplished with the supplied counterbore in the Time-Sert kit. The reason being that the cylinder spigots sit proud of the case and will deflect the supplied counterbore.

I skipped a few photos here. But, this is the counterbored and threaded cylinder stud hole ready to accept the Time- Sert.

Time-Sert installed and ready to accept the factory head studs. This process occasionally distorts the ID of the cylinder spigot. So… whenever we are faced with a full rebuild. We have the case spigots resurfaced, and also make a light pass on the ID of the spigots to ensure the factory tolerance of .003″ to 004″ clearance with the cylinder barrel is achieved.

I’ve been chipping away at the Aston Martin Virage in the workshop, and trying to keep a level head coping with unavailable parts or delays.  This part of the project involved replacing the aged and corroded distributor pickups with the closest available replacement on market. Final product with new pickup shown above. 

Nasty corroded ignition pickups

Modified replacement magnetic pickup.

Cutting down the trigger wheel  in lathe to reset clearance. 

Checking trigger wheel to pickup clearance

I made up this aluminum plate some time ago for holding Marelli caps in the lathe.

Ready to be turned.

Making plastic dust while turning off the shoulder.

Added clearance.

Lining the upper radiator supports and X-brace. We also had to re-work the front section of each inner wheelhouse, before rolling down the nose of the inner fender for spot welding on to the radiator support.

The grille needed lots of re-working to fit without copious amounts of filler – which it previously had.

Shroud yoga.

This was the first time I’ve been able to fit the nose. It still needs some work on each fender seam. But we’re much closer.

The photo above was shamelessly taken from the internet and shows the engine bay of HF Squadra Corse Lancia Flavia. Engine preparation was performed by Almo Bosato – a notable Italian tuner – who is said to have squeezed over 170 horsepower from the Flavia’s flat-four. I would love one of these engines – the likelihood of finding one is slim to none. I have most of a twin-carb Flavia 1.8-liter motor. However, I am missing a few pieces, including the throttle linkage.

This is Flavia’s top engine cover. Here I’m getting ready to turn the OD of the stock throttle pivot down in size to accept the new linkage.

Running the boring bar down the shaft with the cutter facing in.

Off the shelve aftermarket VW twin carburetor linkage. Should work pretty well. More to follow on this project, including the fabrication of that fancy Bosato oil filler.

This Lancia Fulvia Series 1 coupe is almost perfect. The owner is a diehard Italian car enthusiast and only recently acquired it. Unfortunately, after a few hundred miles of use, a nasty oil leak emerged.

All clues point to a leaky rear main seal. So we removed the transaxle, clutch assembly, and flywheel. Here is what we found. The seal wasn’t worn – it was split entirely into two pieces.

It became apparent there was a clearance issue between the flywheel and the rear main seal. So, the first place we looked was at the crankshaft thrust bearings, and to check the axial play – it was within the factory specs. The seal, bearing a large USA stamp, is clearly an aftermarket shielded type (shielded referring to the reinforced steel outer casing). It was also slightly taller, and we determined this to be the problem.

While looking at the flywheel closely, galling caused by the steel-reinforced seal is visible on the flywheel chamfer.

As always, I am little light on photos from this job. But, the image above shows the flywheel after we machined the inner chamfer to provide some additional clearance and clean up the galling. From there were installed slightly taller crankshaft-to-flywheel spacer, setting the crankshaft’s axial play on the tighter side of the factory specs, and we installed a new non-shielded rear main seal.

Back on the road. This Fulvia S1 Coupe drives remarkably well, and more importantly, keeps the pavement dry!

This Aston Martin Virage ended up on “the” very popular auction site as a project, on offer from a high-end dealer in Northern New Jersey. It was acquired by a customer of mine, who has been looking for a Newport Pagnell-era Aston Martin with a manual gearbox for some time. The mileage is low and overall the condition is excellent. Unfortunately, the car has not run in nearly a decade.

The Virage’s naturally-aspirated 5.3-liter quad-cam 48-valve V8. Just lovely.

Mick Wilson. We will never forget.

Cast aluminum top cover to conceal those injectors.

It is a real shame the plenum hides all of this. Spun aluminum trumpets pressed into cast aluminum injector holders. Each one port-matched with a pair of cylinders.

Plenum base sans throttle bodies.

Ehhhhm. We were provided a few clues to the car’s inability to run before we tore into it, and other Virage owner’s instincts were dead on. All of the vacuum lines completely deteriorated. We are only starting here, and will be going over all critical systems in the coming weeks.

This 818.630 5-speed gearbox – with all of its grit and grime – is fresh from a 1970 Lancia Fulvia 1,3S we have done a tone of work on. The box shifts well and runs relatively quiet. But, it does not enjoy going into second gear. In fact, it practically won’t go in at all under load.

I had to do a bit of digging in the toolbox to find the right toothed-sockets, and then modify a few. Lancia seems to have had an aversion to a traditional hex-head fastener. Different tools are also required for Series 1 and Series 2/3 cars.

Here is the main cluster (minus 5th gear and 4/5th synchronizer assembly). The gear stack lives on the main pinion shaft. For those that are interested, gear order from the pinion gear to tail is; reverse, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th.

Tearing down the gear cluster revealed a few things. The most concerning was a (very) loose pinion nut, followed by worn engagement teeth on first and second gear.

The Kristick’s Lancia Spares came through, yet again, and were able to supply two synchronizer rings, as well as, a new-old-stock selector ring and 1st gear.

I was also lucky enough to source a NOS 2nd gear. But, it was missing a number of details and required additional grinding and machine work. I am running the tool post grinder above to open up the internal diameter to match the 2/3rd synchronizer hub.

We also had to add the oil grooves – as they were entirely absent. This required some …creative… setup. But, the resulting oil grooves turned out really well.

Adding two oil feed holes to the gear.

Here is re-ground gear sporting a new pair of oil grooves and oil feed holes. The last thousandths will be honed out in order to get an appropriate surface finished,

Finalizing the internal fit and surface finish.

The transaxle all cleaned up and going back together.

Such a great unit – like most things Lancia. Everything checked out on the bench. So, with the synchronizers lapped to spec, two new gears, a re-torqued pinion nut, reset pinion-to-ring contact, and thorough cleaning – the gearbox is going back together with my preferred case sealant, Loctite 518.

I’m pretty sure Pat Braden’s Alfa Bible says something like “If your Alfa Romeo is the workshop, there is a 1 in 10 chance the head gasket is leaking.” That would certainly ring true here. The car is a crusty and delightful 1971 Spider. It is driven often and thoroughly enjoyed by its owner. Unfortunately, the head gasket recently started leaking into cylinder #1. Cylinder liner protrusion above the block of .01mm to .06mm is called for in these engines, and a spec often overlooked.. So we started there. And fortunately, with the liners secured, this one checked out to be OK.

Not a technically correct method for measuring head height. But, good for reference. New heads measure to 4.410″ tall. This one looks to have been milled once before. Also, evidenced by the rotary broach marks on the mating surface shown below.

Looks like a previous owner gave this head a “custom” port job on the intake side. We will be installing all new valves and stem seals.

Some “special” extraction methods were required to remove the original studs for the SPICA intake. We’ll go ahead and resurface this area of the head, and we’ll be installing a Euro carburetor manifold during reassembly.