Swadeology

Lancia Fulvia – Traumatic Bonding

I watched the new Petrolicious video this morning. It’s called “Traumatic Bonding” and it’s about a guy who bought a Lamborghini Urraco back in the 1980’s and subsequently spent a whole bunch of time and money fixing the car up.

I could only nod my head as I watched it and trembled ever so faintly with fear for the future. Excitement, too, but just a little bit of fear.

Here’s the video. It’s about 8 minutes long.

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Right now, I’m at a tipping point with the Fulvia. I’m dismantling the car but nothing that I’ve done has made the job of restoring it any harder. I haven’t spent any real money on it yet but that’s just about to change (read below).

I have no intention to walk away but if I were thinking about it, now would be the time. The car is still in a condition where it can be restored. It’s 99% complete but everything needs fixing. It could be sold as-is. In fact, I’ve even heard of a prospective buyer who has the skills and the resources to do the job. I could even make a tiny profit if I were of a mind to do so.

I’ve made my first enquiries about replacement panels for the floor and the sills and the costs are a little scary. Just a little. I’m going through Omicron, in England, because they’re the ones with the best reputation and the most comprehensive range of in-house parts and services, and price comparisons with other, similar companies were competitive. The sections I’ve been quoted on – front and rear floors, sills, quarter panels and two rear light housings and lenses – come to just under £1,400. That’s $2,500 Aussie dollars.

What’s scarier is the freight. The supplier has obtained one freight quote so far and it’s £453!!! That’s more than A$800 just to move bits from one place to another.

I’m waiting on him to get a few more quotes.

I also took the top dashboard pad to a restoration company in Melbourne last weekend while visiting my family. The cost for restoring and re-covering – $395. Not unexpected. Maybe $100 more than I thought it would be.

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I don’t want this to be a five-seven-ten-twelve-year process. I want to get this car fixed and use it as often as I can, as soon as I can. I want to do as much of it as I can myself, but I know that I’ll have to pay skilled people to do a LOT of the work.

I’ve set money aside and I’m emotionally invested in this process already, but I’m not made of money and I have to try and be as financially responsible as possible. When I see $800 freight bills I start to wonder about my own sanity.

Thankfully, this will probably be the biggest single parts purchase for the car (at one time) and getting the floors replaced is a significant part of the body repair. I just hope the rest of it is structurally sound and fixable without having to resort to a life of crime in order to get it done before I’m dead.

Again, we come to that idea of the tipping point. Maybe I should try and get one of the Bocchino brothers out to see the car and tell me if the rust is terminal, if the seized engine is fixable and whether or not the car’s skewed front-end can be realigned.

Can this job actually be completed or am I nuts to even try?

I’m committed to my little Lancia Fulvia and I want to enjoy both the process and the end result. Maybe I just need to know a little more about what the process is going to entail. And maybe I need to start looking harder for supplies that aren’t going to blow a third of my budget on freight. I’ll use Omicron for the crucial custom made parts because they make the best stuff – and they’ve already been a valuable source of advice – but there must be a way to source some generic stuff at a more wallet-friendly price.

Traumatic bonding, indeed.

Lancia Fulvia Update – Glimpse

I did a little more work on the Lancia Fulvia today. It doesn’t feel like much was achieved, but it sure was time consuming!

When I last left you, all this stuff was still in the car with the exception of the panic handle….

The main focus for today was to finish getting the central part of the dashboard out.

On the right side of the photo, above, you can see the main areas worked on today – the two knobs and three ‘piano switches’ on the black strip, and the lower-central dashboard padding located below that black strip.

The lower part is the one I worked on first. You have to unscrew the ring around the ignition first. This is one of the securing points (I love you, Lancia). There is a screw inside where the instrument cluster used to be, and two screws inside the glove compartment. The final thing holding it in is the wiring attached to the cigarette lighter. One is a clip, the other had to be cut.

Voila!

Next was the somewhat tougher task of removing the upper section, with the two knobs and the three ‘piano key’ switches.

There was wiring a-plenty here. These controls operate your wipers, washers, lights and heating. The knob on the right has 7 wires attached to it all by itself! The labelling of the wires and the terminals on the back of the switch is what took up so much of my time today.

You can see there’s a little hole in the side of the knobs in the photo, above. Sadly, even though I have a selection of very small hex keys, I didn’t have one that would fit.

The knob on the left was connected by two vacuum hoses only.

This is what I’m left with now that the centre section is cleared. I have a clock and a whole lot wiring to pull out, along with the heating system.

I didn’t want to start on that stuff today, though. Working in the interior is very awkward at the moment. The car is parked sideways across a slope in my front yard so balance can be a problem. I need to put at least one seat back into the car, too. That’d make life a whole lot easier.

So, with the interior done with for today, I thought I’d turn my hands towards getting a glimpse of the future. I want to rebuild my car without the front and rear bumpers so it made sense to take them off and see how it looked.

Rear, with bumper…..

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And rear, without the bumper!

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I much prefer it without. What do you think?

Next, the front end with bumper…..

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And the front, without the bumper!

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Much better!

The bumpers were fixed by 17mm bolts/nuts and were easy, if slightly awkward, to remove. I also removed the bumper mounts from the front end, though I couldn’t get to the mounts at the back of the car today.

This front-on view has me worried, as it always has with this car. It looks a bit like Bugs Bunny after doing 10 rounds with Muhammad Ali. It seems to have a lopsided toothy grin. Hopefully the fundamentals are OK and it won’t take too much fettling to get into line again.

I’m off to Melbourne on Saturday evening and while I’m there, I’m going to drop my dashboard in to The Dashboard Doctor for some repair work. There are numerous cracks along the top and the whole thing needs to be re-covered.

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I’ve also made my first big order of bits to get the restoration underway, with new floor sections and sills on their way from Omicron, in England.

I’ll do a run down of the costs once the order and freight are finalised.

Cheers!

Prejudice – Part 2

by turbin

Follows on from Prejudice Part 1.

Well the ruse worked for about 5 minutes. Yes maybe I had some people thinking about SAAB, and why not? It could just have easily been the case, as it has been for many.

Recently I have questioned my prejudices much more robustly and taken more time to understand why I might feel a certain way. It also helps me understand where others might be coming from.

Why it wasn’t about SAAB is only because I have purchased two post-2003 SAABs, one a 06 9-3 SportCombi shortly after they came out and later a 08 Combi which we still have and love. As a matter of fact, the other day I was almost home when I saw one at a roundabout and thought, “Wow! That’s a cool looking Combi!” and realised it was Mrs Turbin returning home from work.

SO, it wasn’t SAAB I was writing about. It wasn’t even a brand of car or anything car related except for the setting where I have enjoyed this new product has been exclusively while driving.

It is Queens of The Stone Age aka QOTSAs fourth album “Lullabies to Paralyze”.

Now I’m not about to try to sell that band to anyone or explain the reasons I am so into them at risk of boring you. I do not know anyone, friend, foe or family who likes this band even remotely as much as I do. It’s personal, just like SAAB is for those who love the brand.

What’s important is that after buying their 2002 album which really broke through in 2003, I also saw them live both times they were in Australia. As much as anything I loved what their bass-player and sometime vocalist bought to the band in quirkiness, edginess and the rest. He was booted out after the Australian tour and I, like many, thought that was the end. I, also like many, saw the guitarist and sometime vocalist as the demon that ruined something good and decided that I wasn’t going to buy into what came next.

SO, while I’m a person who had no qualms spending large on a couple of those post 03 SAABs I wasn’t prepared to take a chance on spending $20 on an album or two that I might prove to hate or possibly, just possibly, even really love.

Recently while on a Swadesque journey through the albums of Led Zeppelin, I went to buy the next installment, “Houses of the Holy”. It wasn’t at the shop so I finally thought, “Why not take that chance?”, and finally bought the next 2005 QOTSA album, almost 10 years after release. To be honest it wasn’t completely spur of the moment as I had worked my way backwards through the QOTSA catalogue and came to realise that the “demon”, Josh Homme, was actually the founder of the band and had everything to do with their sound as much as his sometime partner in crime, Dave Grohl, is core to Foo Fighters and their sound.

Guess what? I came to love it really quick. Any album that has Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top guesting on a track supplying “guitar lead, vocals” where Jack Black is also credited with “marching” might just have something going for it.

I then got thinking why I let prejudice get in the road all these years. I also came to see there was this strange-but-true parallel with SAAB and thus we get to this point.

My question then is:

Have you, readers of Swadeology, ever come to a point where you’ve finally given up judging something and thought “What was I thinking to have not done this before? I’ve been missing out!”??

Friday Fulvia – Pretty in Pink

It’s almost the weekend! Hence, the Friday Fulvia.

Lancia Fulvia Update – Interior (Still) Coming Out

A little diversion first, shall we?

Last weekend I had the chance to drive a blue Series 2 Lancia Fulvia here in Hobart. The car is (tentatively) up for sale and the owner got in touch to see if I’d be interested in coming to have a look.

He didn’t have to ask twice!

It was wonderful to finally get some seat time in a Fulvia and make contact with an owner who’s been through the ownership experience, including a partial restoration.

I won’t be making an offer on the car because I realised as we drove the blue S2 that I’m far too engaged with my little red Series 1 and I don’t think anything’s going to tear me away from that at this point.

If any Aussies are interested in a blue S2, though, let me know via email and I can put you in touch with the seller. He’s not actively looking to sell at this point, but maybe you and he can work something out. Fulvias don’t come up for sale in Australia very often.

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Last time I updated you on my Lancia Fulvia, I’d just taken the seats and floor coverings out and finally got a look at the floor, which is pretty well rusted.

Since then, I’ve done a few sessions on the dashboard, which is packed with switches, gauges, nuts, bolts and screws. I got some Fulvia repair manuals online but the information in them about dismantling the interior is sadly lacking. It’s been a case of taking what little info there is, asking a few Fulvia friends for help and when all else fails – just going for it!

The first task was to remove the wooden fascia on the dashboard. There are two control knobs just above the steering wheel. The one on the left resets the tripmeter. The one on the right is a dimmer switch for the dashboard lighting. But together, they also secure the wooden dashboard fascia on the driver’s side of the car.

Undo the threaded sleeves holding these on and that’s two of the three nuts holding the wooden fascia done with. The third and final one is inside and just above the glove compartment.

And here’s the dashboard with the wooden fascia removed…..

Removing the gauges was fun! They were all quite easy to remove with just a screwdriver and the various cover plates were just clipped into place. The toughest part was labelling all the wires that connect into the back of the central cluster. The wires are all covered in masking tape labels now, with matching labels on the back of the gauge itself.

The next task was to take off the top dashboard pad. This is fixed in four places. The first two bits to remove are actually the air vents on either side of the dash pad. I kept feeling around the back of the vent for some screws to release the vents. I tried just pulling them out (though not with much force). I then had some helpful advice from a Dutch friend telling me about the spring release system that holds them in place. You can see the curved bits of metal inside the vent. They sit in a groove in the metal. Simply pop them out with a little bit of leverage from a small screwdriver and the vents come out easily.

The other fixing are underneath. Two 10mm nuts that were easily accessible from underneath the pad, inside the dashboard. Here’s the dash removed and turned upside down, showing the location of the fixings.

Removing the dash pad revealed some more rust in the top RHS corner of the dashboard. There must have been a windscreen leak in this area. I’ll show you some more rust from that in a moment.

The lower dashboard pad on the driver’s side was secured by two tiny little 8mm nuts that were a complete pain in the backside to undo (until I stopped trying to use my small shifter and trudged down to the garage for an 8mm spanner!)

You can see from the photo above, where the lower dash pad was removed, it revealed a little more rust in the metal. The lower dash pad itself is your usual foam with a vinyl covering, but it seems to be formed around a metal mould. The metal in the dash pad itself has rusted quite badly – that likely windscreen leak, again – as you can see from the photo below.

The last task for this evening was to remove the ‘panic handle’ from the passenger side of the dashboard. This was held in by four fixings: two inside the glovebox and two inside the handle itself. Important to note – the of the glovebox bolts also acting as a fastener for this blue wire to the body (presumably an earth, maybe for the clock?)

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I’ve still got the central cluster of switches and instruments to remove, which I’m told will get very tricky when it comes to the ventilation system. Then there’s the lower dash pad on the passenger side, including the glove box.

Onwards and upwards!!

Magnus Walker’s Epic Porsche 911 Turbo Ebay Ad

While you’re all pondering the subject of Turbin’s recent Guild writing – Prejudice Part 1 – allow me to distract you momentarily with a rather epic and detailed Ebay ad for a Porsche 911 Turbo. I’m posting it now because it’d be a good idea to see while the auction’s still live.

Mention the name ‘Magnus Walker’ at a Porsche Club event and you’re likely to get mixed reactions. Some people love the guy and some people………. don’t.

He’s certainly worked wonders with his own profile in the last few years. Some would argue he’s done the impossible and actually lifted the already-pantheonic profile of the Porsche 911 in some circles.

Some 911 owners might sneer, but air-cooled 911 prices have gone through the roof in the last few years. If Magnus’ promotional work has added even a single percentage point to that, then that’s a reason to be cheerful.

Magnus is certainly cashing in on a personal level. He was on Porsche’s official guest list at events all over the northern hemisphere last summer. And now he’s cashing in by selling one of his 911 Turbos on Ebay.

You’d be forgiven for thinking he’d simply say “this is a Magnus Walker 911 Turbo” and wait for his notoriety to draw the bids in. But no. This is actually one of the better Ebay ads I’ve ever seen. He’s definitely working hard for the money.

The ad has 159 photos!!!

30 or so of those photos show the car looking all shiny. The rest of them are shots of the rebuild that was done to the car and detail shots of the interior, the undercarriage, etc.

This is a genuine, epic car ad. I’d encourage you to take a look while it’s still online.

It seems to be working, too. As at the time of writing, there have been 33 bids and the asking price is up to $111,099

The Guild: Prejudice – Part 1

by turbin

This is a personal story of prejudice and ignorance but with a happy ending. It also includes a little back-story on an entity dear to my heart. This back-story those in the know are quite familiar with, but I will tell it anyway.

I came to appreciate the product of this entity back in 2000. They had been around for years but in 1998 had come out with an all-new form that signified a change of direction.

Also known by their acronym, a real breakthrough was to occur with the new offering of 2003. This was a product that would take them almost into the mainstream. Problems were on the horizon however, and a while after launch it was clear that there were tensions as to what direction the product should take and a key element was to be left out into the future.

This made me pretty upset as I felt this element was core to the quirkiness, individuality and edginess of the product I had come to know them for. It also became clear that this element would not be returning despite pleas from disgruntled fans and it was also believed to have been the source of some disputes and falling-outs. It was even claimed that any new product would only be a “lite” version of what had come before.

For me personally I lost interest in what was to come after as nothing could be done to redeem things in my eyes. I watched from the sidelines, enjoying the product I had, with the belief it was the pinnacle of achievement from a group whose product would always be a bit “vanilla” from then on.

More “new” product came sporadically with something new in 2005 and a refreshed line-up seeing the light of day in 2007 that some said was “drained of ideas” and “forgettable”.

Finally all was almost lost in 2010 when, starved for oxygen, there was a death on the operating table. There was a last minute resuscitation and final new product came out that recalled some of the glory of before and re-invigorated interest. There has been nothing new since however and for now the future is unclear

Through all this I could not bring myself to respect what had become of something I thought was previously so great.

I delved further back rather than forwards convincing myself I “liked the old stuff better than the new stuff”.

I came to realise though that core elements of the past remained throughout and permeated the product. Looking deeper I could see that the core essence had been retained and it resonated with me anew.

Finally, on a whim, I recently stopped resisting progress and got myself a post 2003 product, one that I had dismissed as “vanilla”. I have now come to realise that it is more polished and, while maybe less of a stand-out on the surface, demonstrates the core competencies and intangibles that are important to me. Above all it just feels right.

I have since been driving around with a smile on my face and can’t get it out of my head.

It dawned on me that for too long I let prejudice stop me from moving forward and in the process deprived myself of the opportunity to really enjoy something new and fresh. I now look forward to working my way through some of the even newer stuff. To be continued….

progressive turbin

Fulvia Friday – Turin 1966

I recently purchased some Lancia Fulvia documents on a CD and included was a whole swathe of Fulvia photography – the sort of stuff I used to scour the internet for in the Saab days. Press photos, advertisements, artistic interpretations. All sorts of stuff.

So welcome to Fulvia Friday.

I’ll kick things off with this interesting Fulvia from the Turin Motor Show in 1966. No, I don’t want to paint mine in this colour scheme, but I’m really glad that somebody did. There’s something very 60’s and quite cool about it.

I like it.

Snippets – Koenigsegg, Car Photos, BMW Foolery, Sniff 911

I haven’t written anything about any new-ish cars in a while, but a few stories this week caught my eye so I thought I’d share them here.

Koenigsegg #1

The first Koenigsegg One:1 production car was registered in Germany this week. From Koenigsegg’s Facebook page:

The process highlighted an interesting technicality – the German registration system could only input power values up to three digits in kW. The One:1 pushed Germany to reconfigure their system to handle the first Megacar!

The One:1 famously has 1000kW power output, which is what the German system couldn’t handle. I wonder how this database fared with the Y2K issue all those years ago 🙂

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Koenigsegg #2

Am I reading this story correctly?

It sounds like Koenigsegg had to pay import duties on a car when it was brought from the US back to Angelholm for servicing. Is this right?

I mean, it’s wrong. But did I read it right?

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Autono-me

Audi has piloted a car around a racetrack with no driver inside. The autonomous Audi RS7 lapped Hockenheim reaching speeds of up to 240km/h.

At some point, some company is going to make an autonomous human to get excited about watching this.

Why is the car industry so intent on killing interest in its own product?

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New Cars and Racing Stripes

I’m trying so hard to be Zen about cars, but sometimes……

What do you think about new cars and racing livery?

My theory:

Racing livery looks good on old cars.
Racing livery looks OK on new cars if they’re actually racing.
Racing livery is OK for support vehicles of those new racing cars.

Racing livery on new cars that aren’t actually used for racing just looks like you’re trying a bit too hard.

BMW M4 owners who want to look like they’re trying a bit too hard now have a limited edition factory car to suit their needs. It’s called the M4 DTM Champion Edition and it’s fair to say that it’s not particularly subtle.

There are only 23 of these DTM Champion Edition cars for sale but I have to wonder….

The M4 is quite an attractive looking car in standard form. Surely there aren’t 23 people with such poor taste as to want to deck out a very nice looking M4 in racing stripes when they’re not actually using the car for racing.

Surely such people don’t actually exist, do they?

Racing stripes should be left for old cars or actual racing cars.

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Porsche 911 Prices

If you’ve been watching classic car prices then you’ll know that 911 prices have ‘enjoyed’ a steep rise in the last few years.

Sniff Petrol summed this up beautifully.

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Car Photography

You know I’m big on car photography, right? Especially if you’re selling your car. There’s nothing worse than an ad for a nice car that has crappy photos.

OK, there are many things worse than that. A lobotomy is worse than that. But only just.

Bottom line: take good photos if you’re selling your car!

If you want some good tips on taking great car photos, you can’t do better than this article at Hemmings. It has lots of great tips on choosing the right background, choosing the right focal length and exposure, preparing the car and lots of other things.

Classics By The Beach – October 2014

Better late than never! And as I’ll be away for November’s Classics in a few weeks time, consider this a bridge to December. Yes, December. Already. And there are only 65 days until Christmas, apparently. Yikes!

This month at Classics saw the usual mix of regular and ‘new’ attendees. Alfa Romeo is my marque of interest this month, for reasons that’ll become clear below.

But first…..

Herbie was here. Love the eyebrows….

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It’s the first time I’d seen a Peugeot RCZ here at Classics, with it’s Zagato-esque double-bubble roof.

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A guy I’ve met recently at Classics emailed me a month or so ago and told me he had a new V4 project going. Naturally, I was thinking Lancia or Saab. I was closer than you think with Saab 🙂

Yes, this camper van has the same V4 engine that powered a lot of older Saab cars. It’s wearing its original paint and insides, and has some fascinating history behind it. I’ll get around to a detailed story on this one at some stage though I must confess, this van’s younger garage-mate will probably be covered first. It’s also powered by a Ford engine, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end 🙂

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Some clown bought this along 🙂

A few less dents and a bit more polish and maybe it could be a future classic.

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What I would have given to see a Devo hat on the front seat!

Whippet.

Whippet good!

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I’m not used to seeing a Triumph in yellow, but I have to say it IS a triumph in yellow.

Wonderful.

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I’ve wanted a Jaguar XJ6 since I was a teenager. I still do, but it’s slipped down the list a bit.

Nowadays I get more and more drawn to predecessor Jags, though. I’ve never driven one or even ridden in one but every time I see one like this, I want to. I’m going to seek out an owner soon and say hello, I think.

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This is one of the first oval-dashboard Porsche 944’s. Known as a 1985.5 model.

I’m still more partial to the 944 shape than to my own (former) 968 shape, to be honest. I think it’s the covered headlamps that do it for me.

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There was a decidedly Italian flavour at Classics this month. I’ll show you three nice Alfas in a minute, but here’s a few of the other Italians in attendance.

Ferrari 308 and a couple of Fiat X19’s. The black one has a bit more pep than your regular X19, courtesy of an engine transplant that sees a Toyota twin-cam 1600 engine amidships. Having driven a similar engine more than a few times in a Corolla at home, I can only imagine how much fun it’d be in this X19.

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Alfa Romeo #1

I’ve featured this Giulietta a few times before. I can’t help but photograph it when it’s there, though, so here are some more…..

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Alfa Romeo #2

We had an Alfa SZ at Classics! I saw my first SZ (in real life) in Sweden back in 2011 and the presence these cars bring to any event is just amazing. Such a pleasure to view.

And there’s one for sale here in Australia right now, too.

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Alfa Romeo #3

Most Alfa’s have a reputation for exciting driving and jaw-dropping beauty. To be honest, though, it’s hard to apply both of those descriptors to the Alfa Romeo 145.

But it was exciting to see the 145 here this month because they weren’t sold here in Australia. This is a rare-as-hens-teeth import that a friend here in Hobart purchased recently.

Even more exciting (for me) is the fact that this is the 16V Boxer-engined model. The 145 was the last car to use Alfa’s beautiful boxer engine – basically an evolution of the engines used in my Alfa 33’s. Later 145’s featured Alfa’s twin-spark engine. The big DTM-style exhaust gave this boxer a very nice note, too.

The word from the owner is that the 145 is actually a very refined drive compared to the 33 but still has wonderful handling that Alfas are known for.

A very unique pick-up, that one.

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That’s all for this month. As mentioned at the top, I’ll miss Classics in November (sadly) but will be back in December.