It’s been an incredibly long time since I blogged about the build of this car, so a catchup is definitely in order. Since the last time I wrote about it, the car build has been completed, and the final stages of it all went relatively smooth. The usual unforeseen issues came into play, mainly in the form of front suspension geometry which we thought we had overcome, before the first outing.
Here are a few pictures I took during the various final building stages.
So a quick recap, the car is a 1972 lancia fulvia coupe, powered by a 2007 Volvo v70r, 2.3l turbo. The engine has had a few modifications, of which include a bigger turbocharger, lifted from a Mitsubishi evo 8. Although we have never put it on a rolling road, on paper it should be approximately 330bhp, so I would guess it’s around the 300bhp mark.
The very first outing we found that our predictions and calculations on the necessary spring poundage for the front suspension, was quite a bit off, giving us a lot of bouncing, body roll, and nose dip on the brakes. A simple swap over to a pair of stiffer springs sorted this problem by the very next race. The other issue came in the way of a faulty alternator, which again, was fixed with a simple swap over.
From then on it’s been a season of tweeking, and fine adjustments to get the best out of the front end, but a after the 1st half of the season, we made the decision that a full redesign and build over the winter is needed.
But on the whole, we’ve been pretty happy with the performance of the car, and the future looks bright.
Unfortunately the panels for a lancia fulvia coupe seem to be non-existent, so I really do need to try and keep the car as straight as possible, but unfortunately there have been number of contacts through the year, which also includes hitting the fence at Hereford.
We still haven't started on the changes we had planned for this winter, but with the season starting in March we really do need to get on with it. Fingers crossed a couple of weekends should have it all done, and I will post about it all when it’s finished.
Thanks for the interest, and I will get back to posting more work blogs in the very near future.
Take care and keep safe. 👍