Lancia Motor Club

Today I moved the Lambda body out of the basement in the workshop, which for me marks the start of the build up proces.  Although I have it for more than two years now and a lot of time has been already spent on the search for missing bits, and some smaller tasks have already been adressed.

Most of the parts however still need cleaning, blasting, painting or re-assembly, os it will be a lengthy proces.  Is it realistic to still aim for Fobello 2021?  A man must have a goal so I'll surely give it a try.

After much consideration I decided to hand the engine to a specialist, and it will be build up using my available spares, but with a new block, crank, camshaft and pistons.  A though (and costly) decision, but I think a good one, and at least that job will be out of my hands.

In this tread I'll try to keep you all informed of the progress, and it will one day hopefully provide a record of the work done.  Hopefully it will also help me to keep motivated!

For those who do not know the 'project', it is a correct 8th series tipo 221 chassis (1928), bought 'naked' by the previous owner, who had a Casaro MM style body built on it in Italy around 2000.  Apparantly three of these cars were constructed at that time.  I bought the car as it is now in the pictures with a lot of parts with it, and the body already painted (not sure if that is an advantage)
Luckily there was a lot of help from other Lambda owners around the globe in getting together most of the missing bits, as I would like to build at least the mechanicals as correct as possible to the original.  Some things such as seats and window frames etc will have to be build from scratch however....

Koen, great news, having seen the body work in person and heard of your plans first hand, moving the Lambda out of its storage area into pride of place in your workshop is a real milestone.

Knowing you have the engine rebuild progressing plus quite a few of the other mechanical parts gathered up is a real fillip to this wonderful restoration, will follow your thread with great interest.

Plus by documenting as many details of the rebuild as possible will be a great resource for many other Lambda projects.

P

Really looking forward to following this - I know very little about Lambdas only traveling in one once (Norman Stewart's car many years ago), so  it will be fascinating to look under the skin

Is it a 2 seater, or is there a dickie seat hidden under the cover ?

Bon Courage

Simon,  It's suposed to be a two seater, but I have been playing with the idea to fit some sort of small bench in the luggage compartment (there would be no place then to take the cover along...and it would'nt be very comfortable.  In any case it's now the last thing on my mind....

This is going to be fantastic. Please could we see some pictures of the chassis as well when it is convenient. It would be nice to see the various major components before it all starts coming together. I often feel the urge to photograph something with pride when I have fitted it all together then wonder why I didn't take pictures of the bits before I started.

Good luck.

Hi Koen,
What a fabulous project you have undertaken. I'm very impressed by the body. I'm equally impressed by your (?) workshop.
My garage will never feel the same again....... :D
 
Good luck with your endeavours!
Tim

Chassis? It doesn't have one!

John, I suppose not! From the wording of the initial post I assumed it was a platform chassis on which the Cassaro body was mounted but from the body shown that obviously can't be the case. Also the chassis I imagined, like an Aprilia platform, is not what coach built cars were based on. At least my mistake means I am now better informed!

It is indeed a platform "chassis", but an 8th series, which did not have the incorperated boot anymore.  The aluminium body is bolted on, and could even easily be removed again, although that would certainly waste the paint job.

I'll try to make some pics this weekend.

My mistake. I didn’t realise it was built on the platform chassis. Apologies!

So I now stand doubly corrected!

Wonderful! Look forward to seeing the progress on the build

Koen the Lambda looks fantastic with that body but maybe flared mudguards as on this Austro Daimler might look even better!

The picture was taken at the VSCC Buxton Rally about 1956 and in the background, top left is my first car, a 1926 Bullnose Morris Oxford, which happily survives to this day in the ownership of a leading member of the Bullnose morris Club. The Austro Daimler has I believe disappeared into a collection on Germany.

Mike

Regarding a seat in the back - am sure they'd be a way to make an alternative lid that came apart to stow... 

Might not be the one you use "day to day" (!!!!!!) but they'd be a way to keep the rain out when parked up short of a tarp and bungee straps.

Lovely project, and looking forward to updates.

Hello Koen,
The picture of your bodyshell, naked, makes me think that you might at this stage want to consider reinforcing the front frame, around the radiator.

Why ? On my Lambda (a 7th series, so with an integral radiator, quite different from an 8th series) I damaged my radiator this summer while driving fast over speed bumps, and roundabouts : this driving fast is quite fun, when your suspension is in good order, but transmits heavy loads through the front diagonals, into the front frame.
The repair of a leaking 7th series radiator can get quite expensive, and is really annoying when you have had it fitted with a new core just 6 months previously !
While discussing this with my Australian friends at Castlemaine a few weeks ago, they all showed me that their Lambdas had reinforcements of various types fitted to their front frame. They told me that that was necessary, when driving as they do for long distances over Australian roads.
When putting in a reinforcing bar, you have to take into account the cooling fan, aesthetics, and the water pipes going into the radiator.
The appended pictures of Australian Lambdas can give you some ideas.

I look forward to the story of your progress – will make a nice car, for sure !

Thank you all for the input!

@Sebastien: a reinforcement is planned.  I feel the best way to do it is as in the second picture of your post, and drill out the original reinforcement first.  It should off course have been done BEFORE the body is painted....
I'll have to find out a way of defining where the fan will be, my engine and fan support are in Italy now....so maybe this will have to wait till it's back.

Not much done yet, again quite a bit of unplanned service work the past week....

Mt VIIth had been badly repaired elsewhere and I decided to make a new frame.    I bought some heavy duty box section of the right size, cut it in half with my Evolution Rage (which will cut anything) and made it up quite easily, with the rear flange rather more generous than the original.   The gauge is about twice the original and seems entirely stable so far.   The VIIIth had already been reinforced before she came into my posession (53 years ago) but also needs rebuilding as it is in leaning backwards, which does nothing for the handling, so I shall do the same with it as well.

Not much done to the Lambda over the weekend, (although I was in the workshop two days, but 'real' work to do....)
But there is something that I would like some opinions on (dangerous I know....)

I've been thinking a while about colours for the front suspension frame (and headlights), and the rear suspension carrier tube.  They are still unpainted.
I was always thinking to have the rear tube in the body colour (as are the more forward rear spring carriers on the side) but to have the front suspension (including the frame) and headlights in black.
Now i'm a bit in doubt....

So any considerations, and if possible information on how it was originally most welcome!

Another question is al other black parts under the car and in the engine compartment: were they originally in gloss, satin, or matt (stuff like rear axle, brake cross shafts, steering gear, pedals etc)
On a very fine restored Astura on Interclassice I noticed a mix of glossy and matt paint in the engine compartment...should have taken notes!

Koen,

The best solution for you would be to fly to San Francisco, and have a close look at the ex Peter Giddings Casaro replica.

The second best, and less expensive  ;) will be to check out the more than 100 photos on the following page.

That ex Peter Giddings car is just now for sale at Fantasy Junction, for USD 245'000.

https://fantasyjunction.com/inventory/1928-lancia-lambda/overview

Small jobs done in the past week.  I've been working on seats, as the seats I got with the car were far to wide to fit in it!
I want the seats to be sliding due to my own long length, so that other people can drive the car too, so I trial fitted an ardea seat, which still proved too wide, but came close to what I had in mind.

As the ardea seats belong to a complete car I did not want to cut 'm up, although I did dismantle the fabric of one of the backrests to see how things were made at the time.  I was amazed by the amount of work that must have been put into these seats...

Since I had a spare set of sliding rails recoverd from the seats I got with the project that were almost identical to the ardea ones and more or less suitable for a prewar car I decided to make a copy of the ardea seats, but less wide, and this will also alow me to shape the backrests to suit the shape of the Lambda.

This weekend I set out to fabricate the structure for the seats.  I made a drawing of the supports for the backrests and will have those laser cut.  Dit some probe seating using the ardea seat to find out height etc, and decided to mount the rails sloping downward to hte back so that bigger people will sit lower....

I will most probably use foam for the cushions rather then spring packs, simply because the cost difference is considerable, and foam offers at least the same comfort with a thinner pack, which again alows more room for my too long legs!

First picture is the 'example' ardea seat, two other pictures are one of the two seat frames as far as they got until now.  It took a few go's and mismeasurements to get two of the exact dimensions and completely the same shape...

Saturday morning I picked up the rear springs that were refurbished by a specialist.  The main and second blades were made new and received new bronze bushings, and some other leaves here and there were replaced as they had cracked in the middle.

Small steps!

Very satisfying

Are you making a leather interior - what colour ?

Hi Simon,

Yes I think it should be leather, what's on my mind is a cognac colour.  However I always dislike the new leather on old cars, so my idea is to find a suitable used leather sofa set and use that leather.  SDo now every now and then I stroll used furniture ads hoping something pops up.  I could off course go for the very nice 'original' Lambda leather that is on show n Padova, but the price is really horrendous (one could buy a complete new 2-3 sofa set, tear it appart en be still off cheaper!....

Here you are .....

https://www.leboncoin.fr/ameublement/1712412608.htm/ (https://www.leboncoin.fr/ameublement/1712412608.htm/)

Bon courage !

Koen, please bear in mind that most upholsterers will make the seats too hard these days. Original Lambda seats were very soft and you sink well down on them. Many of the re-upholstered seats I have encountered are so hard that the driver has to duck down low in order to see through the windscreen rather than over it. Good luck, John

 Thanks for the advise from a long one John!  My super advisor in that field is Leo Schildkamp, who has good knowledge of this proffession, and I must say I found his Lamura very comfortable.

Another question to you John: did you make a recess in the floor under the pedal's?  As that is something I think might work for me, and I can always make a small cover for it for the little ones  ;)

You say "small steps" that take "sooo long" but you will benefit at the end of the process. I suspect you will eventually reach a point when it all comes together surprisingly quickly. I agree whole heartedly about new leather too. Is it something to do with environmentally friendly tanning? I find so many new restorations today spoiled by completely inauthentic leather. The finish is too matt but more particularly is seems to pucker where it is pulled into corners.

Hi Koen,

Just caught up with this thread and wish you well with your exciting project.

In my experience the very best way to get a restoration finished is to have an event to aim for and for you Fobello 2021 couldn't be better. With my Dilambda the incentive was Turin 2006 and we did it with half an hour to spare in three years. For the Fulvia Fanalone, Fulvia 50th was the goal and we made it with half an hour to spare in just six months. http://www.lancia.myzen.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5820.0

Suspension and steering painting. I'm with Sebastien, go for the colour scheme of the Peter Giddings car. When deciding for my Dilambda a friend directed me to a Rolls Royce publication on the subject which stated quite categorically that black was the correct colour for the chassis and everything attached to it on a vintage car, and also for the wheels. I've had to do with two other Dilambda over recent times, one had suspension, steering gear and wheels in body colour, the other had much of it chromium plated and the wheels body colour. Neither looked right to me, in fact I actively disliked it.

Seats. I searched the internet for suitable leather and Ebay came up with five full skins for a bargain price in dark brown which were very nicely creased and patinated. They suited my requirement perfectly resulting in upholstery which looks as though it is eighty years old!

I'm with John here and would suggest that you go for sprung seat cushions if possible. One of the afore mentioned Dilambda had a very expensive trim job with very firm  overstuffed seat bases and shiny leather. Uncomfortable to sit on and difficult to hold oneself in place on the slippery surface particularly of the rear seat. Just perfect to slide onto Modestine's seats, sink nicely down in and gently bounce along as you travel!

Looking forward to your future posts and to see the finished results in Fobello, although Modestine, being a Dilambda sadly doesn't qualify to attend.

Robin.


 

No there's no recess under the pedals, or the need for one, but it's important to have as much room as possible on the right-hand side of the accelerator pedal. Some of my friends, with wider feet than mine, have to drive their Lambdas without their right shoe! My car has the trim cut away at that point.

My VIIth is very similar.

John,

I know that problem, and there will be no trim there on my car.  I've seen several Lambda with a part of the brake pedal cut away even.  I have been looking at an original 8th series left hooker, there that problem is non existant, but the car was way out of my reach...(and was sold afterwards nonetheless)

I hope to find a solution to slightly offset the brake pedal, although there is very little room for that.

I think one of the fist steps will be to rebuild and paint the pedal box and the steering gear, and put that in place, it will give me a better feel of correct seating position.

Not much to report, but some small jobs done such as fabrication of swivel points for the accelerator pedal, and some dismanteling of the two small fuel and oil tanks to prepare them for blasting.  I also took appart the steering colum for cleaning and preparation, and found the bearing inside the bearing carrier broken.  Very odd as one would think this bearing has an easy live...maybe it has something to do with how it was removed from the car at the time...

Is there any knowledge here on the forum regarding the Nivex l'exhausteur vacuum operated fuel system?  Is this wise to try and use this still or is an electric fuel pump hidden in the back a better proposition?
I have a dismanteled unit here (which involves desoldering the housing), and noticed a cork float is used inside, and fear the coating might not be very resitant to fuels containing ethanol...

Seats are a bit on hold as the laser company has not made the necessary parts yet.

I have rebuilt both my Le Nivex pumps using an SU float and found them very reliable.     The split pins holding the various levers in place tend to break if you take them apart but if the only problem is the float then all the rest may be left untouched.     I have just posted the details on the Technical Information thread.

Hi David,  thanks for the posts, interesting read.  Regarding the floats I was alredy thinking along that line, were it copper floats?  Do you remember which type they came out?

They are brass but I do not remember which ones.  They seem to have changed the specifications to cope with moder fuels though.  You will find them here  http://sucarb.co.uk/float-chambers-spares/floats.html 

Some progress over the weekend!
Friday the laser company was ready with the lower backrest frames for the seats.  They are an exact copy of the ardea items.  I had them made in 2mm thick steel as I found the originals in 1.5 mm a bit flimsy.  The original Ardea items are a bit flanged around the edges to stiffen them so I wanted that too.  Hammering by hand was not very succesfull, due to the thickness, and did not seem to help my tennis elbow (wonder where that came from...)
Saturday I decided to try to make a homemade tool for the Pullmax machine and although looking quite crude this did the job very nicely in minutes.

Today I welded the rails to the seat frames and started on making a frame on which to mount the seats.  It looks simple but took a lot of measuring and probe sitting to get it right.  Frame now welded and probe fritted in the car.  I will have to drill some holes here and there to fix it later this week, then it will have to come out again for painting.

With the bases of the seats now fitted I plan to make a wooden template for the shape of the backrests, hopefully some time for that over the week....

Nice to have a bit of adjustment in the seats!

Love the seat frames - looks too good to hide under a seat !

The seat frames are brilliant - can you show us the press tool please.

Mike

Impressive! This is going to be one very special car.

Robin.

Thanks for the comments, I hope not too many are offended by sliding seats in a Lambda.  However my feeling is that the original car had at least two seperate backrests, which made me think about fitting two separate seats.

I did a bit of work on the car today, fitting the lower backrest plates to the frames by welding the pivot points into the frames.  Then I could not resist to try and bend some 10mm tubing into the shape I wanted for the backrests.  I want the top of those to follow the curve of the body, and discovered making one side was easy, but then bending the other side to mirror the first one is quite a challenge!
I started out using my example ardea seatframe as a template, but off course soon had to divert, since one side needed to be lower and the opposite one higher. 
Although some fine tuning has to be done, the general shape is now more or less what I had in mind.  I only used some vise grips and a very rudementary tool for bending concrete iron, and my bare hands and knees.

On the tooling: I'll have to admit that appart from collecting/restoring Lancia's my second hobby has become to collect tooling for that.  Now this has been caused mainly by driving Beta coupés for many years, and I always used to say: if you buy a Beta, welding equipment will follow soon....

With no money to spend to have jobs done on the car, and having learned a lot from my father (although he was a volkswagen beetle/bus man), I always did the work myself.  Liking things to be done proper, the tools came more or lessby itself through the years.  The past ten years I'm working as an independant, which has some advantages in this field I must admit...

Tooling used to make the seat frames are a sheet metal shear, I used a manual brake to bend over the edge at the top, and then used an hydraulic brake to completely flatten the bend (making a flattened U)  The metal used is 1.5mm thick.  Then the manual brake was used again to bend them into an L-profile
I then used the eckold machine to shrink the inner part of the L to make the nice curves in the frame.  I needed five in total to make two exacly the same, mainly due to mismeasurements on my own account....

The little lower sides of the backrests I were laser cut (not by me  :) ) after I copied the exact shape of the ardea frames.  To make the relief in these frames I used the pullmax.  This is a hughe machine originally mainly used for cutting metal into eg circles or other shapes, but due to it's reciprocating action, can also be used to make swages etc in metal.  Pictures hopefully explain!
The eckold is in fact an electrically driven shrinker-stretcher machine, and is the mother of all the small (and some of the really good) hand or foot operated hobby machines.  Only the eckold does is much quicker!  This is not always an advantage, it is also much quicker in completely destroying your workpiece!
My particular eckold is one only found in Holland, and is called a 'Fokker' Eckold.  I was told the 'Fokker' airplane manufacturing company operated fourhundred (!!!) of these machines.  The machine is dated approx 1960....
These machines are very wanted as they have a pedal which when operated immediately stop the operation, and this has proven very handy on more then one occasion.

Voila! Hopefully these ramblings were not too boring!

last picture is of the home made tooling to make the reliëf in the 2mm plates.  The pullmax machine can handle sheet metal up to 4mm!

Nice toy shed!! Superb work going on there - the Lambda has gone to a good home.

Mike

High time for an update, and first of all best wishes to everyone for the new year!

Not very much done during the holidays I'm afraid, as I had to do an overhaul of the Eckold machine in the first place.  It developped a knocking noise that sort of worried me and as I use it quite often for work for a customer, I couldnt risk something breaking.  All in all I turned out there was some play in the main bearings, which were luckily standard SKF items.  So they are now replaced and the machine is running again.
Second job was getting together all spares for my 2 Monte Carlo projects, which I sold recently.  As they were dismanteled almost thirthy years ago one can imagine this took some time.  The pluys now there is more room for the Lambda spares, and the sale will fund new wheels!

Big news is that the engine is coming together well, and that probably I can pick it up end of this month, which will be combined with a visit to the auto moto retro in Turin if all goes as planned.

As the tubing to finish off the seat frames was in backorder I decided to do some work on the gearbox.  It looked and felt to be in quite good condition, with no broken gears or excessive play, but it was horrendously dirty, with black coal like stuff everywhere. 
I now fully dismanteled the unit, and started with cleaning the housing.  The parts washer, although it uses 60°C heated product and 80 bar pressure dit not get it very clean, so I decided to wet blast it.  The result is  a bit over the top IMO, but I guess it will take on some patina quickly enough when in use.  At least the wet blasting got it clean, although a bit shiny...
The bad news is that after cleaning the gearbox cover revealed a crack, so I'll have to decide if I will get it welded, or use another cover.  Sadly this was only visible AFTER two hours of cleaning off course.....

For the rest however the internals did not hold to much surprises and everything seems in good shape, except the nose of the input shaft which is worn.  It could be bushed but I decided to order a new shaft as for the moment they are available from Storicar in Italy for very reasonable money.

Some minor jobs were done such as dismanteling some of the unobtainable bearings for the brake transfer shafts, I took the bearings apart, cleaned the races, and reassembeled them with new balls, and they feel like new now.  Those bearings do not have to work very hard for their living anyway so I guess this will be ok.

I can't quite make out where those cracks are but they do not look very important.     If you have another top cover use it otherwise I would be tempted to fill them in with a little plastic metal - or send it to Nick Gilfillan at nick@dycomet.co.uk for cold metal spray repair (see tech. thread)

I just had a word with an ALU welding friend (one who was a demonstrator and really knows his stuff) and he sees no problem in welding the cracks.  But as you said David, they are not stress cracks.  Something must have hit the cover quite hard, it made a mark on the outside.
I have another cover, but that belongs to a second complete housing so would rather keep that complete....

Next week we will have some items welded, such as the front brake cable pully housings, that both present cracks/miss pieces....

I spend half my life de-greasing and cleaning parts and your machine sounds great ! Can you share some pics or tell us the make etc. Also what do you use as the cleaning solution ?

But looks like new !

Ha Simon, I know the feeling, and the other half was scratching underbody coating of and out Beta wheel arches and off undersides.....

Ok the machines...I used two to get the gearbox housing clean:

First the RVS unpainted one on the right, this is an Italian made High pressure parts washer.  I used one briefly at an engine shop a couple off years ago and was very impressed.  It uses 80bar pressure, warm (50°C) water and soap solution.  The soap is deliverd by the suplier of the machine.  It gets of quit a lot of dirt, but like in case off the very polluted gearbox not everything.  Big advantage is that you use water ans soap, and that since I installed an oil water separator on the sewage of the workshop, the used water can go down the drain...it became more and more difficult to get rid of used degreasing agents, which was one of the reasons I bought this machine.  The biggest disadvantage is that the water needs to get hot.  It contains 90 liters of water, and the greedy Italians installed a 2700 Watt heating element in the machine. (like a domestic thee water heater....)  This then takes about forever to heat up....the suplier commented that it should be left on day and night, which is maybe ok if one uses it daily, but if used, like here once every two weeks or so it would be very uneconomical.  So a couple of weeks ago I installed a home made 12Kw heater and a circulation pump (heater is an long 3Fase resistor installed in a 2" piece of Pipe) and now it gets to 50° in 20 minutes...warranty is now void....

The green machine on the left is a dutch built Henkel wet blasting cabinet.  It uses a mixture of glass beads (same as for dry blasting) and water. This is what gives the aluminium the beautiful finish.  It constantly stirrs the mixture by blowing compressed air in it, and an air driven membrane pump pumps the mixture to the gun, where the mixture is accelerated using more compressed air.  (big compressor needed...)
The cabinet is also completely in RVS and these things really cost a fortune new, but my constantly keeping an eye out on used equipment sites payed of and I got it for very reasonable money.
The disadvantage is one needs to rinse off very very carfully after the wet blasting as one does not want glass beads in an engine....hence I'm now preparing the aurelia block by making plates to completely close the block and will blast it only on the outside, to avoid getting glass into any oil channels.
The advantage over dry blasting with glass is that in the wet machine one closes the pores (is that a good word?) instead of opining them up, and dirty fingers will wipe of easy on wet blasted alu...
But it looks soo clean that is seems the parts are painted with silver paint...

Some pics below of the both of them, and some of the alu parts to be welded to the brake pulley boxes....

I received a video today of the engine running, it is ready for pickup so we'll visit Turin in a week or so!
Can't post the video here sadly.

Finally last week I got the tubes to finish the seat frames.  As it proved difficult to get the shape of the backrest as I wanted it, and even more difficult to mirror it for the other side, I decided to invest the time and make a 'reversable' wooden buck.  It took half a day to make the mold, then 10 minutes per side to bend the tubes around it....but it proved a good investment as finally I got the shape I had in mind...
It took a lot of fitting and re-fitting the seats in the car, as I did not want to do the welding in the car, but it's the end result that counts!
I now also came to the conclusion that when finished the gearstick will need to come out before the seats can go in or out...

Now only need to weld in some little brackets to attach an aluminium plate in the backrests, then they are ready to be painted.

Also last week a friend came to help with soldering new messing mesh to the oil filler tube filters, this needed a massive 200 Watt soldering Iron and a lot of skill, not my cup of tea!  Result very nice, small things but they need to get done.

Wednesday it's of to Turin to fetch the engine, so will post some pics of that next weekend...

Your friend has mastered the art of soldering the perfect heat sink!

It's maybe good to mention here:  We used standard available cupper water pipe of 35mm and 22mm for the outer and inner filter respectivelyas a 'mould' .  Now the soldering guy wanted alu pipe, as the solder would not catch on the pipe.  This was not available in the DIY shop, but the guy in the shop came up with the brilliant idea to stick a piece of Aluminium self adhesive tape on cupper pipe where the soldering had to be done.  It worked a treat!
The soldering in itself is all about knowing which products to use....will make notes next time!

Major steps, luckily in the forward direction.  Visit to Turin brought the engine home, seeing it running before loading was very nice!  In addition to that came a heard of usefull tips from Guido, who built it.
 
In Turin we had a very well filled program, with visits to automotoretro, FCA Heritage hub, and the opening of the aurelia exhibition at Mauto (formerly the Biscaretti).  I must say Mauto was really the best car museum ever, and much much nicer than it was before.  They really did a great job on renewing the museum.  (must admit that the centenario in 2006 was the last time I visited)
However the FCA heritage hub was the ultimate high for me....I hope it will soon be opened for the public, as this collection being available but not accessible is simply a crime IMO.

But back to the Lambda: Another unexpected treat was finding a surplus stock of 'real' Lambda leather, I think the colour matches the colour of the car well enough, and the deal was quickly struck, another problem struck from the list.

And today my soldering and welding genius friend came to the resque again, and TIG welded the crack in the gearbox cover, and repaired the front brake pulley housings.  The crack turned out to be multiple, and much longer then could be seen.  By simply pre-heating it with the TIG, it became very visible. 
And on welding it, I learned that my very clean looking gearbox housing was far from clean, it is simply unbelievable how much oily dirt came sweating out of the aluminium when hot....

First time I have seen a photo of the engine. It looks like a 9th. series, judging by the magneto-less dynamo. Is it held on with just one strap?

Hi John,

Indeed the dynamo is a ninth series.  It came with the car and was fully overhauled already, so I think I'll use that one for now.  But in the meantime I found a correct 8th series magneto, a project for the future.
The dynamo us much shorter so one strap only (off course the attachments for the secand strap are there.  It might be an advantage as the ignition is now a bit further away from the exhaust heat...

quite a bit of time for the Lambda this week, but then one discovers how time consuming the 'small works' are in reality.  Saved some threads, cleaned more gearbox parts, and prepared parts for blasting and painting.
As I decided to use Standox 2K spraycans (which have limited life after they have been mixed) I have to prepare a batch, then blast and primer.

I will try to get on with steering and pedals, as I would like to have these in place first, to better asses seating position.

Gearbox parts are a real pain to get clean, the stuff attached to al internal parts is incredibly sticky, making it very hard to remove...

Sunday=Lambda day! 
Today I mounted the pedal box, after assembling it.  I had to adapt some existing bolts as I did not have the correct length.  Together with a lot of spares came some boxes of withworth bolts in various sizes, and I try to use those as much as possible.

Work then continued on the front brake cross shaft, and I ended up reconditionning the bearings most of the afternoon.  These are unobtainable new so the solution is to take them appart, clean up the races and reassemble with new balls (easier then also cleaning up the old ones...)
But this is a very time consuming job, took me three hours for 8 bearings......

I already found out that my wide foot will not fit between the brake pedal and the body, so will have to adapt the brake pedal a bit....

Exiting day today.  A customer of mine has a company making steel windows, and they recently bought a laser scanner to measure up arches etc in 3D.  Now I had been trying with little succes to make a template of the bulkhead where on the inside I want to make a reinforcement to fit the windscreens on.  (no provision was made to do this)

So the friend came to the rescue with his high tech equipment.  Once one has manually pointed out the starting and the end point, the apparatus scans automatically in a straight line in a raster of 1 by 1 cm.  Amazing stuff!

We did the outside and the inside, which will hopefully help me to produce something that fits!

Very curious now for the result....

In the mean time I kept myself busy with overhouling the center propshaft bearing housing and made supports for the accelerator pedal assy, as one support was missing.
If anyone needs the nice balltype swivel pionts, I had some spares made. (the one original I had was oval)

Heavens, if you get any more high tech you'll be able to 3D print new Lambdas!

Love it !

Today was less exciting, the wholy family was out and I did more cleaning, blasting and painting.  I should have waited till my son is old enough for this  :D
But at least it will bring me closer to putting some stuff together....

The mailman brought a package today, so nice it is almost a shame to use them.

I was still missing one bearing for the gearbox, it is not in production anymore.  Through the ways of the internet found a list of bearings in stock in an Italian general hardware store.  As the price was friendly I ordered two.  The boxes come completely apart when touched, but the bearings are new.

Over the weekend there was not very much time, Martin Willems had a stand on the oltimer show in Antwerp and stayed with us for three days, which led to late nights and lots of beer drinking....
But more blasting and painting got done.....next weekend hopefully some stuff can get fitted!

time for an update!

We're locked in here in Belgium, and many customers have closed with spare time as a result!  
Just before the lockdown I picked up the steering box shaft, which had a damaged tread rectified.
I then could assemble the box, and filled it up with the penrite stuff, feels good!

However on test mounting the steering box and column I found that the steering wheel was lowered by some 30mm in the dashboard, and to accommodate this the box will have to rotate as well.  I think the best solution will be to make an offset bolt, this way the body and box can stay original.

Today I spend some time on trial fitting and measuring the exact offset necessary, and made a drawing for the bolt.  Rest of the day was eaten away by fitting the aluminium connection blocks between engine bearing tubes and body, which required again some measuring and rectifing of the body sides, and shimming out of the blocks.

I also fitted the front brake pulley boxes.

Al this in preparation of building a jig for the re-assembly of the front suspension frame, which came in two halves with the center tube partly missing.  The remains of the center tube were machined out, so I need to get it hard soldered together now.

A question: any tips on how to treat the brake adjusting parts like in the picture?  They are now plain steel, are they left naked steel and only (well)  greased or is it better to have them anodised or treated one way or the other?

Mine are painted black, apart from the threads, which are just greased.
.

If you like the metal look you can use an acrylic spray which I have used regularly. A few light coats and they are well protected - I don't spray the threads, just grease/coppaslip as suggested by John

Thanks for the suggestions!  I've thought of covering 'm in bee wax, which I often do with warm rolled steel, it gives a beautifull finish, but is not a very good protection against moisture.
Since everything else underneath will get a coat of epoxi and matt black I guess I'll follow Johns advice, and grease the treads.

Today most of the day was spend on the fabrication of a support for the dual windscreens.  I need to get that in place before mounting the dashboard, so have to get it over with.
Based on the measurements of the shapes I could print out the curve on three A3 sheets and tape them together, then made first a cardboard version to check the fit (which was very good....)
I then made a wooden jig, and carefully bend the iron UPN 35 into shape.  This took about 50 bend/check/bend again/ check again walks but very pleased it worked out the way it did.

I also made some seperate brackets which bolt to the body and to which the UPN support will be bolted in turn, as there's now way al this can be mounted in one piece.

A lot of work for something that will never be visible...

Hope to finish that one tomorrow, then comes the horrible job of drilling holes in the painted bodywork....need to gather some courage for that! (and a new drill)

Another question (or two ): is there anyone who can shed some light on the following:

1. the trajetory the main battery cable follows from the battery (under the drivers seat) to the starter motor.
2. were the cables running to the rear lights protected in some sort of sleeve or tubing?  Can't imagine them running through the car unprotected?

Many thanks!

Koen

No Corana here till now, but acute subframitis....

Decided to let the windscreens rest for a bit (brackets painted and drying) and attacked another matter that needs resolving.
With the project came a subframe that showed signs of earlier rectifications on the left hand side.  There was another one that had been torched in two with the center part of the bottom tube missing.

With thanks to Nick Benwell I could find the missing center castings and had the remains of the center tube machined out of the parts needed.

I then thought it would be best to make a jig on the actual car to see where that led: it is now confirmed that this led nowhere!
I made a negative jig on the car, then in the jig made again a positive jig to use for fitting and eventual welding.  However could nog get the parts to fit to my satisfaction.

This morning (after considerable overnight thinking....) decided to make a more scientific approach:
I dug out Mr Falchetto's original drawing but quickly came to the conclusion that not much relevant measurements were given.  Through Photoshop I succeeded in getting a copy into a drawing program so that I could scale the image and make more measurements on the original drawings.  (This sounds simple and probably is for those who know how to do this, but for me stuff like this is a real struggle....)
I then made full size drawings on white cardboard, and used those to make a second (!!!!!!) positive jig, exactly according to the drawings.
It turned out my cars radiator frame is leaning a bit to the right of the car, so I'll need to rectify that.

In any case the subframe parts fit together much better now, although some corrections will need to be made to the body.

I'll make some PDF drawings with the dimensions I used, might be (or not?) of interest.

Looks as if you are having too much fun !

Trial fit of the subframe halves on the car, and with some minor corrections this seems ok now.  Sadly the welder is in quarantine too so the welding will have to wait a bit...

Make sure the pillars are parallel and leaning backwards by 3 degrees so as to give a little trail to the steering.   The castor angle is in the stub axles.  There is a diagram in the technical information thread.

I'll check that David, I have a device to measure the angles somewhere, but it seems to have misplaced itself.....
I abandoned the subframe for a moment, as the welder is not available due to Corona....and reverted to front windows.

Made a cardboard model which I fitted to the car this morning.  The one on the left side (of the car) is 3cm higher then the one on the right.
I made also the fixed panel a bit higher then I think they were originally ( This is all more or less derived from the few pics I found in various books of the original )

Sitting in the car and looking at the looks I sort of decided the height of the lower one is only slightly insufficient, so I'm now thinking of lowering the fixed panel by 2 cm's, brining it closer to what it should be, and keep the bigger window.  Mind there will be a window wiper motor on the RH window, cluttering it even more.

I have designed the support frame so that it will be very easy to swap the complete outer frames, as I want to make a second 'one piece' fixed window, which I think will be much more comfortable for longer trips. 

Opinions welcome!!!

To my eye that looks "unusual".  I'd expect either:

A - pair of "conventional" aero screens
B - One bit of glass, perhaps that folds.
C - Split horizontal, bottom fixed, top opens.

Not that I can remember seeing it but perhaps on a sporting Alfa of that period?

D - Two bits of glass, join in the middle, fold either left or right.

The closest I've seen to that shape might be on a small Amilicar, perhaps a Brescia, but they tend to join in the middle and be a V-screen.  I don't remember that style folding left and/or right.

I went looking for a picture - AND FOUND ONE THE SAME AS YOU'VE DONE :)

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=1644210

Here's two pics, one of the original my body is a copy of (there's more in capolavoro), and one of another copy.

And this is what I arrived at today, took some time to get the Bosch wiper motor going to determine the angle of it's movement.
I want both windows to have the same height as opposed to the Peter Giddings replica.

V windscreens work well - the wind and rain get deflected over your head and round the side, unlike the typical British flat screen which sends a wet draught onto the back of your neck!  The French knew all about it and here is my Salmson - no hood, no wipers but drivable under most conditions with Rainex on the glass to disperse the wet. If it gets really bad there is a sweet spot for a couple of inches above the screen through which I can see without getting a faceful. This is an original 1925 screen, but I have made another to the same pattern which was an interesting exercise.

Mike

I think such a V-screen must work very well!  But I'm trying to make something that is true to the original. (and hopefully better than some replica's of the same car....)

Today not much done, attacked one of the engine compartment tanks with paintstripper as I fear blasting will damage the solder too much.  Maybe some 'soft' glas bead blasting tomorrow to clean off the remains.  Bought paint stripper in a spray, that did not apply very well I must say....better stay away from that!

Some more drawing done on the mecanism for the windows, and a system to position them in a correct angle....

I stand corrected.  Be interesting to see the mock up again with the frames marked on the car.

Some attention to firewall and electrics today  high-low beam relay (made by bosch) ...before and aft...
a bit time consuming but what seems beyond salvage is now fully operational again.
I miss the original steel cover, if anybody has this on the shelf, would be glad to hear!

Also got the wooden panel and the accelerator pedal in today.

The material for the wiring is ordered now with AES, very helpful people, they will do a run of gold coloured wire to match the original.

It's the small things that take a lot of time to measure up and fabricate.

Most of the conduit in the engine compartment was missing, one part sourced from australia, but the rest seemed impossible to find, so I decided to make them up based on some measurements on other cars and parts...

For the rest I did more cleaning, blasting and painting, all very interesting!

For the connaiseurs: the small edges on the top part of the conduit were made out of a piece of Lancia Gamma door opening rod, so it stays in the family....a man has to do what a man has to do with all hardware stores locked up....

Brilliant refurb of that bosch relay. Unbelievable bought back to beyond new....

Does anyone know a source for this type of copper conduit?  I found this on the website of fiennes (rolls royce restorers) but they have closed down completely...due to corona.  I need the 16mm internal diameter variant.  I want to use it for the wiring going to the back, which will be a few wires more then in the original due to added direction indicators, brake lights, provision for an electric pump etc....
Found a supplier in Germany who would be happy to make copper conduit for me, but they needed a 1 kilometer order.......

two times good news!

Fiennes woke up out of their corona hibernation and will supply the conduit.

And better: While strolling on the attic in search of a badge I bought 30 years ago in Imola I found the ultimate Lambda assembly manual, only 15 steps so that can't take long! (minus one as i have no doors....)

Lucky you with the Conduit, if that's a Togi Kit instruction book, i have a brand new Togi Lambda kit upstairs, who knows with this lock down I may be tempted to build it ;)

I also came across a hughe box with a 037 built kit in it, I remember buying it somewhere in the nineties when we visited the Lancia exhibition in the Biscaretti.  We parked our van complete with car trailer on the then still open square, now it would have been inside the museum.  I was the l'harmonia and invenzione' exhibition I think.  Never dared attempting to build the kit in fear of wasting it....much better tucked away on the attick!

I have a Togi lambda in my stash (about 50 models I fear) plus a cool Aviomodelli which has the inner structure of the body. Whilst filing magazine cuttings I found this 1929 Lambda mm in The Automobile, June 1988 too.

The past two days loads of fun with making up hooks and pivot points for the 'trunk' catches.  The catches used are in fact the same ones as standard Lambda's had on the back, but the hooks and pivot plates are different due to the shape of the body.  I had very crude aluminium hooks with the project which I didn't like at all so tried to do better, and made pointed ones as on the picture of the original car.

It took a lot of time and fitting, sanding and filing and off course both sides were different which also didn't help much.  For the rest there was/is a bit of thinking going on regarding the electricals.  I want direction indicators, stoplights, emergency lights, electric fuelpump, and this will generate a bit more wiring than in the original.  Further to that I think it would be wise to have some relays doing the real switching work to save the contacts of original switches etc. a bit from the heavy currents.

I'm now thinking to centralise this on one PCB carrying the necesarry connections and relays, and hide this out of sight in a flat box under the dash.  It will be completely out of sight behind an additional ampère and temperature gauge.   Views on this welcome!

Love those latches, and great idea to centralise as much of the electrics in something that can be built on the bench, and hidden.

How did you make the latches?  Intrigued...

David,  very crude procedure, I started with plain steel bar 40x5mm for the top, grinded the top into shape (using a cardboard template), then drilled the holes and carefully bended into the shape, which takes a lot of fitting on the car.  I then cut the bottom off and cut a piece out where the hook comes in.  The hook was made out of 20x20 bar, drilled a hole in the correct place and cut and grinded turplus material away, then welded it in.  Followed by more grinding....
Bottom part same procedure but 8x40 bar and 12x60 bar for the pivot piece.

No fancy machinery used for this.  Drill, disk cutter, powerfile, grinding disk and some manual files is all that is needed...
Off course they are in steel, I hope the nickel plating will keep the rust away...

I guess there is much better ways to do this but this is what I could think up, and had the stuff for...

Plate a good layer of copper under the nickel.    Nickel plate is porous and direct on steel soon rusts through, as I learned from my Aussie restored VIIth.   Had to re-do all the plating.

Roger that David, I'll make shure to hammer on that.

Looked like ali in the photos.  Lovely work (as ever!).

Time for an update.

I finally gathered some courage to start on drilling the holes in the painted body to fix the windscreen frames.  Drilling the holes on the side of the body was a bit exiting as the drilling was far from perpendicular to the material.  I ended up making sort of a stepped 16mm drill to get the job done, and finally the good old round file came to the rescue to finish off.  I then also drilled the internal frame that I made to support the screens under the scuttle, and welded the bits together.  After painting and refitting I was not happy with the result, so started all over again. (this had to do with the trim on the body not being in one plane, and the fit looked awkward with the window not being in one plane as a result.   I now tilted the pins slightly backwards to get all 4 pins lined up in the same plane, hope this makes sense.....) Today finally I got the frame in again in it's definitive form and the external frame (only made for positioning all the internal bits) slides in and out as it was intended.

Will have to do the blasting and painting over now before I can finaly fit it.

Also quite a bit of time was spend on planning the electrics and drawing up a diagram for the 'add ons' such as winkers, brake lights, wipers, electric fuel pump etc.
I decided to go ahead with the plan to hide the extra fuses and relays in a shallow steel box under the dashboard, so that the engine compartment keeps it's original look.

Bit slower progress as there was real work to do every now and then too....

Moved more backwards now, did some more hole drilling in a bid to get rid of the welding in and near the body.  Considerable time was spend in measuring up and drawing the shape the roof has to get, and how high the support should slide out.
I now made the tubes inside the car and the supports, the round rolled flat iron is a dummy.  Through the wonders of the internet I landed on the website of a UK based company making all sorts of oval shaped tubing, even especially for Ferrari and Maserati chassis restaurations.  They also do smaller profiles perfect for the roof support, and deliver in small quantities!

It took a lot more time then I thought it would but I'm happy with the result so far...

Great news.  Which company is the supplier?

The oval tube company:

ProFormance Metals Limited
High March Close, High March Industrial Estate, Daventry, NN11 4EZ
Tel: (+44)1327 311660 or 0845 894 9776 (local rate)
www.proformancemetals.co.uk

I must say they are very responsive and helpfull, have not received the goods yet off course, will take a few weeks as they make the tube to order.

Yesterday was a 'real' work day, as the clients company was virtually empty I could go and do some maintenance....could get used to that: working on the Lambda during the week and real work only on saturdays....

Today I made up some bracing behind the seats.  'Originally' there was a bulkhead behind the seats, but I cut that out since it limited seating space enormously.  But I felt something had to be done now to strenghten the boy sideways.  Unbelievable what two 16mm tubes can do, it is feeling rock solid now. 
Next will be further strenghtening of the sides of the car going forward to the doors, as they are now weakened still by taking the bulkhead out. (which was something completely non original by the way)
Hope to get that in tomorrow...

Little bit done today, untill real work came to interupt....

I made a base plate and pivot points for the wooden bulkhead (is that a good word for it?) behind the seats.  As the backrests can fold forward anyway, it seemed practical to have the wooden plate pivoting too, giving easy and quick access to the luggage compartment.  (the cover of the luggage compartment has to be taken off when opened and then has to be but somewhere...still thinking of making some kind of hinges but its not easy as the roof support bar is in the way.)

After making the wooden plate to size and attaching the pivots to it, it turned out the left hand side was ok, but on the right the plate would not pass the side of the body.

After a bit of fettling and correcting it now works fine.
Next step was preparing a new reinforcement for the side of the body that left enough room for the trim panel, and making a 'triangular' bracket to complete the reinforcement.
The bracket will be covered with the same leather as the side panel trim.

Once these reinforcements are ready I think I'm done with drilling and welding stuff together in a painted car....and then the cabling can go in.

Thank you for the supplier link.  Lots of interesting stuff, and my son might appreciate that they sponsor / partner with Formula Student teams.  They also stock "engineering plastics".

Yesterday not so much time for the Lambda, i made cardboard templates for the side panels, and started on figuring out how to support them, but since it is all to be 3D shaped I'll have to get hold of some decent wood to make that up....to be continued...

Today my girl asked me what I had been doing, I said to her I made a very special spanner to fasten the steering box nut.  Thats nuts! she said.... no no only one nut I replied....
But I then showed her the additional dashboard I made and all was well again...

It will be fitted in the center under the dash and contains all the stuff I wanted added in one go:

from left to right:

winker switch (with timer)
emergency winker switch and green lamp for winkers
water temp gauge
oil temp gauge
fuel pump switch and red oil pressure light
amp meter

The two lamps are age correct jeager item, very similar to the dashboard illumination lamps, and hold a festoon bulb.
I'm not at all impressed though by the light they generate, so as a test ordered a led signaling lamp that hopefully fits exactly inside.
I also have a small beeper that makes an incedible noise which I might add....

The winker switch is on the left, very ok for me as I'm left handed and this way its clear of the steering wheel.

Again not much time to play today, but small things out of the way such as probe fitting the extra instrument panel.  Luckily someone reminded me in time of the little knobs under the dash for winding the clock and the resetting the trip meter.  I thought about that when designing the panel, but forgot about it completely....

I also tidied up the electrical conduits in the engine compartment, and drilled the necessary holes for fitting them, and then set about an experiment to copy the copper tubing that is around the radiator.

I flattened a piece of tube in the vise (will do that in a more proper way when making the real tube), leaving the ends round, then plugged one side, filled up with sand from the blasting cabinet, and plugged the other end.

The first two bends atempted were too sharp and ruined the piece, but the third one comes near what it should be.  again quite a bit of time spend to make tooling that will be used only twice....didnt tell the girls this time.....

I also was looking to front wheel bearings and the possible use of tapered roller bearings instead of the original setup.  Any experience here in this area?

Your local plumbers' merchant would have supplied you with a coil spring to fit inside the pipe and allow bending it as far as you wanted and a bending tool as well.   I have one - somewhere...

Hi David,

That I have here, but: this is not a round tube, the Lambda tupe is oval or flattened in shape, and the normal plumbers tube bending tool's bending radius is way too large, making it sit in the way of the radiator.

I choose to flatten the tube before the bending, as flatening it after bending is even more difficult I think.

I don't  think either of mine is flattened, certainly the vIIth is round and I pretty sure the VIIIth is also but I cannot go and look just at the moment.

Weird, as I've seen two cars with supposedly original tubes (but both where 8th) and they both have flattened tubes.  But checking will only be possible if the radiator is out....

Hello Koen,
I found some relevant pictures of my Lambda, when it was rewired, and the copper tube replaced. I confirm that on my 7th Series the tube is flattened. I think otherwise it is not possible to mount the radiator.
Hope this helps.

Thanks for the pictures Sebastien!  It looks as if your original tube received some extra flattening over the years!

@sebastien:  do you know whether there should be any holes in the bottom of the copper tube to drain water out that might get in?

Koen,
As I understand it, the copper tube is there to protect the electrical wires that run through it from humidity. Being in the front of the Lambda, and also around the radiator, there must be NO hole in that copper tube, especially at the bottom, allowing water to enter (or to exit!).

I was looking at the wrong tube!   Neither of my cars has one anyway.

The past days I  invested a lot of time in 'small stuff'... I made the 'container' for the added electrics under the dashboard, and decided it would be best to have the same sort of metal cable ducts as in the rest of the car.  So I spend quite a few hours testing/measuring and finally fitting under the dashboard, something my long self obviously was not designed for.....

The square box pivots on the most upfront side and fals open, to give acces to the internals, as there will also be quite a few added fuses there, every outgoing cable will have its own fuse.

I then finished the rest of the ducts, made all necessary holes for glands, spot welded in reinforcements for the screws etc.

Unbelievable how much time goes into 'little' jobs like this....

Finally today alo made a bracjket for the ignition coil (against the side of the engin bay, a bit out of sight) and the brake light switch.  The brake light switch is not an original Carello iten, haven't succeeded in finding that yet, but found a nice NOS bakelite item which fits the car I think....

Al the stuff is now out of the car again for painting...

How to spend a full day on something no one will ever see....(except if someone decides to steal my radiator....)

First thought the tube bending would go better when filled with water under pressure, but that was a miss.  Luckily no harm was done to the already flattened tube, so I filled it up with dry sand in place and the bending went OK.
This afternoon I made the 'angle' pieces out of 1mm copper plate, had to make a steel template first to hammer the curves in place.  Same template was used to make the copper brackets to fix the tube.  I feel the biggest challenge will be to get the wiring inside the tube, with one extra wire for the direction indicators.  It sure will be a tight fit!

Also the oval tube for the soft roof support arrived, it looks the part!  It think it will be best to fill that one with sand too before attempting to roll it into shape, as it doesn't seem very coöperative.

Tomorrow I plan to pack up the instruments to send them to the man who will check rev counter and speedo, and will make new cappilary leads on the oil and water temp meters. (non original but very nice Prelac items)

Filling the tube with sand is the traditional approach as used by the old school specialist exhaust builders.

As to no one ever seeing it, in 50 years time someone will uncover it and marvel at your craftsmanship. Your reward is in posterity.

I like that hammer form, and forming.  Lovely.

More hammering today!

The final 'big' job that I want do do on the body is fitting a reinforcement for the radiator surround.  But, without lowering the fan space below the top radiator connection is very limited.
I considered using a 7th series fan carrier, but in the end decided to slightly modify the 8th series fan bracket, to allow it being a bit lower.

As space is very limited I think the only good solution is to drill out the original reinforcement, which is rivetted in so could be replaced,  and make a new, stonger plate to fit in it's place.
I feel only a plate will quite easily flex, seen it is under pressure load, so I wanted it to have an angle to give it more strenght.  As the fan is very (very very) close to the radiator, the angle needs to be out of the way of the fan...
So quite a bit of drawing and testing with cardboard before I could transfer the drawing to a 3mm thick steel plate.  I did not want to weld in the angled piece seen it would be very difficult to clean up the weld on the inside corner, which is the one in sight.  So a special tool had to be made for the Pullmax machine to stamp the angle in.  It worked wel although for the finishing touch the good old hammer had to come in....
All ended up reasonably flat to my surprise!

Question now is whether to drill extra holes (where the hole saw and the rings are in the pic's,) to allow for more airflow through the radiator at the penalty of loss of strenght....

Lovely job again.

That looks so sturdy I doubt some holes like that would take much strength out.

With a good core the radiator provides too much cooling so I don't think extra holes are necessary.

Maybe I'll leave the holes for now, they could always be added later, but indeed I doubt the cooling will be insufficient.  For me it would more be an optical thing, to give it a more finished and racy look.....

Yesterday I drilled out the original reinforcement, so that I could fit the new plate.  It is slightly less wide than the original, which is a really tight fit on the sides of the frame.  I had to cut/grind away exactly 3mm at each side, as otherwise it would be impossible to get the now ridgid plate inside the original frame.  This 3mm I will fill out with side plates with an angle piece welded on that also bolt on on the subframe bolts.

That way the tight fit will be sort of 'restored'

Very nice work on that reinforcement - Complimenti!

I intend to do the same type of reinforcement to my Lambda to avoid having my radiator leak again - your work is a good example of how to do it right!

When I rebuilt the front of my V!!th Lambda I made a new frame altogether from a piece of box section steel that I spllit in half with my Evolution Rage saw (an amazing tool, cuts anything)    The gauge of the steel is thicker than the original and the result is much stronger.   The original actually caved in at the sides from the pressure of the diagonal suspension bars.

David,

I think that would be a great solution too, my problem is off course that when I bought the car the body came already painted, which sort of limits my options....now I only need to carefully replace the rivets, which as far as I learned from google, is done cold for these small sizes...  I'm going to order some and learn how to properly use them, all new to me!

"For me it would more be an optical thing, to give it a more finished and racy look....."

Go for it !!!!

(My reason NOW for pushing that way is so I can enjoy watching you engineer a blind to blank the radiator).

 ;D

As before I can mount the fuel tank I must have at least the rear electrics in place, I thought I should think a bit about rear light mounting brackets and connected to that a position for the number plate.  The rear lamps (of Fiat Topolino furgone origin apparently) also have an incorperated number plate lamp so it would be nice to use that one.

As I didn't feel like attaching them directly on the body, nor wanted to have 'loose' wiring to the lamp units, I devised a bracket out of a 13 mm pipe that is attached to the underside of the car, out off sight.
In one go I also made a numberplate holder, and sort of hope this will be accepted by the Belgian MOT.  (in Belgium numberplates are incredibly big and ugly nowadays, and if there is not enought room for a big one, you can ask as an exceptionto use a motorcycle one instead)  I made the plate slightly bigger then a motor cycle plate....

Opinions on the height of the position of the lampunits welcome.  I fixed 'm now with two tiny welds, so can still alter.  First I thought of having them about 6 cm lower, but I think the higher they are the bigger the chance oncoming traffic sees the stop lights.....(it will be difficult to find an acceptable way of fitting a 3rd stop lamp on this car IMO)

Another matter that got resolved is the the rear spring brackets.  Both of these had a worn out the inner hole (normal 16mm).  Strangely enough the outer one is OK on both brackets.  As one of them is still attached to the car, and painted, I needed to find away to drill out the inner hole to an oversize, in order to later on fit a flanged bushing to bring it back to a perfectly centered 16mm.  I had a special ring turned that can be clamped in the rear compartment, with a 6mm hole, that centers the small hole saw I discovered on the internet.  As the shaft was then too short I made a holder, giving me the chance to make the outside diameter 16mm, so that( it centers in the forward hole.  All went smooth with the electric drill so a nice perfectly centered 22mm hole is now ready to receive the bushing....

Can't find any reference to it, but are you still looking for one of these? If so, one of them is yours. Let me have your address and I'll pop it in the post. It might take a day or two, as I'm not allowed out and will have to get someone to post it for me. Which one?
Regards, John

Dear John!  That seems to be just right, and I saw the bottom part in the parts wanted section.  Which one: keep the best one for yourself as a spare I would say.

I hope you did'nt have to canibalize a good magneto for that?

I'll send a seperate mail, thanks John!

You probably all think I fell asleep or something?  Past Corona real work more and more catches up with me...not a bad thing off course, but it limits Lambda time...although some things have been adressed meantime, like finisching the drawings for the windscreens, the laserwork has been ordered and will be ready sometime during the coming week.

Also this week John's regulator housing arrived in the mail, a very big THANK YOU for that!!!!!
So yesterday evening I just couldn't resist and set to fitting it.  I had to make a small fat aluminium adaptor plate for the modern regulator that was fitted inside the scintilla box, and rework some cables.  Also John's box turned out to be laid out for a smaller diameter generator housing, so I had to mildly adjust the diameter to get a good fit.
This morning fitted the houding and it looks much better!  The brass cover wll get some attention and painting later, to make it look even better.

I send the intruments to a restoration service, as this is something I really don't see myself bringing to a good end.  One of the zamac/mazak frames of the speedo appears to be in poor shape, and the dial of the rpm counter needs to bee sourced of replicated, so I fear this will be a costly affair....

Strugling a bit to find time to work on the Lambda, but this afternoon a little progres was made...
The laser cut parts to finish of the radiator surround reinforcement came in that seemed like an ideal small job.

Folowing the poll I finally decided to cut the desired holes in the 3mm plate, and then refitted it with the welded together angles pieces.  This pieces precisely fill up the space between the new reinforcement plate and the sides of the radiator frame, and I hope they thus help to transfer the forces induced by the supension directly into the reinforcement plate. (I had to cut the new plate less wide than the original one because due to it's rigidity I could not flex it to get it inside the radiator surround, thus it was 3mm away from the original sides)

Hope this makes sense, otherwise some pictures will hopefully do.

With everything in place and botded up the holes for the rivets were marked, and after removal drilled and countersunk.

All ready for a blast and paint now.

Also did some experimenting with the steel rivets and an air hammer, and decided this is not the way to go on an already painted car.  Next week I hope do build a home made hydraulic rivetting tool, watch this space!

Last week I found some time and decided it was time to tackle some mechanical jobs.
I already reconditioned the steering gear before, and filled it up with Penrite steering box lube, but as it was probe mounted in the car it soon became clear there were several leaks.  Talking (read: e-mailing....) about this to Iain Simpson in Australia he strongly advised to convert the housing to accept modern lip seals and to turn a groove into the big adjuster nut for an O-ring (indeed it was leaking there too...)

This turned out to be a rather straightforward turning job so I did as he suggested.  Last week friday I assembled it again, with loctite for the flanges and copper washers on both sides of the bolts (leaking even there!) and filled it up again.  We were out for the weekend and on my return I was very disapointed to find oil under the steering gear again!  Closer inspection learned that the now remaining leak was due to a fault in the casting where the lower positioning bolt is.  Instead of taking it apart again I decided to simply turn two grooves in the positioning bolt (which is an offset affair and non original anyway, and stop the leak with two additional O-rings there.

Also some work done in preparation of assembling the rear axle.  The shaft in the diff for the sattelites was worn out, and will be replaced by a piece of 25mm hardchromed bar.  Drilling the holes in it was rather adventourous using 'any material' stone drills, but it worked OK, and the same drills were used to drill out the holes in the new crown wheel to the desired 9mm (the later diff's use larger bolts)
I then still had to make the oil grooves in the shaft, on which the machinist advised: "just use an angle grinder and cut 'm in by hand."
Now that I found a bit crude so devised a way to get more control on the business: real metalworkers beware as this could be shocking images!!!!

I once had to put a spiral oil groove in the vertical shaft which drives the overhead camshaft of a Brescia Bugatti. I mounted a small air powered grinder on the tool post of my lathe and set up the gearing of the lead screw of the lathe so as to get the correct mm per turn of the groove as the carriage was advanced. I put a handle on the lead screw and my wife turned that, which moved the carriage and through the gearing, rotated the chuck while I operated the grinder. Amazingly it worked, although we did not get quite as nice a result with the hardened steel shaft as I had when practicing on a piece of mild steel.

I did not take a picture of the method but here is the result, the new shaft at the top and the original below. I had to make the new shaft because a previous owner had hard chromed the the shaft above the gear to fit the bronze bush, thereby making it impossible to remove the worn out skew gear for the magneto drive cross shaft! I had to make a new bush and the driving dog at the top, both of which were oversize to fit the chromed shaft.

For me this is half the fun of restoring old things.

Mike

High time for an update.  Lot's of real work interfered with working on the Lambda, hence the long silence.  This does not mean nothing has happened: the diff got mounted in the mean time, and I'm working now on the conversion of the pinion housing to use tapered bearings. (no pic's, I'll make some next time)

I also tried to really finish off some previous work, in blasting and painting the body reinforcement behind the seats, finishing the 'cable operated stops' for the roof support, and re-installing all that.
Another long pending item was a suitable bracket for the spotlight, and a way to fix it to the body.  This had to be done before final blasting and painting of the windscreen support bracket, which is now hopefully definitely fitted....

Last week I made up the wooden boards behind the pedals, trimmed the holes in 'm for the pedals, and primed and painted together with the front floor boards and the panel behind the seats.  I also made up a lock to fix the latter panel into position, so that hard braking will not cause everything in the luggage compartment to come out!

It always amazes me how much time small items like this take to properly make, trial fit, take out again for painting and refitting....which often makes me wonder how much money it would cost to have this done professionaly....

Today I finally fitted the floorboards and cut the rubber mats to size, and again, making up the surrounds for the pedals in aluminium took up a good part of the time, but happy with the result.
I now find the (new) rubber mats looking much too shiny, but a quick test blasting them with glass bead gives them a much more matt appearance!

Another thing that took some thinking was finding a good way to do the riveting of the front frame reinforcement.  I ordered tru the internet some adaptors to do this using an air hammer/chisel, but found this way to brute to use on the already painted body, and the result was also highly depending on how good the 'counter weight' was being held....this led me to test if the hydraulic press would cope with it's 25 tons power, and it did the job perfectly.  Since it was impossible to bring the car to the press, I turned up a holder for the hollowed tool to fit in the treaded cylinder of the press, and welded up a bracket to hold the cylinder.  It is a massive and heavy piece off equipment, but I tested it and it works a treat!  It will be a two man job however....

One and a half day uninterupted Lambda time, now that was a long time ago!

Yesterday I finally fitted the footboards, and glued the rubber mat to them (I left it in one piece for now)  It then took some final adjustments to the pedals to get everything going without too much interference at the pedal surrounds, but all seems well now.
Prior to fitting the rubber I blasted it with glass beat, as I found it way to shiny...that wouldn't have lasted long anyway, but I like the matted look much better!

This morning I started on the roof support bar, which has been lying on the bench way too long.  I made up the end pieces out of solid 30x15 mm steel bar, with a more pronounced bend in them to better match the curve of the body.  Took quite a bit of a lever to get the bend in!  I then ground it more or less into shape before cutting it to lenght and weld it to the elliptic tube.  Then final grounding till the result looks acceptable.  For the fixing scews a piece of solid metal was welded into place inside the tube, as I found the 1.6mm wall thickness a bit thin...

Time left over was used to properly paint the radiator reinforcement plate.

Happy with the progress...

Even with the news that Fobello 2021 will be postponed to 2022, which means one year extra to finish of the car, I felt something had to be done today.  Yesterday I already prepared the rivets and set the press up, and today with help from son and later daughter (no screens so very very very very boring it is to help papa......) I got the rivets in.  It took two modifications to the C-press to get it to do the job right...so the nice yellow colour is now less nice but it did the job!
More imoprtant is that I feel the rivets are very well compessed with no er little damage to the paintwork.  Later on I'll touch up the rivets with a small brush...

More was done: I drew up a little 'rotating contact' for the horn wire in the steering shaft, it is swiftly written down but took me a few hours to come up with a solution and make the drawings...

The rear diff pinion housing got some sort of Bill Smith modification to create a better oil flow to and from the front bearing.  All rear axle parts will be delivered to a specialised guy in Holland who will assemble it and set it up.  We planned to do this together so htat I could learn about it, but with covid now in fifth gear again we decided to be carefull.....a great learning opportunity missed....

You will notice a second Lambda in the background, which is not mine and is merely a visitor as he owner wanted to check out my roof support system and see if he would copy it.  The car is one of the three Casaro copy's and has exactly the same body.  The story is all three were built during winter in the dining room of a hotel in Italy.....
For me it is a welcome visitor, very nice to be able to check out some details....

We have a saying in Belgium  'Met passen en meten wordt veel tijd verscheten'.  A liberate translation: measuring and fitting a lot of time is wasted, which was certainly true today.  Before finally mounting the steering box I wanted to tick one item of the list, and come up with a good solution for the claxon wire connection.  Not sure how this was originally, I only found a bit of completely rottened reddisch plastic tube in the shaft when cleaning the steering gear.
As the shaft is rotating but the screwed on end cap is not I decided to make a rotating contact.

In the rotating shaft comes a plastic sleeve in which a brass contact piece is fitted (with a 3mm hole and a little srcew to fit and fasten the wire to the horn button)
In the end cap, which has a 12mm hole, I also fitted a plastic sleeve with a brass core, in which at one side fits a 6mm carcon brush I stole from an old distributor cap, and on the other side has a connection for the wire.

It has a little step to center a spring which keeps this assy under pressure to prevent it from wanting to rotate (as the plastic sleeve was a press fit into the end cap this was probably not necessary)

After fitting it all together the Ohm-meter confirmed we had a go!

This was an excellent exercise for my non existing lathe skills, but as I now invested in some proper tooling I find it very rewarding to make such things up, even if it takes me a ridiculous amount of time....

If anyone is interested in this mod I have a dwawing of the parts....

The rest of the day (not much...) was used to make a proper housing for the electric fuel pump, which I want under the car, where it should be.  I found a suitable location just behind the rear axle, where there is a void above the floor level so well protected.

Today a milling exercise!

Last week I had a well known Lambda restorer on visit, (Leo Schildkamp) and he promptly spotted a missing part, that I was not aware of.  It is a little plate that sits at the underside of the rear spring package, and keeps the two U-bolts in position.  It all seems very logical now, but thanks to Leo for spotting this, as I would have mounted the springs without.  The dangers of buying a basket case car....

High time for an update!

Although not everything always goes according to plan good progress has been made.  After mounting the steering arm I found too much play in the center position of the steering gear, and even after trying several positions I did not get it to my liking.  I thus took the spare steering gear apart, which looked much more promising I must admit.  (the first one came dismanteled with the car and I found it better to put that one together)
So the whole process of cleaning, blasting, making anti oil leak mods, painting and reassembling was done again, and hura, a much tighter result!
That being done the next step was to fit the steering column.  Since the mounting hole in the dash for the bearing holder had been lowered, fitting it with the original spring proved quite a challenge, resulting in several mounting/dismounting operations and (slight) modifications to the bearing carrier to take up more 'angle'.  In the end I quickly welded together a special tool which allowed just that little bit of extra power to compress the spring and get the nut seated properly.  Available if anyone needs it!

More cleaning and painting was done, not very interesting, but this resulted in the assembly of some steering parts and the rear brake transfer shafts, which are now ready for installation.
I did the final preps, cleaned up damaged treads of the rear axle housing and shafts, before taking it to a friend in Holland for final assembly.  Three days later the good news came that the rear axle is ready!
The rear axle is now using tapered bearings, and has the Bill Smith mods for better oil flow to and from the pinion bearings.

This prompted me to spend some time on the little brake actuator camshafts.  Getting the rear ones, that were in a miserable state, disassembled proved a real challenge.  I ended up using a disk grinder to get the completely locked up rollers and shafts out, and assembled with other shafts and rollers....all cleaned now and ready for fitment to the fresh axle.

Today some time was spend on assembly of the fuel pump assy, which will be fitted under the car on the drivers side, and the construction of a spare wheel carrier.

A long searched for part has been sourced in Germany, the headlight dimming swith.  I did have the internals but missed the cover, and now a complete 'NOS' turned up on ebay...the wonders of the internet.  After receiving the unit it puzzled me how the wires had to enter the unit.  Luckily my friend Iain in Oz knew the answer: originally a backelite spacer was under the unit.  Chances to find this are way below zero so I made something up out of black HDPE that will do the job....

Yesterday the rear axle came back, still have to fit the halfshafts and outer bearings, but the diff is completely set up.  It now also has modern lipseals all round, far enough to the inside, and in dismounable separate steel rings (sealed with an O-ring)

Today I spend most of the day inspecting and cleaning brake drums and shoes....

The big question now is: paint the complete drum matt black or leave the nice looking ALU in sight???
I know originally they were all black so I feel thats the way to go, but the ALU cooling ribs look soo nice now that they are all cleaned and blasted......

Opinions please!

Sorry Koen , but you asked for an opinion , it it is not necessarily the right one (!) but I'd go for black ....

All black is cooler, man...

How long is an unpainted ally surface going to stay bright, shiny and uncorroded? I'd go black and use something like barbecue paint that'll stand the temperatures generated?
Guy

Might black dissipate heat better too?

Frank, that is exactly why they were painted matt black, to better dissipate heat.  I found a 2K brake caliper paint in the shop where I get all my 2K paint cans, I guess that should do the job.

So Back to Black they will go!


Thanks for all your thoughts!

I put a Hardy Spicer rear propshaft on and didn't use the original input spider.

Hi Tony,

That was my initial plan too, but I decided for the sake of progress I will first put it together as it was originally, and maybe later adapt a spare shaft.

Koen: people tell me that the rear propshaft joint is a horrid thing and stresses the pinion bearings.
Personally I struggle with anything on a Lambda possibly being horrid, but my car had something off a Ford, which was. (Condition-wise, I mean: Fords aren't horrid either, we have two of them). So I hadn't much of a decision to make and that is mostly why I went the Hardy Spicer route, using the front propshaft off an Austin Gypsy (remember?) which I removed and bought in Aylesbury scrapyard years ago. It's a measure of how long I took to rebuild my Lambda that Austin Gypsies could still be found in scrapyards when I got as far as the transmission.

Lambda propshafts are seriously heavy, so putting a Hardy Spicer on is a sensible idea.

I fully agree, and it wonders me how the variation in lenght is coped with when the body is moving up and down, is al that taken up by the hardy disk?

It was always my intention to change to a spider joint, although Leo Schildkamp has done the Peking to Paris rally on disks and never had a problem.  In his recent Lamura he has a modern spider joint which broke after only 1000 km's, luckily on accelerating, as it could have done horrific damage breaking at speed.  He now has made a bracket under the tunnel to retain the shaft in the tunnel might it happen again.  My rear axle now has heavy tapered bearings on the pinion which will cope much better with the forces induced by the disk I'm sure, but again, I plan to change it in the future.

In case you can no long find a Gypsy propshaft, Dunning and Fairbank in Leeds are good at anything to do with propshafts. I've had several from them with complete success. They even balanced the Augusta's fabric joint shaft for me.

Mike

I have been talking to this chap michael@northwestpropshafts.com about replacing my front propshaft on the saloon.  I had already replaced the rear shaft with a modern Hardy Spicer but this time have contented myself with retaining the original front shaft (with a modified flange on the back to connect to the hardy Spicer) and replacing the steady bearing - so fr it is fine.   However, Michael is now familiar with many of the problems and could probably provide you with a complete (teo part) shaft more or less off the shelf if you give him your dimensions.    You will need new flanges on gearbox and back axle of course but it is a standard taper.
The tourer has a complete modern shaft (from Oz where the car came from) and it works very well indeed.

A small update.  Not much progress on my car the past two weeks, but some small jobs got attention.

Cleaning, selecting and painting steering joints and rods.
Final fitting of some electrical conduits, with some surpises as in my iniitial construction I did not account for the footboard, so some had to be slightly adapted (and repainted.....)
Fabrication of internals for the rear lights and front direction indicators.  First plan, there was to fit those with ordinary bulbs, but the available space did not allow this (originally they where equipped with one single lamp only, but now the rear lamps will be used as running light/brake light and direction indicator...
For the front direction indicator I found suitable bosch L75 lamps with white glasses, however the available internal space did not allow for a 21W bulb to be fitted.

I then set out on the construction of round PCB's with LED's, and while doing some research for this I came accross complete units readily available (from China...)  These where so cheap it seemed foolish to make something myself, as the empty boards alone would have been more costly...

Order placed, good communication and follow up from my new Chinese best friend Hannah, and swiftly delivered.  It took some experimenting with position and additional colour filtration to disguise the LED's when on, but very pleased wiuth the result I must say.  (foto's to follow, stuff is being painted now)

Very curious about opinions on this!

Another question: can anyone advise me on rim size/with?  The car (as deducted from the original press picture) had 14x50 tyres.  There is only very little 500mm tyres on offer.  I think it might be wiser to convert to 19" rims.  I do not find info on the width of the original 14x50 tyres, and find now only tyres labeled 14/15/16x50, which are too wide IMO.  Think a 19" 450 tyre would be good.  All info welcomed, as this is something I might want to do pre Brexit.....

I think 21 inch wheels are more like the original metric ones. There are a few choices of tyres in that size still available, including Michelin and Blockley.

Also consider Firestone and look at Longstone Tyres website where they list the actual dimension of tyre and tread width which can vary surprisingly between different brands.

I had Dunlop F4, size 5.25 x 21 on a Twenty Hp RR which were due for replacement but also in my opinion looked too fat so instead I fitted the Firestones which were slimmer and lightened the steering as well as looking better. They were perfectly OK and as well as being slightly slimmer than other makes and have a more period looking tread.

Also consider the rolling diameter which also varies, changing the effective gear ratio (MPH per 1000rpm)

Dunlop F4 are no longer made but there is an Ensign version which looks identical.

The competition style tyre with the square block tread tend to make more road noise than the tradition type of tread which may or may not worry you.

There is also a considerable variation in cost - Lucas tyres are very inexpensive but I have no experience of them.

Perhaps talk to Dougal Cawley at Longstone.

Mike

Mike, indeed the Firestone caught my attention, and as you say it is much slimmer then the rest.  The Longstone website is very infomative in this respect.

For wheels: is Richards Bros the way to go or are there others? 

From the practical point of view, 4.50/500 x 20 is the size to go for.  Looks pretty good, reasonably slim tyre and, most important of all, readily available and likely to be so for the forseeable future and at a reasonable price.   My VIIth torpedo came from Oz on 500x22, now unobtainable.  All I can find is 600 x 22 which is really too fat and extremely expensive.    In fact, when the present set wears out it will be cheaper to rebuild the wheels 500 x 20!     Colonial models did have bigger wheels and the 500 x 22 was the nearest equivalent to the original metric size.    Nice high gearing though, needs the new alloy head to power it.

There is also Motor Wheel Services but I have no recent experience of them. Richards have done several good jobs for me and both firms have been around for a long time.

Mike

David,

I have a 12/47 crownwheel/pinion set in the diff now, so I guess wheels should not be too big...it will indeed go between 19" or 20".  Like the firestone option most I must admit as they are slim.
Nobody seems to know the original width of the rims....

Further tyre investigations led me on the Blockley site.

In general I find their racy profile a bit too much, but they now also have a 21" tyre: https://www.blockleytyre.com/product/440-450-x-21 (https://www.blockleytyre.com/product/440-450-x-21) which I find better looking and is rather slim with only 120 mm overall width.
Diameter is 775 mm which is very close to what the original tyres were with 780 mm about (measured that on the press pic related to wheelbase)

If Blockley is as good as they always shout out themselves (and I mean road use, I'm not a race man...) they offer very good value with this tyre.  Has anyone here used them?

This weekend I took on something that had been lying around idle for way too long...window frames.

I had the steel laser cut months ago, but was a bit unsure how to proceed with welding (MIG or hard soldering) but after talking to an expert mig was the weapon of choice.
I drew reinforcements in the frames to prevent them distorting but in the end they came out quite well.  I did the welding in short runs, and changed sides all the time, allowing cooling off time in between.

Sanding went well, it is a matter of working in an organised manner (NOT my strong point...) but here it really pays of.

The pivoting points still have to be welded in, but I did something wrong in the design so luckily I noticed in time...they are now ready for the laser again, still fighting with the drawing of the square windscreen though...

Magnificent work! My workshop is of wooden construction so I gave up welding when we moved here - I never was much good at it! Any silver soldering is done outdoors. Luckily we have a brilliant welder not too far away.

Mike

Lovely , as always ....

Lovely.  Just lovely...

Can anyone tell me how fine it should be polished before I can hand it to the plater?  I have absolutely no knowledge....but I did get me a second hand polishing mill.  Or is it good enough as it its now?

Nice work. The plating will not change the finish to any significant degree, it will look like it does now except a different colour.
To get a good final finish it needs polishing so that it is difficult to tell whether or not it has been plated.

I'd have thought the plater would be the best person to advise on that. I believe it is standard for them to polish the item anyway before plating (but I understand that you might want to do some of the work yourself rather than pay for someone else's labour).

Nice picture!  I did the climb on foot, but good of you to take Kim and Bill along!

are these 21" wheels John?

Yes, 21".

Still in doubt about the wheels.  With the 'classic' tyres on offer now they should be indeed 20" or 21" (to match the original wheel diameter)  I like the Blockley 21" 'A ford' tyre more (for looks) then the original blockleys, But 20" rim size is closest to original. 

Today major progress was made.  New lower tube welded into place!  I already blasted and primered the two halves, then fixed the frame togheter (while mounted on the body) with M5 bolts.  We this morning did final grinding and applied flowing agent before reassembly with the bolts.  Then the frame was fitted and fixed again to the body, and the 5mm holes drilled out to 6mm to hammer in 6mm steel grooved pins.  Then after dismounting again the lot could be welded.  A bit labourous but the only way I felt confident it would fit after welding.   The frame will now need some final cleaning up here and there before being painted (and then fitted!!!!)

With my very skilled welding friend over some other tasks were done such as tig welding a nipple to the rear of the aux fuel tank (which I will use to install an RVS float switch to control the fuel pump.)
He also did the soldering of some brass t-piece for the wire loom conduit, and the soldering on the radiator surround for the wiring.

Now very little excuses are left for me not to make good progress in the coming weeks.

A setback was that an untill today undiscovered crack was found in the left front wheel carrier, I have another one hope this one will clean up ok....better to find out about it now I guess....

I think that is brazing, not welding.   It should be brazing anyway!

correct David, sometimes the words don't come....thanks for reminding me.

Today I did some dry building and checking of the alignment of the two rings (per side), to see if they need adjustment before painting the frame.  And off course as one would expect some 'adjustment' will need to be made, albeit not very much.  One side is very close to perfect (LHS of car) on the right side the top ring will need some carefull adjusting.  Next week I'll have better tools to check, and figure out the best way to correct.
Some pictures of the crack that was found in one of the stub axles.  There's in total 8 here, and must say that there is something to say about each of them....there is a very good reason these are made new.

I had one of those on the VIIth torpedo but managed to limp home...   Lucky I had a spare but have just ordered new ones for both cars!

Big day!  Today I started final adjustments on the subframe, in order to re-align both rings to achieve a sliding pillar.  Good tooling makes the job easier, but still it takes quite a bit of assembling and disassembling to get it more or less Ok.  I will attempt to get it better still tomorrow, however I've now arrived at the point where I can easily slide up and down, but by turning the pillar some 'friction' spots can still be found.

I made supports to fix the frame to the shop floor as it takes quite a bit of force with the big lever do get the job done.  Last picture shows initial mis-alignment on the RH side....

After measuring up my original pillars and consulting John Wilkinson of New Vintage Parts it was decided to re-use the pillars and order new Stub Axles only.

Hopefully tomorrow will see the adjustments finished so I can get the frame painted and mounted, then the cable loom can go in!

Rear springs are still with the specialist firm to get corrected so no news there. 

Please remember that the pillars need to lean about 3 degrees backwards relative to the ground when the car is on its wheels, i.e.3 degrees positive castor.    The contact patch on the tyre is then behind the line of the pillar/steering axis so the wheel trails a little and is stable - think of a bicycle front wheel.   This is not necessarily the same as 3 degrees backwards relative to the chassis frame.    You will need to look at the orientation of the front radiator frame relative to the road.    One of my cars was rebuilt with the frame and hence the pillars at right angles to the chassis and it took me 20 years to realise why the steering was unstable and needed my hands on the wheel at all times as the rear of the car sits higher than the front.     Camber is taken care of by the stub axles (or should be!) with the pillars vertical in the fore and aft plane.

Thanks for that David!  It is indeed difficult to check but I did some sort of a measurement today and with the car's back being 5 cm higher than the front the pillars are 2.5° tilted backward.  Relative to the radiator this would be 3.5°  This is on the LHS.  On the RHS the leaning back is slightly less with 2° and 3° relative to the radiator frame.  So it is not completely in one plane, but I this might also be a measurement error....

Today I spend more time on 'fine tuning' of the pillars and was able to still better it with very minor adjustments.  On both sides there is now still a very small spot with more, but marginal friction, and this is only in one spot on the 360° movement of the pillar (no stub axle attached) so with some planning and testing I will be able to mouint the pillar to the stub axle in a position so that the 'touching spot' is never reached in normal operation.  With this in mind I stopped fiddling, and will try to get it painted this week.

"it took me 20 years to realise why"

Just how satisfying was it when finally right...  I can't imagine.

Today removed the subframe for painting, and made the necessary shim plates here and there.

I also trial fitted the headlamp/wing brackets, to which I made an extension to fir the indicator lamps. 

I then turned my attention to the damper pistons inside the pillars, as the pistons should get removed to change the diaphragm valves.

It is a normal right hand tread but it won't come.  I first made up an alu block to properly clamp the shaft, wich worked well but I found the force needed too big and feared for snapping the shaft (it is hollow)

I then filed two flat side on the wider part of the shaft just below the piston, and made up a proper tool to fit the piston holes, but again, I feel I used about the admissable force nearing to break something and gave up.  A little heat applied to the piston was also tried without avail....

Any tips?

Koen

If you are sure RH thread - and no reason why not - I would try (induction ?) heat plus impact driver and gently try shocking it ....

Do you have a spare ?? If not , do you ABSOLUTELY have to remove it ?

IIRC I held the damper rod in the lathe chuck tightly, locked the headstock, and then made a peg spanner to operate on the "thimble" holes. No reason for it not to be right hand thread, although I don't know for certain. The thread is fine, so can be hard to undo.

And yes, Simon, if you want to replace the damper flap valves, you have to remove the thimble.

It's off.
I knew it was RH tread as I have a spare loose piston.  But these rods are the best I had so wanted to use those, and the diaphragm was broken.  On Leo Schildkamp's advise made a more or less proper tool and tried the air hammer (gently) to no avail, so got out the big fellow.  This is a Facom hand power multiplier, and it has never, never let me down.  One tick and there it was, once loose it could be easily turned off by hand.  I wonder now how to tighten it again, as it is not locked in any way, and would rather not use loctite since those valves do break from time to time....

Just got word the stub axles are in the mail!

Today started on a job pushed ahaed of me way too long, ie to prepare some stuff to be plated...window frames are not ready yet but a lot of small stuff could already get done, and I want the wheel spinners de-chromed in order to repair them where necesary, and fit the new centers.

As your car is a VIIth series the finish should be nickel, not chrome - quite a different colour.   Make sure they put a good thick layer of copper on first.   My VIIth was restored in Oz and the nickel was put straight onto the steel.   No doubt that would last well in the sunshine of Adelaide but it did not survive many British winters and I had to get it redone.   Ten years later it is still entirely sound.

Hi David, yes nickel it will be, although my car is an 8th  ;) Later 8th can have chrome I heard but I like the look of Nickel much more.  But some of the parts with the car came already chromed, so will be 'converted'

Ah, I read VIIth in an earlier post.   My VIIIth is chrome but it was first registered November 1930.

Mine is German Silver, so that was probably an option, too.

I also prefer nickel plating to chrome but there seems to be more than one variety of it. The original 1920s style nickel plating is dull, has to be buffed up to make shiny and then polished ever after. The more common modern variety is bright nickel which comes out of the vat shiny and never seems to tarnish or need polishing. I have that on my Salmson radiator which has never needed polishing in 35 years. I suppose this difference is due to a mix of metals in the plating vat rather than just plain nickel.

One of the hubcaps of the Augusta had evidently been replated chrome direct onto steel and as soon as the car escaped Italy the plating fell off and is now being redone with a copper base coat.

German silver oddly contains much more copper than nickel and is the metal used for radiator shells by RR before stainless steel came into use in the very late 1920's. It does like to be polished.

Mike

How does 'German silver' look, is it even more yellowish then Nickel even?

Never heard about that, but must confess this is all new to me...very steep learning curve with the Lambda (something like Covid new cases graphs....)

Nick Benwell told me that indeed late VIII th cars had chrome...

New stub axles arrived today, finally some parts that don't need scratching and peeling and cleaning before being painted......they look the part, will make some pics tomorrow!

It looks like nickel. I only found out when a heavy tripod fell from its support in the roof of my garage onto the Lambda and dented the radiator surround. Duncan Ricketts bashed it out straight and told me what it was. I had assumed it would need to be replated!

Looks like this - my last 20HP Rolls Royce. The radiator shell is german silver but the shutters other fittings and headlights are nickel plate. There is very little difference. Note the headlights are the original nickel - a bit mellowed and a lovely silky finish. The running board edge beadings are modern bright nickel but toned down a bit by judicious abrasion. A very original car seen at Tan Hill the highest pub in England.



Mike

Aha, thanks for that!   Do I understand correct German silver is a material rather than a plating? 

Yes!

This website https://www.dorsetware.com/types-nickel-plating/ explains the difference between the vintage period nickel plating which they describe as "dull nickel" and the modern "bright nickel" . It's down to the chemicals they use rather than additional metal elements like copper or zinc which are present  in German Silver. The latter has typically 60% copper, 20% nickel and 20% zinc accordinng to Wikipedia so very different to nickel plating even though similar in colour.

Mike

I think all the radiator shells are German Silver but the windscreen frame etc. is chrome on the VIIIth, nickel on the VIIth.

Not so much done over the weekend as some urgent work came up.  However in preparation of the nickel plating to be send out I took apart the Bosch spotlight.  Being absolutely amazed by the amount of bits this generated, I could not resist a staged picture of it all.  For the turning and tilting movement it even has two miniature thrust bearings....on the pic the rear view mirror is missing, as it was broken and would have added quite a bit more parts!  Soend some time on fabricating some special bolts here for various purposes also needing to get plated.

A question related to this: the reflector of this lamp and of the headlights are in fact in very good condition for their age, however dirty.  Can anyone advise on a good way to clean/polish these?

Some pics of the beautifull stub axless: so nicely made that it's almost a crime to hide them in the car....

Nothing simple on a Lancia!

Mike

The stub-axles should go on the wall

I think it is impossible to polish the reflectors, it will merely remove the reflective coating.    They should be re-plated with silver.

David,  following some experiments on a very poor refector I tend to agree.  Best result I had is with Nevrdull.  Sort of a cotton soaked in liquid.  I must say carefull polishing did drastically improve the condition of the reflector, and probably it is ok to use it like it is now, but I did not succeed in getting the desired 'as new' shine.

First picture is of an original reflector in untouched condition (at least not by me....)
Second pic is of a hand polished one.  It is not a big difference and hard to show in a picture, but it misses the bright shine...

Worth mentioning here is that a little heat proved the best way to separate the glass from the lens.

I did some investigating: in Germany there is a compant that offers reconditioning of reflectors using a procedure of damping on aluminium under vacuum.  This is not overly expensive at 70 Euro per reflector.
I did find two companies in the UK offering re-silvering, vintage-headlap restoration and concours plating.  Anyone with experience in this field or a recommendation?

Spend more time on preparing stuff to be plated, making up some bolts and packing all up.

I have no personal experience of either but these two companies are well though of in the uk. Do make sure you get the proper silver plating not the aluminisation which some companies offer.

Mike


Genius of the Lamp
https://www.geniusofthelamp.co.uk/

This company is very well known for immaculate restoration of vintage lamps - very good but no doubt expensive.

------------

KEITH ARDLEY

Address: Classic Car Spares, Bedford House, 14, Bridge Road, Mepal, Ely, Cambs CB6 2AR
Phone: 01353 778493
Email: keith@ardley8142.fsnet.co.uk
Services: Resilvering, refurbishing and sales of lamps and Mirrors

Keith Ardley is well recommended by VSCC members for good service.

Incidentally, I looked today at the fittings on the underbonnet oil tank on the VIIIth and they are in native brass and not plated.    Plating them may well clog the threads as well as being not original.

@ Mike, thanks, I sent Keith an email!  I always prefer working with comanies that do not shout out they're the best....

@ David: Yes I have been in doubt about this.  Although on my parts there is traces of plating on one of the little valves...also the one on the gearbox is plated.
Maybe worth asking Bill Jamieson, in any case the car in his book (his own 8th which was a highly original car foto p 88) has plated fittings.  Maybe it was to order?
It's from this picture I decided to send the tank stuff along....maybe better to do some asking around....

No reply from Keith regarding the silvering of reflectors, but I got a reply from Concours plating, so I'll try them and let you all know the result.

Yesterday at least the subframe and one stub axle got primered.  Just gave them their final coat of matt black but no vpics yet...

I also dis some cleaning up on two 'aftermarket' front suspension caps.  Has anyone seen these before?  They were quite battered but after some hamering now more or less back into shape.  I plan to send them along with the rest to the plater later this week, see if he can make something of them.
My guess is they are a sort of dirt guard or leak protection?  In any case too nice and rare not to resque....

More work was done on cleaning, blasting and painting rear lights and headlights etc...time consuming business!

Today I attacked a long postponed job ie fitting the rear brake transfer tubes under the car.  It seems very simple, but as apparently none of the original mounting holes (or threaded studs) survived the body restoration, it required some measuring to get them in the proper position and aligned.  I had new threaded studs turned up with a little support in the middle as original, and got some castelated nuts from a UK supplier with the correct withworth thread.
Not very handy to work underneath the car with it being only 30 cm from the ground, but transferring it to the lift also seemed ridiculous....
Anyway all got fitted and also the front brake tranfer tube  is now properly aligned and secured with castle nuts.

Painting of the front frame turned out well, but I'll let it harden for another night...then the Lambda will get to look a bit more like one!

On my 5th series torpedo currently being restored, I discovered body colour (lightish blue-grey) under all the other layers of paint on the trapeze and front suspension. So I searched all the photos I could of Lambdas painted in light colours and none of them had black trapezes or front suspensions. This body colour extended to the drag link and steering arm but not I think the drop arm which seemed to be black like the steering column and box. The brakes and backplates at Falchetto's insistence (read his son's commentaries) were very properly black to lose heat.
The rear tube seemed originally to be black - no evidence of any blue colour anywhere down to the bare metal.
James Woollard remembers a long line of Lambda taxis were this blue-grey colour, all lined up on the quayside when he landed at Capri in about 1950! I may have exaggerated the date.

Jonathan, yes this was a difficult choice, and it was already brought up early in this post.  Indeed I think originally the frames had body colour, and even the suspension parts.  I found a lot of dark brown on some of the parts that came with my project.  As my car is a bitsa anyway, it is difficult to find out.  In my case it was a combination of factors that let me to goin for the black option:
With the car body already painted 20 years ago and stored since it would have been difficult to match the colour anyway.
I found it difficult to decide where the line would be between body coloured components and black components.
I sort of liked the Giddings replica which also has matt black on the front suspension.
It made the job easier as I do all blasting and prepping here in the workshop and the matt black is quite 'forgiving' (I use 2K good quality paint cans and must say I'm often impressed by the finish that can be achieved, even with my very limited painting capacities....)

But, it's only paint, and as the paint on the rest of the body is not perfect (but very acceptable) there might come a time it gets rapainted all over...

Your point on the rear chassis tube is a good one: weird indeed that this was originally black then.

just could'nt resist the pic...

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Nooooooo too. But intrigued to know what the plans are for the 8.32 motor!
Guy

It would be a very tight fit I fear!

I bought two 8.82 seven (!) years ago, when I was still regularly working on them for customers.  It was one good body without engine and an accident car with a good engine.  They were in a warehouse in Antwerp, comletely stacked with cars and stuff, and in the back of the warehouse.  As I had no time or lust to work a full week to get the cars out, I said to the owner: "give me a ring when I can come and pick 'm up'.  The ring came last week....

There's still another one here that was lacking some parts which was the prime reason for me to buy the lot.  So if anyone is interested two full cars here in parts....
I sort of lost intrest in 'plastic' cars so will try to sell them as a lot, which won't be easy I fear...maybe I'll have to put the easiest one together and get it running.

Does the car without an engine happen to have a black leather interior? I have a friend who is considering an 8:32.

There are a couple of Stratos replicas around with the 8.32 unit but I believe that the crank is different to the usual Ferrari 308/328 motors so it's not a screamer that those engines are? I don't think there are any further people looking for them now for replica builds, hope you manage to get 2 832's back on the road!
Guy

Today I made a trip to the local radiator man here with my radiator.  It was newly made and came with the car, however it does not fit in!!!!

It turnes out the used grid (more modern than original and NO honeycomb look) was ordered too big, so apart from some items we would have to rebuild the complete radiator....

Before we venture on this: is there a supplier where one can simply order a complete 8th series radiator? (so for a separate radiator surround, as opposed to the earlier ones)

It it true that even the original radiators used a sort of a fake honeycomb grid?  (I have a very old example here that has a honeycomb look but straight tubes behind it....)

Because if we're going to do this it might as well be right first time.

Many thanks,

Koen

Bad luck Koen. When buying a restored or part restored car it's best to expect the unexpected - at least then you won't be disappointed! The Augusta has not been too bad in that respect but I once bought a car which turned out to have a broken kingpin in the front axle which had been "repaired" by brazing.

Mike

Yes, the original radiator is a gilled tube with a honeycomb effect on the front.    I do not think it is possible to order a "Lambda Radiator"  off the shelf as it were.    Vintage Car Radiators http://www.vintagecarradiatorcompany.co.uk has in the past rebuilt a couple of mine and Omicron got a new one for my VIIIth car when it was crashed some 25 years ago but I do not know from where.   Both were true honeycombs as I do not think it is possible to get the fake honeycomb front any more.  A shame because it blocks more easily. A couple of places to start!   Expect to pay a lot of money, my last recore was in the region of £3000 I think.

A fresh problem has unearthed....

I had the rear spring packs checked over and new main leaves made.  On return they would fit the dumb irons at the front but would point heavely upwards at the back.  Not having dissambled a Lambda I knew no better then that the eyes on the new main leaves had been made wrongly.

However further investigations now have led to the conclusion that there have been different generations of dumb irons, and that I have for unknown reasons early ones with a flat bottom, as opposed to the latter ones which present a sloping bottom.

Could this be confirmed?  As if this is correct I will have to track down correct ones....

Pictures show my ones, and another one with a heavily slope.  Standard later ones have a slope, but not so steep apparently...

Any info or additional pics most welcome!

Did some spring testing the past couple of days...

The aim is to get the springs to match the (low) weight of the car as good as possible before cleaning them and painting.
At the front I want to use consortium LT rated springs, in fact intended for the early cars.  I did some checks and found them to be stronger than they ought to be, which is now investigated by the suplier.

The rear spring pack will probably loose one or two blades, to arrive at the intended 420kg for a fully flattened spring.
I also tried inversing a bottom leave and put it on top to avoid weakening the pack but this does strange things...
A time consuming business as it requires the pack to be taken apart and reassembled time after time...

Don't get too exited looking at the pictures, as it is just a quick trial fit!
I wanted to learn where exactly the exhaust pipe would end up, and it seemed easier to just drop in the engine quickly then measuring it all up.  The reason I wanted to know is that I wanted to find an alternative routing for the thick cable running from the battery to the starter motor.  Originally the trajectory is through the inside of the car at the passenger side (battery is below the driver seat on an 8th series), but seen I want to add brake lights, direction indicators and an electric fuel pump there is quite a bit more cabling running to the back of the car, resulting in too little free space for the 35mm² battery cable to pass....
I now routed it in a steel conduit underneath the car, made up of a U-profile, and just enough out of the way of the exhaust (and almost out of sight)

Yesterday and this afternoon prepared the conduit with the wires to the rear.  Quite a few more wires than original, as I added stop lights, direction indicators and a fuel pump.  As I did not want to make connections at the rear I decided to have one wire (and fuse) per lamp.  I used a matt nickel plated flexible conduit, and made brass T-joints.  No wire is visible which is in fact a shame with the AES supplied cotton braided wire...
At the same time I fitted a brass 6mm pipe for the nivex fuel gauging system, and an 8mm fuel line on the right hand side of the car.

As I did not like the look of the plated brackets I bought for fixing conduits and pipes, I made 'm off plain 1.5mm steel and will finish 'm with a matt clear paint.  So they will have to come out again....

I could not resit making an 'original' look wire conduit for the right hand side of the car, where normally there is none fitted, but since temperature capilaires, and oil pressure contact etc will be there, I thought they might better be protected (or hidden)

Fuel tank fitment is temporarily, it will need to come out again when the rear chassis tube, rear electrical conduit and rear licht brackets are finally fitted.  But it will now give me a good chance to measure up and design the filler tube.

Beautiful - as always !

Thanks Simon!  I'm just trying to meet your standards....

Small stuff can take time!  How many brackets does one need to fix in one car?  All in a row it is quite an impressive number.  Home made out of 1.5mm steel and now coated with RX5 after de-greasing....
The good new is that now they go in to stay put for hopefully a very long time!

Today I tackled one of these jobs I just kept postponing: making some brackets to fix the side panels in the car....
The problem was that whoever built the body did not make any provision at all, so something had to be made up.  With the sides curved in all directions not an easy task.  Long while ago I made an attempt in wood, which only confirmed what I already knew: I'm not a wood man...so I put it aside. 

So this morning I bade some L-profiles out of 1.5 mm steel, and shaped them carefully to fit the body by schrinking or stretching.  Measuring and fitting, and welding them together ate away the rest of the day, but pleased i left this behind me...
The idea is now to bend some clips in spring steel band so that on top and around the entry the panels the panels have to be slid in place, and that only at the bottom some screws will be visible....guess that will eat away another day!

Sorry to keep you idle for so long but it were busy times professionally, and there was only very limited Lambda time.
Good news came however, Bill Jamieson found the missing dumb iron in his spares, so that matter is resolved.  I was very, very happy with this news!

Yesterday the first batch of the nickel work came back, and I must say I'm very pleased with the result!  Furhtermore nothing seems to have gone missing.

Following Simon's practice I used the dinner table for a display, and no comments were made!  (I sort of sneaky started out by putting some small screws on the table, and before the misses could react half the table was taken....

For the rest the few hours available this week I used for making up the oil line between engine and pressure gauge, and incorperated a (2CV origin) oil pressure switch, as I feel my degraded brain will better respond to a red lamp then to a gauge when something goes really wrong...
This involved making some tiny brass conical conection pieces on the lathe, which took me off course way to long.....but without practicing I'll never learn!

a little progress today...one of the todo things still on the list was the bases for the windscreens...as I'm meanwhile preparing parts like headlamps, reservoirs, claxon etc to be professionaly painted I felt it would be best to do this all in one go...and then it struck me I would have to get the supports for the windscreens ready too!  As I plan to make two interchangeable solution this means a bit of work....

Today I made up the support for the full width screen, or at least the start of it. It just takes a lot of measuring and fiddling to get it to follow the shape of the body, but in the end it all worked out more or less as intended.

To be continued....

Good progress today on the folding windscreens.  The parts for the pivot points came through from the laser man, and I could not wait to see if I did better this time...(first ones I designed incorrectly)

After some trail fitting all looked well  so I welded the lot together.  I also had some engine cover lock hooks lasered, as the ones I had were either very poor or already bad reproductions.  I had the hooks lasered and welded a piece of tube in, then sanded them into shape.

A third project this weekend was finding a way to bend a 180° turn in 2mm aluminium, to make covers for the bases of the folding windscreen.  This required a purpose built bender, as the stuff I have here won't do this.   2 hours to built the bender, 5 minutes to bend the two plates.  Another tool I'll keep forever and probably never use again....

Next step is fitting them to the car!

Good day today!

After a lot of measuring and trial fitting got the small windows on as intended.  Lot's to do still, but at least now I have a hint on how it will look.  The fill width screen has been on as well, but forgot to make pictures...

Tomorrow I'll try to fit the alu panelling under the windows, that will give a more finished look...

Best not to count the hours that went into this so far.....

And a little something that popped up on the local ad site here.  A complete and brandnew Lambda in parts for 10 Euro, I just could'nt resist...

Lucky you!

Lucky you, it's an old model but quite wonderful. I too have one to build but have held off because I can't establish to my satisfaction the correct factory colour for the bare monocoque. It c an be built so the body slides off to reveal the monocoque like this. The question is, are you going to convert it in to a two seater?

It is a nice model, maybe I should assemble it one day.  And no, will not alter it to a two seater...

After another day of making cardboard templates, and discovering the car is not exactly symetrical (so no shortcuts are to be taken....) I got the alu panels in place...

Two cars for the price of one!  The big screen still needs fitting its messing frame.  Have to figure out height first as it will be a very tight fit in the back I discovered....

Bit more done on the window frames...
I was thinking if the seperate windows could have been lowered, so I fitted the wiper motor for a 'seating' test.  This confirmed (luckily) that I may not lower the windows any more, as then the wiper motor would be too much in the line of sight.

While at it I started fiddeling with the electrical wire to the motor, and made some (tiny) brackets to fit it.  I first fed the wire through a rubber grommet, but this was not very nice, so a little alumunium plate was hammered, feeding out the cable flat and giving a nicer touch (I think)
Al the alu will be painted in body coulour, the steel parts will be nickel plated.

More work done this week is blasting and painting of the seat frames, and making the ALU back panel for the passenger seat.

Hopefully tomorrow more work on the window frames!

Today some work done on the full width screen.  Find the appearance quite heavy, maybe it's the colour of the messing.  The messing profile is 20x20mm.  I wanted 18x18mm, but that does not exist....and 15x15 mm I found a bit thin on top....
Off course it's just for the rainy days or long trips...I guess it will be spending most of its time locked behind the seats....

Another interesting activity in the workshop today: my girl making honeycomb in wax for the bees....I'm still looking for radiator honycomb, sadly this won't work!

Again a little progres over the weekend.  I finally fixed the front subframe to the body.  As I did not thrust the 4.6grade domed bolts that are available (4.6 is what IKEA uses....)  I asked a friend who's good with the lathe to make me some decent bolts.  As base material he used 12.9 steel bolts.  I then still had to insert locking pins, paint 'm, cut to size and drill the little holes for the split pins, so by the time all 18 bolts were fitted a whole day had gone!

Now this allowed me to finally fit the copper conduit with the front wiring, which has been sitting on the bench for way too long.
Today  assembled the hand-brake lever and gearstick base and fitted it to the car, which then enabled me to do a trial fit of the (mostly still empty) gearbox.  This learned me that the interconnection tube will need slight shortening for the gearstick to be straight up in the mid position.  (the gearstick in the pic is a spare one, the other one still needs to be assembled)

Beautiful as always

I am sure it has been mentioned before but there is a slight backward lean (castor angle, 3 degrees) on the pillars isn't there?

Yes David there is.  Although I must admit it is not completely the same on both sides...(slight difference)
It will be more as the car is now on blocks and the front end is lower then where it will end up eventually.

@Simon: thanks, I still think we have the most beautifull hobby in the world, I enjoy every minute of putting this car together....

Another problem resolved!  A thing that bothered me since I got the car were the very crudely made steps to get into the car.  On another replica of the same car (the Peter Giddings Lambda) these are very refined, and to my feeling much closer to what it could have been original.  
So I had to give it a try!  After some consulting with my metalworking friend Cas, a small cutting disk for the milling machine was ordered (not even 15 euro including the tool holder...) and after some trials the inlays for the steps were made.
Today I bent the steps, ground one into shape and welded it to the plates attaching it to the body.  At least it withstood the test!

This week I felt some mechanical work was to be done, and with all front supension parts painted and waiting I thought this would be a good starting point.

First job attacked was testing with the 'empty' pillars in the suspension frame with the new bottom guides firmly fixed.  It was found that on tightening up the bottom guides, the pillars would seize in the guides.  A light hone of the guides cured this problem.  I then reassembled the pillar internals.  Basically there is two valves inside the pillar, one is coil spring operated, and the main valve consists of a ring made out of 0.16mm spring steel.  (where the new supplied spring plates measured 0.32mm....and were consequently disregarded)
Inside the bottom guides is a 'snubber' spring, which is originally a heavy gauge coil spring.  As damage to the precious pillars could occur when this spring breaks, I followed other Lambda owners who have replaced this spring with a PU variant, which is 'unbreakable'... I have decided to monitor this 'spring' closely, as most plastics are not happy when in contact with oil.  In the bottom of the guide I further made a small screw allowing water to be drained easily from time to time.

The original felt seal in the top gland of the pillar was replaced by a modern oil seal, and on top of that I placed a small felt seal, hoping this will help to lubricate the damper shaft.  The bottom plugs were replaced with a teflon inlay as opposed to the original red fibre bottom.  It needs mentioning here that the consortium supplied castle spanner had to be turned down in the lathe before it could be used.  I mention this here because in it's original form it could easily damage the very fine tread in the bottom of the pillars, with very dire consequences.  This issue was also reported to the consortium.

Then came the time to press the pillars into the brand new stub axles.  That went surprisingly well.
Last thing to to before offering the stub axle/pillar assembly to the suspension frame was fitting the small brake cable guide pulleys and their housings, which are locked in position with a circlip.
I found the pulleys to foul the new stub-axles, which would have been easily rectified without the pillars in situ....
After some consulting of the drawings and knowledgable people I this morning decided to get the dremel out and carefully mill away the offending material from the new stub axles.  Not my favourite way, but seen I did not want to press out the pillars again in fear of compromising their good tight fit.
All went well, and after some carefull grinding the result looked OK.  Findings were reported to New Vintage Parts who responded in the mean time they would look into this for future batches.

So following this I proceeded with the re-assembly, which all went well, untill I found the main sprins (brand new coonsortium supply) to foul the top snubber springs....
Seen compression tests had already learned me that these springs are not according the desired 'Light' rate, but somewhere in between 'Light' and 'Heavy', I now decided to order springs from another supplier.

The attentive reader will have noticed by now that these proceedings were not all going to plan, and to find part after part not up to specification (the bottom guides were the THIRD set delivered !!!!!) is rather frustrating I must admit.
I have now changed my attitude towards new parts: by expecting that they will not be usable at all, one at least has on some occasions a positive experience when a part unexpectedly performs or fits as it is intended!

Anyway even with the main springs not fitted I succeeded in fitting the steering arm and rod, so at least something happens now when the wheel is turned! 

Love those steps.  A real labour of love.

Last week I put the wings on, first of all to try the fit, secondly because the filler plates for the gaps where the subframe passes were missing.  Since I aim at getting all these small parts painted in one go I needed to make those.
The supporting plate under the wings were made with a very small edge (only 1 mm...) to carry these plates , so I chose to fix them to the body with an extra bolt for safety.

Luckily the wings did fit perfectly with the headlamp supports in place (this was the first time I could fit them with the subframe attached), and so I drilled all necessary holes, made and fitted the tiny 'nut with plate attached' inside the engine compartment.

Having fitted all this, I could now proceed with fitting the conduits for the electric cabling.  I did not mark the wires so will have to check 'm out one by one....
As the additional wires for ignition and direction indicaters seemed to fill the conduit quite well, I chose to route the heavy gauge battery cable to the starter motor under the car, in a purposedly made conduit.  It then enters the conduit from the bottom, so that it does not need to make an almost impossible 180° bend in the small alu angle piece.

I now attacked the restauration of the wheel spinners, as they need to go along with the rest of the stuff to be nickel plated shortly....quite a lot of material missing....

Pfft, it has been way too long since my last post, sorry for that!  It's just that time was quite limited, although between work quite a few things got done.

The wheel spinners were all welded up and ground to the correct size again, after which they had fresh centers soldered in and then they were ground AGAIN!, but at least they're ready for plating now.  I was surpised to find the original centers where pressed in.
The boot locks, which were not in the best condition, got new 'home made' shackels, and the hooks were welded up and reshaped, so that they regained their original tight (and secure) fit.  Will now also need plating.
The full width windscreen frame that I made, but was not happy with at all, got remade.  As I could not locate a profile to my liking I ended up getting some strips laser cut and welded the U-profile together.  Although a jig was made up in an attempt to keep things in shape, it sort of jumped out after cooling down, being 7 cm out of straight!  Luckily with some heat and carefull hammering it ended up as intended.  Having the profiles laser cut gave me the opportunity to add mounting points for the Bosch wiper motor in one go.  Needless to say this was a rather time consuming operation!  But I'm now happy with the result, and that's what matters.

I then attacked the gearbox re-assembly.  I followed Iain Simpsons advice (and write-up!), and left out the outer bearing on the input shaft, replacing it with a purposedly made bushing (see pic) Seen the shafts nose is carried in a bearing inisde the flywheel, support is well taken care off, and this setup allows for a slight misalignment between engine and gearbox.  I thought (wrongly!!!!) that a gear is just a gear, and selected the best looking ones and assembled the box.  Well I couldn't have been more wrong, and ended up building it three times, as very little deviations between individual gears made for a very noisy, or even unworkable combination.  But practice, and some specially designed and modified pullers helped, as I did the last dis-and re-assembly in exact two hours.

The rear chassis tube got renewed, painted and mounted to the body, so it now proudly carries it's chassis number again.  I already attached the rear spring hangers, all new bronze bushes off course.  I then could also fit the supports for the rear lights and number plate, and finish the electric conduits inside the rear body at least.

Finally the missing correct dumb irons for the rear springs arrived from Australia (with thanks to Iain Simpson and Bill Jamieson!!!) They needed rebushing, but otherwise were fine.  With these being the final parts needing to be painted in body colour, I'm currently prepping all the stuff to bring to the painters.  When these items return, hopefully soon, there will be a lot to do!

On the new parts manufacturing side I decided to make a press tool to fabricate the bolt locking rings for the brake drums.  I only had two original rings in a very shabby condition (mostly because they are abused, their function is to prevent the bolts from moving, but not on assembly....)
So if anyone ever needs those, the tool is there now.  I decided to make the plates in slightly thicker (0.8mm) material then original, this allowed me to get rings and nut locking plates cut out of the same material, giving better strenght and economy!

Lovely work! Our Salmson had trouble with the gearbox input shaft bearing due to a misalignment between geerbox bell housing and the rear of the crankcase (the box was not the original to the car), and solved it by using a double row selfaligning bearing. It has done 70 or 80,000 km since then.
Mike

Lastweek the painted parts could finally be picked up.
First thing I wanted to do is get the instrument panels in place, so that the electrics could be connected and tested before the engine gets in the way.  As already mentionned earlier I decided to group all non-original electrics on a small PCB, hidden away in a box under the dashboard.
This enables me to keep the looks in the engine compartment as original as possible.  It contains relays for headlamps, stop lights, fuel pump, provides for a backup for the original Bosch headlight dipping unit, and direction indicators.  Every wire leaving has it's own seperate fuse.
It was a bit of a hassle to get all the wires connected in the small box, but getting there.
Rear lamp units and front direction indicators were assembled using LED lamps, as there simply was no way I could get old style lamps and fittings into the housings.  Only for the number plate lamp I used a normal 4 watt bulb, as that one is rather visible through the white glass.

Finally then the dashboard panel could be assembled and installed, and the bosh HS switch unit connected up.

The new Hella LED flasher unit was a hugh dissapointment though, as it needs you to put resistors in parralel to the lamps to get it to operate properly, which I find not acceptable, and wonder why they then market it a a LED flasher unit.  Another more suitable one has been ordered now...

Hope to get the headlamps on later this week...

Super work - I wish I had your technogical knowledge!
I have found that LED flashing indicators are very unreliable and would not bother with them - the saving on power is negligable. I have found that flasher control units work poorly unless you incorporate a normal bulb somewhere out of sight to provide extra resistance. I also found that the LEDs can pick up enough energy to flash weakly by induction from the ignition HT system! Because the current draw is so low, LEDs also are extemely sensitive to any poor contacts in the earth return, particularly if this is not wired and is via the chassis. Altogether not worth the effort.

Mike

Mike, your remarks are certainly true, and I only opted for LED (they are flat discs 5cm diameter) as I just could not find a way to fit two 21W bulbs into the tiny lamp housings, which I found too nice not to use, although they are not original.  (they are Topolino Furgoncino items)

Hopefully the new flasher relay that is now underway will resolve my problem, it has four outputs and thus every lamp/LED can be monitored seperately. 

Did some cleaning up/painting on the brass plates, do you still recognize it?  It will certainly enhance the looks of the engine compartment!!!
In the second picture the one on the left is a reproduction, but it doen't look as nice by far IMO....thanks again for that plate!

I'm glad to see that the lubrication plate has a good new home - it's cleaned up well.
Another thought on flasher units. How about clockwork?  The  Citroen 2cv used a  mechanical switch and I think reproductions are still available. That avoids the issues.

Mike 

Yes Mike, And I have a clockwork switch in the car, but I wanted emergency winkers as well, too often I was glad to have those....so wanted them on the Lambda too!

Bit of a setback finding that my rear axle housing after assembly turned out to be twisted, and bent!  Another lesson not to take anything for granted....both halves on itself looked OK, but following final assembly and adjustment it just is no good in this form.

Currently sent out some messages hoping to find a replacement, so here the sam question: if anyone has a spare housing (the two trumpets) or even only a LHS (of car) half that would be most helpfull!

I suppose if nothing can be found I could get it fixed, but it will be quite a job, as only slight bending could be easily done, but the twist is 2.5 degrees which is A LOT, and would mean cutting the welds, reposition and re-weld, not favourable IMO...

What rotten luck Koen. Must have had quite a bump to do that. Just a thought could you solve the twist by welding up and re-drilling the stud holes on the trumpet? The bend might be harder to deal with.

Mike

Sadly no Mike, the diff housing has the nose for the pinion housing incorperated in it, so there is no turning.  I think the only solution would be to cut the steel tube at the side, fit a short piece of tube inside to strenghten and then weld, with some spot welds to the inner tube.  Not the most elegant but it could be done.

The axle came in parts to me when I bought the car, and when spit it is very hard to spot the problem...I should have known better and dry built it first....

But; through the wonders of the forum a solution might be in the making!

After three months of silence, I reckon most will think I just gave up!  Well with the nickelwork off to the plater, and clocks to be repaired, there just was not very much to do.  A replacement rear axle housing was found in the UK, thanks to the forum, however getting it across the North Sea proved simply too much to ask for in these Brexit times....three months and two courriers services have gone by now, and the sad result is one half only that has arrived (last week...)

In general it takes a lot to get my spirit down, but this affair has really let it's marks.  Luckily finally the brightwork came home, and the second clock maker tried did what he promised at a fair cost, instead of thinking for more than two months about the repair cost like the first one....

So little has been done on the Lambda the past months, but a Thema 8.32 has been brought back to live, so that's also a good thing!

But an unexpected visit to the Padova show suddenly got me out of the impasse.  A friend in Italy had an axle housing he did not want to part with, but I could borrow it at least.  Back home the first thing I did was checking that one for straightness, and turned to be a little out to.  Some gentle heat brought it back to it original form, something that proved impossible with my original housing.

I then used the housing to fabricate a good strong welding jig, and chopped up a Lambda rear axle!
I turned up two 8cm long bushes to fit inside the original tube to reinforce the welds, and then came to the conclusion they would not fit as the tubes were out of round!
This was resolved by pressing a suitable 38mm hex socket through the distorted tubes with the press, removing most of the dents in the process.

Then the four (!) parts were fitted to the welding jig, with the rings and shaft in place for continued checks on straightness.  Needles to say that after I finished welding it still was a little out, but grinding out and rewelding in the opposite position generated enough schrink to straighten it perfectly.

Not my favourite way of proceeding but, at least I'm on the move again with the project!

Off course then followed blasting and repainting, and re-assembly, the plus being that since nothing was changed to the diff housing this could be reassembled using the previously turned up shims without further delay.

Today I started on the assembly of the halfshafts and brakes.

Meantime some of the brightwork did get fitted on the car already, the little windows needed some brute force to get all in correct position but in the end they turned out nicely.

and a pic of a finished window frame...

A  monumental effort - just brilliant
Mike

Amazing work! I hope the finished result lifted your spirits once more!
 
Tim

Thanks for the kind words, that is what really helps to keep the spirit up!

Over the weekend some more work done on fitting the brake actuator shafts front and rear.  Could not resist some finishing work on the front screens, as the smal purposedly made rubber profile finaly came through.
Luckily I had a spare glass cut for the big window, as I drew up the recesses for the wiper holes too small, and managed to notice that audibly...and visually afterwards!
Not all can go right first time...

Work on the brakes!
Next project is the brakes!  The shoes were already relined quite a while ago (with glued-on lining to my distaste...), and the drums painted all black (they looked soo nice when blasted showing of their aluminium finnings....)  See picture for the Bill Smith method of fitting rings between the shoe retaining springs (fitting the rings is done by stetching the springs in the drill press).  This system works very well!

As I worried about the setting up, and the brakes need to be up to their job for the MOT...I wanted the linings to be accurately machined on the car.  I have in the workshop a vintage 'continental 60' brake lining tool, which is very usefull on aurelia's and early appias etc, but it could not handle the 370 mm diameter Lambda linings.  After some thinking of building something similar, or with a grinding machine for the Lambda brakes, I looked again at the existing tool and decided I could modify it (in a reversible way)

So the proper fitting tubes for the front and rear were drawn up and commissioned to a machinist, and all arrived back the past week, just in time for a trail fit on the rear axle.

Mean time I fitted the halfshafts in the rear axle, with the original felt seals replaced by a double modern oil seal, thus retaining the 'pre-warning' central oil leak indication (from a hole in the housing between the two seals).  Maybe in this setup the outer oil seal is a bit redundant, but at least it will be a double guard to avoid oil spill on the brakes....

Hope to dress the linings over the weekend and then finally fit the rear axle!

And again four weeks went by.  Sort of last minute I found that some of the brake shoes had too much play on their pivot pins to my taste, so I decided to have them bushed.  Sadly the machinist took a little longer then promised, and for a two hour job the shoes were gone till yesterday.....
Of the shelf 20mmx23mmx30mm bushes where then quickly pressed in, and this morning I could'nt wait to test the brake lining tool!  All went well, and in two hours time both sides of the rear axle were fully done.  The big advantage of this approach is that all can be fitted in one go, backplates and all, since no adjustments need to be made afterwards.
Hopefully tomorrow the rear axle can be finished and fitted!

Merry Christmas to all!!!!

 

O O, time for an update!  At least the rear axle got mounted under the car in 2021, albeit the very last day!  The rest of the holidays more real work then planned got in the way of the Lambda restauration.  However the past week Covid intervened, and twe were all under house arrest!  A good thing having the workshop at home it proved once again!

Some serious work was undertaken the past week in fitting and adjusting the front brakes, mount new bearings in the front hubs, and fit all together.  The track rod I made was too wide by 15mm, so there was no other option then start over and make another one....
I then finally fitted the engine and gearbox, checking all fitted together with ease, and double checking on the clutch operation.  The shaft between the gear lever and the box proved 4mm too long so had to be slightly shortened to get the gear lever to be perpendicular to the tunnel in neutral.  After this the brake compensator shaft couldf be fitted as well, making the lower end of the engine compartment almost complete!
Fitting the rear shock absorbers required some adjustment to the body, as there was not enough room for them to move freely, which was resolved by making a special spacer moving them slightly outwards and removing a bit of the body!
I then could not resist making a probe fit of the carburettor and air filter, and check choke and accelerator connections, as these still need to be adusted and painted.
I also took a lot of time fitting the steering wheel and advance control mechanism, as, due to a fault in the parts manual, where a little spring is shown in the wrong position, the whole steering shaft had to come out again to correct this...the disadvantage of assembling a car without having disassembled it.....
But al in all huge progress has been made the past week...mind that almost every bolt fixing these components had to be made, since no bolts came with the project.  It is a quite time consuming matter, since I want to keep all the treads BSW like original so modify long M8 bolts by cutting new treads....
An intermediate task was to give the underside of the rear mudguards a good thick coat with underbody protection, as I fear the aluminium will be dented quite easily by little stones thrown against it by the wheels.
Next week I hope to pick up some wheels and then the first task will be to bring the car to the radiator man to get the radiator made properly.
Getting closer!!!

Super impressive. Great work on a lovely project.

BSW bolts are available from several suppliers in the UK.     (Post Brexit it may be easier for you to make them rather than try to import them of course).

Yes indeed I did (pre brexit) order some and also castelated nuts etc in various sizes, but sort of forgot about certain items, or did not have sizes available at that time yet.  It now however is very expensive to get small items over, and just does not seem worth the hassle....

On threads: does anyone know the thread size in the valves underneath the two little tanks in the engine compartment?  I need to find some way to connect the tubing to them....it measures 14.8mm in diameter and is 20TPI or 1.25mm pitch, and I don't seem to find anything that comes near.....

Could it be 9/16TH INCH X 20TPI British Standard Cycle thread? It would be a bit undersize 9/16 = 14.29mm.
Tracy tools have taps and dies:-

 https://www.tracytools.com/taps-and-dies/20-TPI-CYCLE-PITCH%20?product_id=1002

Have  a browse, they have a lot of info and most sizes, although not M15x1.25.
If it is for carbon steel (Grade 8.8 like most bolts) rather than brass or aluminium, or mild steel buy HSS taps and dies not carbon steel as the latter will wear out or not even cut.

Mike Clark

Thanks Mike, spoke to Iain in Oz today and it is very probably 15mm with 20 tpi....there is a lot of very odd threads on the Lambda!  I think the easiest will be to cut another thread on the taps, as I need to connect the fuel pipe with a union nut, not so easy to make that....(at least not for me!)

Today spend the day on the carburettor rebuild.  Thought that was rather a simple affair, but it amazed me!  Luckily it al came apart and everything was very dirty but in good shape, even completely no play on the butterfly shaft.  They sure did use other material standards back then!  It is just so nice to clean it all up and re-assemble...still thing we have the most satifying hobby in the world!

Is there any one who knows what jets should be in the 8th series 38HK carb?

Zenith carb jets

Available from consortium

Lancia were not alone in using unexpectec thread sizes. Bugatti used 7, 9, and 11 mm among others including BSP (British plumbing pipe size) for the trackrod ends  of the Brescia, even described as "gas" on the works drawings. BSP was in recent years still used for plumbing iin France.
 
Mike Clark

Regarding British pipe threads -  about 15 yrs ago I got some very good Swiss radiators that were shipped to England before exported to the US - with British Pipe thread. We were stuck about how to connect them, until a year later, McMasters ( large contractor supply house) listed connectors with that thread on one side.

As to why Swiss radiators? We didn't make stylish, clean, heavyweight radiators here in the US. These were brought in by an inspired contractor/dealer in New York, where we saw them. So he did the heavy lifting.

The 2CV has 7mm and 9mm threads here and there too.