Lancia Motor Club

Hello Members

I have re joined the club after 28 years because I now have a Flaminia Pininfarina Coupe (1962 2.5 3B). Bought as a rolling shell in pretty good condition and a lot of boxes and loose parts, it is a proper jigsaw puzzle. I am starting to make lists of what is missing and I will be asking for help in trying to track down parts and quite likely identify some of the ones I have. Trying to get myself onto the database at the moment in the hope that there is a parts book there, although this is proving tricky. If anybody has a parts book scan they can share I would be extremely grateful.

Some of the things I know I need at the moment:

All side glass and the attached metalwork
The rod between the gear lever and the gearbox - don't even know what this looks like.
Bonnet catches
A boot handle
Rear window chrome (stainless?) surround.
An indicator switch

I have wanted a Flaminia coupe for decades after getting the Lancia bug in the 80s whilst studying industrial design - I graduated from Fiats and eventually got a Beta coupe. Back then the only Flaminias I ever saw were Touring bodied cars, but when I saw pictures of the PF coupe I knew it was the one.
Fast forward, I now have a dream to go on an extended European tour when my car is finished, so it needs to be well sorted and reliable.

Anybody who can help with parts, please do get in touch.
I look forward to sharing my progress here.

David

Welcome to the Forum. I have most of the bits you are after, which were left over after the restoration of my Flaminia far more years ago than I want to admit to.

One possible area of confusion may be developing now. I have been on the Forum for many years, as David Gee, so you might well land up with questions or emails that may not make a lot of sense. You are welcome to ring me on 07970421633.
Best wishes

Dave Gee

Pictures please!
Clarkey

David,
Welcome and good luck with your restoration/re-assembly.
I have to agree of course that the PF Coupé is the one to have!
I got scans of the parts book from the club library and you can view them on this link link (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CFxh2WlbL7mkXd2QJbCAJ07UjZNZvlih?usp=sharing)
There are some pages missing I'm afraid but you should be able to find most things.
Willo

I hope that you have great success with this project. My PF has given me over 10 years of interesting problems to solve, as detailed in my numerous forum posts.
 I have found it to be important to gather spare parts immediately they become available. Most become very useful.
 Mechanically OK?


  Richard

Welcome to Flaminia ownership, David.
I have owned a 1964 2.83B PF for about 10 years.  They are a great car, though not without their foibles!
I have switched to 16 inch rims (on original centres) to give a greater choice of tyre size. As a result I have four wheels with good 165x400 Michelin if you need them.
A complete set of bumpers came from Harrington in stainless steel to replace the dented and rusted units which were on the car when I got it.
The 3B carburettor is I am told quite difficult to set up but once properly set up, stays in tune.  I had the petrol tank professionally opened up and cleaned since it had a lot of rust and was blocking in-line filters on a regular basis..
Limit on cruising speed is really how much wind noise you can put up with.  Very torquey engine when in tune.  A bit heavy on petrol, but how many miles do we do in a year?
I hop you enjoy it.
Stuart

Welcome David!

I also have a 1962 2.5 3B, in RHD. If you need any points of reference I am happy to help.

Regarding the 3B carbs, Omicron (Martin Cliffe owned this car in the past and kept detailed notes) have some useful information about getting the internals of the carb in order…..in particular the two “accelerator pumps”, one of which is actually an enrichment device. Setting the carb is then very simple….a single mixture screw, which if my memory serves me right, adds air rather than fuel.

Charles

Thank you all for your encouragement, and thank you Willo for the link. Dave, I will be in touch.

Not many photos at the moment but I have some of the journey home. Couldn't work out how the insert image worked if anyone wants to guide me.


My plan is to farm out quite a few jobs as I am impatient to get on the road. I am, however,  looking to end up with a very high level of finish and will be doing a lot of the detail work myself. The colour will change and I have always been drawn to the e coating process but not felt able to justify it on other cars. I am thinking about  a rollover jig so that I can thoroughly check the shell and do any further repairs before sending it for dipping (or direct to refinishing) but at the moment I am investigating the engine. The outside has previously been cleaned and removing the rocker covers reveals sparkling valve gear and no sludge. The covers themselves have also clearly been thoroughly cleaned on the inside and there is clean oil in the sump, but attempting to remove the inlet manifold makes me think this engine has not been dismantled in recent times. I know it has been stood for at least 5 years but nothing is known of its history before this (or the rest of the car). I will have to make up some sort of tool to lift the manifold off its studs, more makeshift approaches, plus plenty of heat, having failed so far. Then the heads...  I have read of other peoples struggles with these.

Hoping of use re uploading images

https://www.lancia.myzen.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=1193.0

P

Journey home.

Thank you Parisien, for some reason that didn't work before.

Which colour combination favourite?

At the moment I am liking the idea of a solid dark grey, the darker the better, but not black. Does anyone have a definitive list of colours that were available for the PF coupe?

The car came with the remains of a red interior so I will stick with that but maybe go slightly darker.

From the picture it looks red in colour at the moment...not sure if that was a factory colour. If you need parts books etc try Viva Lancia https://viva-lancia.com/specials/cd/flaminia-cd.php

Here are pictures of 1970 Lancia colour flitches which possibly cover the end of Flaminia production. I don't have the actual item so what you can see in the pictures is all the information I have. I had a Berlina which had a dark grey metalic as its original colour which I thought must have looked very distinguished.

My PF was the distinguished grey, then was changed to 'Bleu Lancia' many years ago, which is now somewhat patinated. Red interior also patinated. Black not so much a favourite but looks better in photos.

  Richard

Congrats! I know of the car, looked at it before it got its resale red! Best of luck making it nice again!

Wish I had seen it then but I wasn't looking for a project at the time. Having looked at cars at the higher end of the price range I decided I could only get what I wanted by doing it myself.

Thanks for these. The colours I keep seeing referred to are grigio doncaster, cascine and brighton, but not really sure how these compare. I may consider a metallic.

Grigio Newmarket is the one I think best suits

According to Win Oude Weernink's book Lancia Flaminia - Details of the collection, the original Grey colours for the Coupe were Grigio Marones, Brighton and Albani.
The Berlina was available in Grigio Newmarket, Cascine and Epsom.

The Max Myer codes are in the book.

Thanks, I have that book, I should have looked.

Think at some stage I will get some samples of Grigio Brighton and Albani (i have seen it spelt Albany as well) and apply them to a panel.
Hurt my back at the weekend so taking it easy for a bit now. I did get a rollover jig so looking forward to trying that out once I have made the necessary brackets to attach it to the shell.

In the workshop manual there is a strut used to keep the leaf springs spread open when removing. I have never had a car with leaf springs before - does the strut need to be adjustable in order to get the spring eyes to line up? Could it just have a slight wedge shape to it? Does anybody have any dimensions for it?

David

From my own thread,  image supplied by Alan Murphy .

  Richard

Thank you for that  Richard.

Well, the inlet manifold finally gave in after quite a battle. I will now re purpose the same plate I made for it  to use on the cylinder heads.

very interested in how you will get the heads off as I have a very stuck one and due to moving house have not got round to finishing my removal plate.
Clarkey

I have Flaminia heads to remove imminently. Does anyone have the tools to do this? These are on my smokey spare engine which is in transit to a nearby workshop.
  I will start a new forum thread once this job begins.

  Richard

I have removed the rocker carriers and used an impact wrench to undo the head nuts. A couple of studs, with particularly rusted nuts, unscrewed from the block, revealing quite a bit of corrosion along their length. I think they only came out because of the impact wrench.  It made me wonder if all the studs could be removed in this way by welding nuts to them - I can't get any of my stud extractors to fit. The heads would then hopefully come off quite easily. Anybody done anything like this?

I have been taking a break from the heavier work and have been spending time with my boxes of bits. I will pretty much have to put the whole car back together to check everything fits, and that I have a full compliment of parts, before stripping down again for painting.

First up is the dashboard. I have only had more mass produced cars in the past and it is a surprise to me to see how crude some of the parts of the flaminia are, and how they were clearly adjusted to fit during assembly. Refitting seems to require the same adjustments and finding which of the, seemingly random, screw holes is for which screw. This is particularly true for the dashboard area. I have to say though that I am loving this automotive archaeology/puzzle.

I have fitted the heaters and demist vents, the wiper mechanism and the dashboard structure - firstly with, and then without, top and bottom vinyl covered parts and instruments/switches etc. I have a wiring loom but I think it is beyond saving as it has been cut to remove it. I will probably piece it back together, to confirm it reaches where it should, before reproducing it off the car.

The wiper motor was not good and the park contacts were completely burned out. I have chosen to replace it with a more modern alternative from VAG which fits nicely and has the same spindle dimensions.

It is my intention to fit air conditioning to this car, for the trips to southern Europe that I hope to make. I am not a fan of the ugly under dash evaporator units that are probably more correct for this era of car (i believe pininfarina offered one) so I have sourced a compact unit that fits behind the dashboard - I will duct it to the dashboard vents and to a discrete outlet below the centre of the dash. I have designed a plenum to connect the ducts  (including a small one to the glovebox to keep the  emergency bottle of Champagne cool) and I will 3D print this in ABS this week.

I will need to have the engine in position before I can work on the compressor bracket. If anybody here has a Flaminia with aircon, would it be possible to have some photos of your compressor and mount? I have found a few but they are general engine bay views and the design of the bracket is not entirely visible.
Wanting to make sure that when all is painted it will simply be a matter of bolting it all back together again, I have also been looking at the fitting of a radio - the majority of space available for this has been taken up by the new evaporator. I have bought a classic style radio from retro sounds, which has the very neat feature that it can be broken down into components for mounting. The front panel can be removed from the radio body so that the body can be placed remotely. Currently not sure where I will hide the speakers.

David

I am puzzled by the adjustable strut that supports the centre of the dashboard. I don't have one and, whilst I can see where it should attach to the dashboard, the body attachment is a mystery. There is a bracket behind the wiper mechanism that looks ideal but doesn't line up (not too much of a surprise) but, more importantly, would mean the rod itself pasing right through the mechanism. Could anybody let me have a photo of this?

Thanks
David

Evaporator plenum in position and radio location sorted, only the support strut to resolve. If I have a spare moment I will make Y pieces to connect the aircon hose into the dash outlets but this can wait. These parts will go back into their boxes to await their individual restoration and I will start on the doors next.

Nice progress! I like the AC setup. Where are you based?

Thanks Mitka.

I am in Bath if you want to get a closer look at it.

Come spring I might come up in my Pf coupe😁

Great! Would be good to see another close up.

As mentioned in Clarkey's post, I have removed the majority of the studs from one head, some requiring a nut welding to them. To prevent damage from spatter I used a plumbers heat mat to surround the studs I was working on.

Two of the most stubborn studs seem to be the two central ones - wondering if this is because these are totally surrounded by the water jacket and this is causing the corrosion.

Oh happy day!

I decided to have a go at making a thin wall tube saw, as mentioned by Mitka in Clarkeys thread, to drill out the corrosion around the remaining studs.

I turned down a piece of stainless tube, with a 10mm ID, so that it had a 0.3mm wall thickness, leaving a length of full thickness tube to hold in the drill chuck.

I filed teeth into the end, took a deep breath, and had a go on one of the gummed up studs. Almost immediately it gave off a little puff of powder, so I carefully continued. Progress was slow, so I re filed the teeth, making them deeper and a symmetrical profile, so that I could reverse the drill if necessary. As I proceeded there was more and more resistance caused by the loose powder - aluminium oxide is an abrasive, right? or is that a different form? I lubricated the cutter with some ATF/acetone mix, which is what was at hand, and things went more smoothly, until, slowly but surely, I drilled the entire length of the stud. I tried the drill on hammer setting but found without to be better. Regularly withdrawing and cleaning the drill stopped it gumming up too much.

The third stud I did had all it's thread remaining, so I decided to have a go at withdrawing it using the double nut method - It came out without a problem!

My only concern is that the hole of the removed stud is now a little larger at it's top, I guess where the cutter was settling into its groove, but could it also be from the corrosion?

Anybody see a problem with this? The hole is now closer to 11.2 at the top and I can insert the shank of an 11mm drill about 20mm into it. I cant insert the drill into a hole that the stud has come out of cleanly. 

Impressive...my workshop is not as well equipped as yours so I will try some brackets from the exhaust studs to the plate and give that a go.
Clarkey

One down, one to go.
The first head is now off!
Managed to remove all but 2 of the studs before lifting the head. The 2 remaining ones have had the corrosion drilled out but seem to be more stuck in the block.

I managed to shear off my cutting tool on one - it is important not to let it catch, by constantly lubricating and removing to remove sludge from the tool.

The stainless tube I ordered from amazon arrived today, so I turned down a bit of that to make a second tool - easier because there is less material to remove.

The bores look in very good order so far.
 

The club should issue a medal for people who successfully remove a Flaminia cylinder head. I recall Martin Buckley's magazine write up many years ago about getting the heads off EJJ 87J. The engine was still in the car so he hooked up the head to an engine crane. All he managed to do was lift the whole of the front of the car off the ground and a Flaminia Berlina is a hefty piece of kit. 

I have followed this story (and the related one) with interest. Not that I have ever had problems with stuck heads, but I know plenty that have. That photo of the tubular cutter reminded me of an occasion in 1968, when a friend with a Appia S2, who worked at AEI research labs had their model shop make up such a cutter (a trepanning tool!), with hardened steel teeth – just the job to clear away all the gunge. And at that time the car wouldn’t have been much more than ten years old.

Nice! Well done! If the hole gets too large it can always be sleeved later.

Second head off. This one (RH) had considerably less corrosion than the other. I only had to drill down 2 of the studs.

The question is: what to do next. It was always my intention to have this engine re- built by someone else, while I got on with other tasks, but also to remove it from my very restricted garage space. The idea was that I would have the front and rear suspension and transaxle to prepare while the shell was away being painted, and the engine would come back running and ready to install. I decided to remove the heads myself after hearing about the problems others have had, and how much this could contribute to the cost of the engine. Now that I have the heads off, and can see that the bores look OK and the engine is turning over, I am wondering if I want to go further myself.

If anyone has any recommendations for engine builders, with Flaminia experience, I would be grateful.

Continuing my work on the dashboard I have restored  the pull switches and the ignition switch. The wiper switch had a snapped off spindle, so this was extended with a piece of stainless steel, threaded into the original brass. It also needed modifying to work with the new 2 speed wiper, requiring an additional brass ring with altered spacing. New knobs were needed, which were made on my resin 3D printer then sanded and polished on the lathe. The cigar lighter has been adapted to take a modern core. The switch on the right of the image is for the air conditioning fan.

I have removed the LH door from the car to do a trial build up and make sure I have all the parts.

I have also trial fitted and adjusted the bonnet catches, acquired from Dave Gee (thanks Dave!), and managed to get the bonnet to sit pretty neatly with acceptably even gaps.

I have been working on a few different jobs lately.

The door internals have been assembled and parts checked. Apart from needing some new window winder cable, all seems good.  The next task will be a small welding job, where the trims fit at the top of the doors, and then I will fit the doors back on the car, but with the seals in place, to check that I can get a reasonable alignment before it goes for paint - I have received a huge parcel from Cicognani, with nearly every rubber part they sell for the PF coupe.

I have made up the missing boot hinges. I first made some 3D printed ones to check the fit, then made them in steel by welding some turned tubular parts to flat plates. The welds were shaped to make the hinges look like the few images I have been able to find.

I have made a pattern for the infill panel behind the front bumper, first in cardboard, and then plywood. I have found that the area below the grille is very thin and distorted, so I will need to address this as well. 

I have removed the rear suspension, the transaxle and the front subframe in preparation for installing the shell on the roll over jig. I  have made brackets for this, but also discovered that the front bumper mounts were barely attached to the car, the welds were so poor. This resolved I found myself with a bit of a headache: I only have a small garage and all my other storage is full, meaning the parts removed need to stay under the car. The problem is that the roll over jig has a tube, which connects the front and rear frames, under the length of the car. I have dismantled the rear suspension and am hoping I can move the other parts (all now on wheels) to one side, especially when the shell has to be wheeled out of the garage, attached to the jig, to go to the paint shop. Hope to get the jig attached in the next few days.

I have also been checking the fit of some of the stainless body trims. Does anybody know a source for the clips that hold the windscreen surround trim? Classic Lancia have them but they no longer ship to the UK.

I was surprised to find that I have a rear wheel bearing so bad that the car must have been un driveable. The other side and both the fronts are absolutely fine and all of the other running gear seems in extremely good shape, further adding to my belief that this is a low mileage car. I am wondering if the failed bearing ran dry for some reason, perhaps the seal failed. Could this be the reason the car stopped being used? Anyway, I now have a bearing to change ...

The shell is now mounted on the rollover jig and is on it's side so that I can get a good look at the underside. Nothing much wrong here: A few earlier repairs to tidy up a bit but they all seem to a good standard (restoration rather than MOT). I will do as much as I can before it goes for blast cleaning to keep the cost down.

The rear suspension has been separated to make it more compact and the other big bits have been re arranged on the garage floor. I think the front subframe will have to be disassembled before the rollover jig and shell can get out of the garage.

Glancing at the gearbox I noticed what looked like a nasty crack in the casing at the clutch end. Closer inspection revealed this to be marking on the surface of the casting. I'm not an expert on casting but, if this was made using a shell mould, could a portion of the shell have been snapped off and then patched back in prior to pouring?

I am taking a spare Flaminia engine block to have a crack assesed. If your casing mark is still in doubt I can ask advice from this contact of mine who is in the business of casting new parts and repairing casings
made from  alloys. Including melting down and reusing motorcycle casings.

  Richard

Thanks Richard, I will bear that in mind.

I am not planning to dismantle the gearbox initially but I will take the selector cover off to get a better look. I will fit it into the car as is, apart from a clean up, and will asses it's condition on the road.

Hello all.

I have been working on the Flaminia but neglecting to post any updates. Here are some photos of progress. Mostly dismantling, cleaning and painting. I did add some seat belt mounts, well the top ones anyway. I have been visiting paint shops and think I have decided the way to go. Favourite colour at the moment is Grigio Newmarket. I know it wasn't used on the PF coupe but I think it will look amazing. I like to think that if you had asked Pininfarina nicely they might have done a special order.
I did find a little rust in one of the inner sills and am hoping to do this myself before the car goes for paint. I also still have to make the front bumper infill, although I have made a pattern.

Continued -

Nearly there -

Great stuff...you have been busy.
Clarkey

 I got some parts back from the machine shop for a couple of modifications. The pulley is to drive my air conditioning compressor.

I ordered a spin off oil filter adapter made by flexolite, they said, for flaminia and aurelia. It certainly didn't fit my filter housing, being the wrong sized thread, as well not being able to seal with the o ring they provided. It would not have fitted an aurelia either, I felt, as the shoulder on the threaded part would not pass through the body, as intended, because the hole was too small.
 Thinking that this was going to be a worthwhile modification, given the frequency of oil changes required (If I am thinking of doing an extended trip this may even be necessary whilst away) I decided to design my own, which you see here. It uses a standard filter seal rather than an O ring and copper compression washers to seal the threaded part.
I finished the parts in satin black so as not to look too out of place under the bonnet.

Very neat job on the oil filter housing adaption  8)