Lancia Motor Club

I am interested to see recent favourable comments about the bulkhead reservoir that is designed to meet two needs, one for the front suspension oiling system and the other as brake fluid reservoir and pressurising arrangement. All very elegant and as you say, beautifully made in cast aluminium alloy. But it’s worth remembering that things got a bit more compromised with the 6th Series B20 with the introduction of a hydraulic clutch.

In my experience the hydraulic clutch mechanism was less than perfect and it was no surprise that when it came to the Flaminia, Lancia reverted to a mechanical linkage. The biggest problem was with the slave cylinder, which was poorly designed, difficult to bleed and difficult to adjust so that the clutch could both engage and disengage, which is a kind of useful facility.

The problem with the reservoir was that there was no separate provision for the clutch fluid – the same chamber feeds both clutch and brakes. The take-off from the bottom of the reservoir was via two separate banjos fitted to a single threaded pipe screwed into the base of the tank. See the photo below of this little item that I have kept in my rogue’s gallery of dodgy parts! The idea was that the brakes would be fed from the upper banjo via the flutes cut into the thread, and the clutch supplied via the bottom banjo which is fed by a tube the top of which sits in the tank about 3cms above the bottom. The idea being that in the event of fluid loss, the clutch would fail before the brakes!

I suppose you could argue that this was clever, but I think it would have been cleverer to provide separate reservoirs for each function.

In the end I did what most owners of 6th Series cars did – I abandoned the hydraulic clutch and fitted a simple push-rod arrangement (thanks to Peter Harding), which worked very well. I also fitted a single banjo to the base of the reservoir and that’s how I still have the item in the photo.

If anybody knows of a purist who want to put a 6th Series car back to original clutch and needs this part, put them in touch with me.

Colin     

I would love a B20, with either clutch arrangement ::)

My own car has disc brakes fitted to the front. A modification by the previous owner. I believe they were from a Citroen with a bit of Lotus thrown into the mix. I have since performed a few extra mods, I have changed the original solid skinny discs for larger vented ones, plus different calipers with carbon pads. As I race the car the braking, lets say, is a slight tad better than originally intended.
I've also aquired 6th series drums, and can swap over systems easily enough to comply with regulations where neccesary. One thing I have to remember is to keep the reservoir plunger down when using discs or the brakes will bind. (Took me a while to figure that one out, as the brakes will free up when left unused)
Another Aurelia over here, a 6th series, had had the problems you mentioned. I fitted a seperate fluid reservoir and clutch works fine. I do prefer the clutch cable (unbreakable) of the earlier cars, although the later clutch is a better design. Earlier clutchs are not reallu up to the job of hard use.
Has anyone ever come up with a compromise between the 2 types ?

My 6th series convertible has a manual clutch system. i think we used a Spider pedal box, and an early Flaminia housing with the shaft. No way was a hydraulic system going to cut it - too many things could go wrong.

Tony Nicosia in Los Angeles (from whom I bought the then ratty car) did the work. Nice job.

On early cars is it a clutch CABLE or a system of rods?

David

whoops - its a rod in a sheath, like Niels wrote below,  on s.2

On my series 3 it is a 2mm rod running through a tube