B20 – Life size and model!

[ColinMarr]

My B20 was a late 6th Series car, which I imported from Holland in 1987 as a rolling shell and boxes of parts. It took three years to restore, followed by three years of good use to get it right, and to enjoy it, before circumstances changed and sadly by 1994, it had to go. Its period UK registration was DSK 750 and it was much admired and much photographed.  One of the might-be buyers was a friend of a friend, who was sorely tempted, but it wasn’t to be. I later discovered he had returned to live in Canada, but he hadn’t forgotten about Lancia. To my surprise and pleasure, he contacted me again recently, still in Canada and told me about a 4th Series B20 he now owned, for which he has almost finished a 20-year restoration period. Also, to relate how some time ago he had been involved with a Canadian company producing 1/32 model cars for slot racing. You can imagine my surprise and pleasure when he sent me photos of one of their models!       

[impaw]

wow, that is fantastic!
Have you ordered one yet?

Time to fetch the old Scalextric setup from the attic I think

[Sliding Pillar]

Wonderful Colin.
That trip to Holland is indelibly etched in my mind, especially getting the transaxle down three flights of a spiral staircase, oh and far too much Irish coffee 😉

[DavidLaver]

Wonderful!!!

Worked out who's driving and passenger in the model?

[ColinMarr]

Thanks Ade, I vividly remember that trip too. It was November 1988 (not 1987, as I first thought) and we first had to collect the rolling shell from some remote rural location and then on to Lelystad for two engines and a mountain of parts from Karel Glaaser’s house. Yes, the Irish coffees were mind bending on top of physical exhaustion – it was a long day. All of this was pre-satnav, so you must have done some clever map reading. Photos show the part-restored body, sadly much of which had to be redone. Another memory is of sitting up-front in your van, between you and twin brother Ed, and thinking I had eventually worked out how to tell you apart, only to get it wrong yet again!

[Richard Fridd]

Although it's amazing that these Aurelias could fall into disrepair, I do like to look back at these 'before' photos. Do you have any photos of the subsequent progress Colin?

  Richard

[ColinMarr]

In response to Richard’s question about photos during restoration. Well, I do have photos, but although the end result was good and gratifying, and it turned out to be a lovely car, some aspects of the project were less than happy and I don’t want to revisit it by trying to tell the story through photos. However, there were key lessons I learnt along the way and I am happy to pass on:
•   Unless there are very good reasons why you should, don’t take on a restoration of a car that has already been dismantled. Even if the parts are in labelled boxes (even in Dutch!) it can still be a nightmare to sort it out. The wiring loom was like a birds nest in a tea chest, and was almost the last straw!
•   Similarly, don’t take on restoration of a car that has been raced. Racing cars are best kept as race-cars!
Although I bought my car in from Holland, it had earlier been imported into the UK and had a 1967 registration PPJ 52E. In the 1970s, it was owned and raced by Colin Ryan. I never met Colin, but Barrie Crowe knew him and said he was very competitive. The attached photo is from a Silverstone event in the late 1970s.     

[williamcorke]

Colin, your key lessons are of great interest to me, generally but also specifically as I'm working on a project B20 that was partly dismantled when I got it and has been a race car at some point in its life (probably the 60s).

With the suspicion that I'm risking triggering some PTSD reaction, I'd like to ask why you think race cars should be avoided. I imagine the main reasons might be missing parts (race cars being stripped down for weight-saving), wear (driven hard) and body damage. Is that more or less it?

Your first lesson is somewhat mitigated if you know a particular model and/or (ideally) have another to hand for reference. At least that's my hope...

And to  satisfy Richard's interest in Aurelias that have fallen into disrepair - which is by choice something of a specialist subject for me - here are a couple of photos of my S3 project.

[Jai Sharma]

This is an excellent read, thanks for sharing. The human travails really add something.
I think the reasons given for not restoring a race car ring true, I have a road/race car and I think it would be a disproportionate amount of work to return it to road car spec. It might be different if you have converted to a race car yourself and kept in mind you may return to a road car down the line. But usually one doesn’t incur the expense of race prep with the thought in mind that you may undo it all.

[ColinMarr]

Well, I did say don’t do it “unless there are special reasons why you should”. William, your S3 car looks so complete, lovely and almost there, it would be irresistible not to finish its restoration, that’s special enough for me. Similarly, Jai, your ex-race car is one known to you and no doubt it makes sense to put it back to road use.
My situation was different and hence my advice. I bought it on the basis of seven pages of a fax with all the details and a couple of photos. I hadn’t expected almost everything to be in boxes of parts – two dismantled engines, some of which had been worked on and countless other boxes – even the fuel-gauge sender unit had been dismantled. The floor-mounted gear shift turned out to be cut down from a Flaminia and only operable by a midget sitting on the floor! And not to forget the hidden bangs and bumps from racing.
I said the last straw was the wiring loom, but I had forgotten one of the final nightmares was the hydraulic clutch mechanism, which is unique to S6 cars – a system Lancia abandoned for good reason in time for the Flaminia. It must have worked in period, but it wasn’t thought-through and it used fluid from the same small reservoir as the brakes, and any fluid loss from the clutch could easily result in brake failure. I abandoned it and fitted a long push-rod mechanism provided by Peter Harding, which worked OK. Just a couple more photos, if only to remind me of challenging times.

[oldracer]

This is an excellent read, thanks for sharing. The human travails really add something.
I think the reasons given for not restoring a race car ring true, I have a road/race car and I think it would be a disproportionate amount of work to return it to road car spec. It might be different if you have converted to a race car yourself and kept in mind you may return to a road car down the line. But usually one doesn’t incur the expense of race prep with the thought in mind that you may undo it all.

Jai, my thoughts exactly. When we built our race cars none of us ever considered turning them back into road cars, they were just tools for the job. I'm glad to see my old S2 1600 is still out there although it's a different colour altogether now.

I smile when I see dealers selling 'race' or 'hillclimb' cars on the premise they can be turned back into road cars. To make them even vaguely useable or reliable is going to cost the purchase price again. And the price of replacing the interior nowadays - who knew we should have kept it all? I was too busy collecting spare engines and gearboxes