The Paul Atkinson - Augusta - news update [etc] ...

[Mikenoangelo]

Your car for some unknown reason has alloy mudguards  not steel. I wonder if they were replaced at some point, not exactly correctly?

Mike

[Mark Dibben]

Hello Mike,
Lost in the mists of time I suspect, but the fact it has aluminium mudguards leads me to suspect that its shunt is more recent. After all, I cannot imagine why two new aluminium mudguards would be made, only for one to be so out of shape in comparison with the other one...
Still, there we are, it's all to the good - we'll get there :-)
Thanks again for all your help with the suspension, by the way; Chris and I would have been properly up the creek without the proverbial paddle otherwise!
All best cheers,
Mark

[Mark Dibben]

Well, something else that's odd we noticed today - and I may have been wrong in a previous post - is that while the sidelights are in line with each other, the left headlamp is about half an inch further to the rear of the car than the right one. Oh well, it'll all come clear next week when roachmanufacturing.co.uk take a look at it. You can also see the exhaust manifold air intake very nicely in the second photo.

[Mark Dibben]

Okay, here are a couple of photos of the inlets that have been fabricated and attached. Outside have all been painted, but the inside of the bolts still need painting black :-)

[Mark Dibben]

And one more an inlet plus one of the new driver's side lower dashboard, with Klaxon button and a similar button for the starter - blank - which works absolutely fine. We were particularly pleased with the inlets because they were first mocked up using bits of weetabix boxes cut to the right shapes and stuck together! And then the people at Roach fabricated them up.
We paid particular attention to the exterior shape and wanted it to be absolutely in keeping with the unstreamlined era of the car and in line with angles of the radiator itself and also the bonnet side vents. Inside, of course, they were made with a lovely rounded shape to allow the air to funnel in very nicely. So what you see as the back of the intake from the outside is actually empty!
Luckily, the placement of the carburetor on the inlet side and the manifold fins on the exhaust side meant that this could all be accomplished with the intakes being below the bonnet side vents and thus the engine would be getting cold air direct from the outside without having to mask any of the vents off.
The passenger side lower dashboard will feature two ambient temperature gauges. One in colour for the outside ambient temperature and one in back and white (i.e per the other car gauges) for the ambient temperature inside the car. Multiple Sclerosis makes you unable to regulate body temperature as well as normal people, and a rise in cabin temperature is quickly felt... These two gauges are therefore vital for me to have, as without auto aircon I must monitor these temps and act in advance of starting to feel unwell.

[Mark Dibben]

And the last photo is of the back of the car minus the bumpers. So much better; it's obvious with the bumpers off that the car was never really to have them.

[Mark Dibben]

The verdict from Roach is that it's definitely had quite a shunt at the front, as both wings are very wrong - although the left is indeed worse than the right. They need to be absolutely parallel and meet in the middle under the radiator cowl absolutely straight and in line.
As you all know!!
So that they can then be properly screwed together, one to the other. So both wings need work. But we won't know how much until the paint is stripped off to determine the extent of the bodge underneath the paint. Gulp. And it was indubitably a bodge. This was all cleverly hidden by the way the number plate was attached to the wings. Not visible and the eye was completely drawn by the bright and very shiny and unblemished dead straight bumper. It's only with the bumper off, and thus the number plate off too (the top of it was screwed to the wings y'see), that all is revealed... Sigh.
Ah well :-)

[Mark Dibben]

Okay, went down yesterday to see Stuart Roach at Fawley and he has done a remarkable job.
In the end, it was decided to simply align the lower lip of the left wing, to meet the lower lip of the right wing under the radiator. So that it is all symmetrical down there.
There is too much filler in the right wing to try and re-work that to be the same as the left wing, and too much metalworking would be required to do the opposite, and that be financially feasible. Almost be cheaper to make a whole new wing. So we have to live with the asymmetry in the swoop of the wings.
Thankfully the new stone guard and number plate will keep the eye focused on the middle of the car. And thankfully too the wings are black.
As to the height of the lights relative to each other, again you have to look very carefully and we just have to say that's 90 years' worth of use and bumps and so on. Because to correct it...
But Stuart has corrected the bad stone hit that had starred the left wing too, so that's good as well.
Okay, just repaint the left wing and the new number plate to be the same colour on the spectrometer as the right one and we should be right. Just a shame we're a bit behind as a result of discovering the wing problem in the first place, and so the car will miss (again, sigh!) the owner's dinner tomorrow.
See you there if you're going :-)

[Mark Dibben]

I've just had this email exchange with a fellow Lancia man, and it gives me the opportunity to emphasise that I don't think ill of Paul Atkinson at all. Just for the record.

On Sat, Oct 5, 2024 at 6:37 PM [...] wrote:

    Hello Mark,

    I don't own an Augusta, but I used to look after [one]. I have been reading your posts on the LMC forum with interest. The poorly done crash repair to the front end sounds awful. I knew Paul Atkinson quite well, but mostly through his ownership of a Lambda and I can't see him being responsible for such a bodge. Do you think it was done during his ownership, or someone else? I'm just curious because I don't want to think badly of a man of whom I had a high regard.

    Whatever, I am sure you will enjoy your car.

    Best wishes,
    [...]

Hello [...],
I simply don't understand it.
I mean to do the job properly would take thousands of pounds. So perhaps it was the case that they couldn't afford to do it, and that what we have is the best they could do - or have done for them. Fair enough.
And I have to be honest, with the amount of money I've had to spend to bring the car back into commission (and that's with Chris McPheat charging me mate's rates!) there's no way known that I could afford to have it repaired as-new either. Because to do that means two entirely new wings. So I'm not criticising Paul there.
As I say, it wasn't visible so much until we took the bumper off... And it won't be very visible again when the new stone guard and number plate (that extends 'through' the starting handle area and fills in the V at the bottom) is done. Because that will 'centre' the eye.
We think it must have had a fairly large thump, but it didn't damage the chassis. Perhaps it was driven into a wall or a fence at 10mph or so? That's all it would have taken. Remember the left suspension small spring was broken and most impressively, the lower guide was cracked. That takes some real doing, coz they are hewn of solid rock... [And I should add, too, that two wheels were very badly buckled, one centre and one rim were beyond repair.]
By the way, I've had to spend money on the new lower dashboards (rather than on going towards new wings for example), because I have MS. MS renders the body incapable of effectively controlling heat, which means if I get a build up of heat I start to feel unwell. Without auto-climate I must monitor the external and internal ambient temperatures to be proactive about opening windows early. This means two gauges extra, to go in below the clock, plus a lovely St Christopher I found on Colin Warrington's Old Motors stall at the Prescott Long Course meeting last weekend. Really pleased with how the new lower dashboards are coming together; instead of being simply tacked on, they'll look like they were a bespoke order made in the factory - as do the direct air inlets :-)
As Stuart Roach said to me, she's an old lady showing her adventures! He advised me not to repair a small star crack in the paint on the right mudguard because that's just lovely patina. Which it is actually, just adds character.
Anyway, you'll be able to see it all on the VSCC stand at the Classic Motor Show.
All best cheers,
Mark

[will]

I don’t know what history you know of your Augusta it was owned by Gerald Batt  before Paul Atkinson Gerald bought the car from the late Ken West’s estate the aluminium wings were made by a Mr Peel who made some of the Bluebird cars bodies. He helped with panels for the Appia. If you want to know anymore history of the car I can ask an old friend of Kens.

[Mark Dibben]

Hello Will,
Yes please we're a bit stuck on history. Brian Hands was going to let me have what he knew but has gone quiet; someone said yesterday i think that he was moving house? Dunno, anyway, anything you can glean would be a great help.
Interesting if there is a Bluebird (as in the Campbell WLSR cars?) link,  because my Father was the chief track engineer and 2IC to the project manager for the 1964 Lake Eyre escapade! 
The car is now back at AKVR this evening and we're looking at wing painting and finalising the wire mesh stone guard, starting tomorrow :-)
Thanks ever so much eh,
Mark

[Mark Dibben]

Here is a photo of the work done by Stuart Roach on the left wing lip. Painting begins tomorrow, and we're going to do both wing fronts, apparently, to make sure they look the same, plus the metal plate below the stone guard. With a 'floating' matt-satin grille surrounded by chromed grille to retain a 'Lancia look'. There is precedent for this colourway, by the way, in Keith's DiLambda on the opposiet side of the workshop. That, too has gloss black wings, matt-satin shutters (of course) and a gloss black plate beneath the shutters, behind the bumper. So we're taking our cue from that (and the Lambdas too, of course, that had a body painted number plate piece beneath the oblong radiator). I wish they'd remove the bumpers from the DiLambda, though, it'd look so much better. But Keith is rightly a stickler for authenticity! :-)  

[Sliding Pillar]

Hi Mark, I don't know who owned your car in 1999, but here is a photo of it taken at an Italian car day at Brooklands. Not sure what that is at the bottom of the grille, make of it what you will!!

[will]

The car at time was owned by Ken West you can just see the car radio aerial.
Ken was into car radios

[Mark Dibben]

Thanks for the photo - I wonder where the car radio went then? :-)
We'll need to check for the hole for the ariel lead too, thanks. Indeed, no idea what that thing could possibly be!
I can see the mirrors were on the wings too, instead of the A-pillars as they are now.
Update from today is we had to take the wings off the car to paint them, only to discover they were held on - held on being a loose decription!! - by fence screws. Half of which weren't doing anything...
So, we've had to fully treat and Tetroseal both monocoque 'boxes', anti rust and paint the holes, fit and seal in new outer threads and then of course the right sort of bolts can be used. And of course the wings have had to be treated and sorted. Should all be back on the car by this time next week, leaving the new paint on the wings the weekend to cure.
Sigh.
Fence post screws, for pity's sake!!
The living end.
Thanks again both, both for the info and the photo,
Mark