Body shells and Cages.

Integrales have weak shells and cracks in various places at the front are common, especially on the wider Evo models. You can try to strengthen it or simply add a cage. Why do they crack? Cracks are formed by the metal being regularly flexed, steel can be bent quite a lot before it starts to break, but your car will have seen a lot of flexing since it was made over 15yrs ago. You have to remember that the basic shell was designed in the 70's for a small medium priced FWD hatchback with 1.3 engine. By the end of its run the power output had tripled and the weight of the engine, transmission and ancillaries had grown out of all proportion, still the basic shell remained. The heavy engine and transmission is hung out at the front which apart from making the car a bit 'understeery' means that it puts a lot of strain on the front part of the shell, the chassis rails or legs get a good work out. Support for the chassis rails comes in the form of the suspension arms below. The problem here is that they are fixed to the shell via rubber bushes which allow movement. If you were to replace these with solid bearings or brace around them then you would stop a lot of the movement and stress fractures on the legs themselves, you could however move the problem further back on the shell. Replacing rubber bushes with bearings will increase feedback from the car to the driver making it more enjoyable to drive, the suspension will be encouraged to do its thing too instead of the chassis flexing. The downside is that road noise in the cabin will be increased - they were made from rubber for this reason. The floorpan beneath the front inner seat mountings crack too, this is basically the weight of the driver and passenger bouncing up and down, easily remedied by welding on strengthening plates. The cills on Evos can crack by the base of the A pillar, the front door surrounds also near where they meet the top of the A pillar. It is caused by the chassis flexing because of the engine/transmission bouncing up and down over the bumps in the road. These are the main areas which crack, there are others. I've known and had dealings with three cages: OMP, Sparco, Custom Cages. OMP Rated: 2/10 Just don't even go there, it has no diagonal bracing (front to rear), doesn't tie to the shell and is short on well, just everything... If you must buy this thing then at least make up some brackets to weld it to the shell at high level - top of A and B post, it doesn't do much if you don't apart from make the car difficult to get into. Sparco Rated: 9/10 Overall the best off the shelf package for those who expect to get what they pay for and don't want to pay for hidden extra materials/work. It is has lots of diagonal bracing, weld in brackets to tie it to the shell and is based on the Grp A cage which was very well thought out - well it bloody well should have been! Custom Cages Rated: 7/10 http://www.customcages.co.uk/Rollcage/LoadRollCage.castle?manufacturer=Lancia&model=Delta Integrale&type=Multipoint On the surface a very comprehensive cage with lots of tube, on fitting it you will find that not much of it actually fits. The cage features a diagonal bar which goes from the base of the A pillar, up through the bulkhead/wheelarch and meets the horizontal bar near where it fixes to the strut top. This is a very useful addition as it tackles the problem that integrales have in this area. The A pillar tubes are bent to the wrong angle, a few other braces have the wrong angles cut on them or are short. If you buy this kit be prepared to re-bend some of the tube and order some more for the parts which don't fit. You will also have to make up some brackets to fix it to the shell at high level (A & B posts) as none are provided. It comes across as a cage which was originally designed and fitted to a crashed car, but persevere, add more tube, brackets and you will have a very good strong cage. How do I come to these conclusions? Well having a bit of common sense when just looking at the thing works wonders along with some easily learned structural knowledge, how braces do what they do and what forces are at work. In the workshop we have a two post lift with four adjustable pads which sit under each of the jacking points, if a car has no cage or a poor cage it sags to fit the lift if the adjustable pads aren't wound up exactly equally. If you lift a car with a properly fitted good quality cage in this way it will rock from corner to corner. An interesting read here on the CLS forum: http://www.lanciasport.com/forum/index.php?topic=1020.15

Site goes live

http://www.deltaparts.co.uk/

We are off to a slightly shaky start, there is still the odd mistake here and there and it is a bit light on content, but it can only get better and the range grow.

A massive thanks to site creator James and photographer Nick for making this possible, being a computer dufus and not a great cameraman I couldn't have done it without you.

:-)

Wheel studs and nuts

Just a short post on the small subject of converting to wheel studs & nuts from bolts.

Although there is the advantage that the wheels are much easier to put on with studs, they are usually fitted when wheel spacers are used to allow for the extra thickness. When ordering measure the total thickness of everything which the bolt has to pass through: The hub, brake disc or bell, spacers, wheel and of course wheel nut. The nuts we sell are 25mm total long, the studs are measured as their total length, we stock mainly 60 or 80mm although other sizes are available to order, so:

Hub: 11mm

Standard brake disc: 7mm

Spacer: 17mm

Wheel thickness in nut hole: 15mm

Nut length: 25mm

+5mm extra

Total 80mm

When fitting, an aerosol can of brake cleaner and cotton buds or a small bottle brush are ideal for getting the threads in the hub de-greased and clean before applying liquid thread lock and winding the stud home. Keep an eye on the back as it is easy to go too far when using two nuts together to wind them in, don't go much further than the stud sticking out of the back a mm or two. Allow to dry before putting the other components on and finally the wheel nuts of course.

BC_Racing Suspension

I was rather apprehensive of this system when I first read about it, it seemed too good to be true, but on going round and seeing for myself what it was all about I was happy to give them all the struts and springs they needed to copy and make it work.

On receiving the first set I wasn't dissapointed, the build quality and way it fitted was 1st class, likewise the way the car drove when it was fitted.

Terry, the new owner of an immaculate and beautifully standard (apart from the nice wheels!) white 16v had come to us complaining about the terrible ride on his car, "A shocker must be leaking or a spring broken" he said.
I checked the car over and found nothing wrong, the front struts were nearly new. This just goes to show how bad the OE set up is when a new owner thinks it is defective, Terry opted for the BC-Racing fast road set up.

We carefully fitted the struts and set the car up by lowering it just 20mm and resetting the tracking and camber to our specs. What an improvement! On the softest setting the car just soaks up the bumps and holds itself upright when cornering, if you are found wanting something stiffer then it is a simple job to just turn the top adjuster to firmer for those more spirited days out and trackdays.

The next time I saw Terry was at the Club Lancia Sport Curborough track day where he was lapping quicker and more composed than most people there - including the more higher powered modified cars.

Transmission Problem

Up on the lift just recently was a red Evo 1, the transmission had been slipping and another garage had diagnosed a slipping clutch and replaced it, it made no difference....

First off we cleaned down the underside of the car with the power washer as there was oil everywhere, once it was clean and up in the air it was an easy job to nail the fault - the offside output shaft was hanging out!

Working on cars involves a lot of investigation, I gave the whole area a good coat of looking at and it seemed to me that the car had had a slight accident at the front O/S at one time, I got to work with my spanners.
I soon had the thing apart and the problem soon became clear - half the splines were missing on the output shaft and the inside of the housing which contains the viscous coupler was badly mangled, bits of the clip which had once held it together along with a shattered bearing were still there. What had happened in the past was that the accident had pushed the shaft in too far, broken the clip and the whole lot had whirled around in and out slowly destroying itself, the shaft had only been running off part of it's full length of splines so had eventually given up under the strain hence the transmission slip.
A quick call to the customer confirmed the car was needed back ASAP, so I was to repair it with some second hand parts I had. Sometime later after putting it back together, flushing it through and putting in new oil it was back on the road.

You have to ask what kind of garage incorrectly fits a new clutch while there is hardly any oil in the gearbox and most of it is escaping from the other side of the transmission?

Inner Wheel Arch Protection

Well Summer is gone and Winter is on the way, time to address some rust prevention issues!

It seems that every car that comes in has issues in this area, some almost innocent brown stains make way to bubbles and then all too soon you have an extra large hole.

Why when Lancia went to the trouble of making plastic wheel arch liners did they not cover this area? Maybe they ran out of plastic and it was late Friday afternoon.....

Many cars come in with this area already patched up of course, this issue is by no means new. The problem then is that the person usually doing the patching up makes a piece which doesn't have the access hole in it, then the nuts which hold the anchoring plate below spin and you're into a much bigger job. I have even seen this plate welded on to the crossmember which make things even worse when you come to working on the car.

So to protect this vulnerable area we came up with these.
Just take out your front arch liner, put this in position and then the arch liner back in place, the old liner will need a bit trimming from the edge (we use tin snips) to take up the extra thickness. They don't need any extra fixings and are held in place by the original liner. As usual view the website for more details.

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