It's getting close to the Baston car show at Grimsthorpe Castle and the Integrale needs some work done if it is to star in the show. The brakes were feeling very hard and not working too well, the fuel gauge wasn't working and the engine refused to start so we had to push it on the ramp.
This car was the one driven by Didier Auriol in the 1992 Finnish 1000 lakes rally, it's been all around the world since then, Malc found it for sale in Australia and had it shipped back and got it UK registered. It was originally a group A rally car but it last competed in the desert, hence the massive cooling fins on the front wheels and quite a few other less obvious mods. Anyway it won the 1000 lakes, Auriol's co-pilot was Bernard Occelli. The car was incredibly quick, to put some perspective on it, Colin McRae competed in the same event and came in 8th in his Subaru with a final time of 15 minutes more than Auriol. That's some pretty serious history, it's a real privilege to be working on stuff like this.
The brakes looked very complicated at first, we had trouble with them last year but aborted our attempt to fix them in the field. The car is too valuable to make a mistake with if it's a fun day out rather than a competitive situation. We looked at the fronts first, nothing much to see there except for grooves on both discs both sides that were caused by the discs contacting the stops cast in to the massive Brembo 4 pot calipers. Russ came up with the solution, it looks like at some time the wheel bearings had gone bad and allowed the discs to move in relation to the caliper and contact it. It's not too bad and the pads will soon wear to the grooves, Malc didn't have any new discs in his stash so we have decided to leave as is and let them wear in a bit to give more stopping power.
The rear brakes were a different story, the rear calipers are 4 pots but seem to be Lancia front calipers redeployed to their new position. They look like they have been badly overheated, the friction material was badly cracked, we had no option but to replace them, a set of new old stock ones were sourced from ebay at a fraction of the price we had expected. Changing them was a doddle, it all feels much better now although we didn't try it in the car park as there were a lot of punters in today. Malc can try it in the week and see if he is happy with it.
Next came the fuel gauge, I had looked in to this before when the car was sandwiched between a 6r4 and a wall, I could not work out quite how it all hung together. I thought it had an in tank pump and an external pump, turns out I was wrong. Again. There were actually 2 external pumps and one gauge sender unit, with a wire running to the front of the car - dooohhh, yet another senior moment. The wire is broken but fixing it is an easy job, by holding it on to the back of the gauge we saw the gauge move when we turned the ignition on. We thought there was much more fuel in it but when I had the sender unit out to check it the tank was pretty much empty. We had concluded that the starting problem of yesterday was a lack of fuel so had put half a gallon in it, when we hit the pump switch this time it sounded much more like fuel coursing through the car's veins than air. She fired straight up so that's that sorted too - it runs better with fuel in it, who would have thought it.
We had a good look at everything, I noticed a loose lock nut on the rear suspension so I tightened that up and decided if that one was loose, so may be others. Yup, just about every nut was under torqued, I suspect somebody had removed bits and forgot the final tightening some time in the past, they are all tight now.
There was a fair bit of multiplexing going on today, Paulo from Alliance Transport had a van that needed an oil change, they sponsor Josh in his Fiesta Junior car and Paulo is good mates with Malc so we do bits now and again. We also had to stop to watch Josh race at Oulton Park and I had a go at resetting the service light in Russ's van but that wasn't one of my finest moments, no matter what procedure I followed it still shone brightly like a beacon of despair. It needs a proper diag box, there are no obd codes coming up, it's just a pain, anyway - video time
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