It’s been an incredibly long time since I blogged about the build of this car, so a catchup is definitely in order. Since the last time I wrote about it, the car build has been completed, and the final stages of it all went relatively smooth. The usual unforeseen issues came into play, mainly in the form of front suspension geometry which we thought we had overcome, before the first outing.
Here are a few pictures I took during the various final building stages.
So a quick recap, the car is a 1972 lancia fulvia coupe, powered by a 2007 Volvo v70r, 2.3l turbo. The engine has had a few modifications, of which include a bigger turbocharger, lifted from a Mitsubishi evo 8. Although we have never put it on a rolling road, on paper it should be approximately 330bhp, so I would guess it’s around the 300bhp mark.
The very first outing we found that our predictions and calculations on the necessary spring poundage for the front suspension, was quite a bit off, giving us a lot of bouncing, body roll, and nose dip on the brakes. A simple swap over to a pair of stiffer springs sorted this problem by the very next race. The other issue came in the way of a faulty alternator, which again, was fixed with a simple swap over.
From then on it’s been a season of tweeking, and fine adjustments to get the best out of the front end, but a after the 1st half of the season, we made the decision that a full redesign and build over the winter is needed.
But on the whole, we’ve been pretty happy with the performance of the car, and the future looks bright.