Fanalone: Two Rotten Pictures and a Lubrication lesson

Hello.

Finally as they say, Spring is round the corner.

The Fanalone on which I reported last year is located in an area which is about 800 metres ( about 2700 ft) above sea level and given the fact that this location is in South Eastern France, snow inevitably has to have its say. This year temperatures dropped to as low as -17° and there was 50cm of snow. The recent gradual thaw meant that I could get back to it.

I removed the rest of the engine from the subframe and stripped it down. After nearly ten years, 26 rallies and plenty of road miles too, I was not optimistic but was pleasantly surprised. There is no significant wear to the bores which are in excellent condition as is the crankshaft (supplied secondhand at the time of the Evolution Engineering rebuild that I did). But the big shock was the condition of the lower centre main bearing shell, as you know the Fulvia's Achilles Heel - or arguably, one of them! I apologise for the photo quality - light was difficult.

All the main bearings were perfect! And I should add that the rev-counter tell-tale reads 9000 rpm, the result of a "buzzing" during a "yump" on a rally. There is no need to replace them - to do so would simply be an unnecessary extravagance.

Some of the big ends have marks and will be replaced. the owner has a set of bearing shells, but these are reticular tin easily recognisable by their silvery finish whereas the correct bearings should be lead indium which are grey in appearance. These will be purchased.

I shall replace the piston rings, merely as a precaution and to ensure that performance remains optimum. 1600 Fulvias always seem to wear their timing chains rather quickly, probably because the chain is really a little on the long side: when Lancia developed the 1600 the increased stroke meant that the block was 12.3mm taller than the 1300's. This of course meant that the timing chain had to be longer. About one to one and a half links would have been ideal, but of course this is impossible so 118 links it had to be with a larger tensioner to take up the slack. So the chain will be replaced.

The oil pump is in excellent condition and will be refitted.

Now then the point of all the foregoing blurb! The owner is absolutely rigid on two points: first, she will never race a cold engine and on the road will cover five miles before she applies any heavy right foot. Second she insists on using only 100% synthetic oil. The oil we have used in this car since it was built in 2001 is AGIP Racing 10W/60 fully synthetic. I have argued in the past that any reasonable modern oil is much better than the products available when the Fulvia was made, but I have to say the results speak for themselves - and after all, I have always said that a can of oil is always cheaper than a new engine.

Having wrapped up and packed away the various parts pending the arrival of the bits and pieces I shall need to do the rebuild, I then removed the gearbox from the subframe as this will be replaced, the owner happily having a spare! She has never been happy with the original, I agree: it is not very nice. It is also bloody heavy. Fulvia gearboxes are heavier than they were 25 years ago or so when I first started lifting them...

The subframe pictured below is much filthier than my rotten photo shows! When conditions improve outside, it will of course be properly cleaned, the replacement gearbox installed and then the S1 1300 steering box, which is excellent as 1300 steering boxes usually are, installed. I mentioned this in an earlier piece.

The plan is that after the bottom half of the engine is built up, I shall then have a look at the head. We have some replacement Fanalone rockers to fit - regular readers will recall we had some rocker and camshaft trouble a while back, and there is a set of new valve springs too.

I'll do my best to make some better pictures next time.

Meanwhile if YOU are anywhere near here - i.e. close to Geneva, then get in touch - I want some Fulvias here to work on!

A bientôt

More Fanalone

Hello again.

As I wrote last time, the engine dismantling revealed that certain new parts were necessary. These arrived and this weekend I built up the bottom half of the engine.

A couple of weeks ago I spent a fair amount of time cleaning the oily mess that appears in the earlier photos on this series, so with decent clean parts to work with I could get on with it. At the same time I fitted the new piston rings to the pistons having carefully checked all the gaps. Standard wisdom for water-cooled engines is "three thou per inch of bore" - roughly 0.75mm per 25mm. Every new ring in this case had about 10 - 12 thou (0.010 - 0.012" or 0.25 - 0.3mm) since there is wear in the block. Next time it will have to be a rebore.

A cleanish start!

I think I can say that I have always had trouble making Fulvia engines non-leaky: some of them are as bad as classic English motorcycles. I suppose that this is hardly surprising as the crankcase is all bolted together, and the block bolted on top. So I have taken extra-special care this time preparing all the mating surfaces: we shall see!

First, a quick word about tools. When I first started building these engines, I wondered how I could correctly tighten the block to crankcase bolts. A "crow's foot" attachment was suggested, but these are not much good if tightening torque is substantial as it is in this case - I usually tighten them (12 grade 8mm bolts on 1600s) to 25 lb/ft and use red Loctite as loosened block to crankcase bolts are a serious - and oily - pain. Here's a snap of some tools; they are all 3/8" square drive:

Bottom right is a standard 13mm "crow's foot" attachment; quite useless for this application, unless of course one wants rounded-off bolt heads. So I went back to the Snap-On man and ordered the one on the bottom left, very useful for undoing 13mm tube nuts on hydraulic lines, but no good again, because it is too bulky. Exasperated, I returned to Snap-On's catalogue and in the aircraft tools section, found the one at the top of the picture. This is spline drive and thin walled and does the job nicely so long as somebody hasn't already damaged the bolt heads. The reason is that this tool is (or was) only available in Imperial sizes, so it's ½" (12.7mm). This is good as it makes an excellent tight fit. Of course I make an allowance for the additional length when setting the torque wrench.

It was the late Harry Manning who told me to use a ½" socket rather than 13mm on the 1600 big-end bolts - again to avoid possible damage; sadly there is no equivalent option for the 12mm heads on 1300 con-rods.

Building a Fulvia bottom end is a little awkward in some ways. The crankcase of a Fulvia (as anyone who has read my Fulvia Developments series knows) is weak. It is best then to bolt as much of it together as possible, plus of course the block, before tightening finally the main bearing caps. And in any case one does not want to damage the block to crankcase gasket trying to fit the front cover with the block in place!

The recommended tightening torques for the front and rear covers are quite low, but there are many bolts (good practice this) so the total "clamp" is quite substantial.

So with the crankshaft in place and front and rear covers correctly tightened (not forgetting to install the timing chain which always gets in the way!), one "nips up" the main bearing cap nuts to stop the crank falling on one's foot whilst fixing the block to the crankcase:

Cap nuts "nipped up" ready to fit the end covers and the block

With the block fitted and the main bearing caps tightened to 60lbs/Ft or 8kg/m or 80nm, I then installed the pistons and rods. Not much to say about this except that these days I use a piston ring compressor. I know that the job can be done by feeding in the rings, but it's much less stressful using a compressor. I modified a spring steel one when installing some pistons a few years ago that were fitted with very thin and fragile rings. I simply cut the bottom of the compressor to match the angle of the vee; this works perfectly - one of course must use plenty of oil, but you knew that didn't you?

Here's a snap of the story so far - apologies for the quality:

Note the famous sand-cast large sump fitted only to Fanalones; this holds an extra litre of oil. The sump adds considerably to the rigidity of the crankcase structure. Incidentally, in this case, as is usual, the steel internal baffle was cracked: I could see where I welded it up nine years ago - and of course it cracked somewhere else, two places in fact. Soon fixed with the MIG though.

Next job is to look at cleaning the filthy subframe and to prepare the replacement gearbox for installation.

A bientôt