Well, I did say don’t do it “unless there are special reasons why you should”. William, your S3 car looks so complete, lovely and almost there, it would be irresistible not to finish its restoration, that’s special enough for me. Similarly, Jai, your ex-race car is one known to you and no doubt it makes sense to put it back to road use.
My situation was different and hence my advice. I bought it on the basis of seven pages of a fax with all the details and a couple of photos. I hadn’t expected almost everything to be in boxes of parts – two dismantled engines, some of which had been worked on and countless other boxes – even the fuel-gauge sender unit had been dismantled. The floor-mounted gear shift turned out to be cut down from a Flaminia and only operable by a midget sitting on the floor! And not to forget the hidden bangs and bumps from racing.
I said the last straw was the wiring loom, but I had forgotten one of the final nightmares was the hydraulic clutch mechanism, which is unique to S6 cars – a system Lancia abandoned for good reason in time for the Flaminia. It must have worked in period, but it wasn’t thought-through and it used fluid from the same small reservoir as the brakes, and any fluid loss from the clutch could easily result in brake failure. I abandoned it and fitted a long push-rod mechanism provided by Peter Harding, which worked OK. Just a couple more photos, if only to remind me of challenging times.
