Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

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Grundo Farb
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Joined: March 9th, 2007, 8:51 am
Location: New Zealand - Wellington
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Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by Grundo Farb »

Well good things apparently take time and this project is certainly no exception. I take my hat off to others out there doing Abarth based projects and other replicas as the compilation of bits and parts to do these projects is in itself a substantial part of the journey. This car while not having the direct pedigree of a 131 or 124 has a peculiar place (I think anyway) as it can trace itself to the Beta Coupe Group 3 and 4 Rally cars of the 70's and the 037 of the 80's as it is supercharged.

To the car.

I have a Lancia Beta Volumex coupe which is well on the way to getting on the road/track/rally. I have two spare parts cars and the third (good one I purchased off another member KeithVX on this site) who broke the back on the majority of the race preparation, I am now completing the engine, gearbox and final race prep phase of the work.
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Details about the car:
Engine:
- Guy Croft Forged pistons
- Lightened and balanced flywheel
- H Beam conrods with ARP bolts
- The choice of a 45DCOE or 44 DCNF - I'll come back to that
- rebuilt and uprated organic clutch
- standard head and cams at this point with no porting and polishing
- baffled sump
- 4-1 exhaust manifold with 2 inch exhaust with 2 straight through baffled mufflers coming out from in front of right rear wheel
- standard supercharger pulley although I have a choice of a 19, 20 and 22 tooth pulley (at least I think that's what they are as I haven't looked for a while)

some pictures:
Baffled Sump
Baffled Sump
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IMG_1242_2.jpg
IMG_1242_2.jpg (60.45 KiB) Viewed 13658 times
A various assortment of bits to go on - the rings aren't being used - CP rings sourced from Guy will be used instead
A various assortment of bits to go on - the rings aren't being used - CP rings sourced from Guy will be used instead
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Uprated clutch
Uprated clutch
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IMG_1252_2.jpg
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IMG_1254_2.jpg
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IMG_1255_2.jpg
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The rest of the car:
- Bilstein fully adjustable shocks front, rear shocks from an Audi of undetermined nature
- Colotti Limited Slip Diff
- A choice of final ratios from a selection of other Beta Models
- Half roll cage being extended to a full roll cage
- race fuel cell and battery moved to rear of the car
- rewired and dash reconfigured for racing
lanciapic 015.jpg
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Colotti LSD
Colotti LSD
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So, as mentioned before I have a Guy Croft DCOE manifold from another VX that met a sad end and a DCNF manifold made by Keith the previous owner so I have the luxury of a side by side test at some point.

The current status of the car is:
- The engine is getting built at the moment
- I'm tossing up which final gear ratio to use the standard 3.26 or 4.36 (from a 77 Sedan of all things)
- roll cage, seats and harnesses about to start going in

Thanks,
Adam
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Guy Croft
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Re: Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by Guy Croft »

MODEL POST!

Tuning the Vx always looks good to me!


G
Fingers
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Joined: July 1st, 2006, 8:35 am
Location: Christchurch, New Zealand

Re: Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by Fingers »

Nice one Adam, I'll be watching your progress with interest. Make sure you leave room for a passenger, I'd love a ride. It would be great to see it down here at the Skope classic in the new year too.
I drove down to see Keith when he first started on this car to pick up some bits. He could have posted them but it was just an excuse to drive the VX & see what he'd done. Five hours in the pouring rain! It really is a great example, I think he said he took almost 20 kg of wiring out of it.
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Grundo Farb
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Joined: March 9th, 2007, 8:51 am
Location: New Zealand - Wellington
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Re: Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by Grundo Farb »

Thanks Paul, the wiring in particular is a very good job.

A question I have in general for anyone with any knowledge is how much torque through a front wheel drive car is too much? The reason for my question is I want to install the 4.36 final drive in my gearbox which significantly changes the drive force of the wheels (standard is 3.26) and incidently replicates the performance of the car (expected) to that of the Group 4 rally car from 1975. The only difference I guess though is the influence of the supercharger - hence my reluctance to do too much to the supercharger pulley and head at this stage and focus on getting the car revving and breathing a bit better generally.

The Group 4 rally car had:
190 DIN a 7700 rpm. (195 bhp)
22 kgm @ 5500 rpm
Drive ratio 13/58 (4.462:1) (from Beta 1300)
1st 55 km/h @ 7000 rpm
2nd 78 km/h "
3rd 102 km/h "
4th 127 km/h "
5th 151 km/h "

My car will rev up to 7000 rpm and given the changes to the engine it is uncertain what the engine performance will be, going by Guy's original book I'm thinking approx 25hp improvement along with better breathing for higher revs. The standard engine has peak torque at 3000 rpm at almost the same torque as the rally car - 21kgm.

Developing drive force/speed cascades using the spreadsheet from another post and assuming higher revs and higher engine power due to the larger carb I derive:
165hp at 6500 rpm
Drive ratio 4.36
1st 44 km/h @ 6000 rpm
2nd 68 km/h "
3rd 100 km/h "
4th 133 km/h "
5th 165 km/h "

As it isn't a close ratio gearbox, the drive force in first is quite high (peaks at 2438 lbft in first) which strikes me as a potential issue although the speeds etc seem comparable.

So any thoughts from people as to whether I am way off the mark, will end up with an undrivable front wheel drive car or will actually be quite good?

Thanks,
Adam
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RayO
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Re: Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by RayO »

Hello Grundo,
I too am in the process of building up a Beta Volumex Tarmac rally car. The car itself has been around a while. I competed in it at Targa NZ in 2004. Great rally, well run and bags of fun are my lasting impressions.
My next aim is Targa Tas next year.
Looking at your baffled sump picture; do you know the baffle design works? I like the fairly restricted oil path to the base of the sump. That might prevent oil sloshing up sufficiently on heavy direction changes. My last effort on this didn't work well enough and I needed to have a over-high oil level to avoid/reduce pressure drops.
I have seen a design from NZ that involved two one-way gates to the oil pump suction area. The gates let oil in, but not out. This is supposed to work.
Next little issue is on brakes. Do you run the standard Beta solid discs or have you done some development here? I would like to go to a vented disc design but the way to go is unclear at this stage.
My car has aluminium hinged panels to attemp some weight reduction. It weighs in a about 930Kg.
Your car really looks like it could do the business. Congratulations.

RayO
Attachments
Rally Tas 2008
Rally Tas 2008
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WhizzMan
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Re: Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by WhizzMan »

I have no knowledge of how much torque your gear box and clutch can take, but 220 to 240 Nm on an FWD with with LSD should be just fine.

I see 200+ bhp 400Nm fwd Alfa diesels (2.4 JTD 20V) with Q2 (torsen) Diff absolutely blast around and obliterate most other cars at traffic lights and in corners. The cornering speed is restricted by the weight, but the amount of foot they can give it coming out of the corner still makes them hard to pass.
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Grundo
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Re: Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by Grundo »

Thanks for the comments Ray, I saw your car in that targa in 2004 in Wellington, very wet stages from memory - still going strong and flying the Lancia flag. I did have to squint to recognise the beta in your car but that weight reduction sounds very attractive.

The sump has a one way hinged baffle to take oil into the oil pump intake area. It does seem to work though.

The brakes are standard, only change is brake pads. I want to keep the original wheel size and PCD (I have a few of them), a mod I have seen to up-rate the fronts is to move to delta turbo discs which are ventilated, would be able to keep the pcd and 14" wheels then. Good to hear you are moving to a VX, quite rare in Australia so should have some real interest there.

Thanks,
Adam
Guy Croft
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Re: Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by Guy Croft »

Good to see your car Ray!

G
RayO
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Joined: September 8th, 2010, 10:09 am

Re: Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by RayO »

Lancia Turbo discs are rare items indeed this side of the ditch. Any leads to acquiring this kit in NZ?
I am unable to work out how your hinged arrangement in the sump works from the picture Adam. Can you kindly explain a little more on this. Oil surge rates really high on my agenda as a problem to fix on my car. Any assistance here would be very much appreciated. Maybe the standard Volumex sump eliminates the problem. Probably not because you have altered the design on yours. I have not seen the Volumex sump innards as yet.

thanks,
Ray
Guy Croft
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Re: Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by Guy Croft »

The Vx sump is as poor as the Beta one.

My book shows how they can be massively improved and the other thing you must use is an accumulator like the one below.

G
Attachments
Moroso 1.5qt & clamps.JPG
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trapdoor baffle installed in Beta sump after standard innards removed. Door lets oil flow to pump but not away from it. There is only really room for one because of the intrusion of the X member into the front of the sump.
trapdoor baffle installed in Beta sump after standard innards removed. Door lets oil flow to pump but not away from it. There is only really room for one because of the intrusion of the X member into the front of the sump.
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windage tray
windage tray
AM Vx sump_11.JPG (10.72 KiB) Viewed 13339 times
tmvolumex
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Re: Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by tmvolumex »

As far as obtaing Lancia Turbo disks, all types are available from Tarox in Italy, and Brembo in Italy also. I emailed Tarox as there is no Tarox distributor in the USA and they emailed me back a fair price incuding FEDex shipping from Italy. I say fair price, not a cheap price. I will say though, I have had Tarox disks on my Lancia, 2 liter Volumex, Scorpion for more than 40,000 miles and they are hardly worn. I bought the Japan Sport type and Tarox fast road pads. Granted my car is a street car not a rally car. The disk and brake pad material is super in my opinion though, well worth the expense. With the right caliper they should fit inside your 14 inch wheels.
tm volumex.
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Grundo Farb
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Re: Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by Grundo Farb »

An update.

Had my first Tarmac Rally event yesterday, held on one of the race tracks in New Zealand, great fun, 5 stages with 80km of SS and each SS had a different combination of track directions and layout so was quite varied. The car went well, I ended up 13th out of 21 cars (after 49mins of racing only 45 seconds separated me from 11th and 12th). I was pretty pleased with that as 11th was a Porsche 911 Carrera and it was also my first rally event as a driver.

Things to improve:

- oil accumulator, even with the baffled sump the oil light was coming on on right handers so I will now be getting an oil accumulator
- the LSD is not working properly, a lot of wheel spin coming out of corners I have one more option in changing the oil but think it might need some changes to its setup
- top end, I had the rev limiter set to 6,500 which I hit a couple of times but there is very little power above 6,000 rpm so I might need to do something with the head (it is standard at the moment)
- gear ratios - a different set of gear ratios might help I have an option of buying a gearbox from a 1300 and would be interested in peoples thoughts on whether that would be a good idea

And of course, the skill of the driver...

Here is a link to a clip on you-tube I posted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZT9KTf4s2U


And a couple of photos from the day.
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WhizzMan
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Re: Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by WhizzMan »

That looked like a lot of fun to drive. Why are you braking well into the corner to the right, after the chicane they put up on the straight? It seems illogical to be doing that from the viewpoint the movie is made, but there may be a good reason for it?

I would not decide on gear box gearing choices and limiter settings until the engine power is sorted. If you change the characteristics of the engine, everything you think of now, regarding those, will have to be done again. The accumulator sounds like a must have in this case. Get some good advice on setting up the LSD and, with a little more practice, maybe you'll find that you can gain more by improving the road handling than by adding more engine power. We all love powerful engines, but in the end, they can only do so much in getting car around the track fast. Don't forget to keep a good balance between power, handling and skill, or you will be spending money without a lot of gain in your racing results. In the end it is your car and you should spend your time and money on what you think you want to spend it on. Just take this as some general advice and be sure to have as much fun with the car as possible, regardless what you decide to do.
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Grundo Farb
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Location: New Zealand - Wellington
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Re: Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by Grundo Farb »

Correct on all counts, the late braking was a function of having new Ferodo ds3000 pads in which were quite ferocious and I hadn't used before, getting keen and also trying to manage understeer oh and also driver inexperience. I would also agree on not leaping into any big changes too soon, tyre pressure is one that springs to mind as one to play with as I suspect they might have been too low but it is all part of the learning cycle.
Last edited by Grundo Farb on April 16th, 2012, 2:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Grundo Farb
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Re: Lancia VX Tarmac Rally car

Post by Grundo Farb »

Continuing on with the oil accumulator, what size accumulator should I get for Lancia 2l and also what value does the electronic acutator serve over just the normal manual operation of the accumulator? Is it just for pre-oiling the engine on startup?
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