Fiat 124 AC rally car

[Curly]

This '68 Coupe (an ex club circuit racer) was built up in the late 90's to compete in the classic category (pre 1970) of tarmac special-stage rally events such as Targa Tasmania and Rally Tasmania. As such it was built with reliability and strength in mind, which has been justified with a 100% finishing record over the past 8 years.
As an early AC it still runs the torque tube rear end, but it's now fitted with an LSD. Brakes on the front are ventilated Alfa rotors with Renault calipers which fit snuggly beneath the mandatory 13" diameter wheels. Engine is a 1592 unit with 35-75 cams, twin 45 DCOE Webers and 10:1 compression. Gearbox is the 124 5-speed using the closest standard set of ratios.

Trying to make up time after clobbering a roadside guide post the previous day (note dent in bumper bar) which dislodged our oil filter.

A happy crew (with helmet-hair) at the finish line.

It's no tarmac shredder, but a lovely well-balanced package to drive in these 3-day or longer, events.

[sumplug]

WOW!!
One of my all time favorite cars. The AC could out handle a Lotus Elan! Wish i lived in Australia where a lot of classic cars seem to survive. You have a very healthy racing scene and i salute you!!

Andy.

[1969race125]

That is a very beautiful car. And from the same year as my 125 race car too (which is much less pretty and more an "acquired taste"! I'll post some pictures when it is back together after its accident).

One thing I would really, strongly recommend to you would be to replace that roll bar padding behind your head with the high-density FIA stuff. In high impacts (like falling off the road in the Targa!) that soft stuff will just compress and your head will hit the bar really hard. Fiat Racer Don explains it better in his "Safety First" post:

viewtopic.php?t=426

Andrew

[Curly]

Thanks for the advice and the link Andrew; our motorsports body, CAMS (Confederation of Australian Motor Sport) is constantly upgrading the safety requirements of competition vehicles. The general move now is towards FIA standards and these currently apply to roll cages and clothing. It looks like HANS devices will be next.

I have made a correction to the original post, the Coupe is actually a 1968 model not a '69 as posted. Apologies, the '69s had the later rear axle setup like Andrew's 125.

Here's a shot without the dented bumper bar.

[Curly]

Perhaps it's time for an update ...
This year was our year to do Targa Tasmania. My co-driver and I had been competing in Rally Tasmania for the past 10 years, but had never had the time or money to embark on the ‘Ultimate Tarmac Rally’, but this year it was going to happen – World Financial Crisis or not !
It would be foolish to embark on a project like this without undertaking some preparation to our Coupe, and a calamity if a mechanical issue put us out of the rally during Day One of the six-day event, but it has been known to happen! With that in mind our 1968 Fiat 124AC Coupe was given new brakes, new clutch, new tyres, a gearbox inspection, a rebuilt diff and steering box, even new un-scratched side windows as well as some additional wiring and new 6-point harnesses to meet the latest safety requirements. It was then taken to Wakefield Park near Goulburn, NSW for a shakedown at the Australian Fiat Nationals in January where it performed very well. It was also at about this stage that Bits of Italy in Melbourne offered to share their support crew with us. This was a tremendous load off our shoulders as it meant that we would have spares available if they were required.
The roads chosen for the event’s 40 Special Stages are absolutely magnificent and range from a few short town/spectator stages of 5km to more demanding stages of up to 48km in length. The event covers over 2100km of which 460km are made up of these closed-road Special Stages where cars are sent off – slowest to fastest - at 30 second intervals. We had a great time running and dicing with the same group of cars each day. They included a couple of 944 Porsches, an early E-type, Alfa GTVs, a couple of classic Cooper S's and a later model Fiat 124 coupe. We endured almost 4 fine sunny days, then two wet days on the notorious Tasmanian west coast where the roads were very fast and very slippery - the recovery teams busied themselves each evening dragging exotica out of the shrubbery.
The coupe performed faultlessly, we saw 120mph on the speedo quite frequently (obviously optimistic), but when it's in the rain and low cloud mist along a mountain ridge with blind crests taken flat out - it certainly feels at least that fast. The only spanners we laid on her was during a precautionary brake bleed half way through the event. The brakes really take a caning with lots of long downhill sections and it’s nice to have the security of knowing there's fresh fluid under the pedal. Our support crew refueled us once on Day Six, but they, like us, were happy to leave the crates of spares unopened.
We were very pleased with our result, finishing with a Targa Plate for completing each stage within the 'Trophy time' specified for our category, and placing 18th out of the 42 entries in the Early Classic category. A fantastic event, a pleasing result for the old Fiat and well worth the effort to get there.

We even managed to grab a few seconds of National TV coverage in the 1-hour special broadcast after the event.
Here's the link to the short video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE1djyXwwUo