Post by homersimpson on Oct 10, 2020 11:23:44 GMT
This was my Ferrari 246GT Replica which I bought in 2005 as a previously built car, rebuilt, resprayed, replaced the engine and then sold in 2009.
The car originally had a Lancia Beta engine in it and the previous owner bought it, used it for a bit and then the clutch went. They took it to a garage near Brighton who offered to fit a Lancia Thema turbo engine at the same time as replacing the clutch which they did and this is where the problems started.
The car was on twin Webber 45's which I don't think were suitable for turbo charging and it misfired and blew flames out of the exhaust, they took it to other specialists to look at and in the end ran up such a huge bill that he ended up signing the car over to them which is where I bought it from them on ebay.
I got it home and did some simple checks, it wouldn't even run properly with the turbo disconnected just running normally aspirated so I checked the timing which was ok and checked compression and found that two cylinders had zero compression. No wonder it didn't run well!
Everything that had been made by them to fit the engine in the car was hideously done, they were clearly bodge merchants.
I bought an accident damaged Fiat Tipo Sedicivalvo which had the same 16V 2.0 engine but normally aspirated and fuel injected. I modified it to fit and it ran really well.
One strange thing was that the gear change worked backwards to how it should have been (i.e. 1st was top right and 5th was top left), this was part of the original 'design' and was noted in magazine reports when they were first built. I altered the linkage so it was the correct way around which was dead easy and I cannot see why they weren't originally made like this.
After a few years I sold it when I wanted to buy a house.
Some of the photos were used in the ebay advert when I sold it hence part of the number plate being blocked out. I wonder where it is in now.
