Lancia Motor Club

Model Technical and Interest => Aprilia, Ardennes and Ardea => Topic started by: simonandjuliet on 07 April, 2012, 07:38:04 AM



Title: Petrol Tank
Post by: simonandjuliet on 07 April, 2012, 07:38:04 AM
The first "must-do" job was to clean the petrol tank following the blockage on my way here. Boy, did it need doing !

In the first picture you can just about see the state of the inside, masses of lumpy, rusty mess ! During the cleaning process I removed about 1 lb of this crud, although it took a while because of the baffles. Lots of pressure washing, tank tapping and turning to loosen the rust and then direct it through the holes to a point where you can suck it out with an aquavac. Following this, a proprietary degreaser and cleaner.

In the second photo you can see the finish before sealing the tank with a resin (supposedly resists 80% ethanol mixtures)

Hopefully this will cure the internal rust .....

The petrol gauge was a similar mess and so I spent a several hours dismantling and repairing this. What a work of art - no wonder Lancias were so expensive, a ridiculous number of parts - I will put some pics on later.  These are notoriously temperamental, so hopefully it will work again following my efforts.

A delightful little find was the torsion bar plate on the inner wheelarch which I am sure someone else can translate correctly. The screws even came undone so I could remove it before sanding and repainting the wheelarches and boot area

Next job is to refit the tank with filters and an additional pump then I will finally be able to take my wife out for lunch to celebrate the arrival of the Aprilia !

PS Anyone got a filler cap lid, the one that covers the filler cap ? I am going to put a "swapshop" list on the forum soon in case that is more attractive than money !



Title: Re: Petrol Tank
Post by: davidwheeler on 08 April, 2012, 03:39:36 PM
I have a friend who is a tinsmith (among other things) so we unsoldered the tank around the seam and cleaned it out and soldered it back together.   Unfortunately, I had taken it into my head to paint the inside with Smoothrite, hence my four inline filters!


Title: Re: Petrol Tank
Post by: ColinMarr on 09 April, 2012, 06:36:58 PM
Simon,

I am still feeling envious of you fettling such a fine Aprilia. The plate in the rear wheel arch is interesting. I have seen two other variants of these plates before. One I have seen from an early car had no writing to explain what it was, just the datum line. Later cars had plates like the one in the attached drawing and I guess yours if from one of the very late cars.

I don’t know what the exact translation is, but it is to determine the distance between that datum line and the top of the joint on the drive-shaft. As you probably already know, the idea is to set the trailing arms to that distance with the torsion bars removed. The bars are then to be refitted in their unstressed state, turning the bars until the vernier option of the splines allows them to be fully inserted without altering the distance. And only then tightening all the clamp bolts to lock the bars and splines. This is supposed to be the optimum arrangement whereby, when the car is under little load, the torsion bars twist one way from a neutral position for an upward deflection of the wheels and the opposite way from a neutral position for a downward deflection.

There was lots of correspondence about this on the forum in October 2008, under the heading “AAprilia rear suspension”.

Colin