Lancia Motor Club

Back in 2008 there was a post about John Nicholson's Dedra estate being for sale.

January 2012, having been up on e-bay for sale by the person who bought it from John Nicholson, I am the new owner.

I was thinking about an estate and something with a larger carrying capacity (and towing capacity) than my venerable Y10 so the Dedra seemed worth a punt. I loved the white 2.0 SE saloon I had a few years ago. Also I passed on the old Beta project I had been sitting on so I was in credit with the wife to the extent of one car space.

So far, a week and a half in, it doesn't seem a bad purchase. It is a bit knocked about but should respond to some TLC. I have had to dismantle the driver's seat to make the recline mechanism work. The retaining bush at the far end of the operating rod from the handle had gone missing completely. I made something up as a temporary fix. The other two significant issue were a too large battery ballanced over the battery tray and a wonderfully cracked set of old tyres. How the previous owner got it a new MOT is something one can only speculate about.

My friend Chris, who took me to collect it, re-gassed the air con and gave me a set of automatic height adjusting head lights which I will have to look into fitting.

Hopefully I will get to some events  in it during the year.

Now, what happened to that money I was supposed to spend on starting the Flaminia restoration........

Best of luck with it. I kept my eye on it and was tempted but the wife didn't seem to be too keen on another project. I must admit when I looked at the pics and saw he had a brand new MOT I did wonder if he knew the right people!

Regards
Derek Moore

Surely Derek, you mean the wrong people......;)


P

I am not up for doing a "Fridders" here but a little bit of sorting out has been taking place.

The driver's seat was stuck in the fully upright position which wasn't helping me adapt to left hand drive. This turned out to be a missing bush at the far side of the rod across the bottom of the seat from the recline lever. A large nylon nut has been drilled out to the right size and inserted to hold the rod properly in place. Recline restored and left hand driving now being adapted to satisfactorily.

I am another victim of the elderly tyre syndrome. I noticed fine cracking on the side wall of the tyres on one side of the car. Closer inspection revealed the same in a patch all the way across the tread on all four tyres, presumably where they have stood in contact with the ground. An urgent trip (at very modest speed) has been made to the local tyre dealer for some much safer rubber. I suspect the tyres may have been on the car since it was imported from Germany but still it shows it isn't just older cars that we need to be careful of in this regard.

Next job is chasing down a fuel leak when I fill the tank right up. A clean up round the filler pipe in the rear wheel arch revealed no obvious sourch of a leak but did reveal a nasty patch of rust where the inner arch joins the outer wing panel, which has now been treated. A tentative fill up at the next fuel stop seems to suggest the leak is from the top of the tank under the boot floor. Unless there is a convenient access panel in the floor it looks like a tank out job. What's the betting the bolts shear? WD40  has been applied.