Lancia Motor Club

A friend sent me a couple of scanned (hence poor quality) photos today. This one was taken around 1988 in a service station car park where I was replacing a piston and rod !

Said friend arrived in his Prisma with all the bits .......

Brilliant, where were you (motorway services?).

Yes, motorway services somewhere in the NW of England - probably M6.

The car ran for a few more years without problems before the tin-worm got it ! (RLG 911H for those interested)

I'm trying to remember if as many as two out of the six pistons in the Aurelia were the same size and shape when I got it from you ;)

Tim Burrett put in a matched set for me when I went all posh with it all the same colour all over and everything, but second hand and the ring gaps opened out for new and in one slot I think a new pair of rings.

Jason and Louise have new pistons in - but the time they've had it and the use its had I expect now distinctly second hand.

David

I'd struggle to replace a piston and rod if I was given free run of a clinical F1 workshop. Although I have noticed the title..........

I've just noticed that the Lada Estate (??) opposite you had his bonnet up too. Was he after some advice as well?

Changing a piston and rod in a car park is an impressive feat of bush-mechanicing. ;D  I certainly can't top it but I did once blow the head gasket on my Moggy Minor pick up during my early morning commute on a remote country road in Cheshire. The only tools I had were whatever rusty spanners, pliers and screwdrivers which happened to be rattling around the uncovered pick up-bed.
Somehow I managed to get the head off only to discover it was cracked. Undeterred I caught next bus to civilisation [ Sandbach ] where I knew there was a scrapyard. I bought a head for a fiver and caught the next bus back, fitted the head and made it into work before lunch.
 Tell that to the kids of today, and they won't believe you...

When I was 21 (a long time ago...) I was working up at Leeds during the summer and coming back to Hertfordshire at the weekends in my old Ford 100E. On one occasion on the Friday afternoon a rear axle bearing seized and locked the offside rear dragging the car and me across two lanes and towards the central reservation. With a lot of left lock the car drifted back to the hard shoulder leaving a nice black line. It was a testament to remould technology that the remould tyre did not delaminate or explode. Anyway I got the car dragged off the M1 to to the nearest garage where I parked it up. They were going to be shut at the weekend so I thought I could get back home (hitching) and persaude my dad to go to a breakers yard and find a replacement axle which we did and drove back up and being summertime the were long days so fitted the axle (reconnected brakes etc) and drove back home in convoy. I was worried that we had bought a duff axle as it went clonk clonk clonk down the round, but realised it was the flat spot of the tyre. Folly of youth not to change the tyre too....

I truly cringe at some of the antics that my friends and I got up to with cars all those years ago. Life was so much simpler then. That is not just the cars, hitching was a legitimate way of travel (unreliable but mainly fun) and there so many more buses .....

                               Andy   

When I was at Uni (mid 70s), before having a car, I used hitching to get around, in fact our student house was in Coventry and the Uni is on the way to Kenilworth, so we all trooped out in a morning down to the main road and hitched into for lectures, never an issue and always on time.

I also had a memorable trip to visit girlfriend in Liverpool from Coventry, only required 2 lifts, one up the M6 at 80 mph and a great couple from the M6 who went out of their way to drop me at the girlfriends house... I probably would not have driven that journey as quick.

Happy days

Peter

Getting and giving lifts had it's dangers, at one time I used to give lifts all the time especially to squaddies, or people with trade plates; that was until a friend of mine who I worked with disappeared one day, his car was found covered in blood and eventually his body was found, he'd been murdered by a soldier he gave a lift to, when it came to trial the soldier said he'd made sexual advances to him, but I know for a fact that wasn't true, and the real reason eventually came out that it was a robbery that went wrong, ever since then I only give a lift to someone I know.

Brian
8227 8)

I think that may be a slight exaggeration, but not too far from the truth ..... running an Aurelia on a student grant (remember those ??) was difficult and it does remind me of another "folly" when I dropped a valve on the A1 near Hitchen

Another story involving bush-mechanics ..... fortunately my heads were on bolts, not studs , so you could remove one at the side of the road !

Bolts not studs. Good idea.