Welcome to my video on turning a rusty old shed in to a thoroughbred Italian race car. In the last video we saw the finishing of the welding and cage, preparation for painting and the transformation from yellow to white. Sorry there has not been an update in a while, in this episode the car is built including the engine, gear box, transfer box, suspension, exhaust and electrics.
Building a car from scratch is a daunting prospect when there is virtually nothing from the original donor to go back in. This is complicated still further with the supply (or not) of parts coming through at the right time. I found many a job couldn’t be completed when it should because a small but vital part didn’t arrive. This is compounded by couriers who couldn’t care less and randomly deliver separate parcels of the same consignment over a week.
What followed was three weeks of 12+ hour days, fabricating brackets, modifying parts, waiting for parts and trying to have three people climb over what is actually a small car by today’s standards. We were also lucky that there was another Integrale off the road with a bottom end failure and John was kind enough to let me borrow many parts from his car in order to have it ready on time. These included the windscreen, lights, gearbox bracket, radiator bracket and much more.
Getting the wheels on for the first time was a great feeling after so much work with the 17” wheels only just fitting underneath the arches when we put on some camber. We may have to take some material off the rear arches when the suspension is under full compression, however we can look at that if it is a problem later down the line.
The engine, gear box and transfer box went in without a hitch with all of the shafts lining up as they should. The radiators, cooling pipes all went in without a problem also. The only slight problem was with the brake and fuel lines. As these are running internal to the car they are made to order for the lengths you require and are stainless steel braded to ensure no leaks if there is a shunt. Sadly the supplier kept sending the wrong connectors in the wrong amounts and it took 4 deliveries until we had all the right bits together.
The car was finished on the Tuesday before the first planned race weekend at Snetterton and was shipped off to the mappers to fit the turbo & wastegate, programme the electronics and map the car. Sadly time waits for no man and it was just too much to get done in such a short space of time so plan B was put in to action and we prepared the Mitsubishi ready for a weekend’s racing.
The next episode we find out what it is like running a highly modified car at a race weekend and learn a valuable lesson in how tuning impacts reliability. Don’t forget to subscribe and give the video a thumbs up.