Lancia Beta Forum

I had my first event in my car on sunday after a substantial interior and engine rebuild, it was a very short 1.7km blast on a hill in Wellington NZ where I live. The car had only gone 20km on a new engnie before the race and intended to treat it gently, yeah, good on paper but looked down at the revs seeing 6,500 at one point threw that theory out the door.

Great fun, first event, beat a TR7, 3 litre Capri and was just behind a Clio RS sport (although there was a lot of newer Japanese stuff further in front) so not bad for an old girl.

Great photos and a good result  :)

Great stuff ;D, keep us posted how you get on in other events!

I went in my first Tarmac Rally yesterday with the car. Everybody including the car came out of it all very well. 5 stages on a race track based on different layouts and directions to give 80km of special stages so was a busy day. The car went very well and while I came 13th out of 21 cars the car was only a few laps a second slower than other cars like a Porsche 911 Carrera or a 2 litre turbo Toyota Starlet. In fact after 49mins of racing I was one second slower than the Starlet and 45 seconds down on the Porsche.

Lots of fun with only a couple of moments of getting too keen, one fast right hander I thought I would try in 4th but it was a tad too fast and ended up on some marbles and flying off onto the grass.

Good fun doing Rallies on race tracks in order to learn, not many cars around you and some open spaces to test you and the car.

Here is a link on you tube to a video of the first stage.

Lancia Beta VX - Manfield Tarmac Rally (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZT9KTf4s2U#ws)

And a couple of photos from the day.

Excellent stuff Grundo,  Fantastic to see a Beta on track and doing so well, given her age and the competition she was up against.

Makes me wanna go build a Beta track car!  Especially after being at Goodwood last weekend and doing a couple of laps.  It took me back to days of running a track day car I had 10 years ago!!  (before Wife and daughter came along)

I can feel the bug biting again ::) ::) ::)

Use that feeling and embrace it! My wife took the photos while my daughter watched.

There was a lot of muttering about me driving about in her new kitchen though...

Brilliant !!  Hahaha   Thats just the kind of comment my wife would make!

Is the engine std or tuned to give a lot more power?

Are the suspension and brakes uprated?

Hi Grundo,

Looks like your having great fun!  ;)

Can you tell me what car the front splitter you are using is from?

Cheers, Mark.

The flywheel has been lightened, sump baffled, uprated clutch, new rods, new forged Guy Croft VX pistons and rings so the bottom end is all quite different. The head has been rebuilt but no porting or polishing. The Carb is a 40DCNF with 28mm chokes, I tried a 44DCNF and 32mm chokes but it was too big as the throttle response when quickly opening it wide was quite poor so have changed to a smaller carb on a hand built inlet manifold and air filter box. There is also a new exhaust header 4-1 into two resonators which exits in front of the drivers rear wheel. What power difference this all adds up to I don't know, I just know that it breathes so much better right up to 6500 rpm when on standard tune these things struggle to get to 6000rpm. It most definitely has more torque than standard and hence with the higher revs more power. I have two smaller pulleys with different numbers of teeth for the supercharger but have shied away from mucking around with that at this stage. The gearbox is a standard VX box but I have a Colotti LSD installed.

It also has a full cage, and strut bracing front and rear to help stiffen it up.

The front brake pads are ferodo ds3000 race pads but the discs and calipers are standard, the suspension is all modified with fully adjustable coil overs front and rear. It most definitely stops better than a standard car!

Oh and it has been ENTIRELY re-wired...

It is most certainly fantastic fun! You can't see it on this sort of footage but the understeer and oversteer going on in the car is great to be able to play with. The wonderful thing about these Betas is how controllable they are, no feeling of getting out of control with it.

The front spoiler is a hybrid with the black bit being the original VX (and IE) front spoiler and a fiberglass splitter added to the bottom. The fiberglass splitter was homemade. I also have a set of the Group 3 wheel arches (the smaller ones not the big wide ones) which I will put on the car at some stage.

Cheers,
Adam

Hi Adam,

Good to see another Beta being used in anger, I do hillclimbs/sprints myself and have just finished the roll cage in my car ready for some laps around Lakeside in Brisbane in May. It is gradually morphing from a road car into a full race car at present.

I see you are using Ferodo DS3000 pads, can I ask where you obtained them? I can't seem to find anything for the std Beta brakes, and how did you get on with the LSD? There is guy in Melbourne who can modify one to fit the Beta for around $600, although he won't tell me what it is out of!!

I get a lot of inside wheelspin when used in anger, although less after running harder shock settings at the rear so I now get the "3 legged stance"in corners, and changing to 15x7 rims with 205/50 r15 Toyo R888 semi slicks. (picture pre wheel change).

regards Ian

I love that last picture :)

+1!

The brake pads were sourced from a place in Auckland, Racebrakes. I didn't buy them directly as my car was going through a Motorsport NZ certification process and was with a Lancia/Fiat expert who did the warrant, failed the car on front brake pads and sourced the ferodo pads. He said it is the first time he has ever found a race part for a Beta that is used as a base to modify for another car. Apparently they bring the pads in for the lancia as they can be modified to fit RX7's.

The LSD is a work in progress, It was setup with a level of slip that means the inside wheel still slips, I have one more chance to change the oil to a grippier oil before I would have to take it out and change the spring settings in it. Obviously I am loathe to do that. I did notice though gearbox oil coming out of the breather on top of the gearbox after hard use so the addition of an LSD is raising the temperature of the oil in the box it would seem.

On a seperate note, I have another event in August and hope to install an accumulator before then.

There is another Beta in NZ that has been prepared for the track and I went and saw the guy a couple of weeks ago (I bought two gearboxes off him) and he had been in contact with John Day many years ago to set his car up. He was running 700lb shocks at the back and I think it was 350lb at the front. You are obviously on the right track stiffening up the rear.

Hi Adam

Yes I have small leak from the gearbox breather too! Mind you my gearbox is a bit on the noisy side nowadays....

The accumulator is well worth the money cured ALL my surge problems.

You must be having a lot fun with the VX motor, I love that supercharger whine! Does the motor still have std cams?

Regards Isn

yes the cams are OE.

It is on the list but converting the car to a rally car and all of the intercom, rally computer, safety and compliance work to run a rollcaged/harnessed/race seat car with modified suspension on the road has taken the available budget for the moment!

Had another go in a tarmac rally around a race track on the weekend. Loads of fun and the car went well and had no oil pressure problems with the accumulator fitted. Ended up 25th out of 52 entrants and after 52mins of racing was 2.5 seconds behind a 2006 mini cooper s. The old and the new of supercharging...

Here is a compilation of clips from different stages.

Lancia VX Taupo 2WD Tarmac Rally 2012 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTUpEc8kpeo#ws)

Nice video, especially the sideways slide at the start, well caught!!!! (cold tyres???)

Glad to hear the accumulator worked, how did you plumb it in the end? Are you still using the VX box?

Keep up the good work, I have an event at Queensland Raceway in a couple of weeks, It is an all Italian day so will see how the Beta keeps up with all those quick Alfas /Fiats. A nice pair of GC 3A cams have just arrived with triple springs so busy fitting them, hopefully will put out a few more horses to keep those Alfas at bay...

Ian

Thanks Ian, yes cold tires! It doesn't help when your co-driver says "you can take him!" when you are just coming on to the track and you have never been around there before. Yes I have installed the accumulator, I have plumbed it into the main gallery. The car is currently at my brothers but I will post some pics when I have it back. I can say that there was absolutely no issue with oil pressure over the weekend so very happy. 

With this rally, 52 cars, and this the only italian car. 4th out of14th in class and 25th overall so I was happy and beat a lot of japanese cars. Only 2.7 secs behind the 2006 mini john cooper works after 52 mins of racing so quite happy with that. And yes it is still the VX gearbox so more to come when I get around to changing that to a more aggressive gearbox.

Give it heaps against the other italian cars. They are only driving Alfas as they can't handle Lancias! The GC cams will be interesting. Let me know how they go and what impact they have.

Good luck.
Adam

Ian

I run a pair of GC 3A cams and I see 190 BHP at 7700RPM and it screams round to an 8200 soft 8500 hard rev limit so I hope you have forged bits in the bottom end? If not just fit the inlet one for 165 - 170 BHP 155 - 160 ftlbs torque and a 7200 RPM rev limit. This assumes you have higher compression pistons of at least 10:1.

Enjoy

Eric
"Slightly" modified Montecarlo

Nice video ...Nice car
 :)

I had another event run on the weekend. A short twisty sprint around the coast in Wellington. The car went very well, I finished mid pack which is always good, beat a couple of WRX's but hard to compete with RX7 turbos and a starlet running 228kW at the wheels!

Here are a few pictures.