Lancia Beta Forum

Good morning, I just wanted to introduce myself to the forum. I am an owned of a variety of Lancias and Alfas over the past 26 years including a couple of EVO 2's and Delta 2 HPE's. My father in the 70's and 80's was a Lancia man to and I learnt to drive in a Beta 1600 then moved to Alfas which started my love for both Models. I use in the summer a Thema 8.32 S2 which has taken our family to Tuscany and back for 5 consecutive years without any issue. I enjoy restoration projects and just finished a Alfa Sprint Speciale from 5 pallets of parts and a shell. After 1300 hours it's finished with many new parts searched form all over Europe. Now the next 2 projects are Beta Coupe VX's hence why I wanted to make contact. 1 is a Red VX the other a met Grey Stratton bodied Coupe VX. Both cars are complete, the Red one is generally very good except sills on passenger side and lower doors. The Grey car looks pretty challenging body work wise with lots of hamerite used on sills, door inners etc.

Thankfully betaboyz website for parts looks like there is availability of many parts.

The plan is to start stripping both cars over the next month to see the body work condition. Neither have run for many years.

Any general advice on restoration of these rare cars would be much appreciated!

With luck I hope to make it to an event next summer in one of them - probably the Red one.

Thanks you.

Patrick

interesting to see two vx coupes emerge, are they on my list of vx coupes in the uk? If not I'd appreciate a message with the reg numbers/colour/ and if you wish to divulge also chassis and engine numbers. If you search the forums you will find that I have a very long term vx coupe resto, still not completed, so have pretty much seen it all. You will inevitably find more corrosion than initially seen, I found that the worst corrosion was at the front and rear of the sills, in the box members close to and around the strut towers plus the towers themselves. Some of this is due to areas where several layers of steel are together, not really a design fault as the cars weren't intended to last 30+ years but moisture traps that fester. mechanically they are strong  and most parts can be found one way or another, although it is more challenging than owning an MG or an Alfa in this respect it kind of adds to the fun snapping up those elusive bits n bobs. The engines are good for over 100k but if they are approaching 80k or so the big end and main bearings will probably have significant wear and would probably benefit from changing in advance of any issues. Beta coupes still seem to be undervalued and as this surely cannot continue now must be a good time to restore one, I can't think where else you can buy such elegance coupled to a great drive train and excellent road manners for peanuts.

Happy to send details and will organise.

welcome - and pics of the cars please :)