Lancia Beta Forum

Hello,

Unintentionally acquired a Spider which hadn't been on the road for 6 years - will try a picture.

Picture worked. a bit more info.

Acquired car by an eviction, my VX shell being welded and an abandonment. The Spider had been in my garage for 4 years without being started. It had been driven in and then left. Fortunately my next door neighbour is an old school mechanic by trade and he managed to get it started with a new distributer cap and a condenser (ordered from Mark) and a resolved earthing issue. I continued to start her up occasionally and last week Bob (next door neighbour) drove her into Falmouth for an MOT. We knew there would be a failure sheet coming our way, but we wanted to see how bad it would be. Bob made it there and back without a break down!

Failed on a few braking issues and a few holes here and there, but nothing that should see her sent to the scrappers yet!

Just got to decide what to do now. Either go for a basic scrub up to pass the MOT and do up over time or go for a more in depth restoration which will probably not see her on the road for months or sell. Decisions, decisions.

I'll try a few more pics

Roof appears good but back window translucent

Last one for now

It's difficult to assess from a few pics but my first impression is I've seen a lot worse. It's got the correct headlamps and taillamps and in my experience that suggests it's probably a largely original car. Door mirrors are wrong obviously but they were so easy to break on a pre F/L that's far from unusual.

I'd be temped to keep or at least tart up a bit before selling. Or you could cover it with cr@p and claim it as a barn find which seems to add 50% to the sale value these days!

Do please change the cambelt though!

The cam belt is next on the list. I shouldn't have washed all the grinding dust (from the Land Rover) off or else it would definitely have been classed as a 'garage find' 

Given the time of year I would suggest tidying up what you can over the winter then Enjoy it next summer. After that you will have a better idea of where you want to go with it, full resto or running restoration.

The old way of dealing with opaque rear windows was to polish them with brasso to take the oxidised surface layer off.

I passed my stalled Beta project on about a year ago to concentrate on the Y10 and after acquiring a Dedra estate but one day I fancy another HPE.

Thanks for the tip re the rear window. I am erring on the side of keeping it as a doer upper as I have a couple of other Betas not in use and it would be nice to actually drive one for a change!

brasso is rather aggressive try autoglym first I've used this on MG screens

I've used elbow grease and an old, clean, dust sheet on the rear window. It takes a while, but comes up clear and no chemical damage. Just needs the occasional buff up after that.

MOT now passed - Better get her taxed and enjoy the summer. It may even stop raining long enough to remove the roof ! Then again it is Cornwall.

Well done. Get out and enjoy it. NB anything over 30 you stay dry no matter what....

Keeping the rain out of the cockpit isn't the problem - learning to drive using 'the force' is as the windscreen wipers are shite :)

RainX and keeping north of 50mph helps with that ;)

My technique anyway!

he he - that's my approach as well