Lancia Beta Forum

Hi to all!  I'm from the suburbs of Boston USA.  I am a two time Scorpion owner.  I owned a '76 in the 80's.  Now I am fixing up a '77.

I have a plan:

1) Replace all the rubber parts and ball joints.  The rear suspension is complete. New springs are stock Montecarlo height so about an inch lower than stock Scorpion.
2) Repair all rust issues.  I can weld.  I will be a better welder when this is finished.
3) Upgrade the engine to 160+ hp.  I have read Guy Croft's book 5 times.  Tomorrow an engine from a Lancia Zagato arrives!  I bought it for more displacement (2L vs 1.8L) but the FI parts have me thinking.  The head will get bigger valves, hotter cam, and more.  Pistons and rods will be forged.  Crank oiling will be improved.  This engine should be good for 9000 rpm.  Trying to decide between a pair of DCNF's (which I have) or modern EFI.  I like both power and induction noise so this is a difficult choice.
4) Replace the heavy bumpers with more appropriate ones. 
5) Update the lighting.
6) Fix a whole bunch of small things.
6) Drive the car!

The brakes are rebuilt with direct feeds from the master cylinder to each front brake.  Paint is decent.  New top is installed.  Have a new cooling system in hand including a larger capacity aluminum radiator and dual fans.

A big enabler for this project is my basement workshop that conveniently has a garage door.  The Lancia resides there and I can do work on it year round in comfort.

Hi Jon

Welcome! That sounds like a good plan to me. I run a fuel injected supercharged Montecarlo and have some experience over the years with installing FI. If you have changed the engine from stock forget using the out of date OE FI. It will be a nightmare adapting it and you have old sensors.
Get the Crank sensor WTS ATS TPS sorted and get good at wiring and crimping properly. Ditch the distributor and choose your throttle bodies. It does not need a top of the line ECU, but make sure you choose one that has Rolling Road mapping support easily within reach.

For my Non Supercharged previous engine I used Jenvey twin 40 Throttle Bodies on a Guy Croft twin 45 Weber DCOE manifold. You can use twin DCNF TBs and get a good result just get cold air into them, use a top quality throttle linkage and watch the manifold height so you can get air in.

Enjoy.

Eric
Check my car(s) under members cars   

Eric, thanks for the warm welcome.  I looked up your car in the members cars area - WOW!

Should I pursue the FI route, can I reuse the stock Beta input manifold or will that be the airflow limiting factor?  Its inlet trumpet expands from about 2" diameter at the throttle to 2-3/4".  That manifold is nifty for a Scorpion/Montecarlo.  It fits, has ports and injector adapters for each cylinder, and the single inlet can be ducted to a filter assembly that is fed by a cold air source.  I would certainly be replacing all sensors, injectors and wiring and utilizing a MegaSquirt to control fuel and spark.

The Zagato engine from a breaking yard turns out to be a keeper.  The valves and pistons need to be decarbonized and a few threads chased.  The cams, valves, head and block look to be in good shape.  The bores measure 84 mm plus .0010-.0015 in diameter and have good cylinder walls.  I am going to remeasure the bores to be certain.  There appears to be some porting work on the head.  It is a good basis for a rebuild although I may use the head from the Scorpion motor (with 431,000 miles covered).

BTW I can wire, MIG weld, fabricate in CF and fibreglass and do engineering calculations.

Some day I hope to tour Italy and surrounding countries in this car.

Hi Jon

You could use the OE FI Manifold if you are confident the injectors are in perfect condition and you can fit a modern Throttle position sensor to the throttle or fit a throttle with a modern TPS. Be aware it will never produce the power and throttle response you get from a throttle per cylinder and the straighter the air flow delivering cold air the better. That is why I went with the DCOE manifold. For Cams find a Guy Croft 3A or C&B inlet cam with stock 2l exhaust.  BTW you should be building with new high compression pistons, lightened flywheel and new conrods (lightly modified Integrale ones).

Cast pistons Rev limit is 7500 old conrods even with the big ends re-sized to be round again are a big un-necessary risk. If you build an engine with inlet and exhaust GC 3A or C&B 40/80 cams it will want to give peak power at 7800 and rev out to 9500 resulting in cast pistons failing with style!
Which is why I suggest a hot cam inlet side only which will give 175 BHP and 155 - 160 Ftlbs with a great flat torque curve for use on the road. BTW my GC engine with twin GC cams makes 200BHP and twin DCOE Type Jenvey TBs and is rev limited at 8500. It does have forged pistons and forged conrods.   

Use new sensors with known published values and make sure your crank sensor is in the right place fitted to a really solid bracket. It needs to run very close to the toothed wheel and a weak bracket will see it wiped out. You fit the sensor and bracket first then work out where the tooth gap needs to be. Rotate and fix the toothed wheel. I use 36-1 from Trigger Wheels.com machined to fit the Beta VX crank pulley. The OE Lancia 4 tooth items leave the ECU guessing and no modern ECU will give it's best using them or a distributor trigger.

Use the Cometic MLS head gasket I developed with Cometic and ARP studs to do the job right.

Eric   
PS Get Guy Croft's original book and his last book and learn how to dial in cams and set TDC exactly.