Dear Dedra - Arch de Trimophe

[Mr_Bo11ox]

These have an iron block, no liners. Could sleeve the bores I suppose but it seems overkill.

[Dermist]

The awkward third block

The story so far. 

Original block wrecked due to a failed head gasket allowing water to sit in the bore. 

Replacement block found to have been over bored for first size Pistons. This wouldn't be a problem usually but the block was a non turbo version and therefore had higher compression Pistons. This block also need a small amount of machining to turn it in to a turbo block. 

 

So. Last weekend the good people of the TDC (thema dedra consortium) of which I have become a fully paid up member pulled out another engine and striped it down to the bare block for me! 

This time it comes with the turbo oil drain pipe already machined (boo!) and the pleasant addition of piston skirt oil jets. 

Interestingly the piston crown design is different to that of my originals ones in that there is a depression over a greater surface area. I assume this is to lower the compression ratio? I should add that this is a block from a 16v turbo engine. So what should I do? Install my original Pistons or use the Pistons that were with the block? 

 

Doing some some research into fiat / lancia engines ( as you do). It appears that there is a top level basic matching of Pistons to cylinder bore dimensions. I.e. A cylinder that is slightly under nominal ( but still within overall tolerance) is stamped up 'A'. This might typically be with a new tool / start of the day. As the tool wears and the machine warms up, the size the machine cuts might change and is now on nominal. These are marked 'B'. This carries on to a 'D' catagory dimension. 

 

When the engines are assembled a similar process has happened with the actual Pistons themselves, being marked 'A -D'. So as the block is assembled, an A piston is used in an A cylinder bore. This is to reduce the chance of piston skirt wear on the bores (so I believe). 

The issue that might crop up is that if i use my original Pistons in the 'new' block these were marked 'A'. The 'new' block has bores marked 'c'. 

 

Will nuns and kittens die? I'm not sure. But at the moment I am going down the route of sacrificing OMGMAXPOWER for let's get it on the road and taxed!

 

Enough with the theory, we aren't here to look through text books and poor over engineering drawings. What we want to see is ferrous oxide italian style, man against rust. 

 

Luckily the Dedra chassis was fully galvanised when assembled so there isnt really a lot to show.................... who am I kidding, what follows is an orgy of rust, patches, sacrifices and months and months of work. Sit back, relax and be glad it wasnt you.

 

 

Rear corner, Sun roof drain pipes

 

 

Removing the Gear change tin work

 

 

Rust where the cable management clips are

 

 

 

Front wheel arch, rust cut out and the dreaded expanding foam seen behind!

 

 

 

Another patch cut out, but importantly the Foam has been removed.

 

 

This doesn't look to bad, Front wheel arch, 

 

 

Cutting out the rot still, but now we are the root of the problem

 

Mmm, maybe not.

 

 

 

Front Bumper hanger and oil cooler support.  Looking a little battle scared.

 

The area around the jacking point was just universally condemned.  It was all just Urghhh.  Therefore the decision was taken to cut out and reinstate in a simplified manor.  That’s quite easy to say, but what maybe doesnt come through in the picture is that most of the jacking point is sunk between the sill and the chassis member meaning that the disc cutter was only of some use and a pad saw had to be deployed.

 

Jacking point partially removed, undersea lifting off, every thing red raw with rust.

 

Almost out, more rot under the ‘as new’ underseal!

 

Other jacking point.

 

Jacking point completely removed, and more rust removed from behind it.  The jacking point had rotted out part of the chassis member so this was cut out as well.

 

Passenger side, worse than the drivers with gaps along the sill / floor.  Cable management holes cause of rust patched seen felt tipped for removal.

 

Rear Floor perforation in evidence.

 

Front floor perforation in evidence.

 

Sill end, rear wheel arch.

 

Continued wheel arch woes

 

Other sill and wheel arch.

 

Random rust spot

 

The outside of the sill look very good, would you consider changing it?  Cutting it out and looking inside reveals a very different story!

 

Whats in the box? Only pattern parts! God bless  the internet and all who surf in her.

Bumper hangers!! 16euros each!

[Dermist]

Continued....

 

Lets start, any good body work repair thread should start with a TonyBMW bender.  See his excellent retrorides thread for build details.

 

A quick sacrifice to the welding gods!

 

 

Out with the old, Drivers side floor / Sill.

 

 

Cutting out the rot

 

 

New metal Patch being tried for size, Drivers side floor / Sill.

 

Metal coming out! Drivers side floor / Sill.

 

Rear wheel arch

 

Rear wheel arch was reconstructed as patch work quilt with large patches ‘blended’ in.

 

Brace, brace.

 

Passenger floor patch being fitted.  Brace welded in to stop the car from ‘spreading’.

 

Front Drivers side piece being tested.

 

Actual metal being put back in!

 

More strength 

 

 

Inside front wheel arch, repair to the bulkhead that had rotted through due to the

cavity being full of expanding foam.  The Foam trapped the water against the bulkhead

and rotted through, then allowing water into the cabin and rotting the floor out!

 

Closing piece now with complimentary inspection / waxing hole.

 

There is no such thing as a simple patch

 

Internal sill strengthener replaced

 

Rot cut out, this is under the rear seat.

 

Rear corner of the boot, sunroof drain hole to be added still.

 

Other rear corner, same problem.

 

Front wheel arch

 

 

Inside the rear of the sill, strengthener has been cut out and will be replaced.  All the rust (hopefully) removed and painted.

 

Rear wheel arch finished.

 

Other rear wheel arch

 

Spare wheel well patched in.

 

Front sill closure plate (with the strengthener spot welded through)

 

Patches, Patches

 

Patches Patches

 

Patches Patches.  Even the threaded upstand had to be remade as it had rotted off!

 

Rear sill and end closure plate made awaiting welding in, note again the complimentary waxing point.  The jacking point has been simplified.  It is now made from 3mm plate and welded with a support plate on the sill edge

 

Heres a better view

And again,

There is an additional drain hole which was gently punched through to assist with draining of the sill.  Plus the sill covers have plastic inserts that fit in rectangular holes, these had to be filed out.

 

 

Rear seat patches in

 

Front turret

 

Rear of Spare wheel well.

 

 

When I had an evening spare I noticed that the Fuel Filter bracket was falling apart.  Measuring the old one, i cut up some spare sheet and warmed up the old mangle.

 

 

Old and new.

 

Finished, just needs a lick of paint

 

 

The Italians it would seem are not with out a sense of humour.  After weekly updates to a friend in work, he came out with typical comment “You should call the car patches!†very drool I thought and moved on.  But this throw away comment stick in my mind and I thought I wonder what patches is in Italian.  Well, google came back with the Cerotti, it even has rot in the word! Brilliant.

 

So what have we learnt.  Thank god for galvanising, just imagine how bad it would have been without it.

Don’t get sucked into reading forum pages where multiple months work is condensed into a 45second skim read through.  The above work took months and months and months every weekend and multiple evenings getting things ready for another weekend bash.

 

I fell in to this trap of skimming through other peoples excellent rebuild threads, and letting my mind wonder about how easy and effortless it all seemed.  This isn't a don't do it rant, but realise that this stuff takes hours and hours to achieve sometimes very little!

Would I do it again, no.

 

Any onwards and upwards, top coat and under seal, then engine rebuild and subframes!.

[2MB]

I admire your dedication when many would've given up. My dad had a Dedra turbo in about 1995, it was easily my favourite of the cars he owned, so it's great to see one getting so much love now.

[Sigmund Fraud]

Splendid work, looking forward to seeing this back on the road !

 

Oh, and regarding the pistons... Keep the lower compression ones, then slightly* increase the turbo pressure to compensate* !

 

 

I fell in to this trap of skimming through other peoples excellent rebuild threads, and letting my mind wonder about how easy and effortless it all seemed.  This isn't a don't do it rant, but realise that this stuff takes hours and hours to achieve sometimes very little!

+100 on that one !

[Dermist]

Haha, that was a test to see if anyone read it or skimmed through!  I'm glad you saw it.

[Tickman]

 

.. what follows is an orgy of rust, patches....

 

This made me laugh.

 

....this stuff takes hours and hours to achieve sometimes very little!

Would I do it again, no...

I have only just started with making patches so am learning a lot every time but am actually enjoying it.

I wonder if the would you do it again answer will change with the passing of time? I hope so as you are doing an amazing job putting that back together.

[paulplom]

Well done. I'm sure it will be worth it in the end. These are becoming a rare beast now.

[alcyonecorporation]

BANG, WHAM - with improvements to future proof it. 

Stunning thread. Very impressed with your dedication. 

[Dirk Diggler]

I love Lancia's; have a strange need to go look at this

 

https://www.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/97-1-2-ypsilon-lhd-nctd-amp-taxd/14426145

[Dermist]

@tickman. You are probably right , I was being a little harsh with that comment, the reason it has been done so intensively is that the dedra has to be out of the garage for the end of Feb. Therefore everything else In my life has stopped and all it has been is welding, rubbing down and patches! I'm not moaning but just glad that part is over.

It's like compressing a 3 year project into 6months.

Now I am moving into a phase similar to a "car sos" where I have 5 weeks to finish the car. But in this case it really is 5 weeks to get it rolling and water tight!

[cort1977]

Great work there, off to look up the TonyBMW bender.

[Vin]

Great work 8)

 

After having Tipos and a Tempra, that floor looks very familar...

 

With the Tipo they didn't galvanise the floor, just the outer panels (except the bootlid, which was plastic) so by the look of it the Dedra was the same...

 

Bender looks great.

[Tickman]

Hope you don't mind a quick link to the bender info.

 

Basically at the bottom of this page:

http://retrorides.proboards.com/thread/70135?page=3

[Skizzer]

Blimey. That's a lot of rust for a car that wasn't supposed to be rusty. I hope you caught the bastard that sold it to you and gave him a right shoeing. Oh, wait...

 

Seriously, I know there's been a ridiculous amount of high quality work gone into this. Hopefully it'll be plain sailing from here with the reassembly and you can soon get to enjoy the old girl.

[Dermist]

Arch de Trimophe,

 

So, what has been happening since I last checked in?

 

Well, progress has been made and a potential world first achieved.

 

During the welding and bodywork phase Father Dermist commented that the rear wheel arches really were in a terrible state.  This I think was partly due to the fact that FIAT (Lancia) didn't know what to do with the wheel arch / rear wing interface.  Theres gaps for mud to get into and little ledges looking to attract corrosion.

 

So as the welding came to an end my dad had some spare* time to devote his talents to tackling the thorny issue that FIAT failed to get to grips with.  

 

Cue, Chicken mesh.

 

 

Ok, this is mark 1. The chicken mech was formed to the shape of the wheel arch and then 1.5mm thick length of steel approximately 20mm wide were strengtheners where added to form a kind of skeleton.  This will become clearer in a minute.

 

Fibre glass was liberally added in all the right places and voila!

 

 

It took quite a bit of fitting and Dad thought he could improve the technique so here we go Mark 2 on the opposite side with the added excitement of the petrol tank filler neck and support being in the way.

 

 

See the skeleton now?  This has to bend round the filler neck(plastic part).

 

 

 

 

This was then filled with newspaper (rather than chicken mesh) and again liberally fibre glassed.

 

Voila! 

 

 

Fitted it looks like this

 

 

Both liners use the fittings that are already available in the rear wheel arches plus a few M5 holes drilled through a strengthening rib.

 

Hopefully they will prevent any further damage due to corrosion happening.

 

 

Whilst Dad did that, I scratched myself and got on with dyeing the carpet.

 

 

As removed.

 

 

Sun damage

 

 

Initial try with the spray dye.

 

 

Overall view after the first pass.  I have two more cans to go.

 

When I left you last time the car painted a fetching shade of red oxide, inside and underneath.  Another coat of black this time for the underneath and a matching coat of white applied to the interior.

 

 

Sound deadening mats were added to replace the ones removed previously.

 

 

So, we are bang up to date and momentum is gathering.

 

[Skizzer]

Wow. Just wow. Love the wheelarch liners - this car is officially on its way to being better than new.

[tul66]

Thread resurrection. Does anyone know if the Dedra was ever completed?