KEEPING
DELTAS
DRIVING
Lancia Delta Integrale specialists and enthusiasts
Love my 'Lux
I don't like to go on, but I love my Hi Lux. My Toyota is reliable, strong, and a faithful servant, never complaining at all. Not like some vehicles I could mention
Our Hi-Lux will do anything I ask of it, hauling heavy loads, pulling cars home from near and far, doing demolition and gardening work.
Above it's got a good tonne of bagged flooring screed for our John's kitchen floor, and then the wood flooring too. The truck is shown at a recycling yard off loading 2 tonnes of bricks from a demo job. I'd hoped to get diesel money from these bricks, but they weren't good enough. There were two and a half loads like that.
The Hilux is a great towing wagon, steady with an Ifor Williams twin wheel car trailer, this one hired from Barlow trailers.
Our Hilux was an ex SHB hire vehicle, it had been on long term hire to the National Trust. The truck had done few miles but had obviously been through trees and over rough terrain, it had been completely repainted before
my purchase.
I'd better not show the driver, but he was our HiLux's guardian
while the pickup was with the national trust.
SHB repainted the truck and fitted a new passenger seat, the driver's dog
had made a good mess of that, you can see the dog's paw prints
on the door.
The truck had deep tread off road tyres, I eventually changed these
to a smoother tread which improved the ride and handling.
I've only needed to fit a new clutch to the pickup, the original was becoming very heavy. The truck recently passed 100k miles.
My wife and me became tired of being dumped on hard shoulders by Lancia Deltas,
it spoilt our Italian motoring holidays. So we loaded our bikes in the Hilux
and used it instead for our trips to the Italian Grand Prix.
I'll give the 'Lux a wash and polish and it's ready to load our bikes and go to Italy, reliably! Not like other cars I could mention!
Pictured here in 2019 on our regular Italian Panda spotting section of the trip.
The Hi-Lux is on duty as the Delta workshop wagon today,
taking the knocking Evo engine, and another worn 16v motor
to the engine rebuilders. I'm taking them to ERS in Burscough,
they are a small but busy engine workshop.
I haven't used this company before, but they have a good reputation
and are not far from home, so I've loaded up the 'Lux and I'll drive
the 2 motors over. I'll report on progress.
You'll notice a non standard sump on the right hand motor,
this is a Thema sump.
It's a genuine 16v Delta lump which was replaced in its car with a Thema turbo unit, so all the bits had to be swapped on to the Thema engine. The Thema sump is fitted back on to protect the lower parts.
After the rebuild we'll put it back in the Evo1 it came out of,
with the proper sump.
