KEEPING
DELTAS
DRIVING
Lancia Delta Integrale specialists and enthusiasts
Welcome to your
new home!
This handsome 16v COY, has been mentioned on our site before, owner John brought the car in from Japan and worked to make it reliable and roadworthy. It's a good solid body shell car which has been subjected to the usual JDM 'improvements'. John has enjoyed the Delta ownership, but is now ready for a change, so he kindly offered me the chance to buy COY. Of course I accepted!
COY was located near Halifax in Yorkshire, this is quite a hilly area!
I strapped the Delta on the trailer very well, conditions were wet and slippy, I certainly didn't want to look in the mirror and see COY rolling back down a hill.
The Hilux was in 4 wheel drive to pull well up the steep hills, which it did of course, once we approached the motorway I stopped and checked the straps, then I was able to relax
and enjoy the trip home.
Once back at the garage I got COY on the ramp and I was able to have a good look around the car.
It has been painted in a Maserati metallic blue colour, this is nice, but it should be metallic nero.
I started applying a bit of heat and removing the decals, these were a multi colour Martini style printed item which pulled some blue off the rear door.
This didn't surprise me, I have some experience of cars painted in Japan, and there is usually minimum preparation of the original surface, and little use of any meaningful primer.
Usually a wipe over with a thinners rag and a good blast of base coat and lacquer.
The stickers pulled off some of the blue top coat,
showing the correct Lancia colour underneath.
The door edges have all been painted blue, as behind the rubbers have too. The engine compartment and under the mudguards are original black still.
Our painter will remove all the blue topcoat before repainting the car anyway.
COY also had some interior improvements, most noticeable were the Martini seats. You may have seen these on Ebay's Italian site, they are a Sparco seat of a nice appearance, but they are well 'ard. Not comfortable at all, and they don't have an easy fitment for the Integrale seat sliders.
So I pulled these out and got em back on Ebay, they sold and by a lucky chance a pair of original black leather 16v seats was listed quite soon afterwards, I banged on a big bid and won them
I'm lucky to have Barry as a friend, he's always on the lookout for Integrale stuff, and he let me know these seats were listed on the bay. They were at the other end of the country, but it was a nice day out!
The oriental owner had gone to great trouble applying a soft fabric finish to the dashboard. This was glued on and everything had been removed to get the fabric in all
the bloody corners. I even had to take the lock button out of the glove box lid.
What a job! It took days to remove, thinners, scraper, rubbing, and removing glove box and dash fittings.
The hero of this saga wasn't me, but an old bottle of Kiwi black shoe dye my wife found in the back of a cupboard. It worked very well and bought back a lovely lustre to the battered dashboard. The Kiwi was old but still worked a treat, 2 coats and the dash was like new!
As one often finds on a Delta imported from the Far East, the electrical systems have been 'improved' by additional wiring, often of a heavier gauge then the tidy Italian original material.
Heavier earthing cables and extra relays are often fitted, and have been on this car.
The fuel pump relay is used to activate a second relay which sends power down a fat cable directly from a live feed to the car's fuel pump, I suppose to give the pump more leccy. Big ignition system transformer boxes had been fitted, all with Japanese labels.
Here is a selection of added on electronics I have removed from the engine bay,
the car did drive itself into the garage, but then wouldn't start again, so I set about removing all the gubbins and trying to make some sense of it all.
There was an immobiliser under the dash, I've removed this and got an ignition live feed to an original coil I took off my wife's 16v, but so far I haven't got a spark at the plugs.