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Despite
it's reputation among the mud-slingers, the Lancia Gamma Coupé is
actually an excellent car that can be driven on an everyday basis with
perfectly normal reliability. Mileage of over 100,000 miles before major
work is not uncommon, and the engine itself tends to wear quite little.
However, for this result to be achieved, the owner must be
knowledgeable, patient, and loving. According
to the precious little book called "A Pocket Guide to the Lancia
Gamma", published by the Lancia Gamma Consortium, there are a
couple of little things to be aware about in the event that you begin to
feel the urge to become a "Gammista", presumably listed in the
order that the owner (or purchaser) has to worry about them.
So
what's the problem? Apparently there are three of them:
a)
If you try to start the engine on a cold morning with the steering at
full lock, the
longer cam belt may jump a tooth or even snap,
allowing half of the engine to run the other half into oblivion. A quick
solution is to remember to
always straighten the front wheels when
parking. b)
The angle that the longer cam belt creates around the crankshaft gear is
too wide. If the car is left parked in gear and it gets
"bumped" by an inconsiderate motorist while parking, the
belt can jump a tooth,
thereby throwing half the valve gear in disarray the moment you
unsuspectingly turn the key. The solution is, predictability,
to NOT
park with the engine in gear where there is a hazard of being nudged.
(This problem was resolved on later Series I models by the presence of
belt tensioners).
c)
Last but not least, the belts themselves don't last as long as they
should. Although Lancia officially suggested substituting the belts
every 3 years or 36,000 miles, many Gamma owners do so every 10,000.
Lubrification Worn Camshafts Worn
camshafts can however be rebuilt for a reasonable sum. So perhaps the
most important reason to keep the engine oil under control is to avoid
it mixing with coolant (see below). Cooling
System a)
Paper gaskets (instead of steel) were used at the joining between the
cast iron cylinder liners and the aluminum engine block. Although not an
engineering mistake in it's own right and used successfully by other
manufacturers such as Alfa Romeo, in the case of the Lancia 830 engine
this allows the liners to "sink" with time into the softer
metal and thus lead to head gasket failure, with coolant getting into
the oil sump.
Attenzione!
Replacing the head gaskets may not be
enough to prevent their failure from happening again almost immediately!
With the heads off, the cylinder liner clearance must be to specs, and
if they're not, the bad news is that the engine will have to be taken
apart and the paper gaskets replaced (with modified ones). b) The thermo-mixing switch (decides how to route coolant between the radiator, the cylinder heads, and the interior heater radiator), as well as the thermostat, are known to fail, allowing engine temperature to rise above maximum allowed levels. In addition, the formation of gaseous vapors in the coolant circuit (exacerbated by worn head gaskets) will likewise trigger the thermo-mixing switch to bypass the radiator altogether, as if the engine were cold, with the same result. A good policy is to visually make sure that the thermo-mixing switch is in good condition (by taking apart the water pump, that's where it lives) and by changing the coolant every two years (like you're supposed to do with all cars anyway). More than one Gamma owner takes this opportunity to
routinely replace the thermostat as well. A manual override switch for
the latter is also an idea to keep in mind, but if the coolant
thermometer needle starts to go up and down, that's an indication of gas
in the circuit. Either pull over and let everything cool off, or switch
on the heater and interior fan full blast and downshift. c)
The head gasket material itself was changed with the Series II model in
1980, after no less than 11 important changes to the cooling system
during the production of the Series I. What this all literally boils down to is that if you're purchasing a Gamma that's not in prime condition, be prepared to rebuild the engine!
You may not have to right away, but if you do so following the pointers
that Gamma owners can offer having learned the hard way, you will find
yourself with a perfectly reliable machine that will turn heads at every
stop. Otherwise, keep an eye on the water coolant level (if it
drops conspicuously, you're experiencing head gasket failure), check
the quality of the coolant by inspecting the expansion tank (if you
see a milky brown emulsion floating around, that's engine oil... head
gasket failure), and last but not least, the oil pressure which should
keep the needle of the dashboard indicator around the 1/3 mark. Other
general suggestions would include to avoid purchasing the automatic
(that is, if there are any left in existence) simply because it has been
defined as too unreliable to be of any practical use and since the
gearbox was unique to the Gamma, parts have been NLA (No Longer
Available) since time immemorial. Of course, you can try to purchase an
otherwise sound automatic Gamma for a song, and then (since the gearbox
will almost certainly be faulty) fitting the manual 5-speed removed from
a junked Gamma. This seems to be the status quo these days, done
successfully by many Gammistas. Rust Lastly,
inspect the body for rust. Although especially the Series II Gamma
doesn't rust as badly as the Beta did, all '70s Fiats and Lancia's were
made out of the same poor-quality steel that Italy received as partial
payment for having helped the Russians set up the Lada factory in
Togliattigrad (the Soviets kept the good stuff for themselves). Aside
from the normal spots, check the base of the rear window (eventually
removing the rubber strip, accessible from the open trunk), around the
tail lights, and inside the front fenders.
Smug Myths... MERCEDES
BENZ 190:
The cam timing chain of the four-cylinder engine (2.0 and
2.3 liter) is known to snap on a regular basis, because the number of
links coincidentally proved to be a multiple of the number of teeth of
the gears, thereby wearing the chain in specific spots instead of
spreading the wear uniformly along it's length. No prior warning is
given (as a friend of mine may testify, the car suddenly stopped on the
A21 and he had to hop a fence and search out the nearest farmhouse to
reach a phone) but at least the valves don't get damaged when it
happens.
BMW
7-SERIES:
The straight-six under the hood of the 1977-1986 model is virtually
guaranteed to overheat sooner or later due to insufficient cooling (just
look at the puny viscous joint on the fan to see why). This defect was
somewhat corrected on the restyled 1986-1994 model, but as it were I
owned them both and had both overheat, requiring replacement of the head
gasket in both cases. Especially the 1977 model may crack the cylinder
head in the process, the replacement part these days being worth
generally more than the car itself. When the head is ready to be
reinstalled, one must take care to use new head bolts and clean any oily
residue out of the thread holes of the block, otherwise this residual
oil will expand as the engine heats and ...crack the BLOCK. That
happened a few years back to a friend with a 745i Turbo, and I think
he's still complaining about it. Still remaining in Bavaria, the 1986
model 7-series has congenital design flaws with the electric seat
movement (the drive pins pop out of the reduction gear housings when the
plastic casing of the cables gets hot and lengthen) and the
sophisticated electronics in the dashboard go crazy after a few years
requiring replacement, unless you plan on driving with only the
speedometer functioning. Not truly life-or-death like a timing belt, but
a nuisance nonetheless which can only be remedied spending a lot
of money. Fixing the electric seats and the dashboard on a 735i will
cost more than I spent purchasing my Gamma's new engine. PEUGEOT-TALBOT:
On just about all 1980s Talbot (ex Chrysler Simca) four-cylinder engines
the alloy head will deform in just a few years of use, getting noisier
and more impossible to properly tune up until the head is eventually
removed, replaced, and reinstalled with a new gasket. Same fate for
similar engines installed in corresponding Citroen and Peugeot models,
and also in some Ford models (especially the '80s Fiesta). NSU:
During the sixties Dr. Felix Wankel's revolutionary engine was receiving
a lot of attention from everyone. Only NSU was however fearless enough
to put it into production without sufficient testing, with the result of
the legendary RO-80 model using up engines faster than it did tires. A
joke of the time said that when two RO-80 owners passed each other on a
highway, they would wave holding up the number of fingers relative to
the number of times the engine had been rebuilt. That disaster
eventually headed NSU into the grave, and the other firm which had
invested heavily in the rotary engine (Mazda) escaped following suit
only by reverting to conventional piston engines in all models except
the RX-7. GENERAL
MOTORS:
Let's forget the Corvair for a moment. In 1977, jealous of the success
that Mercedes and Peugeot diesel sedans were having on the U.S. market,
the engineers at GM though that it was high time to for them to
jump on the gravy train. They "dieselized" their popular 350
c.i. (5.7 liter) V8 for this purpose, making up for the lack of
technical refinement with "good ol' cubic inches", and
introduced the Oldsmobile Delta 88. Although the motor eventually even
found it's way under the hood of the Cadillac Seville, it suffered
severely from water in the fuel and rarely lasted more than a few years.
In rural American backwaters you can still find Oldsmobiles and
Cadillacs with the "diesel" badge on the hood (Olds) or the
front fenders (Caddy) but rest assured that the oil-burning offender has
been replaced years ago with the practically identical (and harmless)
gasoline version. I ran into one about 10 years back in Italy, and guess
what? they were rebuilding the engine. I suppose we should quote here
also Cadillac's modular V-8/6/4 engine. I don't really know how bad it
was, but it was offered as an option only for a couple of years, that
must mean something. FIAT:
The family-size Fiat Croma was the first production automobile with a
direct-injection Diesel engine, the technology developed and patented by
the Turin engineers. The car got great mileage but the engine was
rumored to last sometimes even less than 30,000 miles due to problems
with the injection system. This time Fiat got the message and
commendably sold the patent to injection experts Bosch in Germany, who
perfected the system and is now selling complete units back to Fiat (and
just about everybody else).
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