Short update on the Lancia restoration - Saturday a week ago I moved the car to my new workshop/garage, where I am restoring the '61 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint, in order to address the remaining couple of issues. The two most important ones being that the brake master cylinder was not building pressure despite me having fitted new seals (= bad), and no oil pressure on starting up the rebuilt engine (= also bad). It turned out the root cause was similar - both pumps had to be primed in a specific manner.
As for the brake cylinder, I took it all apart again, cleaned it with brake cleaner and then reassembled but with plenty of brake fluid inside the bore and on all the seals. Then bench bleeding, and this time it started to work. Installed it on the car, bled each of the four corners and ended up with a nice firm pedal. Job 1 done.
Turning to the oil pressure situation, I first disassembled the oil pump. This is mounted inside a housing at the front of the engine and it can be removed by jacking up the engine a few inches (of course, this requires removing two of the three engine / transmission mounts and some other items). To my surprise, the pump was bone dry - no oil whatsoever. I then dropped the oil pan to see if the pickup was properly sealed against the bottom of the engine block (or the pump would be sucking up air), but that was all good. Following a tip from who I bought the Lancia (as well as the Alfa) from (and the owner of the garage/workshop) I poured oil into a fitting on top of the engine that, according to the workshop manual, routes straight into the pressure side of the oil pump. After verifying that indeed the oil was reaching the pump, so there was no obstruction inside the engine that could cause problems, I poured in about a quart of oil, then filled the crankcase until the dipstick showed 'full'. This afternoon, after installing a new torque starter (1.8 HP) to replace the rather worn out original Bosch unit (0.8 HP) I hooked up an oil pressure test gauge to the engine and after some cranking the gauge returned a very healthy 35 PSI of pressure. I could also see plenty of oil was making it to the top of the engine, on the camshafts etc.
So now that the two most important remaining issues have been resolved, it's onto a few minor remaining niggles, putting in fresh fuel and starting to enjoy!
When I get to that stage (still need to finalize the California registration process) I will take some more pictures and post some driving videos. Can't wait, the entire restoration has taken about 18 months if I don't count the '21 and '22 summers we spent in France.
