Hi All, from the island of Malta

Dan the Gearboxman wrote:That's the one.....rare over in the uk now.....I looked for an abath and found none...the uk owners club is non existent now too........I thought of building a hot mirafloria instead of a mk1/2 escort, but cannot find a car unsurprisingly

Is next to impossible to find a decent one. Thats the thing about old fords, you still find everything for them and do not cost an arm and leg either.

Just been looking about and one has just sold on uk eBay.....it was one of 200 volumetricos. I.e it was an abath special with a supercharger ( its actually a 131 with a 132 rear axle).

Thats what the lancia 037 used to run with basically. The road version of the fiat 131 volumetrico had the a detuned version of the 037's lump.

I wish I was born in those times.....

Bob was lol!

My absolute favourite era was group b rally cars and the like in the early/ mid eighties when I was a kid....they were awesome.

Still too early for me, born in 1980 me. But group b's were awesome, pure and simple raw power with no electronics. You either have the ba**s to drive the car or not.

Yep, same as all Motorsport back then......the driver drove not a computer doing gear changes and adjusting the suspension or the 4wd torque split.....just the driver and the co driver reading a map and shitting himself, I would sell a kidney for an original 205 t 16 or a delta s4

You can actually, is just finding a spare 250k that is the issue.

Loose change in my pocket.......I wish lol

Aha, indeed.....:-)

I think you would need to sell more than a kidney dan to buy one of them ..... it truelly is the best era for rally cars and proper drivers... there was a documentry the other week about all the group b was a great watch .

Dan the Gearboxman wrote:Bob was lol!

cheeky fooker but yep your right

and you know what I wouldn't change those days for anything.
none of that mamby pamby wrapped in cotton wool crap the young lads have got nowdays
cheap insurance back then too
speeding was cool
meets were just a roadrace down the seafront
no seatbelts and a rear spoiler was nothing more than a table for your tinnies as the aussies say lol

and you could get away with anything if you got pulled by the ol bill (within reason)
southend seafront was something like out the original madmax film and im not joking either

I would hate to be a young lad nowdays as everythings all fooked up

yep and the group b stuff was awesome
proper cars and proper drivers

Dam i missed that documentary Leighton, what channel was it on? The Colin McRae one was good and fell in love with some of his old cars Group B's shouldnt of been banned, even in modern day rallying the spectators put themselves at risk by hanging out on the track so why cap the power output??

Cant stand modern boy racer cars like their corsa vxr's etc... Yeah they can be nippy but i'd expect that seeing as the technology is 20+years ahead of our cars. My car may not be as good in handling department but the shed still puts a smile on my face when it leaves them behind coming out the corners...

I think it was on something like more 4 might be able to catch it on one of the i player types il see if i can throw up a link for you fella was very intresting some footage id never seen before aswell ... i love all the old school cars dont get me wrong you got admire all the modern day technology thats rammed into cars nowadays but i learnt most of the stuff i know on old cars none of this needing to plug shit in to work out something electrical lol

Technology is saving lives, improving economy and performance etc but its the same as comparing our cars to something from the 70's like my mates mk1 cortina. Speaking of which hes considering a nistina conversion

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00qjf2v think this was it mate

Cheers, i think i have seen bits of it but will have to watch it fully one night when im not darting about.

Even tuning was fairly simple back in the day, it was a case of timing and changing the jets on the webers!! Done.

Thats what i was saying vince sort of back to basics ....its nice to work on older cars like that every now and again bit of treat lol ....

Oh yeah, definitely. Nowadays its way too complicated i think. Back in the day there were mechanics, nowadays is engineers.