ErrErrminator said:You can’t just leave that here without telling us more!wspohn said:I often miss both of these:
I owned one of the 100 Islero S cars (painted a horrid brown). It was a home market car and so I had to fit it with seat belts and I did an engine minor tune up including me sitting in front of the TV at night with 24 cam follower buckets and a sheet of heavy plate glass with emery cloth on it, resurfacing them all. Once I had the valves set to spec and had run it awhile, the rings loosened up and it was back in shape again after a lengthy storage by the last owner.
They were (too) well muffled so I removed the intermediate silencers and allowed that glorious exhaust note out. It got 350 bhp out of 3.9 l. at 7,000 rpm. I couldn't drive it to or from work on the classic insurance I had it on so I used it all weekend, doing chores like picking up bales of fertilizer. I actually said "Put the bag of cow manure at the back of the Lamborghini..."
Very interesting amalgam of Italian bits joined to British brakes, electrics and hydraulics. I was able to replace a faulty turn signal switch that would have cost $400 from Italy with a $70 Austin switch which turned out to be the same. Similarly, I stuck an Austin Healey brake light switch in it after I managed to locate it - behind a panel in a rear fender well beside the twin servos. The manufacturers made it harder by using Italian wiring coding on their stuff and just plugging in the British units with a completely different coding and there was no such thing as a wiring diagram.
It was nice that the car had been a homemarket car and had a km speedo (that went to 300 kph) as that was what was wanted in Canada.
When farming bits out to be refurbished I quickly learned to say it (the large oil cooler, for instance) was from some old Fiat - it would come back at about 1/3 the price as if I had told them it was for a Lambo.
So that is the story of the Islero which I owned for many years but never got around to repainting in the original Argento (silver). The wheels, BTW, are to standard small British wire wheel spec and fit my MGs, but as they cost $200 each today, it probably isn't what I would choose to use, and old magnesium wheels have their maintenance issues
PS - just remembered that they were styled by the same Italians that had done the Jensen Interceptors so I was able to replace rusty Lambo rear quarter window latches with NOS Jensen improved ones. And one more bit of trivia - they came with electric windows which was a bit new in 1968/9, but they didn't trust the Lucas systems so included with every car a special key that you would use after pulling a little chrome plug in the door, to manually raise or lower them if the possibly deficient British electric mechanism failed you!
