More Islero info
An Islero review in sport-auto, a French car magazine, translated by me, from the April 2000 issue
An Islero review in sport-auto, a French car magazine, translated by me, from the April 2000 issue
This Islero was purchased on July 3, 2000 and shipped to California via Intercity Lines and arrived on August 14, 2000.
The car was delivered a few days after the promised delivery date, and was delivered to Prancing Horse of California, a service, restoration and repair shop owned by Dayal Dindral. Dayal's shop services Ferrari and Lamborghini. I was introduced to his shop by Fantasy Junction, a speciality car consignment sales dealer, where I had previously looked at Islero 6315.
This page is intended to give a prospective owner of an old Italian car an idea of the expenses involved in fixing up such a car. Obviously, Islero 6621 is a unique example and any other car will probably have completely different needs. Nevertheless, for amusement, I will be tracking the costs of whatever fixing the car needs, so others can laugh at me :-). The car is producing a lot of smoke at the moment. Diagnosis to follow when Dayal gets around to investigating the problem.
8/23/00 Dayal looked at the car today, finally, and pronounced it not worth keeping, though coincidently, he knows of someone who's interested in buying an Islero. Some might question this coincidence. I leave that exercise to the reader. The diagnosis of the smoke is that there is piston ring leakage -- the compression leak-down test showed 4 cylinders losing 40-50% of their pressure, though compression as a whole is good.
8/25/00 Today, I got the names of some other repair places from Cars Dawydiak, a speciality car consignment sales place in San Francisco. They listed a number of places: Monza Motors in SF, Modena Motors in Redwood City, Patrick Otis in Berkeley and Valtellina Automobili in Sausalito. The reason I'm looking for someone else is that Dayal says that he can't work on the car for several months because he's backlogged, and I'd like to get a 2nd opinion on his judgement of the car. Probably will try Monza first, since it's the most convenient.
8/29/00 Drove the car around some during the last few days. It's not smoking so badly, it seems. Perhaps the rings are seating themselves better. Left the car at Monza today, and they reported various things needing to be replaced, that Dayal has also pointed out: all the rubber in the undercarriage is old and brittle, the steering bushings are worn out, the exhaust is rotting, some oil leaks in the engine. Have asked them to try to reroute the wierd routing of the oil from the engine to the oil cooler mounted beneath the radiator -- it's wierd because here it is, the line carrying the lifeblood of the engine, routed below a frame member, just waiting to be smashed accidently on a curb and broken open. I'm sure there are many other little things that need to be refurbished, but for now, the main safety oriented things are the steering and brakes. Monza will be giving me a cost estimate tomorrow. We shall see.
10/3/00 The car's now in a different shop ( Eric's Foreign Car Service), still waiting for the parts, which amount to roughly $1300 for miscellaneous steering and suspension related parts. Am looking to get the shocks rebuilt too. Ordered some leather refurbishing coloring from Liquid Leather. Haven't tried it out yet, since the car is in the shop.
10/4/00 The parts cost just went up since I decided to redo a bunch of other stuff: rebuild the shocks, replace the exhaust system, replace various bushings and leaking oil seals, and more comprehensively rebuild the suspension and steering. Total cost, including labor: close to $8000. While I didn't plan on having to spend so much so soon, the general feeling is that I've got to bite the bullet, and doing some of these things concurrently saves some money on labor. They're going to refurbish what gets dismantled and reused in the suspension, so the undercarriage will look nice after they're done, and the car's ride should be as good as new. It's a bit surprising to me that the suspension is so worn out even though the car has done supposedly 50k kilometers, rather than 150k -- the interior condition doesn't give any clear clues: on the one hand, the seat coverings are not worn, and the rubber part of the mats isn't too worn either (but maybe covered?); on the other hand, the headliner looks like that of my old VW Rabbit at 200k miles and the center console is coming loose. Makes me wonder.
10/15/01 My my, how fast a year goes by. And guess what? The car has been in the shop for that long! Yes, really! Various travails with waiting for parts to be shipped from Europe, wrong parts sent that were exchanged for other wrong parts before the right ones were shipped, other miscellaneous delays. And now, with the suspension and steering pieces finally redone and reinstalled, I'm waiting for the exhaust guy to finish a custom fabrication. Any day now.
12/10/01 So it turns out that the exhaust guy never even started, but the shop was so tired of the car taking up precious space that they finally finished everything. I'll type in the itemized list some other time ... The ride is now much better, without the wobble in the steering, and the handling is good. Changed the tires from the old Avons, which were who knows how old, to some Pirelli P4000s. The tire shop had to install screw-type valves because the old Campy rims didn't hold the newer style rubber valves well. They also had to really beat on the knockoff nut tool to loosen the nut -- no chance of my changing the tire on the side of the road if (knock on wood) I get a flat. AAA to the rescue!! After driving it for a couple of days, the sudden presence of exhaust gasses through the mufflers shot up the innards of one of them, and now the exhaust is really loud, so there will be a visit to the muffler shop for an exhaust system replacement soon. Have had a good estimate from "Exhaust Outlets" in Colma for a custom job.
1/11/02 The new exhaust is in. Not going to pass any concours test, that's for sure, but it works. The new system puts the exhaust headers into a Y right away, with a single pipe to a resonator and then into a muffler and, believe it nor not, Camaro style exhaust tips. Exhaust Outlets normally does custom exhausts for vintage American muscle cars, so it's not a surprise that the proprietor thought that those tips looked good. Actually they do, but they might cause the purist to shake his head. In any case, the sound is nice, though a bit loud.
1/13/02 For your reading pleasure, this is what was done for the car over the past year in the shop: remove and replace (R&R) inner and outer tie rod assemblies and center link; R&R front and rear stabilizer bushings; R&R front left and front right upper and lower ball joints; R&R front and rear upper and lower control arm bushings; remove, rebuild and install front and rear shoocks; R&R drive shaft support mount; R&R transmission mount and transmission seal rear; R&R left right and front differential seals;; R&R differential mount bushings; R&R spark plug, R&R high pressure oil cooling lines. Total parts cost: $3532, total labor cost: $3000, outsourced (shocks, oil hoses): $2125, for a grand total of $9135 to redo the suspension and steering, and all the underbody seals. Plus $700 for the new exhaust, plus $500 for the tires equals $10300 for renovation so far. And it's not finished yet -- the other day, driving to work, the brakes failed, and the diagnosis was a failure in the master brake cylinder. It's now in the shop again waiting for a rebuild kit.
1/22/02 Brakes are now fixed. And work much better now -- before, the brakes pulled left, and while there's a touch of that left, it's much better. The installation of the rebuild kit takes care of additional rubber that has deteriorated. I hope there's no more funny rubber waiting to fail! Cost to fix $450.
2/6/02 Well, the problems never stop. This time, though, it's not the car's fault -- some bastard hit it in the parking lot. The damage is scrapes on the driver's side rear 1/4 panel, squishing in the fender, and culminating in a big dent that ends just before the bumper. Went to several body shops to get estimates, which ranged from $1300 to $2500. It's going to go to Automotive Perfection, in Redwood City, who I found through a recommendation from Tony Palladino at Monza Motors, a Ferrari repair shop in Redwood City, whose estimate was around the median quote, $1800. The only thing I have to say about the irresponsible coward who hit me and now refuses to admit it (I don't have eye witness testimony, but this guy parked his huge pickup next to me, and his bumper is at the same height as the dent, and there are scratches on his bumper, but no telltale paint because the car had its car cover on) is that it figures that a guy who has to prove his masculinity by driving a ridiculously sized pickup is no real man who takes responsibility for his actions. I really want to cause revenge damage to his pickup, but am refraining. For now.
3/14/02 Did I say the problems never stop? I meant it! The brake problem came back, manifesting itself differently. The symptom is the same: no brakes! But this time, there were no clear sign what was going wrong -- no leaks anywhere. Fortunately, a resource that I had come across -- a yahoo group dealing with classic Lambos -- had the answer: the remote vacuum brake boosters were sucking brake fluid into their insides, and so thereby compromising the brakes. When all the fluid got sucked in, no brakes! The solution was a rebuild of the boosters themselves. Another $800. Because of this brake problem, I had to postpone dropping the car off to the body shop, so now, it's at the shop and should be fixed in a couple of weeks or so. Hopefully, he won't find too much hidden rust...
4/7/03 Well, it's been another year. I have been reminded to add something to this log. Let's see, first of all, the body work done was A+ work. Highly recommend the place. What they did was repair the fender and wheelwell lip, where some rusting was found underneath. Went to Monterey in August and had a great time. Car ran well, though some drivetrain vibration at 70-80mph. Went to the San Diego meet in December. Lots of Diablos! Oh yeah, one other interesting thing: using a gps speedometer (thanks Alan), calculated the car's speedometer error. Interestingly, it's off just the right amount such that speed in mph is 1/2 the indicated kph, i.e. 160kph is 80mph. Very convenient. That translates into about a 20% error. The next thing that needs fixing: one day, the clutch pedal went to the floor with no resistance. Problem is leaking clutch fluid. Temporary fix is to add fluid. Longer term fix is to rebuild master and slave cylinders. Surprisingly, the rebuild kit is cheap (like really cheap: $15). Haven't done this yet, but need to before any serious driving. One thing the car has done since purchase is burn oil. Sometime last year, I purchased some so-called "smokeless" oil. It's a synthetic which burns cleanly. For a while, I thought that it actually fixed my ring problem, but actually, it just emits slightly less smoke and smoke of a less obtrusive color, i.e. more of a transparent white, rather than oily blue. Does make for less embarassing driving. Was vaguely thinking of a rebuild to cure the ring blow-by problem, but recently read this article whose advise I am going to follow.
8/18/03 Just returned from Monterey. Car ran very well. No resurfacing of the clutch problem to date. Perhaps it was just low on fluid at that time. In any case, no problems on this trip, except for a funny rattling noise on the way back that turned out to be the passenger side door not fully shut. Got stuck in a few miles of traffic jam in Santa Cruz (took the coast route from SF to Monterey) and oil/water temps were ok. One big nuisance problem was taken care of: I had a problem with not being able to fill up the gas tank at anything more than a trickle from the gas pump. From various discussions on the Yahoo Lambo list, it seems like this problem was caused by a blockage in the gas tank vent line. A month or so ago, I decided to do something about it, and stuck a length of wire as far up the vent tube as possible. There were definitely some blockages that the wire passed through, and it seems to now be ok -- I can fill up at full volume from the gas pump.