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Ritmo/Strada Strada Abarth 130TC

Introduction

Some old school action for you lot

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and a nice still

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Hello, I was wondering about the car you raced on the track. Yes steve, I remeber him, car was a little worse for wear but hell at least he used it. I thought about racing a strada, a real abarth was tempting, the 8v engine is a gem and excellent starting point in the strada 130 woth huge valves, ok the 16v outflows it massively but torque is king on most circuits. Obviously the strada is lighter, smaller too. The galvanised panels mount up the tipos weight as does the cast rear swing arms and wish bones. Like to remanufacture these items one day in t45.

The tipo as you'll know originally belonged to me before I sold it then it was sold on again to your mate. I had started off with a coupe, but having been slavaged it was quite as straight forward to repair, in fact it wasnt straight at all? I considered thte abarth, but they are rare, and replacing panels etc would potentially be an issue if I damaged them. So I thought I'd stick with what I know, I think I asked steve if he'd sell it. I remeber when I drove it again, it felt slow, and awkward, I remeber saying theres something wrong with the rack, low and behold when we sripped it rack was wasted, as were all the cv boots and joints, probably acounting for some poor performance. I laughed aat the dent in the side, never mind, the body shop checked the hub centers and said it was worth pulling the dent out, everything was ok. Although shabby it still wiped the floor with my golf, and sounded good. No idea what it weighs now, hopefully the guy who do the mapping have some scales as they only work on race cars. If it weight 1000 thats ok, if it weighs more then standard i'll cry. Hard to judge things like the doors are really heavy, so's the tail gate despite bing plastic. I think the bonnet will be subjected to the angle grinder soon, its heavy lifting on and off.

BN what was it like at hill climbing, I may have asked this before, was it competitve at all??

cheers
rich
 
Rich
Yes I know the worries like bending a strada would be a nightmare to get replacements so you would have to build up your own stock. In general bending anything is a nightmare if you get into the situation where you need to reshell :bang:

The Tipo was ok at hill climbing. The handling is what saved it as it did hold on quite well - other than that once that it let go resulting in the dend in the sill. It beat escorts, golfs and a few other more road going cars - which of course it was it's self. But it was all great fun and at least he was competing. That was the main objective that year, to understand how it all works, take part and have some fun.

The weight problem the Tipo has is what really killed it's competativness, if it could have shed a few pounds, like 2 or 3 hundred kgs then it would fly. This was very prevalent when directly comparing the two on track. I thing the diff between the abarth and the tipo is 150kg which tells.

Anyway let me know when the first race is and how you do!

Best of luck
 
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