So Rob what made you decide on the DRLA dellorto'S then ? Lying about or cheap ? There has been some money spent on this car it has an ansa exhaust system on it so along with the any of the carbs its bound to help it further. Can anyone who has fitted anything other than standard tell me what influenced them ?
Well Mike, essentially in those days I didn't know any better. A set of carbs and manifold became available in the UK (maybe I found them through the UK Owners Club?) that came off a running X1/9. I got them delivered to Australia for the grand total of 200 pounds!
That was in 1999. That first X had the Dells, a locally ground cam, a reasonable exhaust and slightly raised compression and ran very sweetly and pulled like a train. The jets etc. as the carbs came to me were good enough that I never felt the need to tinker.
At that time I had well over a decade experience preparing and driving rally and race cars which had either rule mandated standard carbs or Webers. Remember this was in the days before the expansive interweb made finding parts easy, so we were restricted to what local parts retailers carried or could get, and those parts were expensive! Anyway, that first X succumbed to rust (I lived just a couple of hundred metres from the sea) and my next X project was to turn a series 1 into a rally car.
By then it was easy and cheap to get Dell parts and I got quite good at tuning them. When I sold that rally car I kept the carbs and manifold knowing I would get another X someday. Enter the barn find
These DRLAs are now over 20 years old, have seen competition action, and I love them. I have a drawer full of jets and other sundry parts, can tune them how I like and find them reliable.
If I had known better in 1999 I would probably be running dual DCNFs today, but I'm very happy with the Dells and will always use them. Like IDFs, they are very popular with the VW/Porsche crowd and the parts available would boggle your mind.
Cheers,
Rob
