The following pages trace the steps to achieve a 30+ BHP Italian barreled Lambretta engine and the hiccups along the way.
The barrel started life as an Italian GP 200 some time between 1969 and 1971, I purchased the barrel from Jason at Classically Italian in Birmingham who is now with Gran Sport, some time during the early 1990’s. The barrel was at this time totally standard so it was a good candidate for tuning purposes.
Being from the Birmingham area I remembered a Lambretta that Stuart Owen had owned back in the 80’s, I remembered this Lambretta was fast for its time. I asked Stuart if he still had the barrel and as I had never done any porting work at this time I asked him if he could copy the porting from his old barrel to the barrel I had purchased.
So the story begins….
The barrel performed well for many years as a stage 4 225 and ended up at 70.6 bore after a few re-bores.The one problem I always did have with it was cracks on the piston inlet side skirt, one time the skirt broke away level with the gudgeon pin while I was overtaking a car and exited out of the crankcase behind the crank webs, this left a huge hole in the casing just under the bump stop. Every winter following this I changed the Asso piston as a mater of course, seeing the piston as a consumable part. Doing this resulted in the engine being very reliable and in fact becoming a bit boring.