30 March 2016, chassis check
Until now, the 403 has not been very nice to drive; directional stability was quite poor. I thought that the problem was the radial-ply structure of the Avon Turbospeed, but in fact the tire specialist found that there were lots of adjustments to make (toe-in was totally wrong, to begin with), tire pressures were all wrong and so on. Apparently, the first adjustments made a huge difference, but I'll find if this is true Monday, when I shall take delivery of the 403
9 April: Loiano
Loiano is a cute little town on the Appennini, on the road climbing up to the Raticosa and then Futa passes. It's an essential part of the Mille Miglia course and on these roads memorable duels were fought between the likes of Moss, Fangio, Bracco, Nuovolari, Biondetti, Varzi, Kling, Taruffi and the like. We got up the Raticosa driving up from Idice, then stopped at Loiano to buy some local specialties and came back to Bologna the other side of the hills. It was fun and the 403 was perfect
At the start: the odometer was recently brought back to zero miles after a complete overhauling....
The first 100 miles of 'real' driving
One thing that I found during this short trip was the unconfortable spacing between the 1st and 2nd gears. The 1st is very short, 2nd appears to be much longer....going uphill, this is not a good thing
