Here is a comparison between the original template (that brown board on the right) and the template I made. As you can see, the original boards only covered up the spare tire hole. This template gives more coverage and should allow people to make themselves a nice upholstered bottom board or rest their factory run on top.
The final file with all the tweaking will be available for download. I'm sorry I do not have templates for the "wings." I had no need for those. At a later date I may make a set, just so I can post some download files. When the files are ready you will see a "downloads" in the right blog column. Hope they help.
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Just a quick update.
I was able to find some hoses to put on the car this week. I went down to the local mom and pop parts store and we scrounged around. They ended up ordering me a flex hose with wire in it for the bottom hose. This should keep it from collapsing in the future. I also may have found the culprit for the collapsing. Not only were my hoses pretty worn, but there was an acorn on the top side of my thermostat. Hopefully there aren't more. If you followed this thread from the beginning, you know I really had my work cut out for me. I had a pile of 'constant torque' hose clamps from the PO (aka UNCLE) and I need three more to finish up my hoses, then I filler her up and burp her again. I hope to order some shocks for the rear on Thursday and see how that helps out the ride. One is seized, as many of you already know. After that is all said and done, I have a bunch of work to do on my daily drivers and then hopefully I scrape some money away for some front end work. Not much has happened for my Spider in the past year or so. Funds have been short and there are issues I'd like to resolve with the car before returning it to the road.
One of my biggest problems with the car right now is the suspension. On of the rear struts seems to be ceased. All of the corners of the car bounce freely with the exception of the rear passenger side. This leaves me with two options. I can compress all the springs and replace the struts or I can replace the springs and struts at the same time. Unfortunately this opens up even more possible problems. Do my A-arms need to be rebuilt? After taking off the springs, will I want to put them back on withour replacing other parts that require the springs removed. Another thing I am considering is how these alterations will effect ride height. Do I really care how high the car sits? Not particularly, but this model year and beyond were raised in the US to meet DOT standards. So, a slightly lower ride will probably have a nice feel and be more visually appealing. I prefer to do that without cutting. Currently, my immediate plan is to try and save enough money to take care of the springs and shocks. Possibly just the shocks. We'll see what the plan ends up requiring. Here are the springs I'm looking at. Currently $179 KYB shocks are $30 each Koni shocks are $135 each (but would be nice) Well, it turns out that I wasn't having a problem with my inline fuse after all. The inline fuse that I thought was the problem actually ran my cigarette lighter. That still needs to be fixed. It's a simple fix. I just need to buy the correct lighter. I can wait. I broke down again. This time in my garage. I decided I'd take my father out for a drive, his first time, in the Fiat. I warmed up the car on this cold November day so I'd be sure the car wouldn't stall. I shut the car down, had some lunch and got ready to head out. With the key in the ignition I went to start her up. The engine turned over and over and over but didn't kick on. There was a smell of gas in the air. I wasn't happy. There was no ride that day. An hour and a half after having the start issue and after my father had headed home for the day, I tried to start the car. It revved right up! I immediately thought of the cold start valve (aka: The Fifth Injector). A gassy smell? Not starting when hot? I believed that the injector was firing with the warm engine and flooding it out. Time to test. I did this test three days in a row. Warmed up the car, shut if off and let it sit for a few minutes. Try to start. No luck. I opened the hood, pulled the wire to the cold start and tried to start again. Fired up after a few turn overs. Yay! Now I need to trouble shoot my thermo time switch, wiring and injector. Since it's not firing when I unplug the wire I'm going to assume it's the thermo time switch. Sadly, thermo time switches aren't cheap. I think that is why the previous owner was wiring in some sort of kill switch. Sorry I haven't updated in a while. Things have been crazy. I managed to get the Fiat registered and on the road. There is still a lot of work to do, but I'm learning to drive standard. I was about to take my fourth short trip on the road to practice driving the car when I ran into a problem... I backed the Fiat out of the garage and onto the lawn and it stalled. I stall a lot. Not a big problem. The problem came when the car wouldn't start. Turned over fine, but it just wouldn't start. So I checked for spark, air and gas. Everything was workin. I had spark, I could run the fuel pump and there were no air issues. HOWEVER! I did not think that maybe the injectors weren't opening. They weren't. I checked my wiring diagrams from Artigue and found that there is an inline fuse under the dash that leads to the injectors. With fingers crossed I removed the fues from it's red sleeve. It was blown. I took out my trusty multimeter and checked the side with the two black wires. I had power. Then I tested the other side for ground continuity. It's touching ground somewhere. I followed the red wire up to.... well... here's the picture. This is not a new nest. It's old. From when the car was kept outside under a tarp at my uncle's. There is nothing fresh about it. I'm hoping I can deal with this issue without removing the dash. Maybe just the instrument cluster. Who knows. I'll find out shortly. Until then, here is a thread where I'm discussing the issue. So if you are in a similar situation, enjoy that discussion. I will report back with updates. Hopefully shortly.
This week I'm trying to make sure everything I need to pass inspection is working, which means I need to go through all the lighting and make sure all the signals work. I've learned quite a bit. The first thing I did with the car was to pull out the PCB boards from the rear lighting fixtures. After doing this I could see that all the sockets had oxidized and was probably the reason why a lot of the lights weren't working. While the wife and I watched our show on Netflix, I scrubbed away at all the sockets and lubricated everything with a light coat of dielectric grease (this should prevent further corrosion or oxidization). I also took this time to test every bulb with my multimeter. I set the multimeter to beep and detected every complete circuit on the bulb. This saved me $1+ per bulb. They all were good! I had planned on replacing them all. After I replaced every bulb I also tested each circuit with the multimeter to make sure current could make it through to the bulb. After installing my panels, just about everything worked. I noticed that the side markers didn't blink. After posting on the www.fiatspider.com forums I learned that the side markers don't blink on this car and was directed to a website that described how to remedy this situation. It's not required by U.S. law, but I think it would be a great safety feature. So, sometime down the road I will modify the cars signals to blink in unison or alternating.
I started working on cleaning up the cowl section of the Fiat, when to my surprise I found a big old rust hole! The rest of the interior is so great, it's a shame this had to happen. My only option is to clean up the area really well, remove as much rust as I can, seal it, and lay out some fiberglass. It will be an afternoon project, but I'll need to wait for the weather to get warmer. I'd like to do this outside. I'd also like to pull out the heater flap and figure out a way to get it more solid. It's falling apart. Today I spent over two hours trying to figure out what nuts to put on the sender unit of the Fiat Spider gas tank. After going to two different stores and returning the same nuts twiceI figured out the size. At the second store, the clerk recommended I use a die to re-cut the threads which had been filled in by previous applications of rust preventative. After re-cutting the threads it was obvious that the sender was held in by 4M .70 metric nuts. Once I replaced the missing nuts I was able to pressure test the tank and find that there were no leaks. That was a very exciting discovery. Most of my simple projects on this car usually require some sort of extra effort. Like patching the radiator (which was done), scraping rubber off the floor in the passenger compartment or finding missing pieces. It took me less time to wire brush and prep the tank for rust reform than it did to find the proper nuts for the sender unit. Who knew! I used Rustoleum Rust Reformer which has gotten pretty good reviews online. We shall see. Ideally I would have media blasted this tank and then painting, but it was too large for my cabinet. I think this application of product should protect the tank for years to come. The previous owner had already sealed the inside of the tank. If it begins to leak eventually I will use a two part gas tank epoxy to fix it. For now, enjoy the pictures. I was going to wait until I finished the top coat to blog, but this is taking longer than expected. Yesterday I was able to prime and use seam sealer. I put a second coat of primer on today. Next, I need to go purchase some fiber glass fill to fill in two large gaps just behind the wheel wells. Previously there was a substance similar to plumbers putty jammed into the large gaps. I removed the putty and primed and sealed inside. Now that it is primed, I will fill it with glass and prime again. After everything dries, the trunk will get a coat of glossy black paint. Then I can start creating templates for the trunks cards. I do not have the originals. It will take me a while, but I want my car done right. It would go a bit faster if I had the originals. After I finish the trunk I need to move on to the gas tank and the passenger compartment. Both will get cleand, sanded and refinished. NOTE: You'll want two cans of primer and two cans of top coat for the trunk. I had to go purchase more from the store today after putting one coat of topcoat on. I sanded down the whole trunk, treated bare metal and rust with a rust prohibitor, primed and topcoated. I used Rustoleum "STOP RUST" brand rattle cans. You can find this paint at your local hardware store, autoparts place or home supplier. After a lot of wrestling I have finished installing the calipers and rotors on the Fiat. Some of my major issues were putting the wrong caliper bracket bolts on the front end. They are longer than the front so they touched the rotor. That obviously wouldn't do. A few other issues I had dealt with placement of the caliper bracket springs as well as getting the wedges positioned in the right place. It turned out I need to use a bit more elbow grease to get them on. I also learned that assembling your caliper bracket, caliper and pads on the work bench is the easiest. Once that is done, you can slip the whole unit over the rotor and bolt it on the car. Here are some photos for you to enjoy. You can see the assembly on the bench as well as on the car. Now it is time to clean up the garage, pull the car out into the driveway and order some extra hose to finish off the brake system. Stay tuned. |