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) 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.
My second section of exhaust had rotted out. The resonator bottom fell apart and every time I started up the car another piece would fall off! My options were to cut out the section and add in some straight pipe or buy a new bolt in unit. While the cost differed greatly, I decided I didn't want to spend an entire day fiddling with metal work. So I placed an order with Auto Racambi. I had been spraying PB Blast all over the bolts on the exhaust and other random places just in case I needed to remove parts. It helped greatly. I decided the removing the section before the part came was best. That way I could immediately put in the new section upon arrival. I started by removing the bolts to the C clamp. That came off easy. If it hadn't I would have just used a cut off wheel. Next up were the four bolts attaching the catalytic converter. The two bottom bolts came off like a charm. Fiat had installed clips to hold the bolt while you turn the nut. It's a great concept unless the tabs are old and don't hold the bolt. There's little room for tools on that side, so the last two bolts were easily cut away with a cutoff wheel attached to an angle grinder. The only thing left to do was to wiggle the section back and forth until it came free of the muffler. Auto Racambi was FAST with the delivery. It went in easy in reverse order. I used four stainless bolts to fasten the section. The hardest part was wiggling the new section into the muffler pipe. I don't think this project even took two hours and it was much easier than trying to tack in new pipe and welding. 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.
Last week I installed my horn button in the center of the steering wheel. It wasn't pushing in all the way and I didn't like the seat. I forgot I placed it in there and hooked the battery up a day or two later. HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK. LOL. Surprised me and everyone else in the house. I quickly unhooked the horn. I haven't touched it since. Today I headed out to the garage and installed the rear lights. Some aren't working and will require new bulbs. I also found out that if the hazard switch is not installed, none of the blinkers will work. While I was out there I also decided to take a look at the horn again. On the bottom of the horn button there is a tab that accepts a connector. My tab was bent enough that the connector grounded itself on the steering nut. I bent the tab back up and put everything back in. The horn seated nicely and now it honks when it is supposed to. Hope this helps anyone trouble shooting the same issue. If you are a frequent reader, then you know I received two pieces of a Fiat in the mail a while back (check out the blog post "Chopped Parts Have Arrived"). These two pieces where the winged mounts that hold on the rocker panelsn (click the image on the left for a larger view). My car had lost both of its wings due to car cancer (RUST). Luckily the surrounding area was solid and just need to be cleaned up, media blasted and/or rust treated. I started out the job by drilling out the factory spot welds on my spare parts. This allowed me to use a cold chisel and some elbow great to pop off my much needed replacement part. After the wing (or ear) was removed I popped it in the blast cabinet and media blasted it. I wire brushed and ground out the area on the car that needed attention and used a flanger/punch to put holes in. I was all ready for some spot welding. After trimming up the piece and fitting it nicely I tacked it into place with a mig welder. In the images below you can see me dry fitting it with a clamp and then the final weld. I'm no welding expert. It's not pretty, but it's going to be covered with a rocker. The whole under side of the rocker will be sanded/wire brushed, cleaned up, and finally prepped with various rust proof paints and primers. Luckily my buddy had a flatbed! That was a HUGE help in acquiring my newly gifted 1981 Fiat Spider 2000. Things went really smooth. Last week me and my father-in-law put some new tires on her so we would be ready to roll her on. I don't think we ran into any issues getting the car on the bed. I did have a problem with my mini van before leaving the house, which put us behind schedule. I later fixed that issue and now I'm ready to work on my Fiat. I'm VERY excited about this project. The body of the car is in pretty good shape. There are a few main areas where some sheet metal will need to be welded in. I found some surface rust in a few spots and I think some bondo was used on one of the back panels. Auto body work will be put on hold until I find out if it starts and when I redo the braking system. Marvel Mystery Oil has been added to the cylinders and hopefully next week I'll find out if the car starts. I'm really happy that I was given the opportunity to bring this car back to life. Thank to the Aunt and Uncle!! An extra birthday present for me! This past Easter I was asked by my wife's Aunt if I wanted her Fiat Spider. Her husband had got it for her with plans of a full restoration. After tearing out the interior and get numerous extra parts the project came to a stand still. A few weeks later, after talking my wife into getting the car, her Uncle sent me a picture of the style of car. Here is the picture he sent. Looks awesome right? Well, today I got to go down to their house and see the current state of the car. (I'll put a gallery below). Looks different right? I've been a hobby mechanic for my family for the past ten or more years. I look forward to the project. I have a background in sculpture, illustration and fabrication. This project should be a good fit. I've decided to start this blog so folks can follow along and hopefully it will make me work harder on the project. Or at least keep up with it. The car is actually in pretty good shape considering its age and the fact that it hasn't been on the road for a very long time. |