'71 Fiat 850 Spider, a Sub-Liter Beater

Congtats on the upcoming nuptials/birth/felony/planned euthanize/whatever the hell the vague reference was to.

And it's odd inspiring those that inspire me

Burrito wrote: ... her passion is photography and mine is rust.

In reply to Burrito:

Don't worry your secret is safe with us, "Caitlyn"

I wonder if you could get Nasr 128 badges for it? That would be some wicked EDM style representin' yo!

That is a damned cool find though. Mark Scholz might still have some 128 bits around (or know someone who does), also if you need a house with a garage, etc, he's your man:

http://portlandhomesforcars.com/

Yes, Yes, Yes, this thread has all the important parts. Fiats and woman who like and let us play with them. Now are there any power adders going onto the misses 128? Or are you going to grab a 1500 and tranny from a later x/19 to drop into it. Bayless used to have quite a good selection of go fast parts for these cars. Not to sure if Vicks has anything but my guess is they would have some stuff for it. What are you thinking of for suspension? I think ground-control has the generic kit for $400 last time I looked. Easy way to get it lower and a little stiffer with some nice Koni's for shocks and that would be a nice little canyon carver. Well good luck on the freshening up on her.

In reply to brad131a4:

The internet has led me to believe that a pair of X19 rear struts moved to the front of a 128 will provide a nice drop in height and a little more spring rate, without losing suspension travel. While that's all fine and dandy (and really quite cool), there's not much in the way of good dampeners for the X. On the same side of that coin, the X19 guys use VW Rabbit front strut tubes to facilitate the use of Konis, bilsteins, etc.. Since I'm also a MK1 VW dork, this is a really quite likely to happen to this car. If it works on the back of an X19, it will work on the front of a 128, right?

The rear will be lowered in the typical 128 fashion; a shim or block between the lower control arm and the transverse leaf. The PO threw in a wagon rear spring pack, which has an extra leaf in it when compared to the coupe or sedan pack, so that should take care of the rear nicely. I'll have to give the geometry a good look and make sure there's space, but I think I can engineer a this to give me some height adjustment.

We're still undecided on what we are going to do for the powerplant. I'm kicking myself for passing on a nearly free 1500 from Turboswede a few months ago.

This build will be more "Only Dropped"

and less Hillclimber

Yes you are correct on the rear to front stut's. I'm mostly 124 coupe and spider player in the fiat world. I have had friends in my younger days that have had 128's and helped them with motor swap's and fun stuff like that. Funny you should mention the mk1 part as I'm also a vw/audi enthusiast as well. I even have a set of mk1 stut's sitting in one of my shed's just taking up space. There yours if you want them as I was going to send them to the recyclers with some other parts I don't need. The top pic is a 124 sedan you don't see much of over here. The hillclimber now that's more my style low and bulldog looking. Probably not what the misses was thinking when you and her went over the build parameters.

Rabbit strut tubes, Bilstein Sports, and coilovers sleeves are already happening. I sold a set of tubes to Ditchdigger about 2 years ago and they've just gathered dust since then, so they're returning to me this Saturday. I'll need to do a little research on spring rates; I've seen the stock front spring rate quoted at 75lbs/in, but that seems really, really low.

I've got a line on an $600 81 X19 that's rusty, but runs and drives nicely. I think a 1.5l, 5 speed, electronic ignition, and L-Jetronic swap in one fell swoop sounds like a lovely way to get back on the road and make a bit more power. If you have any experience on making the X19 guts work in a 128, I'm all ears. I read something about the 5 speed having clearance issue with the swaybar and there being a difference in shift linkage. Information is kinda thin on the ground for these cars.

In the meantime, the shop has been cleaned out and the car is in it's new home.

I'm really looking forward to getting started on this.

Check for rust under the heater box.

Kenny_McCormic wrote: Check for rust under the heater box.

I tried to find a Buyer's Guide or something that would tell me where to look for rust before purchasing, but I came up empty handed. Probably should have just asked the Hive.

Well I do know that the heater box would have to be modified if you want to run dual side draft carbs. IDF's are easier to deal with in this case. I wish my memory was that good from over 30 yrs ago but I'm not that lucky. I do recall that a couple mount's had to be reworked just a bit. As far as the swaybar I think he just made spacers to miss the part it came close to. Forgot that there is a nice amount of room in there once you pull the spare tire out. Could be used to throw a little turbo on it to really up the fun. Not to sure if my friend , well he was back then, is still around. If I get a chance I'll see if I can give him a ring and try to pick his brain. No guarantee's on that as I haven't seen the guy for over 30 yrs. That does look like a fun project though. My wife want's my 76 spider since she doesn't really like her 74 alfa spider as much as she does mine.

There's some good information that can be gleaned from this very relevant thread. He's certainly a like-minded individual.

That was one of the spots on my Yugo, which is practically the same car, but galvanized (at least partially) and 20 some odd years newer. Other spots that come to mind include, but are not limited to, rear control arms, rear bumper mount, trans mount under battery tray, headlight buckets, rear shock towers, front tow point, gas tank. I also remember some stress cracks on the spare tire/heater shelf area on one side or the other. Also closely inspect the brackets that mount the control arms to the unibody, they're just spot welded on, I'd probably seam weld them for use with sticky tires.

In reply to Kenny_McCormic:

Wonderful. That's exactly the kind of information I'm looking for. I did notice that the Uno Turbo swap guy has added gussets where the frame rails meet the firewall.

Keep in mind this has been off the road and in dry storage since 1996 and has spent it's entire life in the Pacific Northwest. I'm hoping that translates to "Solid as berkeley".

More Burrito Fiats? This can only be good news.

I don't know if I'm more jealous of your fab skills or your ability to find cool project Fiats in the first place.

Well, it's been six months since I've done anything on this car. The 128 is getting very close to "done" and it's time to start thinking about the old 850 Coupe again. I'm probably still 3 months out from actually getting to turn wrenches on it, but there's still some life in this build.

In the meantime, we can all drool over and draw inspiration from this:

Cheers!

I am very much looking forward to your triumphant return to the 850. I love the G13B, and your application/execution of the swap promises to be super cool. Mind you, the 128 is righteous as well. Viewing intently.

So, for all intents and purposes, it has been a full year since I posted an update on this car. A lot happened in that year; got hitched, bought a house, traveled internationally, build the 128 for my wonderful bride. I also moved out of the rented shop space and into the 1 car detached shoebox my house came with. I'm still getting settled in here so updates will be slow for a while.

At some point in the last year I began to seriously doubt that I would ever get the G13B properly mated to the Porsche 901 transaxle. I mentioned to Jumper K. Balls that I was going to sell the engine and order up a 4AGE or SR20 adapter kit from Kennedy Engineering. He called me a berkeleying idiot and said I would be doing nothing of the sort. So, that settled that, then. First task to get back into the project is to get the Suzuki and Porsche lovin' 100% ironed out.

So, engine and transmission out, split them apart and figure out where I left off.

The original adapter is extremely crude. If you recall, a buddy and I went all arts and crafts on it with some poster board and beer. In reality, it was good enough to get the engine and trans bolted together enough to build motor mounts and get the lump hung in the car.

But it was never going to be right.

It's back!!

Did you ever finish the yellow car?

So, if the arts and crafts approach didn't yield the necessary accuracy, I guess a more refined approach is required. Queue the free CAD software and whatever knowledge I retained from a semester of AutoCAD 12 years ago.

Don't worry. That's a .dxf converted to a .pdf, that got exported as a .jpeg.

I believe this is version 3 of the drawing and it's very nearly the final draft.

Since I am a very cheap man, and machine time and steel are rather expensive, I opted to print the first few drafts out on paper to make sure I was on the correct path.

And, after a handful of revisions, I decided it was time to call in a favor from my buddy Ryan at Rydelfab down in Eugene.

His CNC Plasma table really does beat banging it out with hand tools.

So, with the plate cut and with all of the holes lining up really well, it was time to drill all the holes out to their proper sizes and send through the tapping head.

After that it was just a matter of offering it up to the Suzuki block and Porker trans.

But how does it line up, you ask?

Dead berkeleying nuts on center!

Next step is to slap a new timing set on the motor along with a new starter and see if I can't get the thing to spin over with the help of some electrons.

Feels good to be back!

Dusterbd13 wrote: It's back!! Did you ever finish the yellow car?

Finish isn't the word I would use to describe what I've done, no, but it is completely awesome. I really haven't had to do much more than add fuel and oil to the thing. I think the rings are finally starting to take a seat, or at least it feels stronger than it did when I first slapped it together. I cycle through it and the Scirocco for daily driving purposes. Crystal, my wife, has almost zero experience with manual transmissions, so she hasn't driven it nearly as much as me. We try to go out a couple nights a week and just let her cruise around in it and get used to it. It is 100% different from anything else she's ever driven.

Burrito wrote: It is 100% different from anything else she's ever driven.

This is probably a true statement for 98% of everyone reading this.

I saw the pic of the rear main seal on Instagram and wasn't quite sure what was happening, so I'm glad to get the decoder ring here. I was sad to hear you were looking to sell the 'Zuki motor, and now glad to hear Ditch talked some sense into you. Love seeing this progressing!

YeeHaa it's back!!! been waiting for this and jumper k balls cars to be worked on more. Going to try and hit up Jumper in a couple of weeks as me and the better half will be in Eugene for the Prefontane track meet.

Today wasn't quite the milestone setting day I thought it would be. Started out with receiving a timing belt kit for a G10 instead of a G13b, so I'll have to double check my rockauto order and make sure the issue is on their end. Anyways, I ended up just tossing the old timing belt and tensioner back on for the meantime. It's not good enough to run the engine on, but I think it's safe for spinning it over with the starter.

After that I jumped right in with the starter arrangement. I ended up with a Samurai starter, because it was the only bellhousing drawing I could track down. I know the G13B is essentially a bolt in swap for the Samurai guys, so I made a few assumptions for my application. One of those assumptions was that the starter and ring gear would play nice together. It appears that was a reasonable thought, but it looks as though the G13B ring gear is slightly larger in diameter.

So, as it is now the mesh on the starter gear and ring gear is too tight and the bendix gets jammed in the outer position. Progress is progress, though.

It's back to the digital drawing board for what I think will be the last revision.

In the meantime I plan to modify this plate a little bit and see if I can't finalize the starter position with a bit of the ol' wallerin' stick.

Cheers!

Can you enlarge the holes, fit the starter with bolts and nuts, and weld the nuts in?