Looking good!
Looking good!
I'm not sure how I haven't remembered to do this before now, but I wanted to share an update on the car and my helper.
My 4 year old daughter often comes out into the garage and asks to sit in the Fiat. There is a notepad and pencil that I keep inside the car just for her. She loves to sit (buckled) in the driver's seat and "drive", and when she tires of that, she will usually doodle, or practice writing her letters. The interior is scattered with pages she's drawn on and torn off.
So while progress continues with the car, I'm not as fast as many on here...but I have a great excuse. 
Very cool hide out for your girl.
Awesome car and helper! My son is still in the 'put everything in his mouth' phase so he can't help with anything yet.
Who needs a Tree House when she has a cool dad like you?! A kid's imagination can build a universe when they are in a happy place.
Awesome! My daughter is almost 12, and will still come out and sit in the driver's seat with a book or a clipboard. I occasionally find a random post-it note with art work or notes on it 
.
The only doodles I find in/on my cars are of specific parts of the male anatomy. I guess that's what happens when you pay friends in beer.
Burrito wrote: The only doodles I find in/on my cars are of specific parts of the male anatomy. I guess that's what happens when you pay friends in beer.
Buy better beer?
or replace beer with Zima?
then see what changes in the "notes" heh...
Burrito, you owe me a keyboard! I won't post it, but a few people at work 'helped' someone else move, and they creatively re-labeled a bunch of his boxes.
Does Zima even exist anymore? Never liked that stuff.
XLR99 wrote: Burrito, you owe me a keyboard! I won't post it, but a few people at work 'helped' someone else move, and they creatively re-labeled a bunch of his boxes. Does Zima even exist anymore? Never liked that stuff.
Thankfully, Zima has long since bit the dust. Much to the chagrin of Phil Dunphy and others. Substitute Zima with Seagrams? Cue puking emoji....
Stefan (Not Bruce) wrote:
Those...er...beverages seem strangely fitting for working on this Fiat. I mean who wouldn't want a cool Lime Melonade to go along with a brown vinyl interior and dusky yellow paint? Another Jamaican Me Happy anyone?
The local bartender told us that Zima is wildly popular in Japan, IIRC.
Not that I have ever seen .... Thankfully!
Burrito wrote: The only doodles I find in/on my cars are of specific parts of the male anatomy. I guess that's what happens when you pay friends in beer.
Best left in black sharpie on the windshield. Not immediately seen, but hilarious.
I just passed three years of ownership with this car. Time has gone really quickly and it is hard to believe it has been so long. I've been getting a bunch of work done on it in the last few weeks, but I'm quite overdue with posting updates here.
My work situation changed in the last two years and I now have to travel a lot for work. This year I have spent about 70% of my time on the road, and that really destroys all progress on a project like this. When I left off, I was getting the odd bit of sanding done here and there to remove all that Rustoleum.
Recent work included finally replacing the water pump, since that was one of the coolant leaks I was seeing. Access to do the work was poor at best - I had to grind down a 1/4" drive 13mm socket to get it in between the exhaust manifold and the intake to remove the water pump. That done, I was bummed to see that I still had a leak, coming from the intake manifold gasket. Would have saved a lot of work to just remove those manifolds before doing the pump, but live and learn. Timing belt is fresh too. Custom socket visible here:
Minty timing belt:
The intake manifold still leaks, but only a nuisance amount. I can live with it for now. I also plugged the smog air injection ports above the spark plugs on the car.
These jobs done, it was time to fire it up and see what is needed next. It fired right up with a squirt of starting fluid. This is from last week:
Sounds good! Any idea on how long until you drive it (even if it's still not "pretty")?
When you take off the manifolds to fix the leak, you could replace the exhaust with a header from Vicks. Also to simplify some things or possibly further complicate things, could also swap to twin carbs. I modified mine for twin side-drafts. The rear trunk is now basically part of the engine compartment. Had to cut a clearance hole for the carbs, also moved a few things to the rear trunk, vapor canister, and coolant tank. Twin down drafts might be a little easier to install... Somehow I got the header and the twin side drafts in even with the A/C still in the car. I did have to swap to a mini alternator. Really the only emission stuff you need to keep, the vapor canister that is connected to the gas tank vent, a vacuum hose also goes to that, other wise the tank would just vent gas vapor.
In reply to TED_fiestaHP:
Personally, I'd put an EFI intake on it and run MegaSquirt.
That said, the DCNF intake works better on the X-1/9 since it doesn't require cutting into the trunk and you can more easily protect the intake and carbs from the exhaust heat.
If you go with a header, add an extra hanger and have it ceramic coated to reduce heat transfer into the engine bay and especially the intake.
Ted, a header and dual manifold is part of the plan...I'll get to that plan in a post soon.
But first, new wheels. Back in February I scored some sweet Keizer wheels with Magnesium centers that had aluminum fasteners that made me a little nervous. I posted a thread asking for help here: 3 piece wheel hardware: stupid light edition
I also grabbed a set of Federal 595 to mount on them. 13" tires are really hard to find these days, and this in pretty much the only performance tire available aside from Toyo R888. I went for 185/60 as a starting point because I knew it would clear without any modification needed. I really wanted to stick with 13" on the car because 15" wheels look like clown shoes on this tiny car. Mockup:
I bought some cheapo hub centering rings and turned them down to fit on my lathe:
Fit on the car to check clearances:
Needed to reseal one wheel, and also changed all the hardware over to some steel bolts.
Assembled weight is right at 6 pounds. Here they are with new hardware:
The new wheels were literally the first significant investment I'd made in the car that wasn't just consumable parts...turns out this was something of a slippery slope because right after I bought the wheels a guy posted a lightly used set of coilovers for sale.
The coilovers are a entry level product that he'd used for a few months before moving on to some more expensive Konis. The seller was a regular autocrosser, whereas I'm building more of a casual street car. Since they were roughly half the price of new, I couldn't turn them down.
Super easy install. Three bolts holds the upper mount, two bolts at the knuckle/hub. Front:
Rear:
New wheels are peeking out from under the car during the install.
Love those wheels.
If you are looking for performance brake pads, the front brakes, you can use hawk blue, part used for RX7 rear brakes. Not sure about options for the rear, I have not tried to fit the RX7 pads there, but I bet they would work there as well. It's interesting, the front fiesta brakes are the same caliper, also about the same on my 128 coupe.
New wheels clear everything really well, but they leave a little to be desired in terms of fitment. Thankfully for me, Fiat hasn't changed their bolt pattern in over 40 years, so I was able to snag a set of wheel spacers for a modern 500 pretty easily. 25mm spacer for the rear, two factory X1/9 spacers in the front. Installed:
Test fitting shows the tire just tucking under the fender, without any rubbing:
You can see I did this at the same time as the intake and exhaust manifold gaskets.
Meanwhile, speaking of slippery slopes... a guy over on X-web listed a hot 1300 motor that came out of a rusty hill climb car. High compression pistons, ported head, desirable FAZA 40/80 cam. All for a very low price too... so this happened:
I had it shipped to the local freight terminal and brought it home.
In reply to Mezzanine: You own a small Italian sports car and you drive a sweptside Dodge?
You, sir, are my hero!
I'm digging the Fiat, it's a neat little car.
In reply to Recon1342:
Yeah buddy! It's a 66 with a 318 Poly and the auto trans. It's rusty and crusty, but it seems to just keep going.
In reply to Mezzanine: My very first vehicle was a '77 Powerwagon with a 360 and a torqueflite 727. That thing was a Hoss!
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