As I mentioned in my new member post, I’ve never owned a Fiat, but I’m excited to begin restoring my new purchase.
The car is in pretty rough condition and will need quite a bit of work, but it should be a great project.
My plan is to attempt to document the restoration on this forum and a personal blog. Hopefully this will serve as not only documentation, but will keep my motivation at a high level. Also, I expect I’ll need quite a bit of advice and assistance from all of you during this process.
Since I like posts with photos, expect to see quite a bit of those
Here she is on the trailer during the first night home 4/25/12:
Since the tires were dry-rotted and I could not roll the vehicle around, I needed to get some tires. I took the rims off and picked up some tires at PepBoys
Cornell 185/70 R13’s for $55.99 each:
Here she is with the new rubber before being rolled off the trailer:
On 4/28/12 I rolled her into the garage:
The first thing I did was pop the trunk, there was quite a bit of stuff in there, misc. bumper parts….
I cleared everything out so I could get a look at the gas tank, looks to be in pretty good shape, even the bottom of it only appears to have a very small amount of surface rust.
Next I pulled the hood off to get a good look at the engine:
There was quite a bit of debris on the engine, especially in the top part of the engine where dirt can collect by the plugs. I taped up the openings and took my leaf blower to it, kinda amazing how much dirt and dust flew off… kinda wish I would have done that in the driveway before bringing the car in the garage.
I know the water pump needs to be replaced, so I started the process of taking it off. I ran out of time and didn’t get finished, but here is where I left it.
One problem I kept running into with removing the hoses is that those old school hose clamps were rusted and the heads kept snapping off.
Since I’m going to take the timing belt off and replace it as well, I’ve been reading about that process, doesn’t seem too difficult. Just need to rotate the engine to TDC and mark everything. Probably should order a manual to make sure I don’t miss any steps.
Also, on a different note, I noticed that the drivers door kinda sags just bit.. the door opens and closes ok, but not at smoothly as the passenger door. When I took a closer look, it looks like someone made some repairs to it in the past…
Trying to repair this is not possible, but since it’s on the door, I’m thinking I could probably just get a replacement door…. Probably low on the list of items to fix at the moment.
A few thoughts on the process so far:
- This is going to take a lot of time. I’ve done this before in the past with other vehicles, but I guess at that time I had less commitments in my life. I’m going to come up with a plan to follow so that I can make steady progress.
- I’m going to need some additional tools, mainly all different types of bendable/flexible ratchet extensions and more deep metric sockets. I can already tell that one difficulty of most jobs will be “getting to” the nuts, bolts, or screws of that particular project.
- PB Blaster is my friend
. Was quoted $325 to repair, will just order a new one .. Was hoping to not have that expense. 
