1980 FI Resto

[pda041376]

Ok so on August 2nd I ended up buying a "1981" Fiat Spider 2000. I found this vehicle on Craigslist and decided that it would be worth the money to try to get back to its formal glory. The guy I got it from informed me of all the ills that this "81" had before I purchased it. Well I got it dropped off at my house and started looking at it, not an 81, but a 01/80 FI (didn't go get the title until the 3rd of August, which verified it certainly was not an 81).

For all the bad: Driver side headlight was busted, the roof was in tatters, the interior was pretty rough (water damage, mildew), the driver side rocker had a finger sized rust hole in it, the paint is absolutely shot, the car won't feed fuel from the tank. I think that covers all the basics.

Here she is as she was delivered:

(For full-sized images: http://fiat.patrickdallen.com/fiat/Photos.html)





















One side of the garage needed to be cleaned out to accommodate the toy, so nothing other than some looking, poking, prodding happened for the next ten days.

Edit: Forgot to mention the price tag was $750.

[RRoller123]

Welcome aboard! You have your work cut out for you, but the engine compartment doesn't look too bad. Any idea how many miles are on the drivetrain?

[pda041376]

Welcome aboard! You have your work cut out for you, but the engine compartment doesn't look too bad. Any idea how many miles are on the drivetrain?

136,000 miles. I fully intend to put all new components on the car and rebuild the engine, tranny and rear end. Just to make it feel and run like it is fresh off the assembly line. I am giving myself a fairly strict timeline of a year before it is back on the road.

[narfire]

Gentlemen...it can be rebuilt...
Yeup you have a project, but as you have mentioned, a realistic timeline and a healthy dose of dollars and you'll have a sweel little car.
Price sounds close for a car like that. If you spray fuel in the intake, will the car kinda start/run?
Best in my opinion to pull the engine anyway and do a re-fresh, not too expensive thing to do.
Have fun and document/pics as you move along eh.
Chris

[pda041376]

Gentlemen...it can be rebuilt...
Yeup you have a project, but as you have mentioned, a realistic timeline and a healthy dose of dollars and you'll have a sweel little car.
Price sounds close for a car like that. If you spray fuel in the intake, will the car kinda start/run?
Best in my opinion to pull the engine anyway and do a re-fresh, not too expensive thing to do.
Have fun and document/pics as you move along eh.
Chris

Yup, car will fire up if fuel sprayed directly. The engine is not locked up, compression is there as well.

I went into it fully knowing its a project car. That being said, I am still young enough to enjoy it and old enough to finance it (36). So far it's all been tear down (13 hours so far). Everything is being removed, bagged and tagged. (My garage is starting to look like an evidence locker.) The female is helping out with scraping/cleaning areas of the car as I expose them. Even the ki is helping (somewhat) with vacuuming out the areas where crap settled into cracks.

Other than the passenger floor pans (which I've already ordered and received) and the right hand corner where the passenger floor pan meets the firewall the car is not a rusty mess. Pulled the rockers last night and to my pleasant surprise, outer sills are good. The shock towers look good, the under seat (package shelf) area is flawless. Surface rust and some under paint "bubbling" rust exists, but going to fire up the DA either today or tomorrow an start pulling it all down to bare metal.

I have more recent pictures, but have to unlazy myself to upload them to my server and link them here. (Which should be later today.)

[pda041376]

Ok so two things happened today: stripped and etched the passenger fender and my car got her name.

After spending 5-6 hours sanding things down (plus food and random beer breaks), it occurred to me, this car did NOT look that bad before I started this. SO about a pound and a half of Bondo removal later I decided my car had earned her name. Since she was not too hard on the eyes before the stripping, but as more layers got puled away I could tell many men have had their hands on her, she earned the name Lucrezia.

Pictures of her defiled form will be posted soon (as well as the progress up to this point, although it is just stripping her down to an empty tub). After todays adventure the time invested has come to about 19 hours. Many more hours to come...

[pda041376]

Ok, so I just looked up the meaning of the name and apparently it means "succeed", hope instilled at this point.

[pda041376]

And the pictures. I have left the other-half in charge of getting pictures of progress, so there are tons from different angles, different light, etc.

Still have to get some more up-to-date ones. For full-sized images:

http://fiat.patrickdallen.com/fiat/Lucr ... .html#grid

Or right-click the image and open it in a new tab.

[pda041376]

And here she is with her first bit stripped naked.

[pda041376]

Phone photos, so they are not the greatest.

For full-sized pics:
http://fiat.patrickdallen.com/fiat/Lucr ... ipped.html

Fender in etch



And hood after realizing auto stripper would make things go a lot faster. Still a few spots to sand out, but the process is infinitely faster than sanding the whole thing down to metal.



Note the pure unmolested metal above the sanded part.

About to change all that by wiping it down and throwing the etching primer to the hood. Sadly the etch is olive drab green, so the poor girl will look like a military vehicle until the time comes to throw the real primer, spot putty, sealer, etc on her.