1979 spider 2000 restoration

[SoFlaFiat]

JD,
Good to see you are plugging away! I have 6 or 8 heads laying around, plus a few bins of fasteners... shoot me an email, I'd be happy to drop what I have in the mail for you!
Keep at it! You have made such good progress!

[MrJD]

So here we go.

Car has been long ignored unfortunately due to real life... a really great life. Here is the main reason, she is a bit over a year old now, and takes up lots of my time.


On to business: The current state of affairs is as follows. I am going to try to get the body work done on the car this summer, as well as getting the special head for the car completed.

I just ordered cams and cam gears, and am taking the cam towers to get cleaned up this week.

big valves, one year only high compression head for the 2.0 block:


missing an exhaust stud...


Drivers side fender and inner fender done, for the most part


I gave up on trying to fix the rear panel, got a replacement panel cut off another car that I will weld in soon. No use in trying to patch rusted metal.


Speaking of rusted metal, here is the passenger side rear fender lip i cut off. Look how bad it was



Got rid of it, and spliced in some fresh! Not yet installed inner fender, still work to be done here. Its hard...


Then i can cut off the middle rocker and weld in a fresh part... this will not be fun.


Brakes: I am eliminating the rear brake valve as the lines going to it are going to fail. To do this, I am just going to cut the line that goes to the valve, and splice it directly into the rear brake lines. Look at this picture:


In it, you can see where the rear flex line connects to lead to the rear brake valve. Beside it are two other lines... one leading to the brakes themselves, and then an unrelated canister line. Should be an easy job... but notice how shiny the fitting is. I rounded it off big time... I did so much trying to get it to come loose... but it is stuck. Going to buy a new pair of heavy duty vice grips this week... going to take a file and square off the fitting on two sides, then use the vice grips to try and get it to turn. What a PITA...

Good times. So much work to do. I cannot see the light.

Jon

EDIT: just ordered $160 worth of pedals and shifters etc... and piles of money in cams and cam gears from mark. Denise, I am coming to see you to work on this head soon.

[Chops]

New to this forum, I have read your restoration blog and found inspiring, I will have some floor welding as well as jack point repair to perform in the future on a 1978 spider. Hope you'll be able to update us, if any, keep up the great work. :

[fiat218]

you can do my 70 next