South Pacific spider restomod begins

[Anbele]

Hahaha…Trevor, my reference was for the “Wizard of Oz”…he residing at the Emerald city and all…didn’t think of OZ = Aussie…sorry about that!

[Kiwispider]

Oh, now I get it! Of course Oz means something other than a nickname for Australia, cultural blind spot on my part

[18Fiatsandcounting]

Kind of like when my wife and I took our honeymoon in New Zealand, and did some wine tasting on Waikehe Island. We kept looking for signs to wineries or tasting rooms (as they are known in the States), only to finally figure out that we need to look for a cellar door. The wine was good, just had to find it!

-Bryan

[Kiwispider]

Great example of translating UK English from Ted Lasso:- When a football coach gets the boot (gets fired) he puts his boots (cleats) in the boot (trunk).

[Kiwispider]

Steering Idler woes.

Gave the steering idler a clean up



Everything looked OK but when filled with 80W-90 gear oil to the recommended level, it was very difficult to rotate. Removed some of the gear oil, which made it easier to turn but also discovered it was leaking between the bottom seal and the idler body.

I've started a separate thread to see if anyone has any great ideas for a fix.
http://www.fiatspider.com/f15/viewtopic ... 14&t=40428

[Kiwispider]

Managed what I hope has fixed the steering idler by using a semi-fluid oil which so far doesn't seem to be pushing past the seal. Steering idler and box now back in the car.

Re-installed window and door latches, quarter lights and glass. No windscreen in place so just a guess on quarter light alignment. Had to move passenger door forward to stop the chrome end trim binding as the door closed, but everything looks pretty good so far.

Turned my attention to the cabin and installed sound deadener to the floor, tunnel, firewall, sills, behind the rear seat and in the doors and side panels. I'd kept the wiring loom in the car cabin, so only had to feed it back into the trunk and through the fire wall.

[Kiwispider]

Underbody Painting

The wheel wells had originally been coated with a sound deadener/rust preventer, some of which was removed to get the car certified in New Zealand, some was removed to do our bodywork patches, and some had just fallen off and was showing surface rust. I removed the loose stuff back to bare metal, treated with rust preventer and coated with zinc rich galvanizing paint. Then recoated all the wheel wells and the inside of the front valence with a healthy coat of underbody paint.

The heater air intake under the cowl was in pretty good condition, just needed a bit of loose seam sealer removed then it got the same underbody paint treatment.

[Kiwispider]

New Springs & Shocks

I wanted to lower the ride height a little and had always been unhappy with the front shocks which didn't seem to absorb our bumpy road surfaces all that well. Turns out the front shocks were KYB's and the back were Munroe,s, I can only assume the springs were factory.

I ordered VAS progressive spring and Hydroshock set, with no guarantee that they would lower the car now that it was bumper-less. The new front and rear springs were about 3/4" shorter than the ones that came out of the car, so that's a good start. I have wheel arch heights recorded so will report back once the car is back on the ground and has a few miles on the clock.

[Kiwispider]

Re-modeled Dashboard

The old flat dashboard had seen better days and was showing some gaps around the edges, and the glove box was out of alignment. I wanted to use some NZ native timber to fashion a new one, add some curvature, relocate the gauges and remove the glove box.

This is a piece of Rimu which I salvaged from a house being demolished. It is one of our premier native tree species and is now only logged under strict sustainability conditions. It's fine grained, easy to work and oil finishes really show off the warm honey colouring.

I ditched the clock in favour of relocating the fuel gauge, so as to have room to create a concave in the dash behind the steering wheel, while rolling the top and bottom edges into the dash surround. I've used a combination of friction, strong door magnets and hand-tightened back screws to replace the four thumbscrews to hold the dash in place. The wiper speed switch and dash light dimmer switch will hold a black aluminium cover plate over the gold metal frame.

[Kiwispider]

Protecting the Door Cards

Edit: Just realised this is out of chronological order and happened after windscreen and roof installed - will post those next

According to photos I've seen on the internet, it looks like Fiat was happy to use any old vinyl flooring offcuts they could find to fashion up some crude water deflectors to protect the door cards from water running down the inside of the doors. I had three different types of vinyl covering the larger holes (some of which had dislodged because the staples had rusted), black tape covering the smaller holes, and hard grey putty around the winder and door latch screws. This looks as if it was typical. Judging by the state of my old door cards, it was also not particularly effective.

I replaced all of that with some PVC water tank liner, the only penetrations being the winder and door latch spindles. There are three indentations at the bottom of the door which I presume allows any water that finds its way between the inner door skin and the door card to drain out, so I kept those unblocked behind the blue liner.

[Kiwispider]

Windscreen Installation

I'd taken the windscreen out myself without any problems, but was advised to get an expert to reinstall it, and I can see why if you haven't done it before. Inserting the rubber seal into the frame, and the screen into the rubber was pretty straight forward using detergent for lubrication and ensuring it all seated well.

But the trick was the rope. The rubber seal has flaps that overlap the Y shaped upstand on the body that the windscreen sits on. Both the cowl and the dash were removed, the screen was lowered onto the Y upstand with the outer (cowl side) flap outside the Y, and the windscreen bolts inserted and hand tightened. But it is quite difficult to get the inner (dash side) flap to also sit outside the Y. This is where the rope comes in.

Before positioning the screen, we inserted a length of 8mm rope into the rubber seal behind the dash side flap, running the entire length of the bottom of the screen, with enough sticking out that we could grab hold of. Once the screen was in the right position sitting on the Y, and the cowl side flap was correctly seated outside the front edge of the Y, we gently pulled the rope inwards and along from one end of the screen to the other. This causes the dash side flap to gently pop out with the rope and seat correctly. Now that I've seen it done, I would probably do it myself with a mate who was handy, but good to know it's been done properly.

I knew the roof was really tight before I'd removed it so we raked the windscreen back as far as we could, which wasn't much as there is not a lot of play in the windscreen bolts. I had to adjust the quarter lights on the doors to rake slightly towards the back, and slightly inwards, to align with the windscreen frame.

Then tuck the dash back under the seal, and same with the cowl, clean off the smudgy finger prints and it's done.

[davebdave]

This car is looking great! I especially like the single piece dash board.
Dave

[Kiwispider]

Installing the Roof

I hadn't paid a lot of attention to the roof prior to the restoration - I always drove with the roof down because putting it up felt like I was forcing the latches and - as others on the forum have said - it pulled the car out of shape to the extent that the doors went out of alignment. I presume it was not the original roof because it was tight and it was vinyl, but in reasonably good condition.



The frame had some surface rust so I removed the quarter lights and stripped the paint, rustproofed and repainted. So far, so ordinary. But when I put the roof back onto the car and tried to fit it in a way that didn't a) bend the car in half; b) prevent the doors from closing; and c)allowed the windows to wind up properly; then it turned into an exercise in compromise.

First off, I noticed that the vinyl roof was not centred on the frame, as shown in these photos.

Driver Side - kind of what I'd expect


Passenger Side - Bit of a gap!


Given the roof was glued to the frame, there was no way to change this that I could see. I had clamped the back edge of the roof down reasonably snug so as to give a nice fit when looking from the rear of the car, but this made the roof really hard to latch closed. But if I loosened of the back edge clamp to allow easy latching, the back edge fell out of the clamp when the roof was down. I also had to loosen off the wire cables on either side of the roof, so now they are basically doing nothing.

There was also the problem of the ends of the front bow protruding under the vinyl and clashing with the top of the door quarter lights. This must have been going on for a long time as the vinyl was showing signs of wearing through, so I had to lower the quarter lights down as far as possible, which meant removing the chrome trim piece on the front of the door. I also discovered that the inward leaning angle of the door quarter lights is not the same as the angle of the 'B' pillar roof quarter light, and there did not appear to be a way to get them to align.

So it took many, many hours of trial and error, adjust and re-adjust, to reach a compromise where the roof is not too hard to latch but stays attached at the back edge when lowered; the doors are only slightly out of alignment when the roof is up but they will close without too much force; the door quarter lights are lower than they really should be so if they are opened (which I don't) they catch the rubber seal of the door trim; and the passenger side window doesn't come up high enough to tuck under the roof so might leak in the rain.

But that will have to do!!

[Kiwispider]

Engine Bay, Charcoal Filter and Wiring

Reinstalled the steering box and idler, brake master cylinder, brake lines and wiring. I re-wrapped the wiring in black polythene tape to tidy it up a bit. New ground pods and installed Vicks headlight relay kit - I made a mounting plate that fitted onto the studs left vacant from removing some part of the anti-pollution gear - the gulp valve maybe? Also colour matched the wiring loom clips.



Somewhere along the way the original charcoal filter canister went missing so I fashioned up a replacement using a large fuel filter filled with activated charcoal with a crankcase vent filter on top. Looks the part, hope it works!

[Kiwispider]

This car is looking great! I especially like the single piece dash board.
Dave

Thanks Dave. I was just reading your post conversations with Bryan re revving the engine out, I've never revved mine that high, but when I'm back on the road I'll be interested to see how mine compares.