Guess who's back ,back again ...

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Tappy
Posts: 721
Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2008 8:22 pm
Your car is a: 124 spider 2000 1979
Location: Belgium ; Centre Of Europe

Guess who's back ,back again ...

Post by Tappy »

Well its me , After a too long time of absence i've finnally got some time to be back on the forum

Some of you may remember that last problems i've faced where some overheating issues, for those who dont here's a little summary


I've seen my share of troubles , such as others . Last problem was an overheating problem , after replacing almost intire cooling sytem , hoses , caps , installed T-pieces , excessive burping, hole drilling in thermostats and numerous suggestions on this forum, even intervention from Alvon who specially made a round trip to help me out (from the states to Belgium !....) All these devine interventions didn't solve the problem , but they did confirm my worst fear ; An head(gasket) problem And this on an new (replacement) engine where all gaskets where replaced only 500 km ago.

Since i've f*cked up my first engine , the wife didn't trust it at all ;me wrenching and fixing the car, so i decided to stay maried and ask someone proffessional(=read highly payed) to help me out on engine problems , in the end this wasn't the best decision to make. After all one of thes pro's ""forgot " to replace an 20year old timing belt resulting in a major failure that costed me over 800$ to let to be fixed by another pro after who the engine suddenly blocked up after a while (Alvon found some serious debris and metal shutter that probably coused that error This resulted in buying yet another engine (the current one , also replaced by a so called proffesional , Only this one didn't torque up the main engine bolts , resulting in an headgasket failure ;causing the overheating problem , compressed air was forced into the cooling sytem , overflowing the expantion tank and leaving air pockets

Sinve ALvon whas here i just began on a new job and for the last weeks this has been taking up alot of my time (witch payed up eventually , today i had a talk with the big boss , and after 2 months i'm alredy up for a promotion !)

Anyway i've already took of the head off a few wheeks ago , planning on replacing the headgasket Ofcourse like its a Fiat tradition there aint a thing like a simple fix , while removing the head i thought i've loosend everything up , did'nt see the bracket attached to the exhoust , result; broke of the pipe . After a quick search i located someone in the Netherlands that would send it right away , but i still didn't recieve anything :evil: I've ended up asking a local welder to weld it back together and that seemed to work. It probably was the best to let the head resurface again , but didnt had the time or money to to so , so i've used copper spray ; Untill now it still holds up.

Finally had replaced the headgasket , get the pipe on , timing belt replaced i tought it was a good idea to change out the spark plugs,the distributor cap and the 20yr old fuel pump at once. That didnd't end up well , In first instance ive hooked up the new fuel pump wrong , when i finally found that, i was releaved that i just made stupid mistake , no wonder the car didn't start
But after fixing that the car would start but didn't run well at all , so back to the garage I had fuel s,o next thing to look for is ignition , the cap was new , like the rotor , cables , points and coil and now even the plugs replaced , but one of these plugs (i did'nt check because they came right out of the box) wasn't working giving me a headache finding the problem. So far so good , for a while , then finally happy i've fixed it all , one day before a fiat gathering , i proudly dragged the wife to the garage to prove i did have some skills .... Well the wife wasn't impressed at all , the car wouldn't start !

I decide to leave the car for a while and forget all about gatherings , fixing cars etc. Next morning awakend bye a beam of sunlight feeling sorry for myself i coulndt go on the anual fiat drive i decided to take a last look and try to solve the problem , wo i started from the beginning checking back everything , when i finally reached the ignition troubleshoot it appeared there wasn't any ! Who supspects the things that have been recently replaced , right ? In this case the new distributor cap was the problem ! , bolted the old one back on and she fired right up ! And still 30 miutes to get to the departure point of the driving gathering ,Whe made it just in time and for the first time whe did got started with the other cars , in fact this was also the first time whe copleted a whole drive with no problems at all .

One thing is for sure , a fiat is like a box of chocolates , you never know what you going to get !


next few days i'll be reading up all missed posts , i've once read the intire forum and i will once again !
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pls don't see what i write , read what i mean
ventura ace

Re: Guess who's back ,back again ...

Post by ventura ace »

Well, Philip, on the positive side, I’ll say that you have learned quite a bit about your spider, through these set-backs. Many of us have gone through similar set-backs, but maybe spread out over a 20 year period. You’ve been enrolled in an accelerated class of learning!!

Glad to hear you have it running again. I am a little concerned about the decision to not machine the head – but if the head was already flat (did you try to measure for flatness?), then perhaps there’s no concern after all. Be sure to check the head bolt torques at 500 miles and again at 1000 miles (or convert to kilometers for you smart fellows that aren’t bogged down with crazy English units).

I believe I had exactly the same problem as you with the distributor cap a few years ago. There are 2 different caps that look exactly the same on the outside, but the inside has a much deeper reach to the contacts for one cap vs the other (probably to match different rotor designs). I had the wrong cap on mine, and it actually ran fairly decent for several weeks until it got all carboned up from arcing across the big gap, then it quit and left me stranded one day.

I’m glad you and Desiree made it to the outing. Did you get some pictures?

A
racydave

Re: Guess who's back ,back again ...

Post by racydave »

Phillip, you are one tough Dude! When we were kids and choosing up teams, you are the kind of person that I would choose first! Takes a licking, and still keeps ticking! Bonsai!!! 8)
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