Sport Coupe Restoration Thread:

[thechadzone]

Unless there are objections to my chronicling the restoration of my '72 BC Coupe here on Fiat SPIDER .com, I'd like to do so here in this thread. I am not an expert car restorer. I'll need the help of many forum contributors to do this right. I've come to feel quite comfortable within this forum, and the level of knowledge here is second to none about the 124 series of Fiat. That said, don't be too hard on me...

So far, I've removed the carpet & jute type padding from the car's floor after also removing its seats. The floor is perfect. It's tar coating was separating from the metal on the passenger's side, but is in very good to perfect condition everywhere else on the interior floor pans. Since this is the case, should I leave it as such, and apply bed liner to the passenger's foot well where the original tar had begun to separate from the pan? This seems the way to go to me, but I'd like other people's thoughts on it.

I've dyed the car's carpet back to black from its faded green color and though it's not perfect, it'll be just fine for now. Even the padding between the carpet and tar coat on the floor pans is in good re-usable shape. I'm not going for a concourse restoration, but is it a bad idea to simply put this carpet padding back where I found it, or use some of the foil type wrapping shown recently in the floor pan restoration thread? I'm inclined to just put the original padding back in place, but I'm all about the preservation of the car.

As per the floor pan restoration thread, I've begun the undercoating of the car's underside starting with its wheel wells. I've finished the front two wheel wells. I started by spraying them liberally with brake cleaner to get the filth off. They were actually pretty clean, and there were only very minor amounts of surface rust here and there. After the brake cleaner came the Simple Green, and after that came the Ospho, which is a rust reversing chemical compound. It's nasty stuff, but the results are very good. After spraying Ospho on and letting it dry, the wheel wells got a coating of rubberized undercoating, just less than one full can per fender well area. I was thorough, and no areas were missed. I was glad to see that there was no rust-through in the battery box, which bulges into the right front fender well of the Coupe. Nice.
Next the floor pans get this same series of steps. So far I've seen no metal that needs to be replaced.

I removed the car's front bumper tonight, partly because I prefer the look of un-bumpered 124s (my Spider AS is also without bumpers). I also wanted to do some preliminary body work on the left front fender while I was messing around in the wheel wells. There is some light to moderate collision damage, most of which was taken by the bumper which fared pretty well considering the impact it took. Unlike my Spider, I had the bumper off the Coupe in 5 or so minutes.

I used a small scissor jack that I wedged between the inner fender well, and the outer fender well's damaged portion to push out the worst parts of the damage. The results were better than I expected them to be. I have zero training in bodywork, but my experience puts me somewhere between novice and intermediate. I'll try to post some before & after photos of both the fender wells, and the fender.
Bumper off, "before" pic of left fender damage
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
Fiat Coupe undercoating & bumper by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

Here's the "After" pic of the preliminary bodywork on the fender:

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
Fiat Coupe undercoating & bumper 2 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

Here is the "Before" pic of what I'm pretty sure is the passenger's side fender well:

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
Fiat Coupe undercoating & bumper 10 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

Here is the "After" pic of the passenger's side fender well (That's not my Bondo in the background):

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]

Here is the "Before" pic of the driver's side fender well (almost forgot to document it):

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
Fiat Coupe undercoating & bumper 7 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

Here is the "After" pic of the driver's side fender well:

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
Fiat coupe undercoating & bumper 6 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

Here is a "Before" pic of the carpet:

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
Here is an "After" shot of the car's carpet:

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
Fiat Coupe Floor Pans 12 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]
fiat coupe floor pans 5 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

Below is the condition of the driver's foot well: The tan fuzzy stuff is the residual floor padding fuzz atop a perfectly intact layer of factory tar. Note the condition of the carpet padding at the top of the pic, it's all in that condition,

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
fiat coupe floor pans 1 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

Below is a "Before" pic of the passenger's footwell: The surface rust is not as extensive as it seems from this shot. The only surface rust that is attached to the metal is on the upper vertical part of the fender well. I didn't get a shot of it yet, but this area cleaned up quite well with some Ospho and a cup brush on an angle grinder

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
fiat coupe floor pans 2 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

Below is a pic of my car that I snapped as I was walking toward it with keys in hand after paying $1500 for it:

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
Fiat Trip with Jeff 7 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

I'm doing all this in my brother's garage while he works on his 850 Spider next to me. He's slowly paying me back for the car, and his wife and kids say that the Spider has given him a renewed enthusiasm for being alive. It's been cool spending the time with my brother, who is smarter, and in all honesty a better mechanic than I am. My biggest contribution to the Fiat Garage is my verve, vision and tenacity.

[Redline]

Thanks for making the thread. I'm sure a few Coupe fans here (besides me) will enjoy reading it.

That's a very solid looking car, a great colour and a bargain at 1500. Here's some inspiration:

[thechadzone]

Thanks, Redline. This is the most rare/collectible car I've ever owned, so I want to do things as "right" as possible on it to both preserve it ,and contribute to its value. I'm not looking to customize it very much, just items like suspension, wheels & tires, no bumpers, and engine upgrades.

I've been inspired by the car you posted since I bought this one a month ago. However, I'm still struggling with the BLUE color. It doesn't look bad as factory colors go, but I'm just not a "blue" kinda guy... Blue is also the traditional color of French sports cars, rather than Italian sports cars... Since I'm going to have to pay someone to repaint it for me, I'm tempted to try another color, but then there's the preservation/value/originality consideration...

The inspiration car lately is this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHRqwgBFSFQ

[kmead]

Great to see. Although there were many more coupes made than Spiders, relatively few were sold in the US. Sadly here they were valued less and were driven, rusted and discarded unlike the Spider which was treated more as a fair weather car and used less strenuously. As a result they are quite rare and worth preserving.

I think showing any Fiat being brought back to life is worth having it documented, I can't see too many people taking much issue with it being shown here since at their base both a Spider and a Coupe are very nearly the same.

The blue on your car is Mediteranean Blue as I recall, they also had French Blue as well (though it may be the opposite), a quick look at the paint code will tell the tale. I have always like the color of your car and would like to suggest you not change the color for historical reasons as well as the fact that way too many cars get changed to Red, Yellow and Silver. There are so few really great colors being produced and sold now of days, it would be a shame to see one disappear under some more mundane color.

Good luck with bringing it back and feel free to post with any questions you may have.

[Redline]

Agree on the colour change, or at least I would say "give it time". My Coupe is a bizarre green that, depending on the light, varies from quite dark (in the rain) to almost the light colour of olive skins. I though it was awful when I first bought the car, but now it's really grown on me and I like the fact that no one makes cars in this colour anymore (a slightly ironic statemtent...). I also smile every time I see a mustard yellow fiat or that great blue. And I love the flat-yet-glossy nature of old paints.

[thechadzone]

I got some more undercoating done. That's damn dirty work! I was filthy when I finished all the prep work around the removal of all the gunked up oil slicks along the bottom of the floor pan with 40 years of dirt stuck to them. Brake cleaner, Simple Green, a wire brush and some rust reverser (in that order) got it done.

The passenger's side interior floor pan is ready for bed liner. I believe the rest of the interior floor area is solid enough to leave as-is. There is a little rust around the passenger's side floor pan drain holes, but not enough to require a weld.

I think it looks more sporty without the front bumper. However, if I keep it that way I'm going to need to figure out a solution for front turn signals that looks cool and doesn't hack into the car.



[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
Fiat Coupe Undercoating and floorpan 5 by thechadzone, on Flickr
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Fiat Coupe undercoating and floorpan 7 by thechadzone, on Flickr



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Fiat coupe undercoating & bumper 8 by thechadzone, on Flickr
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Fiat Coupe undercoating and floorpan by thechadzone, on Flickr
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[thechadzone]

Today I removed and replaced the brake booster & master cylinder assembly on the Coupe. It's brakes work, but the driver must lift the brake pedal up after depressing it to make the brakes un-brake. I dunno wtf might cause this, but I just happened to have a complete master & booster assembly lying around.

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
fiat coupe brake booster 2 by thechadzone, on Flickr
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This is the replacement booster & master after being bolted down from the inside by my brother Jeff.

Fiat coupe brake booster by thechadzone, on Flickr
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[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
fiat coupe brake booster 4 by thechadzone, on Flickr
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[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
fiat coupe brake booster 5 by thechadzone, on Flickr
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Now all I have to do is bleed the brakes & reconnect the clutch cable that conflicted with the removal of the booster. It was reasonably straight forward, or at least not as complex as I feared... BTW, if any of y'all have a single plane intake manifold from a 1.8 liter motor that you'd give up for a reasonable price I'd love a pm or response here from you because now would be a convenient time to make the upgrade to such an intake & use a mechanically actuated secondary type 36 mm. carb. For that matter, I've moved this year, and I can't find my 32-36 DFAV carb. DAMMIT! Anyone got something similar lying around? I'm poor right now, but I recognize reasonable prices on such items. Thanks in advance!

I've finally finished undercoating the underside of the car, what a sh!t job that is. However, there was no metal repair needed, and it looks great now. Most of the time spent was the surface preparation for the undercoating. Gross...

[kmead]

Great to see the progress. Everyone here who has suffered through cleaning the bottom of their car has bemoaned the pain of doing that job.

I hope you didn't remove the clutch pedal spring. If so don't forget the penny trick of putting a small stack of pennies between each wind of the spring to increase its static length.

Keep up the chronicle, it is always good to see people's progress on their cars.

Consider installing the front bumper without the over riders as just a clean single blade (you will need to find some small head chrome bolts to do so or add some new fasteners to the bumper and rechrome (not in the budget right now I know).

[MNspiderman]

I got lucky because when my kid was in high school. he was buddies with the shop teacher and after hours we got to take the cars (4) to his class and hoist them up and power wash the Bjesus out of them. I swear their pressure washer was pushing 300 million psi's. The stuff was flyin' Of course I did the engines, hoods, suspensions, trannies and rear ends too. It was worth getting nasty and wet for. As for Murpheys Law. I can't imagine how many times you squirt a corner and it thanks you by doing a U turn and gets you right in the face. Lots of mental swearing going on. After a while you just laugh in disbelief. But well worth it

[thechadzone]

Thanks for the responses, specifically for the penny trick; I'm going to need it. I considered taking the car to the car wash with jack & jack stands for a thorough scrubbing, but I didn't have the patience required for letting it dry out before finishing the job.

As for the front bumper, I think I'm going to go for the front spoiler that's available through someone on the 124sportcoupe.com site. It can be used with or without a bumper, but I think I'm going to mount the front signals on the spoiler. The original (F-ING) blue is growing on me, and it'll probably end up this same color to preserve the character of the car. However, black with white & chrome accents is still tempting...

This car really needs a new dash. It has 3+ cracks in it, and one of them has affected the curvature of the dash atop the gauge cluster. I've been keeping an eye out for one with no luck so far. Anyone got one/got any ideas for a '72 BC dash? I've seen threads on the alfabb.com site that cover dashboard resurrection, and I might have to do this. My center console isn't the best either...

I have a set of 8x13 knock-off wire wheels with 4x100 hubs lying around, and I'm considering them for my Coupe. According to threads in the Wheels & Tires section, all I'd need for this are the "wobble" lug bolts to mate the 4x100 hub to the 4x98 car. Will 8" wheels fit under the stock fender wells? It looks like they would, and their offset is for RWD... Where the hell do I get wobble bolts? My second choice for wheels are the BMW alloys from '80s BMW 3 series. I've used lugs from the factory optional "Libre"/Roosevelt wheels to overcome the 2mm difference in bolt patten between the wheel & car on my Spider, but these lugs are hard to find at best... These wheels also required a bit of machining of the center bores on the front two wheels.

Here's the BMW alloys with Abarth center caps on my '69

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
fiat with mom by thechadzone, on Flickr
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Here's the wire wheel candidate. I'm not sold on their current white powder coat. They'd likely get cleaned & resprayed with a Duplicolor alloy-type finish similar to that on the BMW alloy pictured.

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]
Fiat Coupe Wire Wheel by thechadzone, on Flickr
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If I get the job I'm crossing my fingers for, I might treat myself to a set of Daytona wheels like those pictured on the car posted a few posts up. For now, I'm sitting in the University of Oregon library procrastinating my studies...

[manoa matt]

While you are at it, replace those original 30+ year old master cylinder rubber hoses (the yellow ones)

[kmead]

I would stay away from the wire wheels. Wires are not exactly the strongest wheel (radial runout) and far from the lightest.

I would find the lightest rim I could which will do the most for your handling.

Look for a set of Alfa BWAs, there have been two sets of them on eBay in the last month both in 14" size. The BMW rims are a good choice. I know someone posted a source for the wobble bolts on this forum within the last week. I know they sell them on eBay as well, you will need to check carefully for bolt length relative to your rims.

[thechadzone]

I'm still hard at work on my 124 Coupe every chance I get, which had been every few days or so. Restoring a car is a greasy frustrating and expensive pain in the ass! I'm not deterred by this, but it's been very true so far.

I've redone the brakes. I swapped out the master cylinder, brake booster, the two front brake tubes, and the brake fluid. The brakes stop the car just fine, and there's plenty of pedal, but the brake pedal still insists on staying down after being depressed, and the brakes stay engaged until I life the brake pedal back up with my foot. I'm pretty sure I've done all the brake work right, is there something I'm missing here?

I need a replacement trans. No getting around it. I was hoping to resurrect 4th gear by flushing out the trans & refilling it with a high quality fluid, but after doing so without any change, I had a look-see at the top side of the trans by removing the plate that surrounds the gear shift lever. It has some kind of Frankenstein repair, complete with nuts, bolts, scars and the use of a wrench to hold it together again. DAMN! "There's your problem...". Have a look at the pics of it. It went into 4th when I got it, but I didn't know that the trans was out of fluid when I got the car, so it seized up on the freeway about an hour after I got it. I got 4 out of 5 gears back after filling it back up, but 4th gear is still nearly non-existent.

I found a very good deal on a Monza brand free flowing muffler of unknown application for $20 at a local independent parts store. Sweet! My car's existing exhaust system was it's original from '72. Not so good... I still need the all important twin tip affixed to complete the Monza look & sound, but what I've done so far is pretty bitchin. in a controversial move, I've constructed a side exiting exhaust system that exits just behind the driver's door. I know that the left side exit is contrary to the flow of the head, but the sound of my cars is a big part of their allure to me, and I like to hear them. My Alfa Spider had this same side exiting Monza set-up, and it sounded fantastic, just like my Coupe now does.

Brakes: This shot is of the master cylinder as we were messing with it

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]Fiat Coupe Restoration Thread 6 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

New brake lines up front: the existing ones were scary!

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thechadzone/504[url]9773299/][/url]Fiat Coupe Restoration Thread 0 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

This is my brother Jeff modeling my new exhaust. That's the god awful hat he picked up at the auto parts store

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]Fiat Coupe Restoration Thread 5 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]Fiat Coupe Restoration Thread 10 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

Look at this sh!t:

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]Fiat Coupe Restoration Thread 1 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

Look at the improvised support structure applied here on the sides & on top

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]Fiat Coupe Restoration Thread 2 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]Fiat Coupe Restoration Thread 3 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

The car does run, I took it for a 10 minute trip up the road today to check out the new exhaust. If I didn't know better I'd swear that this thing is a terrible piece of ...

[thechadzone]

Still going on the Coupe project. I've decided to borrow the drivetrain out of my Spider for use in the Coupe. It's got a smooth trans, 2.0 motor with 1.8 head upgrade, dual IDFs on Waffle manifold. It's also got good brakes, all new rubber pieces on its front end, a nice set of alloy wheels, and a few other odds & ends that'd be nice for the Coupe.

The Spider is cool & all, but its body and paint are poor, and its floor pans are pretty bad. Its got headlights, wipers, & gauges, but no other electrical to speak of... It's plenty powerful, & handles nicely, but it needs more than I can give it right now. I'll likely hold onto it for down the road, but I really don't need more than two cars at this point.

I put down the bed liner on the Coupe's floor pans last night before replacing its tar mat & carpet. It's good peace of mind to know that the floor pans are safe, as the underside of the car. I've included some pics of the progress. I don't know why I didn't take any shots of the carpet, it looks much better since being dyed back to its original black.


[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]Fiat Coupe Bed Liner 7 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]Fiat Coupe Bed Liner 5 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thech ... .jpg[/img]Fiat Coupe Bed Linter 1 by thechadzone, on Flickr[/url]

[Fiat88]

Keep it up, nice progress! Those wrench braces on the tranny housing are crazy!