Bodywork patches

To paraphrase The Presidents of the United States https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvAnQqVJ3XQ. I'm goin' to the garage, gonna make a lot of patches.

Part of the less-is-more philosophy inevitably involves getting rid of all the 'stuff' that is either unappealing or not absolutely vital. There are probably as many opinions as there are Fiat Spiders as to what makes a great looking car. This is mine, so humour me.

Front



Tubular bumpers: not part of the original Italian design; ugly; heavy = gone.
Chrome trim around grille; superfluous = gone, replaced with welded body panel
Elliptical holes; superfluous = made round to take turn signal lights behind
Square holes; superfluous = patched.

Sides



Rubbing strip; somewhat useful but ugly = gone, holes welded
Side marker lights; somewhat useful but unattractive = gone, holes patched
Aluminium side skirts; superfluous = gone, holes filled
Aerial; superfluous = gone, hole patched

Rear



Tail lights; boxy design = gone, re-shape body for new round ones
Quarter panels; unsophisticated fixing method = bumper holes patched, screw fixing removed, relocated to inside the trunk
Rear lip; unsophisticated termination = patch to extend the lip and cover bumper mounting holes
Assorted holes behind number plate; it's a car, not a colander = patched

All badges stay to let the masses know that, deep down, it's still a FIAT!

Here is the cutout for the tail light and rear lip patches

As I stripped bits off and out of the car, before bagging them up for storage, I gave everything a freshen up. The car only has 54,000 miles on the clock so all the moving parts seem to still have life in them. Mostly cosmetics. Here are some before and after pics...

Bodywork in The Time of Covid

All the bodywork up to this point had been done in the relative normality of 2019 and early 2020. By March, Covid had reached New Zealand, and suddenly the drawbridge went up and we were in lockdown.

Level 4 lockdown was a slightly sympathetic version of house arrest; unless you were an essential worker you were allowed to leave the house for 3 reasons only:- to go to the supermarket (alone); to get medical assistance if required; or to exercise, on foot or bicycle. While always maintaining social distancing. Every day at 1pm the Prime Minister would inform the nation on case numbers and deaths, and every day the evening news would tell us how bad the rest of the world was doing.

As it turned out, having a Spider to work on was something like therapy. I spent the best part of six weeks stripping paint. Normally I would have found that interminably dull. Beyond the initial Covid-enforced holiday, there was still a pandemic raging beyond anyone's control, the only news seemed to be bad news, and simple freedoms we casually took for granted had mostly been removed. In that context, being able to make incremental (albeit mundane and repetitive) progress towards an end goal felt both liberating and empowering.

I used a paint stripping wheel in an angle grinder to get most of it, along with a wire wheel and good old sandpaper. Any surface rust was removed back to bare metal and then degreased and Brunoxed. As each panel was completed it got degreased again and coated in Penetrol to prevent corrosion until it got to the body shop.

Any illusions of a rust free car came crashing down when I stripped the trunk lid. It had previously had a luggage rack which someone had removed and filled the holes, which I knew when I bought it. I think they must have put the filler directly onto bare metal because the corrosion around the holes had spread to over an inch in diameter; once I ground all the rust out the lid looked like a swiss cheese.

The car was ready to go to the body shop mid 2020 but it took another year before it got there, here are pics of it on the transporter.

Engine Cosmetics

Turning attention to the engine now, since there were no obvious problems with compression, no desire at this stage for more power, and the timing belt and head gasket had already been changed, there was no reason to go deep inside the engine. I still wanted to pull all the peripherals off for a service or replacement, and to replace all the easily accessible gaskets.

Since the early experiment with painting the cam covers green, I had clarified where I was heading colour-wise, so the first job was to repaint them to something more colour co-ordinated with the rest of the car. This would extend to a few other highlight pieces to offset the monochromatic black and silver I was using on the engine itself.

Distributor, alternator, oil filter mount, fuel pump, throttle linkage, thermostat, water tee and timing belt tensioner were all disassembled, cleaned/lubricated and painted. Water pump, heater pipe and all hoses were replaced with new parts. Sump was removed and panelbeated to get rid of a dent from the same armadillo/pedestrian mentioned on the first page of this thread, then painted.

Carburettor was removed from the manifold, all openings stuffed with rags and masked, and the block and head were cleaned with engine degreaser, hot soapy water, cold water blasted from a hose, scrubbing brush, air jet, you name it. Then metal cleaned, primed and painted with Duplicolour Engine Enamel.

New gaskets were fitted as all the above parts were reinstalled, and to the covers at the end of the cam towers.

Photos before...




....and after.





I doubt it will look this good ever again!

It looks great. Nice job!

That is an awesome looking engine! Looks like a perfect "artist's rendition" even though it's real.

-Bryan

Beat it, beat it, no one wants to be defeated.... (M. Jackson)

Just because you own a welder, doesn't mean you are a welder. Sure, I had managed to weld new cross bracing to my seat frames, but that was thick(er) metal and out of sight, so amateur stuff. I spent some time practicing on panel steel off cuts, but for every acceptable weld there were two that had holes blown through, or spatter, or were 'bird-poop' welds, or all of these.

I decided to make it real by welding in a small patch on the underside of my hood. Apart from taking 3 tries to get the welds semi- decent, it took way too much grinding and filler to get it to not look like a patch. I mean, it's a poor tradesman that blames his tools, but the tools have to take some of the blame, right?

Phill, my body shop guy, came round to scope out how much work he was going to have to do. He politely pointed out that my welder might not be helping me achieve the results I was after. Later in his workshop, he showed me what his trade-quality TIG could do in the right hands. Decision made, I'm not doing the welding, case closed!

Phill also fore-warned me of how much work was going to need to go into my trunk lid. The risk was that the heat going into welding all those smallish patches would distort the skin, making it difficult to get it back into shape without a rippled surface. And he was right.

Here is a picture of the underside, he removed the centre part of the frame to get access to start the beating. Got to treat the surface rust as well - bonus! Count the patches.


Underside during beating.


Top side after beating, used engineers blue to highlight low points. Pretty much had to panel beat the whole lid.


3 coats of epoxy primer, a skim of filler and 3 coats of filler primer later, and it looks brand new!

When sparks fly...

Phill put in untold hours welding all the body patches into place, here are some progress photos...

Front turn signal patch


Front fender patched and Brunoxed


New grille surround tack welded


And fully welded


Rear lights tack welded, quarter panel bumper holes and rear lip extensions welded and ground


Rear lights ready for epoxy primer

About this time, Covid's Delta variant finally arrived in NZ, and back into Level 4 lockdown we went. I'd really hoped to have a hands-on role in the priming and filling process so I could learn a new skill from a professional, but lockdown put paid to that. It didn't stop Phill, though. He had all the materials he needed, and enforced time on his hands, so he made the most of it, and he kept the photos flowing.

Three coats of epoxy primer


Three stages of prep; front fender has first skim of filler before sanding, door has been skimmed, blocked and primed 3 times, rear panel is epoxy primed ready for skim filling. Test fitting of mirror using the existing holes, needs to move forward


Skim filler sanded back




Filler primer coats in progress, guide coating and block sanding between coats


3 coats of filler primer completed, and testing the new number plate mounting



Close up view of the new grille surround incorporated into the body to replace the chrome trim, and turn signal aperture


Close up view of new tail light, rear lip extension and deletion of the rear quarter panel fixing screws


And mirror patch, moved the mirror forward to suit the racing style mirror mounting

These are the paint products Phill used:-

Bottom left = metal cleaner
Mid & top left = 2 pack Etch primer and hardener used to prime bare metal after sanding back filler
Middle = 2 pack Epoxy primer and hardener
Right = 2 pack Filler primer and hardener

Off to the Paint Shop

With the bodywork complete, it's off to the painters we go. By sheer coincidence, Ryan the painter has just bought a 128, so he's naturally invested in how good he can make my Fiat look. He started by giving it a block sand with 360 grit on the panels, and machine/hand sanded all the door jambs, engine bay and inside the trunk and hood. Seam sealer was applied where panels butt together, and where skins overlap at the edges of the doors, trunk and hood.

I'd previously decided that, as the sound deadening material that remained was solid as a rock, there was no point trying to get rid of it (although it would be fun to try the dry ice and hammer method I read about on the forum recently!). The interior was sprayed with a 1k satin black, then masked off to spray door jambs, engine bay and trunk lip. The insides and edges of the doors, hood and trunk lid were also painted ready to put them back on the car. The paint, being a metallic, has the potential to lay down differently on horizontal to vertical surfaces, so they are concerned that if the doors are painted off the car there could be some visible variation. To avoid that, they want to do a 'doors closed' spray of the exterior in one hit.

Here are some photos so far...

Just incredible Trevor! Congrats! If vanity plates are something available down under, I have one for you: “OZWZRD”…cheers mate

Thanks for the compliments Anbele, but hate to break it to you, the vanity plate would have to be NZWZRD. While we Kiwi's share a common bond with our Aussie mates, they just smashed us in the T20 Cricket World Cup, so my generosity would stop before acknowledging them on my licence plate. That would be akin to asking a Canadian what part of the US he's from!

Looking good Kiwispider!!

Thanks Drummond. Good to know you're keeping an eye on me! How are you enjoying your car?

The painter has sent me another couple of teaser photos.