New binders for baby

One side is done, pretty much bolt on, except the lower springs holes had to be drilled out. One other small lproblem, these are early 850 brakes and the the plastic caliper shims are no longer available. I made some steel shims that should work.

Nice garden gloves!

Part of the rear brake freshen up Mayuko is installing new rear cylinders, though she and Buck appear to me catching some ZZZZ's in this shot.

Disc brakes almost ready

One side of the disk brake conversion
the down side is the car will have two different bolt threads, 1.5mm in back and 1.25mm front.

Scuderia Topolino timing gear set

These will change the rotation of the engine to match the 600

We will run 165-65-13 RE-92 bridgestones

These 13x5" wheels should work with the
front disk layout and the 165-65-13 should be
close to the original ride height of the 12x4.5 155 sr

New belly pan driver side

The old floor could probably be saved but Mayuko was adamant about doing this part the right way with now metal, most of the panels are still avail. for the 600, we got this one from MrFiat

Newly cleaned and coated gas tank

Our radiator guy saved another tank for us, his trade mark is a soldered penny in one corner of the finsihed gas tank

Preparing the 850 disk brakes for the front of the 600

New mill almost ready to go in

This is a PBS built motor with their 280ST cam and external oil filter. Dennis Chertien, they guy I bought it from still holds 2 land speed records for an 850 spider, at one time he and his partner held 7 records! Top speed on their yellow spider was over 180 MPH! We are waiting on reverse rotation gears from Scuderia Topolino and our flywheel from Moss machine shop in San Francisco, then the mill will be installed in the little 600.

Cleaned up parts

Go fast plans for Baby

13" wheels with 165-70 rubber
Clubman seats
Seat belts!! not equipped with belts from factory
903 engine (mayuko's head porting magic)
trick intake mani from a guy in Socal
cam from same guy
cut the rear springs one coil
look for one of those little abarth headers
bigger carb
zoom zoom zoom

Pretty Baby!

This car survived relatively unscathed, all original paint NO bondo anywhere and minimal rust, the seats are trashed but they are crap anyway, looking for some club racer seats.

This is disgusting!

this is what the tank looked like after a week in miuratic acid
10 lbs. of roofing tar came out of the gas tank, I'm hoping it cam be saved

Baby's manifold and carb sealed up

Bill the short time 2nd owner, freshened up the head and freed up a stuck valve and got baby running (after sitting over 20 years in a barn), not real well though.
I discovered some air leaks around the manifold and base of he carb, so I made a gasket and got it all sealed up, I cleaned the points, plugs, and cap, and also dissasembled the carb and cleaned it. Finally I timed the engine and cleaned the points in the voltage regulator and it fired right up. It idles and revs very smooth now. Next up, change out the hoses and belts and stick a little baby cherry bomb muffler on it.

Maybe gonna go to Medford to pickup baby Fiat this week

6 hours up 6 hours back minimum pee and breaks, Metal man's nephew has a trailer we can use. Lets see, we now have a Colorado Fiat, Oregon Fiat, and two San Francisco Fiats. Mayuko said no, but I still would like to have a 128, love that high revving little 1300, plus I have two new struts with KYB inserts ready to go. You gotta start somwhere.

Littlest Fiat

New baby in the house

I saw a post on Miafiori about this Fiat 600 in Medford Oregon, called the guy and made the deal, more photos later

New mill is in and ready for dual carbs

11:1 compression
Venolia forged pistons
Total seal rings
Fuel injected head ported, valves un-shrouded
Stainless valves
Modified oil galleys and oil pump
Port matched PBS dual IDF manifold
40MM IDF carbs with larger 34mm venturies
Lightened flywheel
Balanced engine
Delta cams
131 transmission
new drive train rubber bits
Maserati 6.5" BiTurbo rims

Wiring funny business

No wonder why I was blowing the occasional fuse and why the previous owner installed 25 amp fuses thoughout, I located this mess of burnt wire in the driver side rear quarter panel, it was fused to the metal on the inside of the fender. No wonder the brake lights didn't work. The runnig lights actually DID work!

Usual quality control experts present

Suspension monkey business

I will let my daughter explain exactly what we did to the front of her 128 SL coupe, the bottom line is the handling is much improved and so is the ride height.

A tale of two 128's

A cute story on Japlonik about my 128! I'm so glad at least this one didn't go to the crusher.
Check it out here

Just lost about 100 lbs of fat

We removed the boat anchor bumpers and all the smog equipment loosing at least 120 lbs
Photos to follow

Update fuel issue

I noticed a loose jet between the two barrels, tightened it down and changed the plugs, and the car now runs great. I also disconnected the vacuum advance and advanced the timing to about 10 degrees.
Next up cut the front springs

There is a new Fiat in the family

This was a Craigslist find in San Francisco. Totally original 1974 128 SL. It had been sitting in a driveway just off Sloat Blvd. for about 6 years. Note the moss growing under the car...

That was when the husband passed away and his wife didn't drive so it sat until recently when she passed away as well. The car came with a bunch of used old parts. Apparently this guy never threw out anything so as he replaced belts, hoses, plugs, filters the old stuff was kept in it's original box with masking tape and "used" written across it. There were some NOS stuff like belts and bearings though. Also under the hood, masking tape with the oil change schedule written on it. We managed to get the car running and ran like a top ALMOST all the way home. I was stuck in traffic off the San Mateo bridge heading to 880N when it suddenly lost power. Managed to hobble to the 98th Ave. exit and it just became too hard to drive stop and go. The people in that neighborhood are super friendly and we got several offers to help out but most of them were missing their teeth. I'm just glad I wasn't alone or I probably would have gotten twice as many offers. Changed the plugs and still no dice. My dad managed to limp it home with me following in the truck. Could be a fuel issue...TBC

BMW recaros in the spider

These seats came out of a 90's 3 series model bought on Ebay for $350
The trick is to hack off the bmw tracks with a die grinder or sawzall, the front mounting welds can be ground down leaving the feet that already have small holes drilled in them, the rear part of the track has to be cut leaving about 2-3" and the inside rail needs to be cut down to the same height as the outside rail, simply bole the Fiat tracks onto the front feet after enlarging the hole using the same phillips bolts that bolt the tracks onto the original Fiat seats. The rear of theFiat tracks have to be tack welded onto the rails that have been cut down to about 3". Make sure the rails are square and the Fiat mounting bolt holes are exactly 15" on center. The seats fit nicely and all the adjustments work fine. The final seating position is slightly higher and they hold you in way better then the stock Fiat seats.

Side exhaust

Modded air filter

Didn't like all the snorkles so I did some cutting, since this is a budget build I used what I had

Quality control experts on the job

New wheel

Changed out the wood wheel with this one, thanks for the trade Russ!

Only one grill with spoiler

I was sick of looking at the huge 2nd grill so I covered it up, and added a 5 dollar junk yard spoiler from a Jeep wagoneer.

Phoney barth bumpers

I hacked off some front bumper pads from an 80's Porsche 944, the pick and pull person felt sorry for me and gave me the parts. A little sanding and little bumper paint and no more holes!

131 trans install interior shot

I covered the tunnel with carpet and found a rubber boot at pick and pull, for the back half of the tunnel I carved up half of the lower console and covered it with carpet as well, it's OK for now, it looks finished but I may do something different. Retro fit early spider heater controls and get a boot for the handbrake.

Cut springs

No more cappin on Mr. highboy flood rescue vehicle, the back may have to come down another 1/2 coil, the front looks good with the lower control arm almost level with the ground. for the front the inside coil spring compressor rented from Autozone worked like a charm, I did not have the disconnect the lower ball joint.

Some more shots of the Colorado Fiat

131 Trans in the Fiat spider

The shifter location with the 131 transmission is further back from stock but it works for me, it took my daughter and I took about 1 hour to install. I will probably loose both the lower consoles and just go with a carpeted tunnel.
I like the way the 131 trans shifts, very direct and positive, I see why most of the racers use this trans. I used the Redline GL-1 mixed with 20-50 motor oil.

Somewhere in Wyoming

From the middle of Wyoming to Oakland, Ca. in 14 hours, I drove 75-80 MPH until California then slowed to about 70.

Oakland short shifter

Simple and quick modification for shortening the shifter in a 124 spider, it won't work with the stock shifter knob on the 2000 spiders, whick I personally don't like anyway.

Colorado Fiat

Taking Delivery

Mayu getting her spider back, she just barely made it home due to ignition wires making poor contact.
I also removed the old tail pipe before the axle and had a new one fabricated to fit the pretty rear end.

There's another Fiat in town

Like daughter like father

Pretty front end

Very tight fit

I forgot how tight the fit a Fiat motor is,we spent about 5 hours shoehorning the motor in, it almost got Mayuko ready to blow a gasket, she did the rough work under the car and looked like a real grease monkey at the end of the day.
The hard part is done, we will get things connected and the timing best installed tomorrow, hopefully burning gas before noon.
P.S.
After struggling for a couple of hours trying to mate the engine and trans, I removed the motor mounts from the engine block allowing just enough room to wiggle it home.

More engine shots

Jalopnik Engine of the Day!

jalopnik.com/319783/workhorse-engine-of-the-day-fiat-twin+cam

Mayu polishing and porting the head

Supervisors

Buck and dirty nose Diamond making sure all the parts match up properly

Aux. shaft mod on Fiat TC engine

The aux. shaft tip was cut off to avoid damage by #2 rod in the event of a cam belt failure or improper cam timing, (The shaft tip is used to power a block mounted fuel pump on older models) I used a high speed cut off grinder then tapped the oil hole and plugged with a 1/4 " bolt then ground off the bolt head. I also will replace the plastic aux. shaft gear with a metal one.

Engine ready for install

I put the head on today and initially could not get the head bolts torqued properly, ended up using Turbo spider bolts that have a hardened factor or 10.8, the head isn't going anywhere now! A shout out to Joe at Joe's Fiat in Redwood City, Ca. Couldn't be a nicer guy and he really knows his Fiats. He has many hard to find parts and does excellent work.

Foggy