Cute rear end

Cute front end

My old spider wheel

Achtung!

13" spider wheels for the 600

165/65/13 Potenza RE92 wear rating 160, pretty sticky for what they are.

Monkey business

Two struts, two monkeys, 45 min. New boge's for Mayu's 128

Also WRONG

These two images is what our Fiat collection would look like if my dad had his way. In my opinion both look awful. Cast your vote in the comments!

Don't worry! This is just a photoshop job, to see the 128 with the CD58's scroll down...

TRON is WRONG

28/36 Weber DCD carb

This carb along with one of Scuderia Topolino's intake manifolds will go on the 903, it will putt along just fine on the primary and will get with it when you step it down and the 36 secondary kicks in.

Exhaust system

Reversed top spring

Lowered the front about 2"

Front bumper

I tightened up the front bumper by shortening the brackets about inch giving a cleaner look, no bumper brackets please.

600 deck lid closed with 903 motor

Shortened distributor

This dizzy was shortened by Thad Kirk, it is now possible to close the hood on the 600. Thanks Thad!
He can shorten one for you too!

Yeah it's slow...

This quote from Murilee on Japlonik had me laughing all by myself at my desk this afternoon...

"The 24 Hours of LeMons Chief Perp, Jay Lamm, drove a caged, Hammerite-painted, Conrad Stevenson-ized '71 GTV as his everyday transportation for many years, and I can say from personal experience that it's a helluva car. Oh sure, I've been a passenger in the thing when Jay lost a freeway-onramp drag race against an older woman in a 5-year-old Accord who didn't even know we were racing, but the GTV sounded amazing! And that pretty much sums up the GTV Experience: by modern standards, it's pretty slow… but who the hell cares?"

This perfectly sums up my drive to work in the 128.

Carb upgrade on the 128

Another upgrade, this one not as noticeable. Basicall all of this has stuff been forced on me because everthing off my car is going to the 600. My old carb was going to go on the 600 but now theres a whole other ball of wax which I'll let my dad explain in another post.

128 wheel-gate

Theres been wheel drama on the 128 front...long story short my steel wheels needed to go on the 600. As a replacement my dad suggested these which are known as the TRON wheel:

These wheels are a HELL NO for me so I dug my heels in and refused to reconsider despite a really big YES campaign by my dad. A peace accord was reached when we took a trip to Joe's Fiat and uncovered a set of CD58's which are still a little on the fugly side for me but a damn sight better than TRON.



Compared to the steel wheels these magnesium CD58's are way lighter and provide a noticeable difference in performance. The car feels more nimble and quicker off the line. To my utter horror my dad wants to put these on the 600! Weight wise I would say that these are perfectly suited for the 600 and really should go there but it hurts my eyes just thinking about it. These wheels will NEVER go on the little Fiat. So on the 128 they will stay...

Close-up:

Running AND driving!

Fiat Burning

I got the wheels on, crank pulley shimmed and sealed and the rear bumper on minus the bumper guards. Waiting for an electric fuel pump and some final sorting before next Sunday's race in Oakland.

Lower hose with switch

I got this switch assembly from Thad Kirk, I modified it so I could fit the lower engine cover on.

Red sky at night

Lower engine pan

I got a bunch of crap from Mayuko about this wood engine pan,
once it's primed and painted it won't be obvious. Plus it will make a great template when I remake it out of aluminium. I will install some bicycle inner tube around the perimeter next to the pan to make it air tight.

Front timing cover off

Here is a shot with the reverse timing gears installed. I put the new front crank seal in and just purchased a alloy crank pulley on Ebay. With some luck, the little 600 will be running and driving this weekend.

Re -routed lower radiator hose

This is a little cleaner install of the lower hose, I think I will move the ground strap somewhere less obvious as well.

I fought the law and I won!

Excessive exhaust noise ticket issued to me while driving the 128...

My options were pay $176 or fix it.
I did have an aftermarket exhaust but it was not loud in my opinion, so off the the State Referee! I didn't even know there was such a department but apparently you can't get an officer to sign off on noise tickets. The test was no louder than 95 decibels 20in. from the exhaust at 3k RPM. I had to admit I was a little nervous...


I passed!


I still had to pay $25 for the privilege of receiving the ticket.

128 Update!

The 128 stuff has been unfairly left out of this blog primarily because it has been so trouble free. The camera only comes out when we start fixin' stuff and aside from a fuel vacume issue which a vented gas cap fixed and a broken H2O pump belt while crossing the Bay Bridge the 128 has been running like a champ. In fact it was our only driver for a while when the Focus was in the garage and the Spider was sidelined with diff. issues. Not content to let things be today's post is on improvements to the 128! First up was some tunes, the car came with the original "Astro-sonix" AM radio but with no antenna it wasn't much use and I'm not a big fan of sports talk radio. Then I saw this Jalopnik post on a ghetto fab amplifier installation. I don't park my car in a BART parking lot but I am super cheap so this was the perfect set-up.


I also added a cigarette lighter for charging.


Here you can see it peeking from underneath the map holder.


Full view of installation. Thanks for the great how-to Murilee!