Blue '78 Restoration ('73 engine): Oliver?

[twbradio]

OK, I thought that it might be helpful if I covered some of the things I have learned (am learning) on the road to putting a '78 back on the road. Some of these lessons have been legal ones (registering a vehicle that had been forclosed on through a mechanics lean) and some of the lessons have been more practical (why you should always check the year of the engine when purchasing). To begin with, an introduction to the car: Oliver. Why Oliver you may ask ... well, the car is my daughter's and we are fans of Top Gear. I know that the Opel Kadett and the Fiat 124 have very little in common (make that nothing in common), but somehow my daughter made the connection. Pics of the Top Gear Oliver are here: http://www.bbcamerica.com/shows/topgear/photo-oliver-lives.jsp.

This Fiat spent 15 years in the back of a shop followed by 3 months untarped in the Texas sun (and one rain storm).As you can see, the paint looked OK and the top was gone. It was filled with pine needles, and one of the floor pans (drivers side rear) was in bad shape.


With the car we received several boxes of "parts" which included at least one Super-Big Gulp tankard and a breather that doesn't fit the carburetor.

[124JOE]

i found mine in the desert "RENO"on top and an 1inch of dirt inside
still turned out great

[twbradio]

OK, here is my first tip ... if you have a Fiat that has one or more fuel lines replaced and for some reason it refuses to idle at less than 3000 RPM unless you open the choke (and then it dies), check back at the gas tank. On my car the return fuel line was blocked at the tank in the steel portion of the line that is a part of the gas level sending assembly. Evidently, the return line had a hole in it and had picked up stuff from the back floorboard and deposited it around the flare at the tank. It was so clogged that I actually thought that the line had been welded shut, but a little chipping, B12 Chemtool and air finally cleaned it up.

[twbradio]

i found mine in the desert "RENO"on top and an 1inch of dirt inside
still turned out great

Thank you for the hope of a good outcome

[twbradio]

Edited to correct content ...

I haven't mentioned much about the '73 engine yet, but it really is time to let others learn from my mistakes. When buying a used Fiat, I recommend looking for an "honest" car. On an "honest" car, there will be ample signs of aging or properly accomplished repairs, the car will be mostly assembled with only a few parts thrown in (perhaps the original breather if a chrome one has been installed or an extra timing belt) and finally, the parts that are on the car will make sense. This car only passed one of the three tests. There were parts everywhere, the front bow, carburetor fan and breather were not installed and the carburetor had a vacuum secondary. Just in case you are new to Weber carbs, the two pictures below (gratefully borrowed) show the ADFA with a mechanical secondary (top) and a DHSA with a vacuum secondary (bottom).

In my '78 I should have expected to see the top carburetor, but instead I saw the bottom one. Note the big difference as the bottom carburetor has the large round growth in the upper right corner. Before purchasing the car, I Referenced the great carburetor guide from Mirafiori.com (http://www.mirafiori.com/~corey/How-To/Carb.htm), and noticed that it was likely that this car had a DHSA carb. The DHSA carburetor is generally not as desirable as the ADFA that the car originally shipped with (vacuum lag when engaging the secondary and a smaller primary). The thing is that I knew it looked wrong when I saw the carb the first time and I knew that it was likely that it was not an ADFA carburetor, and yet I didn't dig deeper. From this I have developed personal rule #1 ...

Personal rule #1: People that know what they are doing on a car and are not flat broke tend to replace parts with ones that meet or exceed the original specifications. If the parts don't meet or exceed the original specifications, the last guy was too short on cash, brains or time to do the job right.

So what do you get when you have a pre '74 carburetor on an engine installed in a 1978 vehicle ... in this case you get a 1972 engine. Funny thing about 1972 as opposed to 1978 ... they didn't use as much unleaded gas back then. The gas tank fill tube is wide open like you would expect from a car burning regular gas (have to accept the fact that the gas tank was probably "borrowed" from a different car (possibly the '72 or '73). Despite the evidence for the engine originally using regular gasoline, there are catalytic converters in the exhaust. It gets stranger, there appear to be two of them. The first is an old OEM style near the headers and the second is a modern converter just before the muffler. So I have a 1972 engine that wasn't really designed to run unleaded (the lead acted as a lubricant and sealant around the rings) with a tank that is set to accept regular gasoline, an exhaust with two catalytic converters a catalytic converter and a 1973 carburetor. There are reasons that I call this car a FrankenFiat.

The moral of this story ... if one thing doesn't look right, take the hint. There will likely be a lot more to find just beneath the surface. Oh, the answer is yes, I would have still bought the car. I just might have haggled the price a little better.

[manoa matt]

Your "second catalytic converter" just forward of the rear axle is actually a resonator.

[twbradio]

Thank you for the clarification ... I thought that I had seen some talk about a resonator at some point in the past, but was unable to find any info on that today when I was writing the article. The funny thing is that the one that I would dub the resonator is actually just behind the headers ... the exhaust seems to have been borrowed from yet another car and does not follow the traditional route back to the rear of the car.