'79 Spider in Atlanta

[KeithM]

Hello everyone, I'm Keith. I owned a '73 Spider when I was in high school, it's one of a few cars I had that I learned the basics of maintenance and repair on. Being my daily driver to and from school and work, I remember what a pain it was too keep it running with my limited knowledge and tools. The car left me stranded many times, and I was the butt of many a joke from teachers and schoolmates. But it was a cool car and I took a lot of girls out on dates in it. About a week ago during a flash of nostalgia I decided to check Craigslist for Spiders, not sure what prompted that but within a few hours I was unloading the '79 off a flatbed in my driveway (with a couple of unhappy neighbors looking on, I guess they don't like the sound of my air ratchet). I bought the car for $400, and it cost me $140 to get it home. It ran and drove when I got here but the heater control valve was leaking badly and even after bypassing that the car would overheat. So I just went ahead and started dismantling things and ordered all the parts I think I'll need to get it back on the road. The drivetrain is strong, so far I don't hear anything that makes me think I'll have to tear any of that down so I'm focusing on the following over the next couple of months before I begin the body, paint and interior work.

-1800 intake manifold and 34 ADF Weber Carb. I have a manifold coming from Mark at Allison Automotive next week. The car had a rebuilt 34 ADF on it when I bought it, mounted to the original 2000 dual plane manifold. Since it sat for a long time I took the carb off, tore it down and am soaking it in solvent right now before I blow the passages out and reassemble it.

-Replace all cooling system components. Also got an aluminum radiator from Mark, and am replacing the thermostat, hoses, heater pipes, heater control valve and water pump

-Replace timing belt

-Replace all ignition components (except distributor)

-Rewire entire car with Painless Performance harness 10102 (getting started on that today). Very big project I know, but the PO had pulled a lot of the wiring out and nothing was working. This ought to be a great solution to the typical problems. Found a great article on the 10102 in Spiders here http://www.dcfiats.org/tech/Installing% ... less-C.pdf

That should keep me busy for the next month at least. There's a bit of bodywork to do- the driver's front fender is rotted out completely at the back of the wheel well and the driver's door has a rust hole the size of my fist in it. The passenger's door also has a rust hole. The floor pans need replacement. But the car in general isn't bad, and there's virtually no rust on the quarters or in the back. The interior is horrible- for some reason the PO dismantled the seat covers and made his own out of really cheap vinyl and some red-ish fabric with the Chanel logo all over it. Weird. Missing driver's side door panel. Missing the radio console. Otherwise pretty complete. Lots of work there but I think I can clean the car up, throw some cheap seat covers on it (does anyone know of good ones that fit?) and drive it for awhile when I'm finished with the mechanicals. The brakes seem good (i'll flush them when I figure out how to get the bleeders out of the calipers without busting them) and the front end was completely overhauled except for the upper ball joints just a few years ago. It also has new tires and a new battery. Not bad for $540!

I guess that's probably lots more than anyone wanted to know, but if you took the time to read this please say hi and let me know if you have any suggestions for my project.

By the way, special thanks to Mark and Greg at Allison Automotive. Great guys! I can't wait to get my aluminum radiator and 1800 manifold next week.

[RRoller123]

Welcome aboard! You will find plenty of knowledgeable and friendly people here.

Post some pictures! They help a great deal when trying to help diagnose problems, inquiries, etc that you may have.

Here is a thread on how to post pictures directly to the forum:

http://www.fiatspider.com/f15/viewtopic ... 13&t=32169

And here is another picture-posting thread:

http://www.fiatspider.com/f15/viewtopic ... 12&t=23084

This short instruction covers how to resize pictures so that they don’t get cut off at the right side:

http://www.fiatspider.com/f15/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=30441

[Note: In the past few months, there have been numerous complaints regarding the performance of Photobucket, however, to be fair, the problems seen to have been resolved recently.]

And here is a link to a map of Spider owner’s locations. Many forum members have listed their locations.

https://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=191825


Pete

[DRUMMOND]

Hi keithM

Welcome to the forum. look forward to some photos and Discussions

Drummond

[Fiatlanta]

Fellow Atlanta '79 owner here. Welcome!

[chrisg]

Congratulations! Thank you for buying that so I'm relieved of the temptation to drag it back to Knoxville as a 2L donor for other cars! Sounds like you are aptly hitting the ground running on it and as I'm sure you've heard l, once sorted, these cars are not the viable butt of any reliability jokes.

Considering the history of the car and what you are already doing, it would probably be a good idea to at least pull, check, etc the head. If you replaced the head with a fresh 1.8 head that would be a nice thing too.

I do not envy your wiring proposal in the least, though it remains a similar possibility for myself on my 1970 124 Coupe thanks to someone being free & easy with wire snips when dismantling....my experience (road cars, not race cars) has been that the original wiring is okay with a little attention. Surely an LSD-influenced design is my theory, but still able to be rendered reliable without terrible grief. Massive hacks by a PO probably takes it over the edge. Shame, I used to have a few complete Spider 2000 harnesses from cars that were wrecked when fairly new...one of those would have been nice for this car.

Have fun!

[KeithM]

Hey all- here are a couple of pictures from the day I brought the Spider home

[KeithM]

Chris, did you look at this car and not buy it? If you know anything about the history of it, good or bad, I'd love to hear about it. I ran the engine and drove the car around the block, heard no suspect noises and it had plenty of power. My intention is to restore all the systems that the drivetrain depends upon- electrical, fuel, cooling...and then do the bodywork. I guess I could pull the head and have it gone over, I've got a great machine shop nearby that I use a lot on other projects. What would an 1800 head do for this engine's performance? Are they hard to come by? Any modifications needed to fit them that head to the 2000 block?

[chrisg]

no, I didn't. I just have the ATL CL queued up on an iphone app along with some other locales that are close to me. I have family in ATL, so it's not an impractical place to look. I'd rather see the car being brought back to life than the engine pulled which would almost invariably lead to it being fully dismantled & thus -1 more 124 Spider in the world.

The 1800 head from '74-'78 will bolt on and gives a modest increase in CR (lore from years ago was 9:1, but I believe I read something recently that it's a bit less than that...but definitely an improvement over 8:1 or whatever is stock). For me, giving it having had temperature problems (even with at least one known leak - heater valve failure is almost standard after a point) and not knowing if they started with overheating which led to overt leaks or visa versa & if I were doing the other work, I'd at least pull/check/etc. the head. I would think it's not hard to find a good 1.8 head (even one that's more or less ready to bolt on...but certainly a core that's as good as any) around there.