Hello From Minnesota!

[RKSutterMN]

Hey there fellow Spider-people,

My name is Ryan and I'm in Minnesota, a bit north of St. Paul. I've been a fan of the Fiat Spider for many years and recently acquired two of them (a '78.5 and an '80) for a grand total of $500 on Craigslist. Considering what I spent, it should not be surprising that neither of them runs so if we want to be technical, I've never actually driven a Spider. But, this is my DIY auto restoration school and I'm having a great time. Each car is mostly good where the other one is mostly bad. Examples... The windshield on the '78 is good but the windshield on the '80 is cracked, whereas the soft top on the '80 is great and the soft top on the '78 is rotted away. The '80 is structurally sound, cosmetically bad, the '78 is cosmetically decent, structurally rotted. In short: I am officially restoring the '80, but I will be taking fenders, transmission, rear diff, windshield and other stuff from the '78 so the resulting franken-car will be almost equal parts both. It's wicked fun. Most of the interior is coming from yet another Spider that died in an engine fire. So sad...

I've been a car guy most of my life but only got the space to tinker and work on them properly a couple years ago so I'm new to the hobby. In addition to my Spiders, I have three cats, four dogs, a wife, a kid in college, and a clean 1969 Triumph Spitfire Mk3 that runs great. I only have to do minor repairs and updates to the Spit. I also have a plan to use one of my two Spider motors in a Locost (Lotus 7 clone) build someday. I'm looking forward to sharing my progress and I thank you all for sharing your pics and wisdom.

Cheers!

Ryan

[RKSutterMN]

Also, here's a write-up on my blog about my Spider project to-date:

http://www.ryansutter.net/2017/09/02/up ... r-project/

[Site Owner]

Welcome to the community Ryan! You'll find a lot of help and friends here.