Sunbeam

I was told some fettling would be required. This is more than fettling!! I’m at the point where if I had a 60 and a 75 degree bend to weld in I can make it work. I’ve enquired about obtaining said bends from the company.

The pipes are bent up so I have been mucking around with fitting them up. I’m hitting a wall with the secondaries, I can’t make them fit. Look how far apart the ends are. They are supposed to come together to weld into a collector. Also they should be on the same plane in the vertical sense but… There are other problems too. I can’t lay them as per the factory ones due to slightly different bend angles so I’m simultaneously hitting the bell housing and the chassis rail. Tell me, am I unreasonable in expecting to be able to fit up the pipes with minor trimming? This part of the job (bending 2x pipes and laser cut flange ran to $215+GST. They had my original as a pattern and supposedly use 3D scanning. At this rate I will need to cut them at nearly every bend and add or subtract sections. What would you recommend?

It boils after 3 minutes of running. Let’s check the thermostat. Yeah, that’ll do it I guess.

I agree on the quality look of things. Different era.

Yeah, a wagon would be sick.

I took her into the paddock today and did a skid. It was awesome. This is when the fuel pump decided to start working, spraying old petrol wildly around the engine bay. I E-stopped it and did a field repair literally in a field which is cool. I thought if the fuel pump is working why not hook it back up to the carb? I had suspected there was water in the fuel tank and the droplets visible in the filter confirmed it. I worked on the assumption that the watery stuff had already been pumped out all over my paddock so I went and fetched some new hose and a new filter and hooked it up. It still ran mint, so the fuel is not completely stale. Speaking of water, there was also a robust quantity of it in the sump so I have drained it and given it two oil changes so far. I’m waiting for a new bypass filter to turn up from Rock Auto because nobody local had a listing, so I have a years supply of filters for the whole fleet coming. Pic of milkshake: I have also emptied the car out and taken stock of the bits and bobs. I have two sets of hubcaps, many headlights and headlight bowls and a set of surrounds, two taillights for a Fiat that is definitely not a 1500, and a bunch of interior door handles and window winder handles. In the back seat was a windscreen and the boot contained: A pair of BRAND NEW front doors. N.O.fricken S! Score. With the interior empty I gave it a thorough vacuum. I’m considering weighing the dust bag in for scrap. The car is definitely lighter now as a result. I also cleaned the windows which immediately makes the car look less derelict. Second impressions are that it’s more solid than it looks. The boot is mint, all the floors are great except for the driver’s which is quite bad. There is obviously a LOT of surface rust but actual perforation is limited to only a few structural areas. I have lifted some big scabs off the roof but no holes underneath, though I guess the steel is now rather thinner than it should be. I should be parking it to concentrate on other things like getting the 125 legal, but I feel like it’s a good idea to do some preventative pre storage tasks before burying it in the corner. If you have any ideas about slowing the rust let me know in the discussion thread. Thanks for reading.

Dear reader, When confronted with an inexorably increasing stack of projects, none of which are complete, what does the sane protagonist do?…. Why, MOAR CARS!!! what else? Let me take you back to a time when we cowered from the Bat AIDS in our homes and became listless and dare I say bored. This delightful wreck pops up for sale deep within Covidistan (a locked down Auckland) The first thing my brain said was BUY IT so I did. Well the lockdown dragged on, couldn’t get a ferrry when it finally lifted etc, so a deal was done to un-buy it. Got my money back, the seller was free to re-list. 6 months later he contacted me to ask if I still wanted it, it’s free to a good home and you seem like a retarded nutjob you would provide that home, but please come fetch it soon because the car is now stored outside and I’ve sold my house and need to be out in a month. No worries. I flew to New Plymouth, borrowed my mate’s Hilux and trailer and picked the car up from muggy salty Kaukapakapa. Thus: She was put into storage here: One year and six months later, I suggested to the family that a trip to our old home of Taranaki would be a good idea. Oh, and since we’re going anyway we might as well collect the old Fiat. Foolishly everyone agreed. Now, what to do about a trailer? We were planning to be away for 6 days and that makes hiring a trailer expensive. Therefore I did what any sane person would do and bought one. When we arrived at our objective we decided that since the trailer lacked a winch, it would be much easier to get the car to run and drive it onto the trailer. A charged battery was produced along with a can of Start ya Bastard! The points were levered to ensure they weren’t stuck. A fuel feed was rigged to the carb.. Brake fluid was tipped into the (bone dry) clutch reservoir and much fluid was spilled in an attempt to bleed the system. Eventually we had clutch! Then a thing happened. She purrs like a kitten!! No stumbles, rattles or misfires. Back to the trailer. I did indeed drive the Fiat straight on to the trailer and a problem became evident. You see, the previous owner had just put brand new wheels and tyres on the trailer going from 13 inch to 14 inch wheels. The tyres were sitting hard on the inside of the guards with the 1000kg Fiat on it. This led to some bush mods in the pouring rain involving a battery drill and prybar to raise the guards. I’ll tidy this up at some point. Then we were on the road back home. At this point I wish to make an aside to extol the virtues of a 16 year old 375,000km BMW X5 as a superlative touring and towing vehicle. I still had power in reserve to accelerate up transmission gully. We covered 1650km at an average of 65km/h and 11.2 l/100km. And home… Astute readers will spot that the trailer axle is well forward of the centre of the deck. This struck me as odd but for most front engined vehicles probably results in a reliable proportion of the weight being on the towbar. Anyway I’m very satisfied with how it behaved. Discuss

Discuss (nicely)

What brand and price point are we talking? Total bodyshop is clearing some at very steep discounts. Italco brand

LVMP guns… ok for home warrior? 6CFM at 36psi sounds pretty compressor friendly.

I can’t catch a break on this thing. I had a WOF booked, so I had to quickly fix the exhaust leak. It turns out there were two leaks, a small one at the manifold flange and a larger one at the first slip joint. I reached in to undo the flange nuts and 3 were easy and one was not. SNAP… Broken stud!! WOF booking cancelled. Did I mention I like my hoist? 10 minutes to achieve this: Removing the manifold takes a bit longer. Firstly you to drain the cooling system. For the umpteenth time… because the pipe off the back of the water pump has to come off to get to the last manifold nut. Then if you remove the battery and turn it just so you can slip it out past the brake master cylinder. The plan of attack is to soak in crc for a day and then attempt stud removal. I’ll replace all 4 while I’m this deep. Before I wind in new studs I might get the sealing surfaces planed to ensure flatness. Then the universe, I think, is telling me just to replace the whole janky drinking straw sized exhaust system while I’m at it. It won’t be cheap because the downpipe will need to be remade as well. The lesson,dear reader, is don’t waste your time and effort on something you know needs replacing to hasten the point at which you can go for a hoon. 100% I will ignore my own advice in the future.

I have one (diode) but haven’t reinstalled the new alternator yet as I’ve been running it on the old one for now.

Hmmm. I don’t have a ROSA wire, and the yellow/blue connection trick doesn’t work for me. I think I must have a different alternator because the yellow wire must have a power supply or the alternator puts out 0 volts

New one is a 2 wire

I am awaiting your report sir.

After nearly two months the driveshaft is done. Shiny: looks new, but then it should for the price of the job. My wallet: Installed and hooned. Success I’d say. But now the exhaust is leaking and the voltage regulator is only intermittently working. Getting close!

Maintained to acceptable kiwi standards then.

I’m putting the ZF away for now. I have a use for it in the back of my mind, but not for the 125 at this stage.

To address the tyre clearance issue I sent the rims off to Elite wheels and they took 3mm off the mounting face. Still clears vital components on the rear, though I can’t check running clearance yet because the car is immobile. I also had 2.5mm skimmed off the disc hat so the rear wheels are now tucked 5.5mm further inboard. The fronts however don’t clear the calipers no more! It’s less than 1mm, so I put the stock spacers back on and it’s happy days. I sealed the water jacket cover with red rtv and today I put the gearbox back in (4 speed). What a mission! With the new engine mounts the engine sits just a fraction high and you can barely get the input spigot to line up with the spigot bearing because the bell housing at that point is jammed in the tunnel. Then the drama of re fitting the starter! There is little room and I couldn’t back the starter out enough to slide the nose into the hole, the back was jamming on the fuel pump. So I took the fuel pump off but then had to remove the oil filter so my hands could achieve the angle required to refit the pump! All up 2 hours of knuckle grazing.

The reason I bought the parts car was for the 5 speed transmission tunnel. It’s been modified with an axe.

Blasphemer!

I’m glad I have a hoist! With little wiggle room to get the gearbox out it’s nice to do it standing up instead of groveling on the concrete underneath the car. The leak was obvious. Will be using rtv this time, no gasket. With it apart I’m lead to think (dangerous) is it 5 speed time?

I was very excited to see this book come up on the Tard while I was away. Quite expensive but they don’t surface every day. BUY NOW! Factory workshop manual! Super detailed beautiful illustrations.

Drama. We returned from holidays and have been “enjoying” winter again. I decided to tidy up a few jobs… 1. I was having trouble with the boss kit I bought because the adapter to momo bolt pattern was pants. I then bought a fiat 124 boss kit which I was lead to believe would work. It did not, leaving a huge gap between the steering column surround and the steering wheel boss. I then bought an 850 boss kit which I cross referenced to 125’s. This was much better but I had to trim it! I took about 10mm off. Now the wheel is fitted and the horn is working, but annoyingly the self cancel mechanism isn’t, and it’s not the fault of the boss kit. 2. Before we went away, I drained the water from the cooling system and refilled it with proper coolant, took it for a hoon to circulate, no leaks noted, job done. Nope, came back to it leaking from every single hose connection and the rear water jacket cover. The hoses are no problem, resealed and now coolant tight. The water jacket cover however is going to be a pain. At very best it’s a gearbox out job and the clutch and flywheel need to come off. At worst it could be an engine out job. 3. I’ve completed one step for removing the box anyway because I took the driveshaft out to take it into town for balancing. Except it cannot be balanced because the front tripod/slip yoke is flogged out. I received a quote to repair which involves cutting off the slip stub and welding a new one on, and obtaining a new tripod. The cost is similar to having a custom driveshaft built which floored me, but after a week of ruminating I have authorised the work against my dutch judgement. Before I did this, I decided to pull the driveshaft from my parts wreck in the hope that it would be better and solve my problems, but no. The first thing I noticed is that the front half of the shaft was way too short…what the? And the yoke was just as floppy. The riddle was solved when I pulled the gearbox while I was under there. I don’t know why I never noticed but the gearbox looks nothing like a 124 box, and in the light of day once I dragged it out I recognised it immediately. It’s a late 131 sport box, one of the strongest of all Fiat rear wheel drive gearboxes. This made me happy. I don’t know what to do with it, but it’s going in the hoard and no hasty decisions will be made.

Cheers for the hint. Makes sense I guess. Could go in the yellow or the +12v feeder.