ThePog

Yea there was so much fuckery going on that there was no way I could work with it. However I may have overreached my abilities.

Lols I finished wiring up the front end except for the final wrap and decided to hook up a battery to see if what i had done actually worked. It all does except for the headlight pod motors, these start continuously popping up and down as soon as the key is on. This is undesirable, troubleshooting commences tomorrow...

Did the other side, pretty much the same deal so imagine those pics mirrored. For a break I decided to start in with the wiring install. If you remember this is pretty much where I got to; Then it immediately turned to madness Then after a couple of days effort rerouting and reterminating it got much tidier Working on the front of the car wiring now, and I'm probably going to have to drop the engine to do it justice in the engine bay and back of the car. Thats fine cos I want to sort a couple of things on the engine/clutch/gearbox.

Did this bit. This bit is supposedly where it got a nudge and there was half a tin of bog on there. It was weird because under the bog there was like a 5mm push in that basically wasnt even worth worrying about, but also a 'welded' patch that essentially came off with a screwdriver, and a strip of holes under the back sill that had been completely ignored. Commence sorting; Smashed some more black on those two rims while I was waiting for coats to dry, plus pottered with some other stuff. The tyres are the same ones that were on it when I sold it so I think it will be getting some new feet. Any suggestions in a 175/70-13 ?

Got some matt clear on it and kindof reassembled the front and various bits like the wiper mech. Bear in mind there is no wiring loom in there so it is not all that. Still it looks pretty great.

Got to the point of getting a bit of colour onto the front end after a chunk of fettling. I am clearly going to run out of colour before I'm done but we will see how well I can blend it in to the bits that are still there.

Yea I have been pretty happy with the results so far. The paint shop will probably be open on Wednesday, and I have plenty to go on with in the meantime..

Brush on would be ok for a lot of what I am doing... I do know someone coming to chch in the next couple of days, what part of town are you? Happy to flick some cash your way.

Daily update. This relentless shit is probably getting boring, but its for me not you so you can just bear with me or not. Today I made a front lip and grille carrier as the original is too rough to even bother fitting up. Its kinda rough in the finish department but frankly I dont give a shit as long as it performs the functions required. I found some stainless mesh, I'll see what I can do with that.

Apparently a lot of the NZ ones came through the UK due to the RHD'ness etc, which is potentially a bad situation. However I was told that by the 80s the Italians had started a cursory program of rust prevention on these, and it is more solid than you would expect so maybe this is true. But there is also a lot of veeeery thin steel to weld to, there has been a certain amount of hole chasing on this...

Paganism appears finished, the family went out for the day and must have felt that it would be painful to me to waste a day sitting around on my arse and so didnt invite me along. My wife is very understanding. Some wirebrushing revealed even more lovely holes; Ran out of brunox, just as well I have the wiring to get through if I run out of welding to do.....

I realised I have run out of Brunox convertor/primer, I had a ring around and it seems the only spray on equivalent is crc, does anyone rate this or should I hold out for the brunox?

There appears to be some sort of weird pagan festival going on that my family expects me to participate in, but even so I have managed to get the windscreen out and cleaned up, with the expected level of ugly sitting in there. Yesterday I also managed a difficult bit of the passenger door, with some pretend pressed sections and a hem detail that I'm quite pleased with;

I suspect I am being far too dry for him to suspect anything, but if he was that into me he should have stalked the rest of my imgur and perhaps got an inkling of some of my scope of work and the implications....

I now know exactly what it is like to be mansplained to.

Also I am hoping to troll this tedious imgur fucker for a bit longer

Got some use out of my stupidly big and chunky ramps, its not a bad working height. Fixed this little bit of ugly in the frunk. Apart from the windscreen area thats all the hard stuff done.

Cracking on I tried the thing where you weld little patches at a time all over the place and hose it down with air to keep the distortion down, however my enthusiasm got the better of me in that vertical run. Good enough though and way better than what was/wasnt there.

Spent an hour with the wire brush on the front of it, this was like an archeological dig to uncover a special world of poor decisions and welding fuckery. Further digging on this spot tells me the windscreen will need to come out, this area and the same on the other side was there when I first had it, but the new layer of bog hadn't really solved the issue; This had bog all over it for no real reason, there is a dent but no attempt had been made to pull it out; Im going to cut out all those patches and do them again, but this time with feeling.

Shit I'd better be careful what evidence I leave around the place with fucking ol CSI: Wellywood on the case.

Yea it looks pretty much exactly the same, maybe a new fuel pump in there, and the headers have been wrapped. We ran it the day i looked at it, nothing obviously horrible going on. I checked and its only done 6000 odd km since I sold it. I am probably going to fit an uprated clutch, so If the engine is out I will drop the sump and have a geez. I got it into the shed today, so ill see how much I can get through in the next couple of weeks.

Righto, time to thread dredge I decided it was time to smash this out. Some things were unbolted and I got to seeing if it was possible to replicate 40 year old italian paint with some cans of brunox, custom colour and matt clear coat. 'Kinda' is the answer. This is what it looked like, although I did wire brush it and wiped it with prepsol. One coat of Brunox Two coats of Brunox Some colour; No clear on that yet but I kindof sorted the boot as a test, this went well apart from I needed to scuff up the clear to get it looking shitty enough, it might need a bit more loving. So yea roast the fuck out of my sad efforts in the discussion, even though you and I both know I am a massive useless dickhead when it comes to paint. It least it will be mostly the same shade of blue at the end.

To stop the rust the most reliable way is it sell it and never buy another fiat, but where is the fun in that? A mate of mine had a wagon one of these a long time ago that someone had put a twin cam into, it was pretty rare I imagine. The wagon styling worked for me.

I might have a horn pump for you, there was a bit of extra shit came with my X1/9 and I recall there were a couple of very OS looking pumps. I'll have a look in the weekend.