Sunbeam's 1973 Fiat 125

[Sunbeam]

Ooooooh, page 3!

Except for pic no.3 all the internet pics I found of 125s with CD66s ride as high as 4x4s. The smaller tyre diameter exacerbating the arch gap..It looks dark green one has had work done on the arches? I can’t wait to get my car back so I can have another measure. I found some scribbled notes in the shed from when I was checking clearances previously and I had calculated that a 7 inch rim would need a 20 offset to fit. I’m all for laying down some $ on sweet rims but I need to satisfy myself that they will 100% fit.

[Sunbeam]

Recovery mission today. Left home at 7, good driving conditions. I did have a small drama, I noticed that the image in the drivers door mirror was wobbling. I pulled over to investigate, rolled down the window and poked the glass to see what’s up, and it fell into my hand! The glue had failed, and I’m very lucky I noticed before it ended up on the road in 1,000,000,000 pieces. The hardware shop in Amberley didn’t have any double sided tape so I carried on. It quickly became clear that the lack of a mirror is not fun, especially when towing a 2.5 metre wide trailer. A shout out to the staff at Arthur Burke’s workshop in Waikari who hooked me up with some tape and didn’t want anything for it. 
 

The Lewis pass was very icy, I could feel the car squirm from time to time so I took it real slow. Stunning day, but freezing cold and the heater in the car has a blocked core so the only thing keeping me alive was the heated seat. I duly arrived to a beautiful west coast day. Too cold for sandflies, yay!

 

Top of the Lewis, I was keen to see some temperatures, so I had the OBD dongle hooked up

I don’t even know if thats average or what, since I have never had this data at my fingertips before. On the flat oil sits at around 112, atf 80, and coolant 88-90

St James carpark:

Aaand back in the mank cave.

440km, 8 hours total and a remarkable 10.6 litres/100km average. Now waiting on a parcel so I can start putting stuff back in/on.

[Sunbeam]

This has to be one of my favourite things-a shipment of new parts arriving!

[Sunbeam]

Cracked into the suspension bushings today, starting with the track rod bushes. The left one loosened off well. So I had a go at cracking the right. This one is putting up a real fight-one that I am losing. I’m stuck here now and it won’t move in any direction anymore. I think I need to borrow Dad’s die grinder and cut it and split it off before I do any more damage to myself or the car.

[Sunbeam]

Snapped up this garage ornament. It’s a 1608cc 125 engine. Cams have rust on the lobes, so it’s definitely been sitting a while. Came with a carb (another Solex...) part of a starter motor, and a flywheel (which upon closer inspection has “Holden” cast into it) I’ll tuck it away and give it a good inspection in the future. The vendor alleges it “has good bores”. We shall see.

[Sunbeam]

On with more serious work. Today I removed the castor rods (“thrust rods” in the manual). The nuts were no match for my new toy.

The bushes are well past their prime:

Then it was off to the vice to strip them. The spacer tubes came off far more easily than their crusty appearance suggested they would. Then it was time to remove the inner nut. Before  attempting to wind them off, I employed my newest power tool to clean the threads. Say hello to my new friend.

8 inch bench grinder. My first mod was to buy a wire wheel for it. It’s great, but it makes it shake like MAD. I have stuff walking all over the bench whenever it’s running.  Anyway, clean threads or not, the nuts wouldn’t budge. So, I cut a starter slit in the side of the nut

And then finish the job with the nut splitter.

My heart sank when I wound the nut off the right hand rod. The thread is absolutely stuffed.

@azzurro, from all the 125s you harvested bits from, did you happen to keep any of these?

 

Moving on, the swaybar is very easy to remove from the vehicle. I found the clamps on the inner (chassis) bushes very hard to split, but I got there in the end. It needed a beating with a sacrificial narrow flat bladed screwdriver.

Now I’m looking forward to using my other new friend to clean up all the brackets and bits

[Sunbeam]

I took a break from the landscaping chores (lockdown =no decking timber) and the wood splitting (drizzle and cold = no thanks) and set to continuing with some front suspension (in)action. 
All round good citizen @azzurro dropped by recently on his way home from Auckland to give me some rusted junk treasure from his hoard. A couple of (chuckle) thrust rods - as the book calls them. One was straight with a nick in the thread, the other had decent thread but was a bit bent. I chose the latter. One fat bloke and sturdy vice later it’s more or less straight and then into the blast cabinet, prime and paint. Bet you can’t tell which is the good original and which was the bent rusty one.

I’m annoyed at my new swaybar bushes now. The new ones are taller than the old ones and no amount of crushing and cursing will make them fit in the brackets. They assemble like so:

When installed, the metal brackets are sandwiched tight. Look at the difference between old and new, allowing for oldness and squashedness:

I think I might have to cut most of the chamfered raised portion off. Anyway, I’m grumpy now and I’m going to light the fire and have a Sunbeam’s famous turbocharged hot chocolate. Good evening.

[Sunbeam]

The thrust rods and swaybar are now refitted to the vehicle. The swaybar saddle bracket things are very annoying but we got there in the end. 
Today it was blowing a gale so I retreated to the shed, which was very loudly groaning and popping in the wind. I popped the clutch cable out. The pedal end is almost inaccessible for my sausage fingers, but I got it unhooked by pushing hard on the firewall side. I decided then that the brake booster bracket looked too crusty so I unbolted that and chucked it in the blast cabinet.

Primed

painted

The removal of said bracket revealed a little rust bubble on the firewall. Luckily it wasn’t deep. I gave the area a scotch brite, and prepsol.

then hit it with some primer

Then I pulled the shield off the booster and gave that a blast and a prime.

Then I gave the booster a good scrub and bolted the new master cylinder on.

I have some colour matched 2k paint the panel beater gave me, but no way of spraying it, so I may have to splash out on a touch up gun. 

[Sunbeam]

So what I actually did because I’m impatient, is mixed up some paint and brushed it on. It’s covered by the brake booster/mc bracket and it actually didn’t come out that gross.

 

My attention now turns to the engine. I pulled the alternator off and then I wanted to pull the fan clutch off. Unfortunately, only half of it let go.

Side A:

Side B:

I have another moderately annoying problem. The water pump pulley is bent AND it’s half a pulley width out of alignment with the crank and alternator pulleys. More will be revealed when I get the rest of that fan clutch off, I suppose.

Anyway, the brake booster et al is ready to go back on the firewall when the time comes.

 

[Sunbeam]

I had to cut the bearing race that was stuck to the water pump shaft.

It was still hard work getting the pulley off the shaft and when it finally popped it’s obvious why. Rust!

There was also something funky going on with the key. I popped the key out, cleaned the shaft and the bore of the pulley and slid it back on and what do you know…perfect alignment. The water pump feels ok, in fact it looks like a replacement, reinforced by the traces of silicone type sealer residue around the mounting face. It looks like what happened is a ham-fisted amateur, after replacing the water pump (with silicone gasket maker?!) got the key jammed on an angle which prevented the pulley from sliding all the way home and then just did the nut up gudntight anyway. 
This does not help the fact that the pulley itself is warped and has some crazy runout. Since the fan clutch is junk, and the pulley is riveted to the clutch I wonder if I need to get a water pump and pulley from a twin cam that doesn’t use a fan clutch like the 125.

Anyway I thought it was time to clean the motor. I am planning on replacing all the seals and gaskets (not the head gasket because it’s not broken) and I hate working on filthy stuff. I can confirm being able to waterblast the engine upside down on the engine stand is great! I was shocked at how quickly the block flash rusted and also the alloy went powdery really quickly (within minutes) 

Clean motor:

 

[Sunbeam]

In preparation for seal and gasket replacement I started pulling stuff off. Exhaust manifold nuts undid very easily. Maybe too easily. 

Is that some exhaust stain on the side of the block?

Exhaust valves well carbonated

Intake manifold nuts were way tighter, but still easily cracked and came undone. 

The backs of the valves are also quite dirty. Evidence I suppose of decades of non-use and short runs.

 

Then I pulled off the crank breather box. It’s gross.

And just out of idle curiosity, let’s pop the sump off. Bolts were not tight at all, gasket was! There’s sludge in the bottom of the sump, and some carbon crap on the oil pickup. I suspected the last oil change before I bought the car was a long, long time ago and this kinda confirms it. 

 

I don’t think I should pull the head… Should I? Maybe just a rattle can rebuild. And then a jolly good long run when it’s back on the road.
 

 

[Sunbeam]

The water jacket is in very nice condition. No pitting, and just a light dusting of surface rust.

I have cleaned up the outside of the fuel tank too. No pics because it’s boring. I just hit any spots with signs of rust spidering under the paint with a strip disc, then spot painted with brunox. Then I hit the whole thing with 400 grit and painted it with a brush and some White Knight rust killer paint I had leftover from another project. 

Inside the tank looks like this though: that’s the back of the drain bung you can see on the right of the picture.

Check out the tide mark.

Thoughts on how to treat?

 

[Sunbeam]

I had wanted an excuse to try evaporust because the Land Rover tank is way rustier than the Fiat’s. So I went and bought a 5 litre can and sloshed it round in the Fiat tank for a couple of days. Then drained it back into the container (it’s reusable!) and poked the water blaster lance around the insides. Then dried it out 

Left the heat gun in there on low while I went inside for a cuppa. It worked a treat. The innards now look like this:

Then, to retard rusting I made a brew to slosh around

Also reusable, it will be good for lighting the incinerator. Then I smashed and scraped all the paint off the tank:

[Sunbeam]

I got started on the engine strip down today. I was confused almost immediately (not difficult to achieve).

This is the thermostat housing, next to the new thermostat I have in stock:

The first thing I did was to take the coolant neck off the head. What I found was another thermostat!

Then I was confused. That’s my story.

[Sunbeam]

Photo dump! 

I doubt this is the O.G. gasket. Bores are well glazed too. Some marks, but can’t really feel them.

 

The gasket is damaged…

 

Underside, check out the scorch mark:

Mark on the head between 1&2 (left of following pic)

Scorch mark on block

 

Big end cap, bearing has faint scuff, but can’t feel anything.

Big end journal:

 

This is where it gets uglier. Main cap & bearing. Check out the dark marks on the edges of the bearing:

Main journals have black skid marks on them. I can’t tell if they’re damaged at this point, or if it’s deposited burnt oil.

Cam boxes are FILTHY, however the exhaust cam is quite a bit less filthy.

 

The cams have a lot of end float, but there’s no specs for it in the book. Crank end float seems fine. Finally, the pistons look like standard size, they have very gummed up oil rings but most worryingly they are very tight on the gudgeon pins, the rods won’t swing at all. In fact it takes a fair bit of force to rock the piston. Something aint right.  Aaaand I accidentally dropped number 4 on the concrete. Looks fine though…

 

 

[Sunbeam]

Oooh what have we here? Postie brings stuff.

I wonder what’s in it?

If I was a maladjusted human I would make an unboxing video for youtube. Er, I am maladjusted but in a different way…anyhoo.

VOILA!

I think they were on Trademe for a few minutes tops til I stabbed the buy now so hard I almost punched a hole in the ipad. Good price for some very tidy carbs. Such fun!

 

[Sunbeam]

Rewinding a little, I stripped the spare engine. Remember how I had written earlier that the vendor had stated it had “good bores”? It seems my scepticism was well founded!

mhmm..

Ooh, nice. Clearly well maintained.

Won’t turn, so soak them pistons 

Three days later, 3 pistons out, one still firmly in. I tried all sorts of brews, heat etc. Hammering with a wooden drift did not work at all, the drift was absorbing too much force. In the end I smashed it out with a steel drift. During this pounding, the head flew off my big ball pein hammer and of course it landed on the CAR!! Bounced twice, and luckily missed the boy,

 

Anyway, check out the mint bore

And piston

 

I will scrap this piston due to the loads I imposed on it during extraction. So I have a usable crank, head and some pistons and rods and of course the block could be used if bored out, but since pistons are unobtainium that’s academic. The cam lobes are rusted to buggery and the intake cam is rusted into the cam box and I’ve been unable to extract it.

 

[Sunbeam]

Rewind even further. Before I tore into the engine I needed to do something with the bumpers because they were cluttering up my work bench. They’re alright on the outside, and mostly straight but the overriders have seen better days and probably a few knocks too. I wanted to do an overrider delete anyway because I prefer the look. The insides of the bumpers were deeply rusty. I mummified the shiny side with masking tape.

Then, I spent ages trying to clean up the inner surfaces. Starting with a wire brush and then moving to sandpaper. This took hours! The end result wasn’t great, but I cleaned and degreased them and then went Brunox x 3 coats, high build primer, then 3 top coats in black.

I then needed some long bolts to replace the long studs that are part of the overriders. No bumper bolts I have seen are anywhere near long enough, so I ended up buying stainless engineering coach bolts. These are a very dull finish and have grading numbers on the heads. I ground the numbers off very carefully with my most worn out flap disc. Then I went through wet sanding by hand up to 2000 grit and then finished with Autosol. They came up nice.

No wide shot, sorry due to fullness of shed, but I’m happy enough. There are some visible witness marks in the chrome mostly on the rear bumper where the overriders used to sit, but the bumpers are not the worst looking part of the car by a long way. 
I’m no further with the engine either.

 

[Sunbeam]

In other news the Fiat 1500 isn’t happening. The too hard basket became a yawning abyss and the owner offered to reverse the deal, so I said yes. You North Islanders keep an eye out on TradeMe. It’ll be relisted soon. Sad, but onward and upward.

[Sunbeam]

This is basically just a proof of life post. Due to economic setbacks, 2021 did not see the return to roadworthiness of the Fiat. I’m chipping away at things though, and having a fun time with the quality (or lack thereof) of today’s aftermarket parts. 
Exhibit A.

New driveshaft centre bearing support (“pillowblock” in the book… cute name) spacing of bolt holes…

To slot or not? And an expensive piece of cheese:

this is a giubo, or “flex coupling”. The o.g. Unit is a bit doughy and cracked after 50 years. The steel sleeve pictured collapsed before getting anywhere near the specified torque on the fastener. I’m in talks with the supplier who seems to be deflecting at the moment.