Sunbeam's 1973 Fiat 125

[Sunbeam]

Parts supplier came through. Took a while but today I took delivery of a new donut free of charge.  I’m at home with the Rona this week, so I’m claiming the torquing of 3 bolts as achievement. To be honest I’ve had worse colds, but my excuse for doing nothing is that there’s a stack of polycarbonate roofing in my way. 
 

Happily they torqued up nicely. This donut has one piece crush tubes, and the tolerance is way better.

[Sunbeam]

Got a call from the engine shop, bore wear is 6 thou which is the trigger for a rebore. New pistons on the way$$$$$!

[Sunbeam]

Aaaaaaaaargh! I had a cluster fly infestation in the shed so I bombed it.

The picture does not do justice to the carpet of dead flies. I then set about vacuuming them all up. They are so gross, the vacuum cleaner hose now has a thick buildup of goo on the inside with the consistency of tar from the filth that these flies excrete.

My cleanup revealed a bigger problem, a mouse plague. They’ve had such an abundant season thanks to the mild, moist summer that the numbers have exploded. Anyway, they have made camp inside the Fiat and MG, and have been gnawing on bits of car. Quite demoralising.

[Sunbeam]

Significant wallet-lightening action has taken place. These are on their way from Straya.

 

Also NOS main and big end bearings.

[Sunbeam]

Look what the postie dropped off today! Going straight to the machinists. I love NOS.

[Sunbeam]

The engine block is still sitting untouched on the floor at the machinists. Grrrrr. I’m giving it one week and then I’m picking it up and giving it to someone else to do. Any recommendations in Christchurch?

 

Anyhoo, FIZZZ FIZZZ look what finally turned up!  Front fits, but quite snug on the hub, so hard to get off.

 

Rears won’t go on. Looks like I need 0.3mm off the hub centre.

Also, they dont fit over the locator pegs. The hex doesn’t fit in the relief in the wheel. I can probably make do without the hex, as they don’t need to be super tight.

 

Well worth the wait getting them shipped in a container. This way they ended up 150 per wheel cheaper than the next best place I could get them on the interweb. Shout out to Palmside in Christchurch, they were good to deal with. Also, they have a couple more sets in stock now too for you Fiat foamers. Specs are 13x7 et10. They appear well made, and not that heavy.

 

EDIT: also poos, because the wheel bearing cap sticks out too far to use the centre caps!
 

[Sunbeam]

The bottom end has come back from the machine shop! There’s a bit of cleaning work for me to do, as the block didn’t get hot-tanked. The rationale for this was it would destroy the auxiliary shaft bearing which they didn’t remove because they couldn’t be bothered. They did remove the gallery plugs and gave it a good manual hose out though, and he reiterated several times how much crap was lodged in there! The deck has had a very light skim. The marks still visible can’t actually be felt by my sensitive fingers.

It has been bored 0.4mm oversized. 

The crank has had the journals polished and also had the gallery plugs removed (full of crap also) This meant the holes had to be drilled and tapped for new modern replacement plugs. This apparently ruined his tap because the steel is so hard! Go Fiat!!

The crank has also had some weight ground off to balance it. It didn’t need much apparently.

Shiny piston

The rods were balanced too. 6 grams between the heaviest and lightest ex factory. All spot on now. Looks like number 2 was the lightest as it has nothing  missing.

 

The flywheel and clutch cover were also balanced. The flywheel was pretty good, just 4 small holes drilled.  Clutch covers aren’t that well balanced evidently because swiss cheese to get it right!

I have only had time to gap the rings on number 1 so far, and they were bang on the low end of the spec range out of the box. If all the others are the same I’ll be happy as. 

[Sunbeam]

What do you do when you’re not making progress but want to play with your car? Rims! Local good guys at Tyre General in Rangoon offered to pop one of my old tyres onto the new rim to assess the fit (technically I’m not allowed to run a 185 on a 7 inch rim) at no charge. The idea was to see if it looked too stretched and/or stupid.

Head on view:

 

Close up:

 

Side profile: yes,yes, more slam required but there’s no engine in there! There is a spring compressor installed but still only got it down an inch. The stock springs are looooong and getting them out will be fun. Not.

Please comment on the stupidity factor or otherwise in the Discussion thread

[Sunbeam]

Tis the season to pull finger. I’m eagerly anticipating the return of my head from the engine shop, so therefore I feel it is time to start prepping the bits and pieces for engine assembly. Most minor components were put in plastic bins upon disassembly and left, and thus are caked in baked oil filth. The first job I gave myself was to strip and clean the oil pump. Job 1 was to carefully prise the pickup screen off the pump, as there were several bits of hard carbon lodged in the holes of the mesh. CHANGE YOUR OIL PEOPLE!! There are just 3 M6 bolts holding the two halves of the pump body together, and it pays to have a good hold of both halves as you remove them or else the relief spring might try and launch parts across the workshop.

I don’t have a parts washer, so a container with some liquid gold (petrol) has to suffice. The petrol soon starts to look like the crude from whence it came.  There is some light scratching on the mating parts and inside the housing. The flat parts got a tickle up on a sheet of 800 and then 1200. You can’t feel the scratches in the housing so I left them… the car had mint oil pressure before. 

All reassembled with a lashing of 20w50 and a new drive gear. The old drive gear looked fine, but they are considered a consumable in Fiat World, as they have a very important job. You see, the gear also drives the distributor (via the auxiliary shaft off the timing belt) and if the internal splines shear (a known occurrence on old engines) the motor will continue to run but the oil pump will suddenly stop!

Now wrapped in my Sunday shirt ready for fitting later.

[Sunbeam]

I’ve cleaned up the front and rear crank seal housings and fitted new seals, also the oil filter housing.

 

Then outside with the block for a hot soapy wash.

 

Of course, the bores started to flash rust immediately despite me working as fast as I could to dry everything. I soaked them in CRC as quickly as possible and wiped it away as well as I could.

[Sunbeam]

Then I masked the block.

 

And finally I get to apply the Ford Grey engine paint which is very close to the original Fiat grey. EXCEPT…..

IT’S NOT FORD GREY!! Crap crap crap! It looks stupid. I did the full coat to prevent rusting. Not sure what I’ll do about it. I might let it cure and then go over it with something else. I’m not sure how this error occurred.

[Sunbeam]

I cannot however, wait a week and twiddle my thumbs so let’s put some bits back in the inside. Time to open some decades old packaging. Check out the Fiat and Lancia engraving on the shells. I love NOS.

 

It’s quite satisfying to pop in the shells, smear on the lube and finally nestle the crank in place being careful not to knock the thrust bearings out of place. Caps torqued and crank still turns smoothly, yay!

[Sunbeam]

Next, I was fizzing to drop the pistons in, so I unpacked the big end shells and….OH NO…. they’re for the wrong engine! I’ve emailed the supplier and he’s looking into it. This won’t be a quick fix because Christmas and they came from Western Australia.

2mm too small:

 

There’s not much I can do except wrap the engine up and try to keep dust out.

 

As an outlet for my anger I decided to remove the cooked-on sump gasket. Twist knot cup wire brush 1, old sump gasket 0.

[Sunbeam]

Time for retail therapy.

 

A Poll:

A: 

B:

C:

D:

Opinions Here

[Sunbeam]

More Visa thrashing today. New balljoints, shocks, spigot bearing, timing tensioner bearing, spindle nuts and a couple of oil filters to pad out the shipping are on the way. KYB shocks from Rock Auto $32 nzd a corner! I ordered shocks for a 124 coupe as these should help when some low is installed. Pretty sure they’re the same fit but a smidge shorter than 125 shocks…fingers crossed.

Also, I got the head back from the machine shop the day before Christmas eve. There was a last minute drama as some of the valve stems were under spec/had massive wear grooves (CHANGE YOUR OIL, FOLKS!) so a quick pillage of my spare engine and a trip to town ensued. I didn’t have high hopes as the spare engine is even grungier than the one I’m rebuilding, but we managed to make a full engine set..whew! Apparently other than that my head is mint and has had the lightest of skims.

[Sunbeam]

Also, leaning towards the leatherbound Momo California, soz @azzurro. I love the look of the mahogany one but it’s quite a bit more $$$ and I just don’t love gripping wood as much as I like leather… just sayin.

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