Sunbeam's 1973 Fiat 125

[Sunbeam]

On 09/01/2025 at 21:06, Sunbeam said:

the aftermarket strikes again! 

 

 

Yeah, that’s a bit short. 
 

Remember this? Time to print a retraction. It was not the fault of the aftermarket, but a brain fart by the supplier who swiftly rectified the error. In the following picture, upper is correct, lower incorrect.

 

With some limited shed time after dinner, I risked further spinal injury to refit the heater. Firstly I wanted to remove the steel heater return pipe so that I could fit a new hose. It’s not possible for me to do this in situ. This however required removal of the alternator and extraction from underneath the car. Et voila

refitted in reverse, and then assembled the heater box with my flash new core.

What a prick to refit. It goes in ok but if it’s not lined up millimetre perfect, the fresh air flap won’t open. Now I have a new heater core and all new hoses associated with the heater. I refilled the coolant for what seems like the 50th time in the last 6 months and ran it up to temp in the workshop. Wow, what heat and fast! No leaks yet, but I need to top up the system post cooldown and then go for a hoon and get it properly hot and up to pressure. If it oasses that test I can refit the ductwork and reassemble the lower dash. I probably won’t get around to that until next week because I’m a grownup apparently, with a job.

[Sunbeam]

Change of plan. Starting work late afternoon now, so quickly went for hoon, no leaks! Reassembled interior and a quick wash. I’ll drive it to work and hopefully when I finish at 2am on Sunday there will be no drama.

 

Boy, it looks yellow in photos. 

[Sunbeam]

Been pulling to one side under braking and a lot of brake dust appearing on the right front wheel so I pulled the calipers to clean these wedgy things.

those are what pass for a caliper slide on these old things. I had made the mistake of lightly greasing them when fitting them up 2 years ago and thus there was all sorts of crud glued in there. The Fiat Barries assure me they should be clean and DRY. 
 

 Next, I wanted to adjust the front camber. The old factory data has the tech dial in a smidge of positive camber. That’s well and good for 175 R13s from half a century ago with bus spec ride height. Mine’s lowered to a well laden height and fully laden camber spec is a smidge negative. So I pulled some shims and my rig and trig tells me I’m now about 0.5 degrees negative camber. 

 

Eldest passed her full license test so I told her she was now allowed to drive the Fiat under supervision. She was fizzing hard.

[Sunbeam]

Rock Auto continues to deliver the goods. How’s these for $50 a pop? Filed for future use.