bubbles

 The Fiat twin cam cooling system evolved over the years from a thermostat in the head to a three-way setup external to the engine. I don't know the engineering behind it, but when I put the 1972 engine in this 1978 Spider, I decided to convert it over to the external setup since it was then the same as all the other cars, which is useful at times. Once set up correctly, these cars have excellent cooling capabilities - I've never had any issues with it in the summer heat, not even when racing. 

One oddity is that I am not sure where the radiator in this car was originally from because it doesn't actually fit in this car. It's about an inch too narrow.  Someone had (very kindly) given it to me and I had already recored it before realizing with a good deal of aggravation that it seemed to be from a different car. Since the only real problem was that it didn't quite reach the mounting bolt on the passenger side, I just made a spacer for it to bolt it on. I also converted over to a larger (and lighter) fan than the original Fiat metal-framed stocky yellow 4-bladed unit.  I don't like how those aftermarket fans just ziptie to the radiator so I used some more flat stock to make mounts for it. The mounts are ugly, but they work. I might pretty them up at some point, but I doubt it. 

One of the things to be aware of with Spiders is that the radiator is lower than the engine, which leads to problems if you haven't fully bled all the air out of the system. My simple solution is to have a flushing tee in the top heater hose that is the uppermost point of the cooling system. I fill, burp all the hoses, and then top off through the flushing tee, and that does it. 

 The first problem with this new overheating issue was that I, like a big dummy, had installed the thermostat the wrong way round, and it was not in fact stuck closed. There's an arrow pointing at the nominal outlet tee on this thermostat, but turns out that's not actually how it goes. That was easily fixed, but I still had a problem with overheating, and it did not appear the thermostat was opening to allow coolant flow from the lower radiator hose back into the pump.  After a few rounds of careful bleeding, the problem persisted. I theorized that new thermostats (with which I have little familiarity) perhaps seal far too tightly, causing an air bubble in the lower hose that prevented coolant contact with the thermostat, which in turn does not open as it should. 

There's a trick for this, drilling a tiny hole in the thermostat plate to allow air to escape (some other engines have this by design, some even with tiny little float valves to allow air but prevent liquid).  I commenced to drilling, and on the next round everything worked just fine.  

I also fixed the thermoswitch wiring to the fan that was falling off, tidied away the wiring harness, flushed the whole thing and refilled with the green stuff and distilled water, and that little problem appears to have been solved. 

The car has not repeated the ignition malarkey, but I moved the new ignition relay over behind a brace further away from the exhaust, in case heat was causing it to seize up or something. It is more likely that there is some stray voltage through the pink wire, or the ignition switch is not disconnecting cleanly. The power usage of the relay is so much lower than that of the coil, it might be causing some latent electrical shorting issues to be more apparent.

behavioral problems

 I drove the car to work today, and it ran pretty hot, but performed in a considerably more lively manner than it has in the past, with its new ignition relay and some carb tuning.  I arrived at work pondering the growing temperature problem, parked, and turned the key off which to my utter astonishment had absolutely no effect. The car kept on running, in the manner of my old Mercedes diesel with a vacuum leak. Embarrassed, I opened the hood while curious coworkers looked on and made ribald remarks. I tried the first solution I could think of which was to pop off the pink trigger wire to the relay. The engine died and I went on about my day pondering the significance of this event. I could make no sense of it, as the trigger wire powered off the relay when physically disconnected, just as it should have done with the key off. At the end of the day I went out, reconnected the wire, and drove home with the engine still running too hot. The same thing happened when I arrived, but after disconnecting and reconnecting the pink wire, everything worked normally. 

 Mysterious, but I spent a few minutes troubleshooting the overheating problem and soon found (in addition to some slightly janky fan wiring I had done previously) that the new thermostat is stuck closed. The sensation of the fan blowing hot air at the top and cool air at the bottom was a strange one. I'll have to swap that out and see what's up with it, and at this point I might as well flush the cooling system completely.  

the blue vs the yellow

I spent a few minutes attempting to start the car today with no success. You may notice in the previous post that the picture of the new ignition relay shows the yellow wire connected to the positive terminal of the coil. This turns out to be wrong, and it's actually the blue wire that was supposed to be connected, as yellow is normally closed (NC) on that relay and blue is normally open (NO). Fortunately I had the battery disconnected so the coil didn't bathe itself in a warm glow of fire during the overnight chill. I swapped yellow for blue, and the engine started right up. It sounds considerably better with the exhaust leaks fixed (or at least greatly reduced), and the voltmeter now shows a perfectly normal 13.5V with the headlights on. I expect the ignition switch is really happy not to have all that load through it as well. 

While the car warmed up I took the time to fix the burnt-out starboard-side license plate lamp as well. I didn't drive it, but the clutch feels a whole lot better too - it used to be somewhat graunchy which I imagine was the threaded end of the cable scraping over the edge of the throwout lever. 

I'm pondering how to pack the ever-growing list of tools and supplies I'm generating. The Spider has a decently-sized boot for a 2-seater roadster. It also has a weird little rear bench seat, the provenance of which is completely unknown. No one could actually sit there except sideways, as there's no legroom. With snacks, liquids for car and man, parts, and tools, every little nook will be filled. Possibly some bags may be strapped onto the luggage rack, as is right and proper until it rains. 

There is an additional problem.  According to the specifications, the maximum cargo weight of a wooded and watered 1978 Fiat Spider is around 500 lbs. I like ice cream, and my co-pilot is of the same ancient stock, so just the weight of meatbags in the car is north of 400 lbs. I have therefore abandoned my idea to fit the floor jack into the trunk. There isn't any carpet in the car though, so there's that.  

Clutch, exhaust leak, and electrical forays

 I drove the Spider to work one day last week, and it did fine, except that the clutch was starting to feel odd. The release point was moving further and further down the pedal travel, which indicated the cable was slipping or otherwise needed adjustment. I can't remember if I mentioned this, but we replaced the transmission over the summer with one found in someone's garage, and I got second gear back, which is nice. But I assembled the clutch cable connection to the throwout lever wrongly. There's a little ball nut thing that sits against the lever and holds it all nicely, and I'd just put a nut on it.  

I found a ball nut thing in my boxes of Fiat hardware, and reassembled the whole thing properly. 

 While I was crawling around under there, the small exhaust leak has been a big problem. The car has a set of rusty old headers on it, which came I think actually with the car. They have a slip-on connection to the downpipe, and when the engine went in I managed to save them by carefully cutting a slot in each tip and tapping them off. But they didn't go on quite as well. I tried to weld them but I've realized my little 110v MIG welder must have a worn liner as the feed is extremely jerky, and all I get are boogers. Given the rusty state of the headers, it's probably not all my fault. At any rate there are some pinhole leaks left. I decided to try slathering on some exhaust cement and we'll see if that does anything. 

Also while I was doing that, I noticed that the reverse light harness was disconnected. It was a little bit of a hack job, as I have a philosophy about not cutting into the existing car wiring if possible. I'd made a little harness with spade connectors that fit into the factory plug, which I did not have. 

Upon investigation, it was in fact completely gone - all the way up to the connector under the console. The only thing I can think of is that it got caught in the guibo right there which yanked it out and threw it away like the garbage it was.  

I started making a new one, then suddenly realized I had a factory one sitting right in front of me, on the transmission out of the 1979 Spider we picked up in the spring to scrap. It was the older style with the integrated connector to the switch, but a little soldering fixed that, and now it's as it should be, tucked into its retaining clip. 

As I've mentioned, the wiring in these cars is not exactly high-quality. One of the major problems is that most of the key-switched electrical load goes through the ignition switch directly. The switch as a result tends to wear out faster than it should. This car originally came with points, but someone in the past popped in an electronic ignition system, which is nice and has worked great (so far), but they ran the power to it directly off the keyed hot terminal from the ignition switch with a looooong pink wire screwed onto the coil.  I'm sure that puts a bit of a heavy load on the little contactor in the switch. I have been pondering for a long time the benefits of wiring the pink wire up to a relay instead and powering the coil directly from the alternator charging post.  

As I had also planned to hook up the Cibie fog lamps to a relay, I decided to add a new power distribution box. I had one somewhere but couldn't find it, and ordered another 4-pole one. Wires and solder and connectors later, I have the ignition wired up and the light wiring started. I haven't tested any of this yet (or the clutch adjustment) as the exhaust cement is still drying.

Note the cardboard spacer in the coil bracket. This is PO shenanigans, and I think maybe that coil is a points coil. Hopefully it's up to the task of running with full power. I'll throw an extra one in the trunk just in case, as well as a spare pickup.

I turned my attention to some maintenance items, adjusting the valves and swapping out the thermostat that I think is stuck open. Fiat valves use buckets and shims, and adjustments are a matter of measuring clearances and swapping thicker or thinner shims to get the correct clearance. One small problem is that the factory shims tend to have variances of three or four hundredths of a millimeter, and the spec is +/- 5/100ths, so I like to be as precise as I can and measure the actual shim with a micrometer. My micrometer isn't very good though, so occasionally it's slight trial and error. But as it happened, only two exhaust valves and one intake were out of spec, so it wasn't hard. Properly adjusted valves really do make a big difference in how the engine runs.

 There is still some oil residue in the cooling system from the head gasket incident. After replacing the gasket, I flushed the system like mad and tried all sorts of other things like dishwasher detergent to get the oil out, but there's still a coating of it on the inside of the radiator hoses. I guess there's not much to do about it. It's not new, just residual, so I suppose the worst thing is that it may soften my radiator hoses over time. Hopefully water pumps like a little oil in the coolant.

I've only got just about one Sunday left before the rally, but there really isn't that much left to do, assuming I haven't messed anything up further. I have to make brackets for the fog lamps and finish their wiring, then it's fluids, grease, and air in the tires. Oh, and the radio antenna broke off. Might be a couple of weeknights in there but I don't think there's any panic-inducing thoughts intruding yet.  

Memento mori

 I mentioned previously that the red Spider was obtained under depressing circumstances. As the rally date approaches, I wanted to remember a friend of mine who taught me a few things about cars, and especially the lesson of diligence when a task gets difficult. 

I moved to a new city when I was a teenager, out of a small town into one of the largest cities in the nation. I met a gregarious kid at a gathering to which my parents (hoping to instantly socialize me) had sent me. Really lost, and just standing around, I ran into this guy who became a fast friend. Through our young years, our adventures with cars were pretty legendary in hindsight. I think our skins were only saved by having extremely slow machines - I had a 1980 Toyota Celica with a clogged carb and a three-speed automatic, which would do 70 or 80 wide open and almost redlined. He had a 80 or 81 VW Dasher diesel wagon (which I would absolutely love to have these days) that made a whopping 48 horsepower. We were never in any danger, but by gosh we had fun!

There was a road we were often on which had a nice little hill up to a railroad track and a perfect drop on the other side for launching a car at speed. One evening, up to no good, we spent ten minutes in my Celica jumping the car over the railroad track, at a whopping speed of probably 40 or 50 mph.  I noticed this did not improve my car's handling, but it was still pretty memorable.

Time passed, we grew up. I moved away and we were not in as much contact as we used to be. I visited once in a while, and looked at our cars, but the wild times of our youth were gone, and we commiserated over these facts. 

I bought the Spider from a guy on Craigslist which happened to be not far from my friend's house. I drove up on a rainy Saturday, did the deal, and had the car on the trailer when I realized it was only a few minutes out of my way to go visit, and so I did. We chatted, looked at home improvements, but I had an eye on the weather radar and a big fat thunderstorm was rolling in. There I was with a Fiat on a trailer with no top and no windshield, and the issues of moisture in inconvenient orifices was weighing on my mind. I said goodbye, and drove off into the lowering clouds.

 

This was the last time I saw my friend. He had bought a house about half a mile down the road from where we jumped railroad tracks as kids, and a few months after my drive-by visit as he rolled out his garbage cans to the verge, a driver on their phone speeding along the two-lane road struck him and hurled him into the bushes. He survived as a vegetable for another year or so before his family pulled the plug. I visited him shortly before the end, and, not knowing what else to say, talked to him about our multitudinous automotive adventures, some of which make really excellent stories to this day. 

I am saddened by the nature of his passing, and the red Spider continually reminds me of my last visit to his adult life where we as kids went thrill-seeking by jumping slow cars over railroad tracks. I'll be thinking about him on this rally, the jolly kid with the engineering knack who taught me that just keeping at it is usually all it takes to solve a problem. 

Fiat lux

 I had a go at fixing the stripped rear lug by welding it up, drilling, and retapping. It seems to have worked, we'll see if it holds up if i need to take the wheel off again. 

Fiat wiring is notoriously bad - it's generally undersized and over the 47 years and multiple hardships this car has suffered, the grounds are corroded and things just don't volt up like they were designed to do. Also I realized the battery I remembered just buying is 3 years old now and suffering somewhat. I replaced the clock with a voltmeter, and during the drive yesterday with the headlights on and wipers going, I saw the voltage was not exactly where I would wish. The car has one of the slightly larger 65 amp alternators, but the voltage was sitting at about 11.5-12 V, so I think the battery hasn't held up on the top end, and the lights, radiator fan, wipers, and  battery requirements pretty much kill the spare capacity.

I'll pick up a new battery, but the headlights have always been fairly bad and I found a set of Grote LED round DOT lights for not a particularly reasonable price. I swapped in the LED lights and also did the side markers and taillights.

 They work great. It is a little sad that they're super white and flash instantly on, bam, there is light instead of the timely glow of the halogens. But I'll be able to see where I'm going, and the voltmeter is sitting above 12v volts now. Still need a new battery, but the electrical load should be more suited to the elderly wiring. 

So, at this stage, I really just have the exhaust leak to fix, replace the panhard rod, then it's maintenance items. The passenger mirror is tightened down, the sun visors don't flop down in your face any more, and the turn signal wiring is nicely soldered down. It is still running a little rich but nothing terrible. I want to install the set of Cibie driving lights I found, and maybe get some better speakers working for the radio, but the big stuff on the list is just about done.

Signals, indicators, and wires

 Raining some today so I don't want to pull the other car out of the garage and watch it rust in front of my eyes. So I worked on some easy tasks, mainly getting the dash indicator lights working and fixing the right front turn signal that is weirdly dim and non-cooperative at times. 

The dash lights were easy - the indicator bulbs had just fallen out of their sockets, and they were swapped all around anyway. Of the three indicators (headlights,turn signal indicator (which is two arrows, but one light), and high beam indicator), literally every one was in the wrong socket in the gauge. Easy fix. 

 

    Investigating the front turn signal was more interesting. This one was on the car when I got it, and I realized it was some janky wiring probably at fault. Someone in the past had used some butt connectors to splice wires, and as I think of those things as butt-terrible connectors, that was an obvious place to start. As I was uploading the picture below, I realized it shows the common ground is disconnected. As the side marker and parking light/turn signal still worked, it must have been finding a bad ground someplace else. Probably I could have just plugged that back in and fixed the issue, but I really hate butt connectors.

 

 

There is another little mystery here, which is the disconnected harness that on the wiring diagram goes to the driver's side headlight. But why this is on the passenger side, and disconnected, and the headlights still work is a problem for another distant day. 

I removed the whole harness and put new connectors on, and everything worked much better.  

In the afternoon I drove it across town, about 60 miles round trip on the highway, in a light rain and it did fine. The windshield wipers work but only on one speed (which is fine, RainX solves a lot of problems). I think the thermostat is stuck open. The handling is a little sensitive, and I have a new panhard rod to install to see if that damps it down a little. It's not bad though, and the ride itself is much better after the A-arms and alignment. It's noisy, and there is a small exhaust leak that leaves one smelling like Italian cars - burnt oil and unburned gas, with an an undertone of anxiety - but I feel ok about a long road trip in it once the few remaining small items are cleared up.

 

Tomorrow - see if I can fix the stripped rear lug and install the new LED headlights.