the new on/off switch

 Drove it to work today and all is largely well, except the not-turning-off problem persists. Unplugged the now-prominent pink wire, and plugged it back in to start it up and go home. When I got home, I jiggled some things with no pleasing results until I happened to turn on the headlights while the car ran on its mysteriously-powered coil, and the engine died. I found that it won't quit if the lights are off, but if the lights are turned on, it acts normally. I could almost understand it if it's the other way around, but turning the lights on to kill the engine is pretty bizarre. I only have a barely-half-baked theory that there is a voltage leak through the ignition switch that is enough to keep the relay energized, and turning on the light draws it down enough to de-energize the relay. The weather precludes me working on this much until next week, so we'll see what happens. 

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. 

Through the fire and flames

Went out today to replace the cracked fuel line, which in any sane scenario is about a 90-second job, it's just a 5/16ths rubber fuel hose between a backflow valve and the intake of the fuel pump. Two clamps and boogedy boogedy let's go racing.

Apparently, I had installed the fuel pump before i put the manifold on, and the clamp on the line was facing into a blind corner where I could not get a screwdriver or a wrench or a pair of pliers or anything on it. In restrospect I probably could have applied (considerably) more force to twist it around to where I could get at it, but the fuel pump itself is really easy to remove and I only tried a little until I figured I'd just take ten more minutes to take it off, replace the gaskets, put on the missing lock washers, and otherwise do it right. This I did. 

 

How nice. 

When all was properly and carefully reassembled, I went to start the car. Note "carefully". The fuel pump on this engine is the mechanical one, dead simple except that the pump lever can get stuck off to one side of the cam (run by an auxiliary cog and shaft off the timing belt) and miss out on all the cam action. I knew this and was as careful as I could installing it under the manifold with the hoses attached.

With all the fuel in the line having drained and the pump needing to prime, I got some carb cleaner to use as starting fluid and sprayed it fairly generously into the secondary. I cranked away and it caught and ran for a second, then died, and I sprayed some more and attempted to start it again. This time, it backfired and set the carb on fire, which immediately spread to the air filter pan. 

I'm not a carb expert at all, my other cars are all fuel-injected. But I know enough from episodes of Roadkill and old John Deakin columns on AVWeb that when there is an intake fire, you just keep cranking until it goes out. So I did not let off the starter, and the car didn't start, and the fire just stayed, burning off the extra carb cleaner, and I was starting to get a little anxious when it backfired again and shot burning carb cleaner or fuel out all over and things began to get really exciting. I jumped out and in a panic tried to blow it out, and then realized the whole side of the engine was on fire under the manifold and the oil residue was starting to burn. In the space of two or three seconds the flames began to mount and were now rising to about halfway up the hood. 

I ran back to the trunk to grab the fire extinguisher, and only when I got there did I realize I'd left the keys in the ignition. I darted back and grabbed them, opened the trunk, grabbed the fire extinguisher which is bungeed to the jack mount, and the bungee was tangled around the pin and the extinguisher mount. I managed finally to get it free, yanked the pin while running back to the front where the fire was smoking blackly and gave it a half-second burst which immediately put out the flames.  

All this probably took about 30 seconds. Except for the scorched emergency hood release cable which had been lying across the edge of the air filter pan, there did not appear to be any damage except to my ego. There was cornstarch all over the engine and carburetor  that I washed off with a hose. So the lesson here (which has not yet endeth) is that starting fluid is evil. 

I took the pump off again and tested it, and it pumped fine, so it was pretty obvious that the aforementioned cam bypass problem had occurred. I spent about two hours trying to get that stupid pump positioned correctly, but every time for some reason the lever ended up on the side of the cam. I finally took the hoses back off and tried it that way, put the hoses and clamps on by touch, and that did the trick. I guess some tension from the hoses made it hard to align the pump properly, and I ended up pretty much back where I should have started, getting the intake clamp lined up correctly to tighten down.  In retrospect I ignored a key Law of Fiats - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I could have probably gotten a pair of needlenose on the troublesome clamp and managed to turn it enough to get the screwdriver on it, but I got ambitious. 

I decided to keep the 13" BWAs and got two new tires shipped from online to install at the cheap red place. Yesterday, I waited there a ridiculously long time to mount and balance tires on two loose wheels, with an appointment and all. They also refused to mount one of the existing tires (not old and not worn out, although the other one had suffered from the bad alignment from the old A-arm on that side) on the spare rim. I ended up going to the tire shop down the street and paying them cash to mount and balance the spare, which was not only less than the red place but they did it in about 6 minutes. 

It also turns out that at some point some dolt who owns both Fiats and Mercedes mixed up Fiat and Mercedes lug bolts, which are different thread pitches, and this is likely the cause of my stripped left rear lug threads. I also had a bad one that had suffered abuse, but the threads chased up ok and I was able to torque it down. 

 

 

For the remaining stripped hole I'm going to try welding up the threads then re-drilling and tapping (it uses the same 12 x 1.25 size I got for the A-arm bolts, and the one tiny intellectual triumph to which I can lay claim in this whole debacle is that I got both the tap and the die in that size last weekend).

This weekend was ridiculous and I am fairly annoyed with myself and that tire chain, but all is well that ends well, the car did not burn down, and there was progress. So there it is.

Is that gasoline I smell?

 Drove the car to work yesterday, and while bombing down the freeway home I had the impression, as I have had before, that it was running rather rich. Subsequently a child by the school yelled at me that "the car smells really bad".  Rich, indeed, but it seemed to me that after fixing the filter, the carburetor is behaving a little more predictably, and I gave it a quick adjustment while it was still hot from the freeway. The mixture screw is out just under two turns, which seems right, but what do I know?

 Later today, I walked out of the house to get the mail and I could smell gasoline across the yard. There was a big puddle under the Spider, and on a quick look I found the fuel pump intake line had apparently cracked. Between this and the defective fuel filter, it could explain a lot, both the hard starting and the bad smells that so annoy the children. I just vise-gripped the line till I can repair it.

I decided to stick with the 13" BWAs on the car for simplicity and ordered a couple of new tires. One of the existing ones was a victim of the bad alignment, so I'll put the other one on the matching red rim I have for a spare.  

Intermovement

Now comes a period of inactivity. This weekend was a marathon but amazing things happened. The new control arms and tie rod ends make a LOT of difference, not to mention a proper alignment. It's a whole different car, no longer darting for the bushes when it sees a puddle, and it doesn't steer like a ship. It drives reasonably nicely and the new filter seems to have improved fuel flow. It seems to be running a little richer than before, so I wonder if the filter was always bad and I adjusted the carburetor with some restricted fuel flow going on.

Also the luggage rack got installed. I am not a fan of these racks installed on the Spiders, but they are at least slightly practical for things like a rally, and there were already holes in the boot lid for it.

I'll drive it to work this week and keep debugging it, but the front suspension and steering was a major tick on the to-do list. 

Threadliness is next to Godliness

New die arrived and the threads got cleaned up. Clean threads make a huge difference in one's quality of life.  

 While cleaning the forward stud, I realized someone else had had the same problem as I had with the aft stud spinning under torque. What I thought was a blob of tar or undercoating was someone's slag-weld job.

 

It's especially amusing because the forward stud is actually a bolt and you can reach the head of it pretty easily to hold it. Oh well. The lower A-arm bolted on with its shims, and then all the front suspension is done. (Recall I had done the starboard side previously, and due to my lack of skill it was a horrific job that I swore I would never do again, which is actually quite easy now. Don't be deterred.) 

A combination of a child, an old front tube bumper, and a couple of tires got me to the ~150 lbs needed on suspension preload, then tightened it all down. Glorious!

I noted previously that the car had become very hard to start and needed a kick in the bum from ether. This was unusual, as the carb rebuild is not very old, and it has started pretty quickly up until now. I cranked a while and then hopped out and began unscrewing the fuel line to the carb to see if it was getting fuel. As I jiggled the line where the (newish) fuel filter is mounted, it made some pretty jingle-bell noises. Since it's not even Halloween yet, I took the filter off and realized it had collapsed somehow and was not doing any sort of filtering at all, and potentially blocking fuel flow when the detached piece rolls around inside.

 

Replaced the filter (Autozone only had one carb filter in stock, which was eye-opening) and that seems to be better although we'll see what it does after sitting a while. 

A is for Aggravating

 I tackled the driver's side suspension. I did the passenger side a little while back, and it went okay. The replacement A-arms I got are not as good quality as the OEM ones, and the welding on the lower shock mount had failed immediately when I installed the shock on the passenger side. I had to jankily weld it up and while ugly, it's solid. 

 So, not wanting that to happen again, I preemptively booger-welded the lower A-arm, so it looked like the original and you can't tell which is which now.

Or maybe you can. At any rate, the grinder and paint make me the welder I ain't.

The top arm is easy, just remove the mounting bolt and the upper ball joint nut and pickle that baby off. This appears to be an original A-arm, as the ball joint is riveted on and the bushings are really trashed.

 Of course problems ensued on the last nut on the bottom one. The spring mounts to the body at top and the lower arm at bottom, so my method here is not to use the compressor when disassembling, but jack up the lower arm to relieve the tension on its mount to the body, unbolt it, then lower the whole thing down and pop out the coil spring from its remaining tension (for which installation is NOT the reverse of removal). The aft nut however had been really beat upon, and the stud broke loose inside the cross member and just spun with the rusted beaten nut. 

The stud has a round head which I presume is tack-welded to the inside of the crossmember, or possibly it was a bolt with a rounded-off head, but at any rate it was round and there was no way to get a wrench on it. I have a trashed flat blade I use for various prying purposes and I hammered that in against the round head, which did not work....at first.

The nut would turn about a quarter turn before binding again and breaking the tension from the screwdriver. Each time I hammered it again and would get another quarter turn. This went on for a while, but the pattern held up and slowly I got the nut off. This was a joyous moment as I did NOT want to start cutting things, which is always nondeterministic. 

Eventually I got the A-arm off, and it was in worse shape than the top.

That bolt, however, is in bad shape and I don't want to put things back together without trying to salvage it. I don't have a die in its 12 x 1.25 size to clean up the threads, so I downed tools and went off to the orangey-colored hardware store to get one. They did not have one - in fact they had almost no taps or dies, just a few sizes in a kit that was not desirable. I tried the down-low blue place next with no better result, and then came home in annoyance and ordered one online. 

I went ahead and replaced the tie rod ends (tagliando di controllo!) and with a few minutes left, screwed on the rear panels by the back seat that hide the convertible top windows when it's folded down.  

So next steps, clean up that stud, install the bottom A-arm, tighten everything down, and take it for an alignment. Aligning this car is dead simple, but it uses shims for the camber, slipped in on the lower A-arm studs which somehow always seems to confuse people. 

The car was in an accident in the distant past, and had a front corner sloppily welded back on. It's holding, and is nothing really structural but I might try my hand at hammering this even and welding it (rather more neatly than my own other attempt on the A-arm).
 

...To the Present Day, 8 weeks to Go

 So, with all that, the current state of the car is not bad. Brakes good, tires fair, as Charlie Ryan says. It runs and drives, burns some oil but not a lot (and in a most shocking turn of events, it doesn't appear to drip any at all on the garage floor). It has a lot of rusty sharp corners in the interior.

I actually have no idea how far this rally goes. On paper it's about  600 miles, but LeMons being LeMons, I expect a lot more. So I probably should change the oil, as well as:

1. Adjust the valves;
2. Fix a stripped rear lug bolt; 
3. Replace the rusted A-arms, tie rod ends, and get an alignment;
4. Seat belts might be important;
5. Fix the wonky right turn signal
6. and get tires. Here is a dilemma...should I swap the Biturbo wheels back on for 14" tires or stick with the 13" BWAs? edit: BWAs it is.
7. New front brake pads - edit: Had a look and they are in good shape. 
8. Fix and adjust clutch cable;
9. Fix broken passenger door handle, that would be inconvenient otherwise. It is now very convenient.
10. Replace cracked driver's headlight;
11. Do all fluids:
1. Engine oil is ok
2. Radiator probably ok but may flush it anyway
3. Steering box oil
4. Transmission oil
5. rear diff oil
6. Grease everything in sight
12. Repack front wheel bearings
13. New plug wires and dizzy cap;
14. Install driving lights - I have some spare Bosch driving lights off old Mercedes and I expect they will help a lot. edit: EVEN BETTER -STAY TUNED
15. Fix exhaust leak 
16. Clean the spilled oil out of the trunk (for weight savings, of course) 
17. Check the A-arm bolts
18. seat covers!!!!! 

That's all I can think of at the moment. Timewise, I've got maybe 4 good weekends before Dec 4, as the others are taken up. The A-arms are going to be hard as I have never found a good spring compressor for the small springs in this car, and I hope the local shop knows how to adjust camber with shims.  

 

edit: Now it has seatbelts!

 

Time Passes....

 After just about exactly 14 years and a bunch of cars and kids and life events, we got the yen to race again (or rather, stopped having to change diapers and realized we had some free time) and decided to try the LeMons Lone Star/No-Start Rally. We wanted to do MSR, but race prep has changed in 14 years and the rally sounded like a lot of fun - if you can't have the LeMons you love, you love the LeMons you have. Or make lemon hand grenades, or something. 

 Pondering this over the summer, we of course figured we'd bring back the 81 Fiat Brava from previous races, which we still have and which still runs. It's been parked in the yard, looming mysteriously in the background of pictures through years of family gatherings and kids' ball games. 

 

After a few seconds' worth of further reflection though, it was just about an insurmountable task to get the Brava titled and roadworthy in the time we had available (also it was never roadworthy to begin with). I started the process to get a title for it anyway, but in the other corner of the yard it was hard to ignore a 1978 Fiat 124 Spider that I had picked up as a rolling chassis for parts and which turned out not to be rusty enough to sacrifice on the altar of Mercury so that my other cars might live. 

It had turned into a sink for all the extra parts I had lying around, and, while still abysmally incomplete, I had to assess what I was actually able to do in the time I had. When I got the Spider (a sad story that I won't go into here), it was a stripped chassis - had the side window glass, the convertible top frame, a short block, and the transmission. 

Someone had started thinking about working on it, but gave up. I had a spare 2-liter engine from a long-departed 1977 Spider that someone had crammed a carbed 1980 engine into hoping to make it go fast. Sadly not only was that year about the worst year for horsepower (turning out a whopping 86 rampant Italian ponies) but the car subsequently only went fast right into the scrapyard.  The engine was also not in great shape, with dings all over a piston from where someone dropped a washer into the intake, but it ran and it was what I had. 

But then someone turned up a 1972 1608cc engine which seemed ok and was far better on paper than the 2-liter (also, it would fit without swapping out the subframe which was different on the 2L cars, due to the taller block). I jumped on this and hauled it home. 

Easy choice there, and we put that one in with the existing transmission and a 32ADFA Weber from the 2L engine. Bonus with the 32ADFA was an automatic choke, and I think I prefer mechanical secondaries over the vacuum-operated secondary on the original 1608 carb. 

We also painted the gas tank, for speed.

The engine turned out to be worn but ok, and it lit off and ran fine (for a while). The transmission that had come with the car turned out to be noisy. As it happened, it made far too much noise for the number of gears remaining in available to use, for sure. Second gear was conspicuous by its absence, but it was driveable with the high-revving 1608 and so I left it there while debugging the rest of the car. 

The debugging included hot wires grounding out, and the steering column falling off, but no permanent damage was done, and I obtained much satisfaction by fixing the brakes and lights (and generally tracing out the rest of the wonky wiring, much of which dead-ended into weird emissions devices that no longer existed). 

 

 

I swapped out the Maserati Biturbo wheels it came with to a set of BWAs I had (which as it happened was the reason I'd bought the 1977 donor car with the trashed 2L I was lucky enough not to have to use).  

 The 1608 then blew the head gasket (not original, as it happened...)

 ...but it's not super hard to fix on these cars, and fortunately it was not overheating, just making forbidden mayonnaise. So there did not appear to be any permanent damage. 

Someone had, however, dropped the head pretty hard on the locating dowel in the block. This just helps prove the adage that the worst thing about cars are the previous owners. 
 

I figured this wasn't much worse than the factory stamp in the mating surface, so carried on.

And here things stood in the summer, with 5 months to go.