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 the head wasn't warped.
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.
And here things stood in the summer, with 5 months to go.
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