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.
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