Josh's FIAT 1500 Cabrio

4/11/2004: Tweaking the site

I’ve made a few changes to the blosxom software used to run this site. I removed the “comments” feature because it didn’t really work very well- I’ll replace it with something better.

The “archives” pages now show entries in chronological order instead of in reverse.

I’ve added new index pages that list the entries out, rather than showing the full bodies by default (though the option is still there to show them all in full)

To make it easier to follow the project’s progress, i’ve also added a direct link to the latest post from the welcome page for the site.

4/6/2004: Road Trip for Parts

This weekend I drove down to Asheville, NC, a round trip of around 1700 miles. I had a great time- I love to take the occasional long road trip. I think this was the furthest i’d gone since my last cross-country drive, in 2001.

For a New-Englander like me, Virginia and North Carolina are pretty much “the south”, which makes it almost like going to a foreign country. I made sure to partake of a Bojangles Chicken Biscuit while I was down there (it’s mandatory when I am in NC- don’t ask :)).

The official purpose of the trip was to pick up some car parts. Rob Sewell is parting out this 118H 1500 Cabriolet. As you can see, it’s firmly in the “parts car” category. The previous owner was very fond of bondo and pop rivets. There are several lines in the body that are just completely missing on this car, smoothed over with filler (such as the seam above the rocker panel, and the trim that goes on it).

I bought several parts. primarily a front bumper and grille, but also a few other spare parts (such as a water pump and thermostat housing) which were in better condition than the ones I had. I also got to snap a few photos of the car for reference. I don’t get to see a whole lot of 1500 Cabriolets around, so any chance to take a good close look at one is great.

By the way- Rob still has a number of parts left on the car- anyone looking for anything should definitely drop him a line. He’s been listing items on ebay as “fiatracer”. I won’t post his email address here directly- anyone who wants it just email me and i’ll let you know.

3/24/2004: Dashboard 2

First update in a while.. Tonight I removed the tach and speedometer, taking notes as to what wires went where.

I think I’ll leave the rest of the switches and wiring as it is for now. I’m a bit daunted by the idea of fully removing the wiring harness- it seems a bit stiff, so I tihnk I will wait for a warmer day before screwing with it any more.

I’m at the point now where i’ve taken enough stuff off the car for the forseeable future- i’ve got plenty to work on cleaning up and rebuilding for a while.

Hopefully I’ll be finding a shop to do the rocker panel repairs soon. I’ll also be picking up a MIG welder so that I can begin on the floor and other damaged areas once that’s done.

2/29/2004: The Website Goes Public

I’ve been developing this site on and off since I began this project, at the end of last summer. Finally I’ve sorted out the remaining details and have decided it’s time to open the site to the public.

If that’s you, then welcome! Please let me know if you have any questions or problems with the site.

At the moment things are going a bit slowly on the car, but I think it will pick up again, now that the weather is finally starting to warm up.

2/29/2004: Heater, Wiper Motor

I decided to continue on stripping the dashboard area. My goal is to get all the stuff that needs to be refurbished out of there, leaving just stuff that can be masked off when it comes time to paint the car.

Yesterday, I removed the windshield wiper motor assembly. (Note: there appear to have been grey rubber gaskets between the chromed bases on the outside and the body ofthe car.. THey were totally disintigrated, though. On the inside of the car, rope caulk was wound around the threaded section.

Once that was out, I finished bead blasting the intake manifold and painted it with Eastwood Diamond Clear- we’ll see how that holds up.

I then tore down the engine mounts so that the metal pieces can be repainted. One in particular was in pretty rough shape (rusty, snapped off stud, etc). I’ll probably swap it out with one from the spare parts pile.

This morning, I took off the windshield washer tubing and jets, then began to take the heater out. The heater box is held in by 4 bolts (the two at the top are hard to see- one of which was missing on my car, either because it was never installed in the first place or because someone has worked on this before, I don’t know which).

I figured out the hard way that the heater core must come out before the heater box can be moved. If you do it the other way around, the pipes that go through the firewall can’t move enough to clear it. It would have been better if i’d removed the heater core before messing with those bolts.

The heater box is as rusty as you would expect it to be (it’s open to the outside world at the top, relying on drains to take the water out the bottom of the car). Nothing substantial though, easily cleaned up and painted.

I’m happy to say that the whole cowl area of the body seems perfect- no signs of rust at all.

1/31/2004: Dashboard

Today I managed to remove the radio and the dashpad. The dashpad is held in by three nuts. The center one is accessible through the radio opening and (through contortion) from underneath. The one on the right is harder to get to, but you can barely get a wrench on it and move it a few degrees. Fortunately it wasn’t rusted and I was able to take it off by hand after loosening it.

The left one was really inaccessible. I was able to barely get two fingers around it- a wrench would have been almost impossible. Lucky for me, it was loose enough that i could take it off with my fingers alone (slowly).

Possible signs that this part has been taken off before- the washers on the left and center ones were flipped opposite directions, and the one on the right was a different kind of washer altogether and it had an 11mm M6 nut on it instead of 10mm. Very strange.

With the top off, I could see the radio wiring (I’d just snipped the wires to take out the radio, since there was plenty of room to reconnect them if i decided I wanted to). As you can see, it was actually spliced twice. They didn’t bother to remove the wires from the old radio last time it was replaced- it was just spliced and re-spliced.

I also solved the mystery of where the speaker was. I’d been wondering where it was hidden. There’s one speaker, and it’s hidden behind a structural member, facing into it! I imagine it must give just delightful sound ;-)

I then took off the plastic housing around the steering column. I found that there was a rubber piece around the ignition wiring that was melted, and one wire that had burned through at some point and had apparently been disconnected. I’ll need to track down what the story is there with a wiring diagram.

Other than that, the wiring harness in the car looks fairly good- i saw one or two other splices, but nothing too scary- the radio was wired straight to the ignition switch, so nothing was cut up on its account.

The plastic arms on the turn signal stalks are cracked, so i’ll need to replace those. I have to check out #40912’s and see if they’re better.

The most irritating thing about the wiring harness in this car is that there are really no junction blocks anywhere. It’s not possible to remove sections of the wiring harness as a unit easily- it appears to me that one bundle of wiring could go to different parts of the car. I will investigate better once I get the heater out of the way and can see things better. Ideally it would be nice to take the whole harness out of the car to clean it up and make the tub of the car easier to sandblast and paint, when we get to that point. This may not be practical though.

Sunday, I continued with the dashboard, removing the grab handle, cigarette lighter, and stainless trim strip. I found that one of the mounting points had come loose from the trim- i’ll probably epoxy that back on, rather than trying to weld or braze to stainless.

Then I removed the heater fan. Like the cigarette lighter, it had an in-line wire spade connection wrapped in electrical tape- this doesn’t seem very “professional” to me, but it might be original- I don’t see how else you would replace components like this. I will compare with #40912.

1/29/2004: Misc Stuff..

I removed a few more bits off the engine

• centrifugal oil filter (gunk)
• oil separator
• fuel pump
• oil pressure fitting

I also noticed that one of the bolts that holds down the valve cover has been tapped out to a larger size, so it doesn’t match the other 3. I’ll have to look into that further- it may make sense to have a helicoil put in there when I have the valve job done. Also removed the two stainless trim pieces on top of the rear fenders. This required snapping off all 4 fasteners (requiring some contortion to get to two of them). They can be replaced without too much trouble, so i’m not going to worry about it.

I also tried to remove the stainless piece in front of the rear bumper. I got one screw out, got another to spin, and tried to drill two (with little success).

Will try again with a better drill bit and see how I do.

1/28/2004: Intake Manifold

Spent the day cleaning parts and sorting them into piles according to what needed what kind of coating applied. A number of fasteners spent last night and today in the tumbler, and came out pretty good.

I’m trying to get together a batch of parts to be sent out for zinc or cadmium plating.

I started to clean up the intake manifold. There’s a little valve inside the manifold which was totally gummed up. I got it loose and scraped the worst of the goo out of it.

I then started bead blasting the whole thing.

1/27/2004: Subframe 4

Monday afternoon, I picked up my subframe from Manchester Motor Car. They welded up a few holes, fixed some popped welds, and butt welded in two patches (in the rusty areas).

Here’s the before and after:

Next step is to fix the two “horns”, weld them back on, and then paint the subframe with POR-15, inside and out.

1/25/2004: Heater Valve

After a night soaking and a little heat from a propane torch, I got the heater valve unstuck.

Then I bent the tabs that hold the arm onto the valve shaft and removed it. I bead blasted the components individually:

Unfortunately, this blew holes right through the area of the valve back that was heavily corroded:

I have one more valve (on the engine that’s still in the barn at my mom’s house to try. Hopefully it’s in better shape.

1/25/2004: Heater Valve II

I went down to my mom’s house and took the other heater valve off the other engine there.

This one had an intact spring and the screws were less chewed up than the other.

The casting that was so corroded on mine was in much better shape on this one, and cleaned up well.

.. Except I found that it has a big crack in it. Gah. I don’t know if I did that while removing it, or if that was there, but there’s no way I can use this as it is.

My next option was to have either of these pieces welded, or to try to find another used one that’s in better shape.

On monday I went to talk to Danny at Fun Imported about this, to see if he had a better core I could start from or something.

As it turns out, he had a new one in stock for a reasonable price, so I decided to just go with that instead. Thus ends the saga of the heater valve.

1/23/2004: Subframe, Etc.

Earlier this week, I started to look at the air cleaner as a possible project. I took off the hose that connects the two pieces together and found a bit of original paint underneath that I will try to match. I have two air cleaner assemblies, the one out of my car and the one from #40912. I believe i’ll be using the lid from 40912’s, and the body from mine. The metal is fairly pitted, so this will be my first experimentation with real high-build primers and body fillers. I’ll have to wait for it to warm up before I can really do anything though.

I placed an order with C. Obert & Co. for the various bits I need (new hose, filter, sticker, etc).

I also ordered several types of foam from materialscraps.com. I hope to use it to replace the original foam gasket between the lid and the rest of the air cleaner. I was able to remove the old one intact, but it’s gone all gooey with age, and I don’t really think I can reuse it.

On Wednesday, I wire-brushed the whole replacement subframe, which had some light rust on it from sitting (I had it sandblasted a while ago now, but haven’t painted it.

Since i’m concerned about the rusty areas in the front, I decided to remove the two bent-up “horns” and see how things looked underneath them. (As far as I can tell, these pieces are just there to get scraped if you pull up too close to a curb, to prevent damage to the real frame- I may not bother replacing them, since the originals are so bent up anyway)

After sandblasting	Now (left)	Now (right)

As you can see, the metal was quite thin on both sides, and tore when I drilled and chiselled off the horns. Definitely will need to be repaired before I can paint this subframe.

But still, compared with what’s in the car now, I think it’s work fixing.

Yuck.

On thursday, I removed the accelerator cable and the centrifugal oil filter cover bolts, adding them to my pile of rusty hardware to be cleaned up.

I’ve been bead blasting all the components which I need to have zinc plated. Once I have enough collected together, I will count them up and start looking for a place to zinc plate them as one batch. I imagine there’ll be at least one more batch afterwards, with the things I miss the first time, but still, i’d like to knock out as much as I can in the first round.

The blasting cabinet is working wonderfully- i’ve set it up in my laundry room, which is adjacent to the garage, so i can run a hose through the door. That way, I can work in a heated space. It’s quite chilly in the garage lately.

While I was taking out the accelerator cable, I also took out the gas pedal. It’ll need to be painted or powder coated.

I removed the heater valve and started to disassemble it. I had to cut off one of the screws, but I did get it apart:

The spring is broken, and the valve was full of disgusting gunk, but the rubber diaphragm inside is not in bad shape.

The rotating shaft was wedged up solid, as was the screw that goes in to it. I left it to soak overnight in penetrating oil, which hopefully will free it up.

As it turns out, this heater valve is the same as on a ferrari 250 or 330. Naturally this means it costs $150 to replace, but it does mean there are some additional sources for parts. For instance, the rubber diaphragm appears to be available for about $15 through one of the ferrari vendors.

I also separated the carb from the manifold and started cleaning it up. The manifold is in the “to be bead blasted” pile now.

On friday i brought the “new” subframe to Manchester Motor Car Company. They’re going to weld in patches to fix the rusty sections on monday.

1/18/2004: Bead Blasting

Over lunch, I went out to New England Silica and bought a 50 lb bag of #10 glass beads for $24.00.

Glass bead is a relatively gentle media. It’s usually used for cleaning parts, but generally will not touch rust. It’s gentle enough to use on aluminum surfaces, leaving them clean, but not rough.

Here’s an example of what it does:

(in the first picture i’d started on the right-hand piece, in the second i’ve finished cleaning both)

It erases the corrosion, but doesn’t smooth out any scratches or surface imperfections that exist on the surface of the part. It’s interesting to see all the casting imperfections in these parts.

The parts are left with a slightly matte texture, but nothing objectionable. And of course it can be polished if that look is desired.

I’m currently trying to decide how to best protect these pieces from immediately re-corroding. I think i’ll try Eastwood’s Diamond Clear paint. Not sure yet though.

In the process of blasting, i started to have some problems with my blasting cabinet- it just wasn’t doing much. I took apart the blasting nozzle and found a piece of metal was wedged inside, partially blocking the flow of grit. Also the trigger valve was jamming up, so I oiled it to get it moving again. I also ordered a better quality replacement from TP Tools. Switching to their pickup tube made such a big improvement, i decided to go the rest of the way and switch over the blasting gun as well.

1/14/2004: Brake Reservoir

I started cleaning up the brake fluid reservoir. The plastic cup came clean pretty easily with some scrubbing and Simple Green.

For reference, here is what the assembly looks like:

You can see here where it was protected by the gasket, the bracket was originally zinc plated:

I think it will clean up pretty well.

1/11/2004: Tumbler?

Tonight I took apart the thermostat housing. As expected, the studs were thoroughly rusted and stuck in the aluminum. I snapped two off, but it was no big deal- once I separated the two pieces I was able to remove the studs with a pair of vice grips.

For reference, these studs are M6x35mm, and I will be replacing them (as well as the nuts and washers) with new studs.

I threw a small batch of other hardware into the vibratory tumbler I bought from Eastwood. Using the green pyramid media, it seems to take a long time to get the rust off, but it does eventually work. I think I may have had too much media in there to start with, so things weren’t tumbling very effectively.

Once the rust was gone (several days, all told, running it a few hours here and there), I switched the parts over to the “dry shine” media. I let it run all day while I was working, and the bolts came out nice and shiny.

I’ll be experimenting with this process some more over the next few weeks. I’m also looking into how to get these pieces plated, so they don’t just rust again. I’m inclined to try to find a shop to do it, rather than use a Caswell kit. Depends on how much it costs though.

01/05/2004: Model History Information

I’ve added a bunch of content to the Reference Information section of the site, including an extensive Model History coverying all the cabriolet models and their predecessors.

I also added a set of Model Specifications with photos for each of the cabriolet models.

12/27/2003: Fun

Today Danny from Fun Imported Autos and Toys. As it turns out, he has a few of these cars himself, and stocks (or can get) many parts for them. Given the fact that he’s right up the street from me, this is rather convenient!

We looked over the car and discussed what parts he stocks and is able to get. He’s looking into a few things for me now, and we’ll follow up in the new year.

In general I was encouraged to have someone who’s familar with these old FIATs confirm that this car is really quite solid on the whole, compared to others its age.

12/16/2003: On the Engine Stand

NAPA had the proper size bolts to mount the engine to the stand. I had to go there twice though. On the first attempt my short bolts were too short and my long bolts were too long.

Second time was the charm, though, and the engine is now mounted on the stand. Tonight I sprayed the engine and transmission down with Gunk and hosed off some of the grease. Lookin’ good.

12/15/2003: Removing the Engine

Tonight I rented an engine hoist and pulled the engine. I removed the 4 bolts that hold the transmission mount to the subframe and transmission and supported the back of the transmission with a floor jack.

I then removed the two nuts which hold the engine mounts to the subframe. I With the steering fully to the left (to give a bit more clearance around the steering linkage), I was able to lift the engine up a bit and then forward to get the oil pan over the subframe. Then I started lowering the back of the transmission and raising the front of the engine.

At this point my cheap load leveller broke and I had to fiddle with it to get it somewhat functional (I reversed the threaded rod, removed the handle, and added another nut to help prevent it from slipping, as the threaded part of the sliding section was stripping out).

At that point I was able to get the engine tipped enough to clear the front of the engine bay. I couldn’t tip it back to a level position once it cleared this, so I had to lift the tail of the transmission up and over the fender.

I put the engine down on the floor and removed the transmission, clutch, and flywheel.

At this point I found that I didn’t have long enough bolts to mount the engine to my engine stand, and had to call it a night. Tomorrow I hope to find some suitable bolts (M12x1.5mm, and odd size) before I have to return the hoist.

Yay, empty engine bay!

11/30/2003: I Hate Captured Nuts

6 bolts hold on a plate that goes below the driveshaft tunnel, supporting the driveshaft center bearing and the emergency brake mechanism. Unfortunately, the nuts on the other side of the floor are inside of the seat mounting rails, and are just captured nuts, held by flimsy sheet metal boxes, which easily bent, letting the nuts spin.

Although two bolts were missing and one did come out on its own, the remaining 3 just spun no matter what I tried to do.

After trying to figure out how to hold the spinning nuts, I finally just gave up and used a cut-off wheel on an angle grinder and cut off the heads of the remaining 3 bolts.

Success! The plate is finally off!

I’ll have to remove the rest of the cut-off bolts and messed up nut cages when I repair the floor. I expect i’ll just drill access holes in the seat rails and use normal nuts when I reassemble this. It should be less troublesome.