1974 Fiat 128 Sedan for the Bride of Burrito.

I've been pecking away at a few things.

Got the wagon rear spring tossed in, almost without issue.

Here's the sedan spring vs. the wagon spring.

Broke an m6 bolt that Fiat decided should be made out of room temperature cheese instead of steel.

Which got drilled out and threads chased.  Always a nice reminder that every 20 minute job is a broken bolt away from being an absolute ordeal.

The new spring raised the rear of the car about 1/2" so we're rocking a little rake for the time being.

The car seems genuinely slower now that the rear tires don't rub every time you stick your foot in the throttle.

I drained and dropped the tank and replaced the fuel level sending unit.  I'm pretty sure they were north of $200 when I put the car together and I just didn't have the money at the time.  A few weeks ago I grabbed a NOS unit out of Greece for $43 shipped, so no idea what happened to the market on those, but I'm not complaining.

Totally the same but completely different.  Luckily there were some unused ports in the gas tank above where the filler neck enters, so I rerouted the return line there, and strangely it no longer sounds like someone is pissing in the tank fulltime.

It took a considerable amount of faffing about, but I did eventually figure out the wiring and got the gauge working properly.  The old fuel sender was broken long before I swapped the gauges for 850 Spider (?) units x number of years ago.  Really wish I had left myself some notes, but I figured it out eventually.

Love this car. 

Excellent work

I've struck out on the cheap, local options for 4 speed transmissions.  So I'm planning on keeping the current trans until it properly E36 M3s the bed and forces my hand.

One of the things the 5 speed has always done is leak from the driver's side inner CV/tripod joint boot.  I think all of the 5 speed yugo inner boots are NOS bits from 1991.

In my mind this is a 6 year old rubber part, but in reality it's probably a 32 year old rubber part that was on a dormant car for 6 years.

Call it future proofing, or maybe frugality, but I've got a perfectly good 128 4 speed boot just sitting here.  And since the X1/9 shares that bit, you can still get them.

I turned out a cute little boot barb deal on the lathe.

It'll go in the flange repair plate thing I made 6(!) years ago.

Couldn't help but toss it back in the lathe to clean off those mediocre welds.  

I'm 100% still under the delusion that that ziptie is temporary.  

Had to do a little parts bin shopping to get it to work.  So now I've got a 4 speed half shaft, inner boot, and outer CV, with a 5 speed yugo inner tripod joint.  I had to machine the half shaft slightly to get the tripod joint to seat properly on the splines, but otherwise everything went together like a big Italian/Yugoslavia Lego set.

I treated the trans to 3 quarts of fresh Redline MTL, and it seems a lot happier, maybe even a little quieter.  It also seems to be retaining "all" of it's oil at this time, which is a big win.

Some human colostomy bag stole my van Sunday, 7/16, so the Fiat is my primary means of transportation now.  I've got a few of the bugs worked out of it, and it honestly goes down the interstate at 70 pretty damn well considering.

I think I'm almost to the point where I can coast on the project a little bit, which is good because I have race prep to do on the MX bike and Nova maintenance/sale prep to do.

Maybe next time I'll clean off a workbench so this isn't just a bunch of pictures of me awkwardly holding things with my dirty fingernails.  Probably not though.

That came out great!

Saw your van ordeal on IG. Sucks, hopefully they find it and all the stuff inside. 

That boot adapter is slick! Nicely done!

Just saw the van was found along with the bike! Awesome news!

But dont put aside the Fiat now!

Yep, the burrito van is back!  I lost a lot of my riding kit, all of my camping kit (minus cooler, which only got brought inside because I wanted a beer), but the both the van and Suzuki TS90 are home and are both surprisingly unberkeleyed.

I'll make someone a good deal on a high mileage, high roof/tall door Econoline....

In reply to Ethnic Food-Wrap Aficionado :

Man, what a relief about the van. You must be over the moon. 

Nothing much to report here.  I've been commuting in the old girl 4-5 days a week since the last update and it's been just as sweet as a peach.  I think the only things I've done lately is revive both the windshield wiper motor and heater blower motor, since the mornings are starting to be dewy.  We've owned this car 8 years (I think), and this is the first time the wipers have worked.  Which is totally fine because we definitely don't live in a temperate rainforest or anything.

In other news, I'm working hard to get a few sets of Ossa expansion chambers out to help fund the next project.

I've got to finish these four, then one for a different customer, then maybe two for me if I'm not totally burned out on sheet metal work by then.  So, it'll probably be pretty quiet here for a while, unless the car totally E36 M3s the bed.

And of course, still going old bike racing to get the aggression out and keep the competitive spirit happy.

In reply to Ethnic Food-Wrap Aficionado :

What was the issue with the WW motor? On my 124 the motor was never an issue, it was the plastic gear that would always split and then bind up. Even though that car is long gone, when 3D printing came out I thought it would have been a perfect fit for a NLA factory weak item.

In reply to hobiercr :

Like pretty much everything else with this car, it was just corroded contacts and dirty grounds.  Once I got a whole 12v and a ground path to the motor, they took off and parked properly. 

I dropped a whopping $1.38 a set for wiper refills on closeout from RockAuto, and nabbed a few spares to make the shipping fees make sense.   With any luck I'll get to use them before the car rusts in half.

Are expansion chambers black magic? I know it's all tuned waves and such, but it looks like such a dynamic environment to even design within, what with the bends and the multiple diameter changes.

buzzboy said:

Are expansion chambers black magic?

Yes.

The bends in these are quite a bit harsher than you would want to see on a tuned performance pipe, but the buyers specifically asked for something that wouldn't look out of place or too modern on the over-restored museum pieces that will wear them.   If they were for me, I probably would have done the belly in 4 or 5 cones to give it a nice graceful swoop and keep everything more concentric.

The pressure waves don't care about changing direction, so long as it's a smooth transition.  Concentricity is a big power killer, though.  The baffle cone is pretty far from ideal on these, but that's life.

I'm working off of a spec sheet from 1971 for these, so I didn't have to do any math beyond the little bit required for the layout work.

The amount of math that goes into making a properly tuned expansion chamber is intense, and I'm at best a fledging when it comes to that part of it.  Luckily these just have to look good in someone's living room.

Totally binge read most of this thread at work today (slow day). Little cars and old motorcycles are awesome!!!