'71 Fiat 850 Spider, a Sub-Liter Beater

That's the one I had bookmarked, Kenny. It's too late to get it here for the weekend, so I'll have to try Napa and whatnot.

So, despite the lack of updates and photos I have been fairly busy on the old girl. A few days ago my Fiance tossed a point and shoot camera in my general direction and said something along the lines of "This is your's now, since you broke the last one. Go tell your internet friends what stupid things you've been doing in the shop." Yes Ma'am.

A few weeks ago I started building up the spare 903 I had with a junkyard head. The 903 had been punched out to 65.6mm earlier in life, making it a whopping 919cc. I checked all the bearing clearances in the bottom end with a few lengths of Plastigage; everything was well within spec. The head was verified flat with a really high end machinists straight edge. I stole the newer timing set out of the 843 I took out, along with the cam and a few tappets that were missing from the 903. I came up one 903 pushrod short of a full set, but Ditchdigger was gettin' hitched and he had a whole slew of them kicking around, so I was only set back a few days.

Since the 903 block uses a 4 bolt waterpump instead of the 3 bolt like the 817/843 blocks, I had to make a new watercock.

The "new" engine found it's way into the bay very quickly.

So then, yesterday, she coughed to life for the first time with the new motor. And I drove it, quite illegally around the neighborhood. Then I smiled like a goon; toothily and, well, creepily. This morning I partially disassembled the Carb-O-Nator to clean a few years of neglect and E10 out of it. It was surprisingly clean. Some green E10 funk, a small amount of sediment in the float bowl, and one very gummed up idle jet.

ESPLOSIONS!</

This is an awesome build - always wanted to get an older car to work on and looked at a few when I got my current project car but decided the rust and fabrication skills were beyond my abilities, so stuck with something that's easier to modify.

Glad to see progress on this!

Me too! I took it for a little spin today. Still lots of tuning to do, but it's certainly running better now than it ever did in it's last guise. Acceleration is pretty lackluster until about 4500rpm or so, then it really starts to get it's E36 M3 together.

I've got a bunch of stuff on CL to fund the trip to the DOL/DMV to get it all squared away. Hopefully I can roll a few miles on it before the weather goes to OMGHOT.

Innovate LC-2 is on it's way. Gotta go junkyarding for a CLT and IAT sensor and some pigtails. I wonder how many MPGs I could eek out of the thing before I strap the Tarbonater to it.

Stupid PB won't rotate the images. Whatever.

I just wanted to call you out as one of my motivators with my X1/9 thread. I love your 850, and it gave me confidence in buying my own little wreck. Keep up the awesome work.

So, I finally got tired of being locked out of the glovebox. It's been broken shut for the 3 or 4 years that I've owned the car.

This is the most current registration. It predates me by a full two years, and expired in FutureWifes birth month.

And you thought you had a long-term project!

Oooh, a "Spicv"! Just one vowel away from "Spec V"!

This is excellent, can't wait for more progress. Keep it up!

Turbo 850? Yes. Please do.

I went looking for this thread today because a nice 850 Spider popped up on my local classifieds. Have you done anything more since the last post?

I have done a thing or two since the last update. I've discovered a lot poorly repair crash damage and some fairly significant rust in bad places. Both are conceivably fixable, but I'm not sure that I want to go down that rabbit hole at this time. It's kinda left a sour taste in my mouth and I haven't been extremely motivated to waste time and money on it lately. I feel like I could spend the next year of my life making it right, only to end up with a Fiat worth a insignificant sum to a small group of people.

But I did have a little bit of fun before things started to go south.

So, at this point the fate of the car is largely uncertain. As space, time, and money are tight, there is a very good possibility that it will be parted out so that my 850 Coupe can live on.

The way I see it, the vast majority of the money that I've put into the Spider could be unbolted from it and put directly onto the Coupe. The Coupe hasn't been hit (or at least not as hard as the spider) and a much younger Burrito Enthusiast already performed (almost) all the rust repair.

If I had the space, I would just mothball the Spider and come back when things change. I can't see that happening any time soon, so a partout is likely the answer. If that's the route I go, it will live on as the Coupe; I'll pretend I'm a Native American, and it a Buffalo. I will use every last scrap of sheet metal, every last inch of wiring, etc. to make the Coupe live on.

Probably not the update you were hoping for, right? Me either.

I was kind of worried there was going to be more damage to come when you were talking about how bad the headlight bucket was. Someone doesn't fix a prang that poorly when it's the last thing wrong with it.

It's a shame that you can't save them all, but at least the car will live on in a fashion instead of being abandoned in a field like most of its siblings.

So, I guess this thread is about the Coupe now. Jumping straight in with some rust repair.

A previous owner tried to replace the drivers outer rocker panel. I use the word "try" loosely.

So I cut it and a small section of the inner sill off.

Super awesome work, PO!

Coming right along.

I've started parting out the Spider and so far things are going pretty well. The engine went away last night, and a few more parts are heading out via post to sunny California tomorrow. Some of the smaller, more desirable parts are heading to ebay in hopes of recouping the most money possible, whereas the larger items will probably just languish on Craigslist for the next few years...

I'm hoping to have the Spider gone, or ready to go, by the end of the weekend. I'm about halfway through a (hopefully only) 16-day-straight stretch of work right now, so shop time has slowed down a bit.

There's a 40 year old German Tranny I picked up on Craigslist waiting to be serviced on my bench as I type. 5 forward gears is as much as I will say right now. The new power plant has been decided on and I'm fairly certain I can successfully mate the two aforementioned items together with minimal fuss.

Ooh, and I'm buying a shrinker/stretcher. Excited business, I'll say.

Dang, sorry to see the spider go. It was always a point of light in my darkest X1/9 nights. However, great work on the coupe. Reminds me of where I was a few years ago with the X. Keep the updates coming.

Burrito Enthusiast wrote: There's a 40 year old German Tranny I picked up on Craigslist waiting to be serviced on my bench as I type.

...

mblommel wrote: Dang, sorry to see the spider go. It was always a point of light in my darkest X1/9 nights. However, great work on the coupe. Reminds me of where I was a few years ago with the X. Keep the updates coming.

Your X is my favorite, hands down. You've absolutely nailed the exact look I would seek if I went down that particular road. It's actually the car I show SWMBO every time one comes up for sale locally.

Not much happened last week. 16 days of work in a row, mostly 9 and 10 hour shifts with one 13 thrown in for good measure. But today, today was different. Today I got to spend as much time as I wanted in the shop. Too bad it was cold as berkeley in there.

Best thing ever. I just need to figure out how to get a few pair of spare boots hung on that thing and I'll be unstoppable.

The spider is almost completely gutted. Only a few items remain to be removed.

Sorta a somber mood, really; Cutting up a car I've spent so much time thinking about. I just keep telling myself that it is for the greater good.

The coupe is going to be bad berkeleying ass. Current inspiration is as follows.

In reply to Burrito Enthusiast:

Thanks for the kind words regarding the X!

Is there nobody that would take the Spider shell and save it from being made into melted down and made into harbor freight tools?

In reply to mblommel:

List it for free on here and craigslist, then odds are 20 years from now it will pop up on craigslist and we can bicker about whether or not it was right for some redneck to turn it into a drag car or monster truck.

Well, Pick 'n' Pull offered me a whopping $33 for it, so I'm inclined to send it straight to the shredder at this point. Oddly enough, I was watching the first TMNT movie yesterday while tearing it apart...

I'm going to ask one of the guys down at the shop if I can push it into his holding area before I cut it up. It has some good sheet metal left on it and would really be pretty useful if someone had a rusty or crashed car of their own.

That being said, it does need to move in a timely manner. I Get a little bit more depressed every time I see my Scirocco out in the elements and the spider is in it's spot.

So, uhhhh.

The shop looks surprisingly ok, considering a car just got destroyed in it.

A feel like a considerable weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Next time I want to drag another project home, somebody slap me.

slap you with what? 20.00 bills? I don't see much dis-enabling on this forum! I thought I heard Taps playing. Sad to see her go, but as organ transplants, something wonderful will happen.