now. on to repairing all of the holes i put in the chassis. i started with repairing the frame horn connections. here is the starting point on the passenger side....
now. on to repairing all of the holes i put in the chassis. i started with repairing the frame horn connections. here is the starting point on the passenger side....
where o where can i find the metal to fix these holes....... hmmmmmm. how about........
formed panel waiting to be welded in....
tacked in place. needs cleanup...... i have to admit the gas lines right below the panel were interfering with my concentration on the welds.....
the bigger hole needed a little more than sheet metal. i decided to put some reinforcing in the hole to rough out the basic shape and geometry. once again the old chassis was generous with itself offering up the torsion springs from the trunk deck hinges for my use.... such a giving soul it has......
unfortunately this is where the project ended as the general ickiness of my welds clued me in to the lack of shielding gas in my tank....
dough!
tune in again next week!
went back at it today. a comfy 46 degrees with 15 mph winds. who needs a garage..... i do! it was cold so few pictures. i cut panels from cardboard templates and fit them in the steel rod frame.
finished view from the engine side
finished view from inside
So let's see you are going to put a fiat spider body on a Miata sub frame with a ford motor. I have this correct? Sounds like fun. I do have a little bit to say on your assessment of the fiat parts that you say are not available. The rear end on the manual yes is limited on gearing. Now a rear end from a automatic I believe is a spicer third member unit. Plenty of choices for gearing there. Plus it is a 3.57 to start with. Little more hp friendly on the car.
The wheels yes being a 4x98 bolt pattern are not the easiest thing to find but there are plenty of offerings if you look at other makes. Maserati biturbo rims work well and come in a 14x7 size that bolts right up, Early alfa's have the same pattern before going to the 4x108 and I've run across a few 15x7's for not much more than a tune up on some cars. Lancia's have some 14x6 that work well. heck I even have a few 13" that I don't need with some 205/60/13 tires.
As far as a nice easy upgrade for the front brakes is to get the vented rotors from a vw golf or jetta and the calipers. Much better fad resistance and longer life even with using a good set of pagid or hawk track pads. Stopping is very impressive just with that and it still works with 13" rims.
The front suspension well that is something of a pain. About the only thing I have looked at is changing it over to the factory rally specs. It gives a little better adjustments for the tarmac than the stock setup it has now. Plus changing it to a rack n pinion as I haven't been able to figure out a way to get a quicker ratio box in it to work well.
That's just a few of my observations on the fiat aspect of your build. Other than that it still look's like a fun way to piece together a fun car.
thanks for the info. it wouldnt solve all of the issues we considered but it is definitely ore options than i found on the fiat spider forum.
so one of the lingering issues we are working through is the exhaust path. the starter on the drivers side of the motor definitely restricts the ability to use the headers we had for the truck in the conventional way. it seems the easiest access for the exhaust is to flip the headers and go forward with the exhaust flow, around the crank, and between the control arms on the opposite side and out. which got me thinking...... what about turbocharging the lump? we originally planned to feed it NOS for the drags, but with all the room we have between the motor and radiator..... and the fact that i am aiming the exhaust forward anyway, what about turbocharging? how do you pick a junkyard turbo for a 4.0 L engine that never had one as an option? looking on the turbonetics site it looks like an airworx 8400SX 110mm s75 compressor has the best map, but how do the grm folks id junkyard turbos without the maps?
observation. bed frame angle is really brittle crappy stuff, and every time i've welded it it has later broken near the welds, even in non load situations. keep a close eye on those mounts over time and maybe paint them white to easily spot cracking before having a really bad situation arise
Ok now you're talking. I like the sound of the turbo as long as it gets run to the back exiting in the stock location. That or out of the hood. Either one works for me
Very good points on being careful with the junk metal but I don't think these rails were original to the bed frame. Most of the bed frame rails I have found use rivits at the ends to seat into the grooves on the head and foot boars. This had hardware store bolts and the metal appears to be actual structural angle not bent plate like most newer bed frames. I've used that stuff before (to make my first welder cart actually) and you are right. It fatigues breaks really easily. But now you do have me second guessing my analysis so I may see if I can get it looked at to evaluate it before we start driving with these mounts though
This weekends goal is to begin placing the fiat body on the miata chassis. i'm starting with the rear quarters and working my way forward. I started by taking a board and hanging it along the wheels of the fiat. centerpoints of the axels were identified and then junction points of the body panels were laid out as hashes on the board. I measured the height of the various points f rom the door sill line to get a height from the miata's door sill line since i plan to use the miata door sills and rockers. In addition to maintaining the stability of the miata's chassis the fiats rockers are too far gone to reuse anyway. the difference in wheelbase is only about 1/2" with the miata being slightly shorter. i started by removing all of the trunk from the miata chassis.
this post was duplicate. sorry.....
i have to admit that when i finished bobbing the miata i was momentariliy distracted by the idea of making a rear wheel drive mini cooper instead..... maybe 2018?
finally it was time to disect the fiat. for a moment i paused thinking maybe i shouldn't do it. the idea of doing the mini helped with that. but once i started looking at what was needed to remove the parts i realized this fiat is too rusty to be anything but a challenge car. 3 hours later the rear quarters valance, and trunk deck panel were removed.
then
by this time the sun was setting fast so time to clean up. back at it tomorrow!
This is getting interesting! You cant leave me hanging there, put the rear clip on!!!!
Wish I was closer cause I am on the hunt for the rear framerails that you bobbed off the back of the Miata. Wonder what they would cost to ship to michigan?
i spent the day alternating between stoking the fire in the fire pit and test fitting the rear clip. my goal was to save as much of the miata chassis and reinforcement as i could. so i started with minimal cuts above and ahead of the rear suspension. after a good bit of very careful and cautious trimming the test fit was a little.... well. see for yourself.
time to get more aggressive. with successive trimming i would place the clip over the car and try to find the point of contact that was holding up the clip.
second try helped a little
third try was better
fourth try a little more successful fifth try a little more....
i had to pull off a lot more of the interior reinforcing than i wanted to. i was hesitant to do it and its probably why it took 5 (actually a lot more than 5. that was just the stops i photographed) to get somewhere. but gradually i came to realize that reinforcing can be added back and since i dont have to worry about speakers, air conditioning, and a fold down top it wont be hard to find a way to re brace what remains..... so
and so here we are. miata with a fiat rear clip in the foreground and the remains of the donor fiat in the background.
it isnt welded in yet as i want to reconstruct some of the interior reinforcing, paint the cuts, and fit the doors on to match the contour at the front of the rear quarters before its set permanently. but all in all i'm pleased.
Looking good.
What windshield are you going to use?
One of the places where I got lucky was with the Volvo A-pillar line of sight.
The Miata is wider and if the seats had been further apart, the stock miata seating and pedal position would have had me looking into the Volvo A-pillar.
Knowing what I know now, I would measure the center to center distance of the donor seats and compare to the Miata. If the Miata is much wider, then you could have an issue with the body donor's a-post being in the line of sight. Narrower would not matter.
Why did you bob the rear frame rails? If you had left them full length, they look like they would have tied in to the back of the Fiat clip quite nicely?
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