After the AGM I decided it was time to take the car off the road and use the time during the winter months to get as much work on it done as possible – all in preparation for spa. Mad I hear you say

Im not aiming for a monster coupe at this stage, I just wanted to make a few enhancements, and ensure that everything is tiptop! I decided to make myself a list to make things a bit more manageable.

SPA Shopping List
New Eibach springs / New Bilstein Shocks / New Wishbones, Droplinks, Track Rod Ends, Top Mounts and Coil Bearings / Silicon Water Hoses / New Header Tank / New Alloy Rad / De-rust and Waxoyl car / Refurbish hubs, Brembos and rear brakes / Detail engine bay / Strip all interior out – soundproof, clean and derust (pinnin badges) / Respray Bumper and remove corrosion in arches / belts and oil pipes / Remap (and probably a few other bits)

Here are a few pictures of how I have been getting on:

Removed Archliners
Sanded back and treated rusted areas. Applied Rust treatment and then undersealed the whole arch. Fitted liners back on.


Removed Old Suspension
- Thanks MARCO20VALVET for all your help with this!!!

Unfortunately while removing one of the droplinks the thread snapped on the antiroll bar 
Will have to source one soon and replace it…


Not A Fan of The Cold

While we had the gorgeous weather…. I decided to keep myself busy I would start prepping things for the engine bay and various other parts. My rear brake disc covered were completely rusted. I brought some new ones and noticed that the paint was soo thin and cheap it would only be a matter on months before they started to rust again. I gave them a few coats with Zinc Primer and then started with the Hammorite. The more coats the better IMO… I don’t want to have to change these for a while!


I also refurbished my horns and horn brackets! Halfords Rubber spray paint gave a really nice effect on the lower part of the horn, and I just used black paint with a few coats of lacquer on the top. Again after sanding down I used Hammerite Kurust followed by Zinc Primer to offer better protection.


Next Step…

In the next week I will be fitting all of the new suspension – Cant wait to see how much difference this will make on the car! Pictures to follow

Also those of you removing bolts or infact anything on the car that may be a bit siezed.... this stuff was a godsend and worked a treat!!

A little update on progress,

Its been a busy weekend, most of it spend dicking around with the ARB!
Friday night marco came round and we decided it would be a good opportunity to remove the broken ARB




With the aid of some flood lights, a few phone conversations with joe and lots of tea we got the job done before midnight.
In order to get the ARB out we had to remove the bolt from the gearbox mount, remove all off the subframe bolts and only then was there enough clearance to pull the ARB through.

The new ARB was fitted and at the same time some nice new PowerFlex Bushes were added



I also used this time to fully underseal the front arches in prep for the new suspension.
I sanded and treated any rust in the arches first with:
Hammerite Kurust and then applied Hammerite Underbody Seal (great stuff btw)


Inbetween downpours of rain (god i hate working on the car outside) the new billies/eibachs combo were fitted to the front and rear. Along with new top mounts, coil bearings, wishbones, drop links and track rod ends.
I had also done a quick refurb of my hubs before i fitted them.


(as a self respecting italian I must point out that the can of spaghetti hoops is not mine!)

Ive also finished refurbishing the brembos in preperation to refit

Full thread Here

I will upload some pictures of the suspension fitted in a day or two when i get the time.

Next Step:
Derust and repaint engine bay
Fit Alloy Rad
Fit Water Hoses

Ahh my coupe is looking a little worse for wear at the moment
It will all be worth it im sure



Big Thanks again to Marco20ValveT for all his help over the weekend

I havent updated this thread for a while as ive not had the time.
Good progress has been made with the car the past few weeks.

Suspension

Front
ARB & powerflex bushes fitted
Eibachs and Billies Fitted with new Coil Bearings and Top Mounts from AA
New wishbones, drop links and trac rod ends fitted
I also replaced the inner cv boots

Rear
Eibachs and Billies fitted
Fitted Rear Disc Guards. When you buy these the quality of the paint is very very poor. It really doesnt take much to scratch or chip these. I gave them a few coats of zinc primer followed by 4 coats of black hammorite. Hopefully these will last longer than the last ones...




Brakes

Yellow Stuff pads fitted front and back
Brembos refurbished and fitted
Just need to refurbish the rears now

Braided hoses to be fitted however due to my lines being in poor condition im going to get my dad to sort these out at the garage inc making new lines.



Hel Braided Hoses

Cosmetic
Painted the front cross member.
Painted top of new rad to make it look like the OE Ones
Refurbished Heat Shield



On saturday Nismo came over to give me a hand
Upon arrival he was greeted with this:





We fitted all of the silicon water hoses from rogs group buy.
A few of them needed cutting down slightly but all in all it wasnt the worst job in the world.
The hardest bit is getting the CHOD in place...
My original hoses went in that bad condition however I was shocked to see the bodge that had been done with my CHOD.
It would appear that my CHOD was bulging at one point and rather than replacing the hose they just chopped it down

We also fitted my nice semi new coolant bottle and washer bottle, refurbished rad support bar, new rad and refurbished slam pannel. The system was bled and alowed to get up to temp.



The car will be on its way to completion as on Wednesday its getting trailerd to my dads garage (autovilla) to have some bodywork done and the last few jobs.

One thing I did notice while fitting the arches back on was:





New belts as well then!

... oh and my nice new oil pipes



I cant wait to drive the car again, its been sorn since the AGM!

You have probably seen Marcos recent thread... well as they say all things happen in two's. While helping Marco my car was being picked up to go to my dads garage (autovilla.co.uk) to have a few bits done bodywork wise:

- Front Bumper Repaired / Resprayed
- Side Skirts Removed / Repaired / Resparayed
- Small Dent on Drivers Rear Quater
- Grind back and fix / spray all arch lips



Well I got a call from my old man yesterday telling me to come to the garage because the bodyshop needed to speak to me... o dear I thought not another surprise.

I get there and find some sheets of metal that have been painted in various shades of red. They were infact every red paint code asociated with the coupes. . . The sprayer then said what colour is your car. . . Speed Red I replied. He gave me the sheet of metal with speed red and it didnt match at all, infact none of the reds did.

It appears whoever sprayed the car before did not have a digital scale and mixer (like they do) and probably mixed the paint by eye/hand. To be honest I was never happy with the quality of the paint job, it clearly must have been a mates rates deal as you do not expect your arches to start bubbling after two years!

I was left with two options...

- Pay £700/800 to get the bits done I wanted and for it to look crap and not match
or
- Go all out and have a full respray.

Those of you who have used my old mans garage know they arnt cheap, especially the body shop. I do a lot of IT Work for them so I will get a Good Deal however its still going to cost me around the 2k mark...

While they are respraying it I will be having a few parts sand blasted along with some new chassis legs as mine started to rot and im trying to blag a front cross member which ive noticed they have a few in stock!!!

Prep work has started....
Glass should be removed at some point in the next few days

She is looking sad



Going to cut these at the spot welds and retrofit them onto the coupe. They are pretty much an identical match
Not a bad find... in the junk pile in the loft of the garage



Looks like mine isnt the only Fiat in for a respray

Another update on the restoration process:

Parts have arrived back from the sandblasters and have been primed.
The slam panel is going to look



A few other bits back from the blasters:



I have new mounting brackets for both front and rear bumpers as mine were rusty - as with most coupes.
Luckily we found some from a punto (i think) the bottom box section is identical to the coupe.
We cut them from the spot welds and welded them in their new home



My B-Pilars, Door Handles and Badges are also being sorted, this is after one coat only.



Im having the 20v and Turbo (red badges) sprayed to match the speed red colour of the car. The titaniam strip on the badge will stay the same as it hasnt faded.



Not long now hopefully

Comments Thread Here

The end is near

While the car was being primered and preped for paint we made some new brackets for the side skirts and welded them in place. The old brackets were either missing or the screwes had sheared inside them.



We also found a rad cross member from an alfa of some sort. It was the same size as the coupe one but was bent differently at the ends, the screw holes were also slightly off.
A grinder and plasma cutter soon got it looking identical to the coupe one. We removed the brackets from the old cross member and spot welded them onto the new one.
Looks pretty dam good compared to my bodge hammorite jobby on the original one.



A few other bits



I popped into my Dads today and the car was having its first coat of paint... Not long now, I really cant wait to get it back!

Ive not updated this thread in a while so thought I should give an update as to whats going on with the car.

Sunday My Dad and I opened up the garage so we could do a few finishing touches to car before the bodyshop re-assemble and give it a final mop.

What started off a simple job turned into a bit of a nightmare. We needed to remove the power steering pump pully as there was a rather large chunk missing from it.



We had problems getting the bolt out, it was just spinning, In the end it was grinded out.
I was shocked to see the state of the inside of the pully... how on earth did that happen??



Power steering pump and bearing were removed/destroyed and replaced... Cheers for sorting that out Joe!



We Changed the coolant, Changed the oil for Selenia Racing 10w60 and Changed the brake fluid for DOT 5.1
While doing the brake fluid we fitted the HEL braided lines...



Also fitted a new shiny new aircon rad to match the new rad I had fitted previously



Hopefully the car should be back with me this friday! Fingers Crossed!!!

oo and just to add. I managed to get the courage together to do a compression test while we changed the plugs.
11 Bar bang on across all 5 cylinders

Discussion Thread Here

Little Update:
The car is FINISHED
Just waiting for MOT and Wheel Alignment now

Here are a few pics after the respray taken on my phone!
Will get some nicer ones soon

CAR IS FINISHED WOOO

CLICK HERE FOR PICS

Yeah ok I lied... car isnt finished.....

I just cant help myself

So its that time of year 6 weeks before SPA and ive decided to loose even more hair and try and get all the following done:

Clutch - Done
Belts - Done
All rear brake hard lines changed

Fit the Following:
Pro Allow FMIC
3 Inch Down pipe
Ported Manifold
GT28R Turbo
New Rocker Cover
New Plenum/New Fuel Rail
Colder Plugs
3.8 Bar FPR
Fuel Pump Mod
Gizzmo Boost Controller
Ferrari Yellow Brembos and Rear Calipers
Remove Braided Brake lines and replace with standards (im sorry i just dont trust them)
Ported and polished throttle body

Remap as well...

COMMENTS THREAD HERE

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