things that already went wrong , dont get me wrong ,I like my spider very much , i spend all my free time searching stuff on the internet and i really want to learn , now i'm following evening school to learn a bit how a car works.
Last summer on a beautifull evening i went out to my best friends fathers café and i very much like riding the spider in the evening with an open top , especially when my bedroom is about 32°c
So we went there , had some drinks and on the way back i decided to make a sanatary stop on the side of the road . (maybe i should tell you first that the exhoust line on the car was from a 2000 model however someone swapped the motor into a 1600 model , so the whole exhoust line was to low on the car) So we stopped on the side on the road , what i didn't see @ that time was that there was an enourmus gap right there where i stopped , BANG ! the exhoust line hit the streeet and the manifold couln't take the hit and broke ...Disaster not only waking up the whole neightbourhoud , i dint realise what was happend . So i opend up the hood , but becouse it was dark outside i could't see what was happend ... np i 'm a smoker so i took my fire out of my pocket and illuminated the motor , not just a bit !! It set itself on fire becouse of a bad oilcap the whole cylinder was soaked in oil , you can imagine what happend , i lit on the engine , in no time flames where bursting out of my engine compartment . What a nightmare , no Fire extinguisher
My Friend already starting to run towards some spectators who i woke up whith the blastering sound of the broke of manifold , asking for a bucket of water. Anyone tried to extinguis burning oil with water ? Lucky for me i remebered a spectacular show of the firedepartment tryng to extinguis a frying pan , my luck i would be the pretty face i am now telling you this if i dind remebered ! Becouse whe where picknicking the other day i still had a blanked in the trunk , whe made that one wet and put that on the fire. After all i didn't have that much damage things could been a lot worse ...
After this fire i needed a new manifold so i went on searching and then was the first time i checked the motornumber and realised it was a 1600 instead of the 1995 that the papers stated ....
a few months later i thought it was time to clean out my engine bay , clean op the motor , maybe do some poliching here and there (like the shiny motors you see on pictures from die hard members) Not knowing anything about motors i tought this was something i could do with no hassle. If i wasnt been that thorrow tho... in my drift i bolted off the cams and took them in for a pollishing job . I dind't know that the timing belt had to be exact , i thought if you put it back on like you got it off it would be fine. So i did. I wanted to start the 124 and all she did was klik, KRAK . and nothing further .... Yay a hard lesson was learned , the timing belt has to be EXACKTLY lockaded all valves broke off , cylinderhead sevarly damaged (probably from keep trying and wondering why it dint start)
As i knew from the last time it wasn't a 2l but a 1600 so the time was right to get a whole new motor this time a 2000l Problem was i dint know anything about motors (as you should know by reading this far) and if i would buy a second hand motor i could easely be a golf motor as far as i knew. So looked for someone who had a motor and would do the swith also so i would see it work before pickup . Took me 3 months to find that someone but he was 200 Km away from my home so needed a towcompagny , my other car is a citroën c3 pluriel , you cant even tow a bike with that (but my girfriend wanted that one or i had to sell he spider to get something bigger ) Ok this guy worked on his spare time on my spider he did replace the motor , installed twin webers on it , replaced the radiator (it would not have leaked harder than it dit if you had mounted it upside down with no cap) replaced the waterpump , oilpump made a linkage for the twin webers replaced the stearing cullom (it was stuck not a bit of oil left in it , the guy amost crached severely becouse it blocked ) and he kept his word and dindn't ask anything more for all these improvements he made (about 1000€ for the motor, twin webers , new radiator and all the other pieces) After al i was happy becouse i didnt loose my spider and after not driven it for 5 months i really was hoping to get it ready for this summer
What i dint know and what he failed to mension is that the motor he replaced still had the original timing belt (probably for the last 15 years) So a few weeks back on the first sunny day we had i decided to take the spider for a spin I drove like 10 km and stopped for a quick snack. When i got back in and ready to leave i turned the egnition key and all she did was klik , KRAK.OMG the timing belt was broken , so i had let her fix again .... same result all valves where broken off again . Luckely this time i learned to know someone who does nothing than prepairing oldtimers for racing , this guy is now my mechanic he fixed her , again , for 600€ ....@ this point i realised i had to go and take lessons , in the end i would be a lot cheaper
Now i'm only allowed to do some things besides the motor (from my girfriend , and i really dont want to tell her once again the motor has been f*cked up again)
So there is where i am today , trying to clean up the wiring , hopefully i dont do anything wrong again
to be (dis)continued....
I am glad to see you are as determined to get things fixed as I am. Good money thrown after bad on a Spider is still cheaper and more rewarding than drugs and beer. It is also way cheaper than owning any boat made for saltwater! 
You won't know what to do with yourself once you get it fixed. What will you do with all that spare time and money?
(aldo now it is starting better , becouse the fuell pump isn't sucking air most of the time , solved that problem trough replacing the hose, now realising that was probably the couse of the bad starting issue i had before)
, cousing the new contactpoints to melt (@least the plastic thing that makes it go open and closed)
You deserve an award!
