second time around

[flatlander]

Owned my first, a '70 Spider that I bought in '73 with about 7K miles on it for $1200. Drove it 'til it had just under 200K on the odometer, when the rear end started to whine so I traded it in on a '76 Lancia Scorpion. If I had known then what I know now about how easy it is to swap a rear end, I might still have that car. The Scorpion was fun (and faster than the Spider) but never as good a car overall. About 6 years ago, I decided to find another fun-to-drive car (the Scorpion went away 20+ years ago); looked at lots of different options and settled on a Spider as my best option - this one is a '76. Brought it home and began to dismantle; removed every nut bolt and screw that I could find (except for the gear clusters in the tranny and rear end) and set about replacing all the wear parts. Took the body and most of the suspension to a dunk-tank stripper; spent about 18 months just getting all the pieces cleaned up. Had just started putting it back together when I let I guy I work with talk me into getting involved in a house flip - that ended up taking almost 2 years and was a money loser. By the time I got back to the Fiat, I had pretty much forgotten how it came apart, so putting it back together was a bit of a challenge - it is still not completely sorted out, but it is operational. Hope to work out the rest of the bugs this summer...


ready to go to the stripper


clean as a whistle


ready for primer


new leather on seats, door panels, dash, console, etc.


Black Cherry


expanded aluminum behind the stock grilles

[mdrburchette]

I hope you took the time to take pics while you did all this work. We love pics. Where are you located?

[flatlander]

I took quite a few pictures and intended to post a few with my introduction, but I am not clever enough to figure out how it is done. If you have any instructions, I am interested. I am in SW Washington, just a few miles north of Portland OR.

[mdrburchette]

There are several posts on how to add a pic, but try this one:
http://www.fiatspider.com/f08/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=686

[mdrburchette]

Here's a good one too:
http://www.fiatspider.com/f08/viewtopic ... res#p37831