I broke down and took my PITA, I mean, FIAT to a mechanic to do many things I could not do myself. The brakes, particularly, I wanted professionally done so that I could stop safely.
* Got cooling system and heater core repaired/replaced. Lots of new hoses!
* Replaced rear calipers as they were leaking...quite badly actually.
* Replaced master cylinder for almost as bad a reason.
- Brakes now work!
* Had an alignment done.
* New tires, shocks to come.
* Replaced fuel filter.
We *finally* figured out why my Fiat wouldn't start after running once...but before I say what the issue was, here is the back-story...
Last year, I was driving back from having new tires put on and *wham*...it was like I was running on half a cylinder. I limped it the last 2 blocks home where she died and would not start again. As the mechanic looked at it, a wire from my coil to my distributor (which I replaced as it was all melted) had come loose and got eaten up. I never checked it after I replaced it...had I done so, the car would have fired up again. However, it still was a matter of restarting after running it once. I would need to leave it overnight and come back the next day before it would start again. This was something I couldn't figure out.
My guess was a bad cold start valve. Other guesses from people were along the lines of a different faulty part, fuel filter/pump, or something else.
The mechanic found that one of the previous owners had grounded something to the wire leading up to the cold start valve...making it stay open and flooding the engine. The valve actually works perfectly. They undid the damage and the car (with the other repairs) runs very very well! We don't know what the something was. We guessed that they may have been trying to get more fuel into the engine to make it go faster. But, we really don't know for sure.
I took it up and down I-5 at 65 MPH for around 110 miles with no problems, having a few stops along the way. (Did faster and faster, longer and longer trips to test it out first.) Can I say now that I really LOVE the Shorter Shifter compared to the factory one! Now that I can drive the car, I really appreciate the difference in using it. But I digress...
What a fun little car!!! I am going to drive it some before doing any sort of restoration/clean up during the Winter. I've had it 2 years and I am *finally* getting to drive it!!! Going to hit up a few local wineries this weekend, I think I'll take a few pictures at these beautiful places.
