New member - 1969 AS

[ARD]

Hi all,

Picked up my new 1969 Fiat Spider on Friday, and very much enjoyed driving it a couple of hundred miles over the weekend. The car is in great condition in general, having been imported from California in the 90s, but has sat doing barely 1500 miles in the last 15 years. I previously had an Austin Healey Sprite (a later Mk IV) and am enjoying the slightly bigger, more comfortable and frankly better driving Italian beauty.

Thanks,
Andrew

[18Fiatsandcounting]

Welcome, Andrew. I too have a '69 spider that has been in the family since the original purchase, and while I've had other cars of that general era (MGB, TR6), the spider always had the best balance of features in my view. If you have any questions on your car, someone on this forum will likely be able to help out.

-Bryan

[ARD]

Thanks for the welcome! My two main questions at the moment are:
1. Are there any well supported clubs in the UK with regular meetings etc? With the Sprite I was a MASC member and enjoyed meeting up, seeing other people’s cars, and having someone in real life to ask advice from!
2. Any thoughts on changing the steering wheel? I’m the opposite of Italian, vaguely tall with longish legs and (I think) normal arms, although I’ve never thought about it before!! Either way not getting properly comfortable and finding my knees up round the steering wheel and still struggling to reach the top of the wheel comfortably. I was looking at the Nardi ones, but is 350mm too small on the diameter which the ‘deep corn’ ones are?

Currently the cold running is a little rough - however the car has hardly run in the last few years so planning to use it for a couple of weeks then investigate in a bit more detail when I have a spare weekend. In theory the garage checked the tune as part of the pre-sale checks but I’ll work through it methodically.

[18Fiatsandcounting]

I have to admit that I am not at all familiar with Fiat clubs in the UK, although Google is your friend and a little online searching might prove fruitful.

As for the steering wheel, yes, it does seem that Fiats are set up in the classic Italian driving style of arms stretched way out with the pedals much too close. Perhaps suitable for orangutans, but for people, not so much. I'm sure many others on this forum have changed their steering wheels, and perhaps someone can offer guidance. For me personally, I've just lived with the original steering wheel, although I have invariably put one of those stretchy fake leather steering wheel covers around the outer rim to make them more "grip-able".

-Bryan