1980 Fiat Spider restoration

Here's how my Fiat looked the day I bought it and brought it home. It was starting off in fairly good shape. The body wasn't great and it had a few rust holes, but overall it was a nice place to start.

I cleaned it up and took these "glamour shots" of it.

The interior wasn't bad either. I would say that the interior really just needed a deep cleaning and it was fine.

This shot must have been after I had replaced the stereo. As for other details about the interior, I removed the driver's side seat frame and took it to a machine shop to have them weld a couple of broken spots. I put the seat back together and it was as good as new. As far as the mechanics of the car went, I wanted to make sure I was on good footing right away. I had my timing belt and belt tensioner replaced. While that was off, I had the engine seals replaced. I also replaced the water pump and the water pump belt. I flushed the cooling system and replaced all of the hoses. Besides an oil change, new plugs/wires, and a mass air flow unit, that was about all it took to get the engine running wonderfully.

I replaced the master cylinder, added all steel brake lines, a new brake compensator, new rotors, a couple of new rear calipers, and new ceramic pads all the way around with the help of my friend Massimo. I had pictures of that in process, but have since lost them.

The heat was not working, so I pulled the heater core out and removed the valve. I found a new valve from my friend Giovanni at Auto-Sprint Chicago.

This was one of the longest, hardest, most unbelievably complicated parts of the whole car project so far.

I cleaned out the heater core with CLR. All kinds of crap came out of it. When I was finished, I flowed wonderfully. The new valve fit it perfectly.

At this point, it was time to start working on the looks of the car. I started with the interior. I stripped the car down to the bare metal and cut out all of the rust in the interior.

I shot the car with two thick coats of a Rustoleum flat black rust proofer. On the top of that, I put another two coats of truck bed liner.

It was time to start working on some of the major outside things before I took it to the auto body shop. I ordered new rocker panels from International Auto Parts and removed the old panels.

I then removed all the rust from under the rockers and by the edges of the wheel wells. after it was all ground out, I coated the inner body panels with a few coats of rust protector.

At this point, I shot my rockers with some rust proofer and installed them.

I removed the front grills and stripped and painted them.

I stripped all of the chrome off of the car and it was ready to go to the body shop.

With the car gone, I had to find something to keep me busy. I went by my friend Shannon's shop and made fun of the fact that he's English. I brought my old trunk shelf that covers my spare and my gas tank. He then grabbed nice new wood that he trimmed out using the old pieces as templates. I then brought them home and covered them with a couple of coats of fiberglass to make them just a little bit nicer and also water-proof. I then carpeted them with a nice grey carpet I picked up at Home Depot. (I'm not sure why I didn't take a photo of the carpeted piece. I stopped taking pictures at the fiberglass stage.)