Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[vitesse]

[colwyn500]

It would be hard to justify the swap on practical grounds because everything is tickety boo at the moment and you would be risking some scratches and damage. But as swapping engines in a 500 is relatively a doddle and Luigi would be a great testbed for performance and as you are very careful and precise in your work, I would give it a go.
I wouldn't want to snip wires or do something irreversible so alternator and starter might be tricky and you would definitely be stripping the gearbox to fit new shafts if you wanted to try that out.
I reckon if you didn't have us lot nipping at you you would try it out at least.
Look at the way some cars get "pimped". Luigi would feel different but not really look different and you do have the ability to return it back to spec.

[vitesse]

[vitesse]

I had a play with the new engine today. I just want to see if I could get the starter motor to turn the engine over and see if the electronic ignition would produce a spark.

The difference with this engine is that has a solenoid on the starter motor with is activated by a 12v supply from the ignition switch, so I rigged up an additional 12v supply. This goes to the spade connector on the solenoid and 12v from the battery goes on the right hand terminal in the picture below. I used a set of jump leads down from Luigi's battery and then tried putting the additional switched 12v supply on to the spade connector. But nothing just a lot of arcing and sparking. I took the starter motor out and bench tested it and again nothing. Sprayed a liberal amount of WD40 on the gears and bearings inside, spun it over by hand and it seemed to spin manually by hand ok. Bench tested again and success. So I stuck it back on the engine and took the plugs out and it spun the engine over nicely now and I had good compression out of the spark plug holes.



Rigged up a little test loom with a 12v supply for the electronic ignition and with the plugs out I turned over the engine again and was getting a spark on both plugs, it was a little weak but I this that is probably down to earthing and supply being a iffy, as it was getting late and I was running out of time.

I noticed the engine and gearbox both had stamps on indicating that they were built in 1997, so not very old at all really. I just need to get some fuel hose as I appear to have run out and then I should be able to perform the infamous bench test.

[colwyn500]

That looks brilliant Tony. All the Ignition components look very much like mine off the Cinquecento Sporting I had, with that TDC pickup and similar albeit half-sized coil-pack. It should be very reliable and the engine itself, on the face of it, looks unmolested.

[D4B]

[vitesse]

[D4B]

To free up space and money for my next project ~ a series Land Rover hopefully!!

[colwyn500]

[colwyn500]

[D4B]

We best stop diluting Tony's Fiat thread with this green oval stuff. Let's just leave it that at today's prices it's never gonna be a Series 1 !!

[vitesse]

That's ok. I always wanted an ex forces air transportable short wheel base Land Rover, the one with square front wings. Probably because I used to drive them everyday when I was in the RAF. I actually fell out of the passenger door once whilst driving on the airfield, the door wasn't closed properly and I leaned on it as we were going around a corner and ended up disappearing and landing on the grass outside. Fortunately we weren't going too fast and no lasting damage was done. I think!!!!!!!

I also used to drive a Saracen with a preselect gearbox, I think that is a bit too big of a restoration project if I was to get one of them.

What camper van do you want Peter?

[colwyn500]

My favoured campers are the Fiat 850 or 900 based versions called, Amigo, Pandora and Caravelle. They turn up on Ebay every couple of months and there's one on at the moment which is somewhat overpriced in my opinion.

Trouble is that I am a bit averse to welding up roof gutters and spraying bodywork after the last few years' slog.

[vitesse]

[vitesse]

I had a tinker around with the new engine again today and managed to hugely increase the spark on both plugs, both spark plug gaps were virtually nonexistent, so I opened them up and hey presto much better. The simplest things.

The odd thing is if I turn the engine over using the starter motor I get a good spark as the engine rotates. If I try to do it manually by using a spanner on the alternator bolt and with all the electrics connected to a 12v supply I don't get any spark at the spark plugs, so it is impossible to manually setup.

So I have decided to just go for it tomorrow and see if I can get the thing to run. I would imagine that the timing would be roughly about right as all you can adjust is the pickup sensor next to the flywheel and there isn't a massive amount of adjustment. I have connected up the fuel lines, so hopefully I should get it running tomorrow, so fingers crossed for a new video.