1965 Fiat 500F - Summer Pottering

Two more options, both likely to be expensive (and one of them way out in left field):

a) A Steyr-Puch engine. Lovely flat twin thing, fitted to the 500's Austrian cousin. Also found in Häflingers. And designed by Ledwinka Jr;

b) Another flat-twing thing... Panhard. I admit this was mentioned to me in a conversation with another (older) car nut like, forty years ago, but it seems it was a thing, back in the day. I wonder what's the going rate for one in BT/CT "Tigre" spec?

Best of luck with the project!

horrido I think the engine you're thinking of with 80 odd HP for €13k is on the same website, haha.

Cisitalia both those engines are certainly interesting! The Steyr-Puch flat twin was available as a 650 with a factory 43hp at one stage, more than any of the factory tuned Fiat parallel twin variations.

Plans for the moment involve sticking with the stock engine. I wanna just see what it was meant to feel like from the factory, and to learn the crash gearbox first.

When I am ready for some tuning then they start in such a slow state of tune (just 35hp per litre), there's a lot an amateur like me should be able to do at home and have fun trying ot get more out of it. The engines are cheap and common enough to try some experimental stuff without worrying too much if things go wrong!

Things have been progressing nicely over rather past few days, I've been working through my boxes of mechanical parts, nice to have bits to be working on in the comfort of the shed on a blustery damp autumn evening.

With the front kingpins and uprights sorted in the pervious update, I could now assemble the brakes, with blasted and painted backing plates, new wheel cylinders and new shoes.



Before fitting the new wheel bearings into new drums and getting this little section finished off.



Getting the drums on was a bit of a challenge! I presume the new shoes are just a fraction big, I spent ages fiddling about repositioning the self adjusters and trying to centre the shoes in order to get the drum on with no luck. In the end I filed 1/2 a millimetre or so off the end of each of the tangs on the shoes where they go into the wheel cylinder and then I was finally able to squeeze the drum on.

The steering box was next, it was a big greasy mess as can be seen in the previous update where I had all the parts on the bench, but after some clean up it wasn't looking too bad.



My plan was to do a full rebuild on it, but the castlated plug that adjusts preload on the input shaft bearings was firmly seized. I bought a special tool for it, and the tool destroyed itself before the nut moved, that was after copious amounts of heat and penetrating oil. So yeah... that's not coming out without risking damaging of the main casting. Luckily the input bearings felt fine with no play, and I was able t clean it out, replace all the seals, paint it, fill it with fresh oil and adjust it for a nice smooth action with no play. If it's done 57 years without the bearings developing any slack, then I think it will do a few more yet!



That basically covers all of the front end steering, suspension and brakes, excluding the bits that will be replaced e.g. track rod arms, so time to start on the rear!

Really enjoying the updates that you have been making, your updates are always very informative.

If you are interested in watching a restoration of a Fiat 500 from Australia, Howard Astill has a YouTube channel and has done a Fiat 500. www.youtube.com/@astilldesign

Warren

Thank you Tylerman . '59 is an early one! I saw your pictures in metalshapes thread, looks like you've got a fairly big job on your hands there, but they are lovely little cars to work on.

So yes, working on cars... what have I been up to these past few weeks I hear you ask?

Picking up where we left off, I was continuing to potter on with some of the smaller mechanical bits. The handbrake was looking a bit crusty.



So thats got pulled to bits...



... before cleaning, polishing of sliding surfaces and a quick lick of paint.



The windscreen wiper mechanism got the same treatment.




And that essentially brought us to the end of the mechanical bits in my boxes of part!. I did have the fuel tank on my list at this point but one quick look inside...




... and I decided that it would not be in my best interest to do battle with trying to save this one. If, like my Daimler, a new tank was north of £500 then I'd be out there now trying to clean it before using a fuel tank liner to seal it and trying to clean and repair the sender. But a new 500 fuel tank comes in around £150, so I think I'll just put my old tank I the scrap pile and move on!

As I still had a couple of weeks till I would be able to make my next big parts order, I thought I'd make myself useful and start on some of the more cosmetic cleanup needed on some parts.

I started with the hub caps. They needed a good wash first, with hot soapy water and fine wire wool getting the heaviest corrosion off. After that a bit of Autosol and a buffing pad on the pillar drill made light work of giving them some shine. I did do all 4!



I then turned my attention to the steering column. The steering wheel was covered in a sort of baked on dirt, the best way to shift it again seemed to be to go at it with some fine wire wool, and then polish it back up with some cutting compound. I also painted the column itself and glued my light/indicator stalks. If they do fail I will still be able to operate the switch and then can swap it out for a modern replacement, so I figure its worth a punt on repairing the originals first.

I also had a go at the speedo. Again it was covered with baked on dirt and also appears to be sun damaged on the top, with some heavy brown staining. Again wirewool was able to cut through the dirt and then I polished the plastic back up with compound. The speedo itself comes apart easily enough and the staining on the dial cleaned up surprisingly easily.

Here's a before:



And after:




At this stage I had been paid and could order the next pile of bits. This meant I could continue to put the rear suspension back together. The rear wheel bearings were first on my list.



All fairly straight forward. Getting the preload right with the crushable spacer took a little careful work but was not as bad as I was expecting from some of the things I'd read online! Next I could assemble the rear brakes.



Like the fronts even with the shoes fully retracted I struggled to get the drums on. But this time I found a clearer problem. The pins on my original handbrake linkage were all seized solid so I had purchased replacements. Comparing the old to the new, one of the new link was approx 2mm longer than the old.



And this was enough to hold the shoes out a touch even with the handbrake arm fully retracted. A little tickle with the angle grinder adjusted my new linkage and now I could get the drums on.



And then my last job on this little assembly was to run a bit of brake hardline from the wheel cylinders to where the Flexi lines mount on the suspension arm.



So now I've got a pile of nice shiny mechanical bits cluttering up my shed, and with the underside of the shell now complete, it seemed only logical to start bolting some of them on! Front suspension and steering first.




And then the rear suspension (note to self wipe those oily finger prints off! haha). The rear suspension arms should be shimmed to make sure the track width is equal each side, but I'm not finding much information about it online. All my original shims were rusted to bits and these are new arms anyway, so would need different shims I presume. For now I've just used some washers to centralise the arms in the adjustment. A quick check with a tape measure suggests they are probably close enough!



And then, I couldn't not bolt some wheels up. This is the first time the car has sat on its own wheels in my ownership, so quite a little milestone. The wheels themselves will need a clean up and paint and the tyres are definitely going to be replaced bone there car goes on the road, the rear tyres are remoulds which is enough to scare me off using them even if they weren't heavy perished and hard as plastic. haha.



It's sitting a little high... There's still an awful lot of car left t bolt together, not least the engine and gearbox!

Given that the weather is not yet really suitable for bodywork, it seemed logical to tackle the engine and gearbox next. By the time I've dealt with them spring should be on its way and I can go back to paint prep and painting before continuing to assemble the car.

So let's start wit the gearbox. It's a dirty old thing...



I presume it was a mixture of waxoyl, road dirt and baked on gearbox oil. Either way the engine degreaser spray I'd bought made no dent on it. White spirit and lots of elbow grease had a better result, not perfect yet but plenty good enough for now to get it inside the shed and to not risk dirt falling inside when I open it up. Cup for scale here, its like a toy gearbox!



The main job for the gearbox is to replace the driveshafts. A previous owner has decided to weld together what should be a splined joint, not quite sure why?!



Anyway, new driveshafts seemed a sensible move! It was at this point I realised that replacing the drive shafts is not as straight forward as it sounds, the differential needs to come out and be split in half to extract the shafts. This is as far as I've currently got.



With the gearbox this far apart I'm not 100% confident that the input shaft turns as smoothly as I'd like, theres a bit of a bearing noise. So I suspect I will be digging into the rest of the gearbox after all!

Thinking of the gearbox, can anyone confirm if the gear selector should be sprung to hold the stick upright when in neutral? I can select all 5 gears (4 forward + revise) fine by moving the selector on the gearbox, but when in neutral there's no resistance to twisting the selector / moving the stick side to side. I would expect it to be sprung to the centre?

As I'm going to be pulling the box apart anyway to look at the bearings I'm sure it will be obvious if there's a broken spring or anything, but never hurts to ask!

Great work on the little fiat. Mine has no side to side centering on the stick just like glenanderson suggests. So I guess that is how they are meant to be.

"The main job for the gearbox is to replace the driveshafts. A previous owner has decided to weld together what should be a splined joint, not quite sure why?!"

The splines on the driveshafts are a known failure point.

They can strip...

Since you cant take a shaft out without splitting the gearbox ( which you can do on 600 and 850 boxes ), the box has to come out of the car to do it.

Welding the flange to the shaft is a quick and dirty fix...

Edit.

Also, back in the days when these cars were still plentiful in junkyards, it was not uncommon to swap a 126 engine & box into a 500 ( only 600cc at the time ).
And because the rear track on a 126 is a bit wider, some people would just chop off a bit off the driveshafts instead of doing it right and use 500 shafts.
That would loose about 1/2 of the outside splines, so the weld fix would happen ( before or after the splines failed...)

But that doesnt apply to your car, because you have a 500 box.


As a extra piece of useless trivia, I've been told that the synchro rings in the 126 boxes generate a tiny little bit of drag in the gearbox.

Which then reduced the performance of the car.

I've never been able to check if this is true, but I figured a 500 doesnt have enough power to potentially give any of it away, and double clutching was easy...


Great progress on the 500, very nice to see.

The Fiat 500 box is lovely, precise and quick shifting.

I've owned quite a few cars after my first 500, and as far as gearboxes go it set the standard for all of them...

I’m not going to try to teach you how to change gears, I just want to say that I think you are doing a fantastic job with the Giacosa masterpiece.

From my experience, the quicker you shift it ( going up ) the nicer it gets.

You just have to time your pedal movements with a very quick flick of the wrist.

And double clutching on the way down.

Don't be afraid to hurt it, its built to stand up to the massive flywheel on a 500 engine ( with its potential of a lot of stored energy).

But never try to put it 1st if the car is moving.

That will do damage... ( which is typical with cars of the period when 1st and reverse used some of the same gears )