1971 Fiat 850 sedan

great! I really like the first set of wheels you had on it too. Two thumbs up.

Wayhaay another 850 owner on here!!, Welcome,i've a 71 as well, off the road at the moment, cos a little piece of bubbling has turned into look at all the rust , I'm doing a swap later today , a door for an engine lid and cash and then I'll finally have all the panels needed to repaint it, all i need now is cash and someone with epic welding skills ;D

There's still a few around... here's mine:-


No now used for 9 months after I got substantially stiffed by a 'specialist' engine supplier..

Ta. No rust- totally boggers. Bought with a terminally seized motor ,been sittng for years.

Bought a 'turnkey' motor (just wanted it on the road for summer,quickly) from a Specialist - at an inflated price, that was totally trucked - discovered once fitted of course.
Natch - he disclaimed all knowledge, even when I towed it to his works -wanted to charge me for ''investigative'' work...

So,bought another from an engine builder (-apparently ''all done''), to discover a massive oil leak from the crank that soaked the clutch.

Totally disheartened at constant engine swops, rapidly escalating costs & the end of summer, it just got shoved to the back of the barn -probably now sit there a few years till I get around to rebuilding one of those engines, myself, properly.

How to make a watercooled VW distributor work with a Fiat motor.

There are a few rasons for me doing this.
1. The 40+ year old Fiat distributors are terminally sloppy with iffy advance mechanisms
2. It is an easy way to ditch the points and condenser to go with a reliable electronic ignition system
3. The parts are all free since I have so much of it laying about.

I did this with a standard VW vaccum advance distributor and have been driving with it for 8 months now without any issues. Since I am going with megasquirt for fuel I might as well let it control spark....actually that will be necessary when I apply boost.

OK so the necessary parts
One junk Marrelli distributor...I think this had been stored at the bottom of a pond for a few years, what a mess.

One VW distributor. From a 91 or so golf with Digi2 management. No advance mechanism in this one just a 4 window hall sensor trigger.

You can see what needs to be done. The fiat shaft is much longer 5.5" from the bottom to the tip of the shaft and the VW dizzy base is fatter.


Disassemble the bosch unit.


Starting with the body. Take a measurement of the Fiat distributor where it fits the head and turn the mounting point of the VW base to match.

I also removed the large ring and turned the shaft down to one inch to match the Marelli unit so the fiat hold down clamp would still work

Now on to the shaft. I simply parted off the end leaving half an inch extending through the distributor and drilled the end to 5/16" about 3/4" deep.

I then cut a bit less than the last 6 inches off the marelli shaft faced it and turned it down to 5/16" for a 3/4" shank for a press fit.

After a trip to the blast cabinet so the body could be prettied up with some glass bead this is all the parts we need.

I put it all back together,put a dab of retaining compound on the marelli shaft and pressed it together. Then I drilled the shafts where they meet and inserted a 1/8" spring roll pin to insure they would never slip and mess up the timing.

All done!


For now I am going to install it and use the factory VW knock sensing ignition unit to control spark. The advance curve from that setup is a bit more aggresive than the vacuum and flyweights (good for another 8hp on a VW) and the frankenstien WOW factor is hard to beat

Yet another reason why, after a welder. A Lathe is the shade tree wrenchers best friend. This took about 25 minutes from start to finish

wow, I wondered about those bolts, very impressive really! I might have to get a set or 2.

Love the engineering fix.

Ride height looks great too.

Did a driveway alignment today. I shimmed the upper control arms out to remove some of the negative camber. I still need to adjust more out. took it from 4.2 on the drivers side and 4.58 on the passenger to 2 degrees even on both. This little angle gauge from horrible freight is made for setting up table saw blades but is awesome for this. I made a fancy jig but it proved to be no more accurate than holding it flat up against the lug face.



then I set up the string gauge, centered the steering linkage and set toe to zero or as close as I could measure with the crude setup.

I needed to simulate my weight somehow and the tires and wheels were there so....





The little eight and a half now tracks straigt and true. I could even take my hands off the wheel if I dared.

Just perfect!