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STUPID PROJECTS and LESSONS LEARNED/MAYBE - Lesson#4
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Author:  apatrizi [ Tue Feb 03, 2015 2:15 pm ]
Post subject:  STUPID PROJECTS and LESSONS LEARNED/MAYBE - Lesson#4

By now you may have figured out I was growing up and honing my skills, and will continue my boring
chronology.

At 16 I bought my first car, a 1959 Fiat 500 U.S. Version( Big Bug-eye headlight buckets.). It was home to 2 German Shepherd's at a nearby gas station, and I could only own it by building a dog house along with $20.00. I found it because in the gas station up the street there was a burned Ferrari 250 convertible. It was melted beyond recognition except to the discerning eye of a connoisseur such as myself. It was a rusted hulk of metal, and I recall lots of globs of Aluminum replaced what used to be critical components...
My Fiat project began with buying a battery, and of course it was half the size of any battery an American car used so it fit inside a little chamber in the front. Cost more than the car...I got it running uneventfully and learned how to drive a 4 speed "crash box" (no syncro's). I became a master at double clutching. Probably was the best part of this experience. Since the starter had no solenoid you yanked a lever up between the seats that pulled a cable that engaged the gear and spun the starter. (Ingenious Italians it would slip and break.) Since I didn't like the posture of the rear of the car with the camber tucking the wheels inwards, I wrote to Road & Track. The Q&A response was sure "cut a coil out of the rear springs". Well the car sat better, but viola rubber and aluminum hub bushings between the halfshafts and rear hubs began shattering. (Even my technical vocabulary was maturing.) The Fiat parts guy became my best friend. Behold Fiat issued an upgraded part, after I destroyed 6 of the previous ones, and it did not
crumble. Now the halfshafts would break in the middle. An uncle with skills similar to mk e welded these back up for me, by now I had half a dozen. And for may years after the Fiat was gone I was able to use these as jack handles and pry bars. ( Wish I still had some.) By now I could remove the engine, split the transmission halves and replace halfshafts and put the car back together in under 3 hours. With such improved skills I tried my hand at fabricating using a $20 arc welder I bought from the back cover of a comic book. I wanted to set up dual carbs into a single throat on the cylinder head. Needless to say the pipes, washers etc. and many blown fuses later cancelled the upgrade. I now know how bad an idea that was, I need Mark as a neighbor and he would have drilled and machined the head to accept the carbs, one per cylinder and yes they were Weber's. I finally got my license, and regularly found the Fiat moved by my High School buddies, in-between two tree's next to the sidewalk.
My love of Italian cars had begun.

Author:  mk e [ Thu Feb 05, 2015 3:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: STUPID PROJECTS and LESSONS LEARNED/MAYBE - Lesson#4

I love that story!

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