http://s215.photobucket.com/albums/cc17 ... er%202000/
Meet my new baby, I'm now the proud owner of a 1981 Fiat Spider, with 62,304 original miles on the odometer. Its a 3 (now 4) owner car, thats been garaged all of its life basically. The 3rd owner never drove it in the rain, and always put it inside his garage. The 2nd owner kept it in a garage for 10 years. And better yet, all 3 owners knew each other personally, so I got a good bit of history on the car when I bought it.
Its so in tact, the seatbelts work like new, carpet looks good, the floormats look good, not a single crack in the dash, all the gauges and lights work, the dash clock even works, even though the lens is clouded. It came with some brand new bridgestone tires, and a like new vinyl top (My ultimate goal is to get a cloth top of the same color). The body is near flawless, if you don't take into account the awful paint job. I even have all the trunk carpet and parts of the original toolkit. I even have power windows, and they work great too!
Some of the imperfections on this car are the fact that the 2nd owner rigged a switch to the center of the dash (where the exhaust gas sensor light goes) to control the cooling fan. He also took the seatbelt light out and replaced it with the exhaust gas sensor. The ignition switch has a loose wire that causes the car not to start sometimes, but jiggling the pigtail fixes that. The headlight switch is a little weird, if you mess with it too much the lights start to flicker and go out.
The idle is rough at recommended rpms, its probably the gas in the car or the plugs/plug wires though not being that great.
The exhaust hangs a little low, but that's not a big issue. Despite the idle issue though, the car runs strong, and is still quick.
The paint is god awful, the people who did it did an extremely terrible job at it, and there's overspray in the wheel wells, on some of the stickers under the hood, its bad. It also looks as if someone tried to buff the paint job or something, because it has massive amounts of scratches, like someone ran sandpaper all over it. But that's no biggie, I plan on repainting it the factory color, and I even have the factory color code and all that under my trunk.
All in all for $2800 I think I got a great deal on an all original Spider with relatively low mileage.
Now on to me:
I'm 21 years old, with an Associate's Degree in Computer Technology. I dig Italian sports cars for some reason or another, even though I'm not a very mechanically inclined person..looks like I'm going to have to learn now that I actually own one. I'm a fish out of water when working on cars, so I'll have tons of questions. Luckily my Dad knows more about this stuff than I do, so at least I have someone to learn from.
I've liked this particular car since I was in Elementary School, you can say having one that runs was one of my childhood dream cars, they're just so damn attractive. Well now I have that dream, hehe looking outside at it makes me smile.
I could probably play with the FI computer and all the electricals, that stuff makes sense to me, but when it comes to the drivetrain and stuff...I get lost :p
I can't wait to drive it and see what kinds of reactions I get :p
Well, I'm off to go get it registered and tagged hopefully
Enjoy the photo album.
