Getting close!

[davidbruce]

]I purchased my 80 in November 2015. It was a non runner in tough shape but I was looking for a project as I recently retired. I began the disassembly process and about 4 months in I came across a 73 I couldn't refuse. It was close to finished but the PO had lost interest. I finished it and drove it for the next 2 years or so. I realized I would never finish the 80 while the 73 was in the garage. The 73 was the better of the 2 bodies but there were some things I wanted to do and it was too nice and original to mess with. I sold it and this is where I am at today. I have been on the road for about 6 weeks and so far no issues. I still have the suspension bushings and shocks/springs to do. A PO changed the differential to the early pumpkin style. So I was wanting to get some seat time before deciding on what to do with the undercarriage and whether or not to change the diff/ratio. The verdict on the ratio is 2 thumbs up. The jury is still out on suspension mods. At the moment i'm having a blast driving this and slowly compiling a mental list of winter tweaks but so far nothing major.

[18Fiatsandcounting]

Nice! My opinion: Just drive and enjoy. My current two Fiats have so many warts (accidents, fires, floods, rust, my goofball early years) that I have stopped trying to make them perfect. They never will be. Best to get them running and enjoy them for what they are: 51 and 49 year old cars with lots of memories and lots of stories to tell. Kind of like me.

-Bryan

[davidbruce]

HI Bryan, well if I was looking for perfection I would have paid someone to do the bodywork and paint. No I'm just interested in refining the ride. Clunks from bad suspension bushings, drips from worn input seals etc. are all low hanging fruit to me. And besides, it doesn't appear there will be a winter holiday this year.

[18Fiatsandcounting]

Sounds like a good approach. Here's how my luck goes (true story): I had rented some space in an auto body shop and repainted my '69 spider myself back in the early 1980s, and I had just backed it out of the paint booth into the parking lot. Some guy with a large land yacht wasn't watching what he was doing, and backed into my rear fender. Sigh... I mean, come on, the paint was less than 1 hour old... So, I had to rent more space/time in the shop and fix it again.

Given this apparent jinx upon my bodywork, I just live with the warts.

-Bryan

[scrapironchef]

Nice looking, I like the bumper hole fix on the front. The roll bar brake light is one of the things I'm working on for mine.

What seats are those?

[davidbruce]

HI Scrapiron, they are early Miata seats. I modified them to both lower them and also so they would bolt on to the stock mounts. I had 2 reasons for mounting the roll bar. One was for a hi mount brake light and the other was to get the seat belt mount shoulder height or higher. The light is a little larger than i had originally envisioned but I'll live with it for a while and may replace it with something more subtle down the road.