Autobianchi Bianchina - FIAT 850 Engine + SIMCA TA
Before I had the 850 coupe the same deep dish wheels belonged to my 850 powered Bianchina.
Just found this old picture where I mounted 50 series P7's on all four.
This car had a A-arm coil-over front end and the rear suspension section from a Simca 1000. The Simca TA (transAxle) was used since the suspension unit has a special center mount for the TA instead of the side mounts of the 850. An 850 bellhousing was fit with a few modifications along with modified 850 input shaft which mated to the Simca trans.
Due to the Simca final drive this car seemed to have an endless top speed. I never got close to it's top speed, since it felt too uncomfortable going over 100 in such a small, crude car.
Showing some wear after several thousand miles in Phoenix Arizona and few years of snow/salt and Detroit Michigan potholes. This car even spent time in Canada before being retired in California.
Here it is before it got cut-up for scrap.
The little pod to the left of the original speedo is custom made out of aluminum sheet to house the water temp and oil pressure gauges out of another Fiat. The radiator came from Chevy Vega due to it's efficient cross flow design, inlet/outlet positions, small size and it was free. It was enclosed in a very efficient thin sheet alloy housing with 2 fans pulling air from the back. If I were to do it over again, I would install the radiator like Abarth did on 600s, since things were very cramped in front of the steering tie rods and center link making all the fitment work difficult.
The appearance of the car would probably have improved by using a front air dam/shroud to enclose the radiator. I never had any cooling problems using this setup since the system included the Ford expansion tank and lots of coolant.
The car was carpeted, but in this photo I was doing some work where it was removed and you can see the white aluminum floors. I dismantled a motor-home where I was able to collect lots of aluminum and steel sheet metal that I used for the project.
Below is the only photo I can find that shows the Simca subframe in place. Here the throttle and clutch cable are disconnected, but you can imagine where the clutch cable would have needed to cross right in the middle of the sub-frame structure. So the clutch cable just rode under the cross member, rubbing on it making it's final pivot up the the clutch arm. I never got around to redesigning the clutch actuating setup or installing a hydraulic slave cylinder, so the clutch always felt a bit hard and always wondered when the cable would break due to the strange path it followed and all the friction. The cable was also custom made as nothing off the shelf was the correct length or had the right fittings on the ends.
The clutch cable was the only thing that ever left me stranded on the road when it snapped. I still managed to get home by push starting the car by myself (the car was so small you could almost hug it :love
in one gear by clutchless shifting and timing the traffic lights :hypno:
Various 850 engines were installed throughout the life of the car. Most of these photos show an 817/843 with a single barrel Weber. Only reason for this low performance motor is either I sold the hotter motor I had in the car or I was using it in another car.
The electrical system was based off late model Fiat 850 alternator (shown below) which worked well other than replacing relays as they became faulty.
The photo below gives some perspective of how small the car is compared to whats on the road in the US. The color of the car was intended to be a bright color like yellow, blue, red or white, but due to some mixup with my painter it ended up in a late 1970's Fiat Brown that made the car look like a small brown "turd" IMO.
The body is mostly steel with some aluminum to lighten things where possible. The front air dam still needed some redesign to make it look more like an Abarth design, but I just got involved to too many projects and ran out of time.
The car had a mishap with a center concrete median that damaged the front lower drivers side.This loosened-up the front-end bodywork and punctured the radiator too. I thought about repairing the car, but along came my 600 sunroof and I ran out of parking. The car was dismantled into small pieces and put in a Hollywood Ca dumpster.
The Simca suspension assembly mounted easily to the 500 frame (Binachina's underpinnings are Fiat 500). The only problem was there was no way to properly to route the clutch cable up the the bell housing clutch arm. The triangulated assembly was in the way. The Simca clutch arm was in a different position which made it route correctly. Since I was using an 850 bellhousing the angle was all wrong. Eventually I was going to fit a hydraulic clutch cylinder, but I never got around to it.
Here is the adapter plate for the Simca suspension. It bolted to the lower frame cross member. Then the entire suspension unit bolted (#6 bolt in the diagram above) to the welded-on nuts and the bump stop extensions. You can see this plate in one of the photos above where the car is dismantled and on it's side.
Here is my Red 128 powered 1967 600D and my 1959 600 when I first bought it. The red car finally got sold and the the brown car was scrapped.
The red car still used a stock 600D transaxle and suspension except for an Abarth front leaf spring. The stub axle flexible rubber couplers where replaced several times along with: axles, stub axles and splined couplers since the 128 engine was too much power/torque for a 28 HP drive train assembly. The metal splines and rubber in these parts just couldn't hold up to the power of the modified 128 engine.
I've been asked many times about installing a bigger engine the 850 coupe. I don't start making plans as I don't want to go through the trouble/expense/downtime again since I've done it many times over with several cars. If I want to go fast, I just get into another car that's already built to go faster. :thumbsup:
That doesn't mean I'm still not tempted to install a Mazda Rotary or Suzuki Hayabusa whenever I see them on uTube.
The DiDato wheels also spent some time on my 128 powered 600 Sedan. The blue car was out of Echo Park Ca.