Fiat Abarth 1300/124 - an extensive restoration project.

Amazing work!! That's the way to do it right. Great to see and hear about the progress.
 
This is an inspiration to me, as I bitch about prepping my X1/20 for paint. It might be tough work, but nothing like the scope of your project.

Keep up the work and the posts!
 
After I stripped away more of the primer on the floor, I found more rust to deal with. I hate rust. :mad:

I decided to remove the floor pan in one piece to work on. Oddly, the driver's side footwell area was is pretty decent shape so I left the in place. Removing the floor from an 850 coupe isn't all that hard, much easier than the floor in a 600.

DSCF0769.JPG


I used the floor out of the donor body as is because it was better than this one. Still had lots of rust patches needed tho. I had the floor on a couple of sawhorses which was a lot easier than attempting to do it if it was still in the car. Photo below shows all the patch pieces welded in place and ready for some grinding and sanding. The large patch piece is from the 1300. I ended up making one good floor out of 3 floors plus some new sheet metal. The rear seat footwell area was pretty bad and I made most of that up from scratch from 20 gauge steel. Getting the floor back to rust-free shape definitely took a LOT of hours.

DSCF0795.JPG


Here's the floor after sanding down all the welds.

DSCF0801.JPG


Here's the repaired floor almost ready to re-install. What looks like surface rust is just stains from the muriatic acid I used to remove some stubborn rust. I will media blast the floor top and bottom once all metal work on the body is finished.
DSCF0817.JPG


The last patch piece for the floor is this piece that goes against the right side front fender well. A bit tricky with the compound curve in it.

DSCF0773.JPG


Before I put the floor back in, I need to replace the rusty heater pipes that run through the tunnel. The ones out of the donor car are in great shape except for some internal corrosion that I'll need to clean out. When the floor is fully welded in, I need to hammer out some "humps" either side of the tunnel at the forward end. Abarth did that to make clearance for the coolant pipes. Won't be too hard to replicate because they beat the humps out pretty roughly at the factory. :)

If I forgot to mention it, I hate rust. :mad:
 
Last edited:
The 850 coupes have a cross rail going left to right that strengthens the floor. Abarth made some holes in it for the coolant pipes up to the front rad. These two photos are what the original piece looked like. It may look okay on the outside but it was seriously rusty on the inside and not re-useable. I have no idea how Abarth created the holes but am guessing they used a torch to heat the metal and hammered it out. The original workmanship is rather rough.

DSCF0779.JPG


DSCF0778 (1).JPG


Luckily I had one good cross rail to work with and needed to replicate the "dimples" that Abarth did. I took some 20 gauge steel and after drilling holes in it, I used a couple of heavy wall pipes of different diameters, rounded the ends and used a heavy hammer to recreate the dimples. Came out pretty good and look the same as the Abarth ones.

DSCF0774 (1).JPG
DSCF0775.JPG
DSCF0776 (1).JPG


After cutting out some small squares from the cross rail, I welded the new dimple pieces in and ground the welds down. I still have a little sanding left to do in these two photos. There's 4 holes on the bottom of the cross rail that weren't present on the '66 1300 so I'm going to fill them in. I'm going to plug weld the cross rail from above the floor and had to weld up all the holes in the flanges from drilling out spot welds. When this is back on the car, it will look exactly like what Abarth did.

DSCF0790.JPG


DSCF0789 (1).JPG
 
I would leave the holes, they were added to allow water to drain out and prevent the rust you found inside.

I know not Abarth originale for the era of the car but an improvement to ensure its long life...

Just a suggestion.

Great work.
 
I would leave the holes, they were added to allow water to drain out and prevent the rust you found inside.

I know not Abarth originale for the era of the car but an improvement to ensure its long life...

Just a suggestion.

Great work.
Yea, thinking about it, you are probably right. Of the 3 cross rails I've got, the one in the best shape is the one with the drain holes. Hopefully it will never see a drop of rain and when it needs washing, I may send it to a dry cleaner. :)
 
Hi Gil, looking great, go man go!
Eric in San Diego
Hi Eric, thanks. I know you know how long this project has been for me. It started out a decade or more ago when I first wanted to build a replica then I came across the real thing but was in sad shape. I'm hoping to have it in primer this summer.
 
Didn't realize that the 2 liter Abarth twin cam was a twin spark, just saw the dual coils in the video...
 
Got the floor pan back in today and fully welded in place. Sanding down the welds is almost finished and just needs some touchup here and there. Also need to check for any pinholes in the welds and weld them up as needed. Next up on the to-do list is welding the cross rail back on and the seat brackets/rails on top. Then there will be a like-new rust free floor on the car, woohoo. :)

DSCF0840.JPG
 
That's a milestone for the project, nice work! Cool to think that you were likely working on your car at the same time I was block sanding my X1/20 today : )
 
Time for an update, it's been a while. Major milestone, the shell is now in primer. Weather wasn't good this year and wasn't until August that it was dry & warm enough for long enough to start the media blasting in the driveway. Then we had bad wildfire smoke from the US for a while. It took weeks with my small pot blaster to get it done. Wasn't until late Oct. I sprayed the primer and it was the last available day of warm & dry enough weather to do it until next year. The sun was going down and it was getting almost too cold as I was finishing it off. The only thing not finished is the hood which is now at a shop getting some tig welding done to it. It's mostly in primer and shouldn't take much more work to finish that. There were times when I thought I'd never get this thing to the primer stage...

Media blasting the wheel wells was really difficult, especially the front. It's like trying to blast inside a fish bowl and the media bounces back into your face and it's hard to see even with the 500 watt quartz light I was using.. I had to do a lot of it blind and then stop and check to see if I got the paint/rust/undercoating off. The body seemed huge compared to my 600 shell I media blasted a couple of years ago.

The entire body now has 2 coats of epoxy primer and over that on the exterior areas, 3-4 coats of urethane high-build primer. Next step is many hours of block sanding and touchup with filler where needed, applying seam sealer in various locations and spraying on the undercoating. I'm also going to be painting the floor and interior by hand, except for a couple of small spots that show and need to be in body color. I'll be putting sound deadening mat over the floor, firewall and a few other spots so no point in spending a lot more time spraying primer and paint there.

I just finished painting all the suspension parts and a bunch of misc. parts. I'll be able to work on the motor and transaxle over the winter.
DSCF0009.JPG
DSCF1639.JPG
DSCF1640.JPG
DSCF1592.JPG
DSCF1612.JPG
DSCF1620.JPG
DSCF1628.JPG
 

Attachments

  • DSCF0010.JPG
    DSCF0010.JPG
    190.2 KB · Views: 107
  • DSCF0011.JPG
    DSCF0011.JPG
    319 KB · Views: 107
Last edited:
Gee, that looks easy.

That is an incredible amount of work. The rear panel, was it so rusted out or were those patch panels to replicate what would have been on the Abarth rear panel which I am sure is different due to the engine mount approach of a pushrod 124 engine versus the 850 (843)? Looks OE in the last image.

Congrats on this milestone.
 
I'm pretty happy with the way the rear panel turned out. On the lettering, it took many hours to get the holes drilled in the right spots. I measured all the studs with calipers and transferred it from paper onto a piece of sheet steel. Drilled all the holes in that and did a test fit-up with the lettering. Some holes were a bit off and I ended up re-drilling holes over again on another piece of metal. I clamped that piece onto the panel and used it as a guide for the drill bit. If I got them drilled in the wrong spots on the panel, there'd be no way of moving them and they'd show. It was like a one-shot deal to drill them where they needed to be. All the lettering ended being perfectly aligned, whew.

The patch panels on the exterior side were to repair collision damage in one spot and the other was to repair a crappy mod done by the PO. On the engine side, the original brackets needed to be removed. Not sure if you can tell in the photos, but I had to cut the panel all the way from side to the other, then push the lower part rearward and weld it back up. This removed the "ledge" that was originally there. This is what Abarth did and was necessary to make clearance for the pulleys on the 124 motor. The PO had hacked off the two brackets because he had planned on installing a 124 motor but gave up. I had to weld in some new sheet metal where the brackets normally are. The panel was also kinda rusty along the bottom and I drilled out the spot welds, pulled the seam apart, blasted it clean, treated it with weld-through primer and plug-welded it back together. Makes me tired just thinking about it. When I got my original 1300, it didn't have a rear engine panel and I had to modify a stock one.

Also maybe hard to tell in the photos, I removed the studs on each side at mid-height leaving the ones top and bottom. Also another Abarth mod. The rear panel doesn't carry the weight of the engine and I am guessing they did that so the engine could be pulled out with the engine cradle still attached, otherwise the oil pan wouldn't clear the cradle.

Abarth did a lot of modifications to the body on the 1300/124s plus the special parts they had to make. No wonder they didn't build many. I can't see how they would have made much of a profit, if any on them. All the work done by hand too.

DSCF1603.JPG
If the holes
 
Last edited:
Back
Top