1964 fiat 600 (perhaps) cassetta Abarth

Oriebi

Daily Driver
Hello to all.
We arrived here with you thanks to the chance encounter with the post redracer on his 600.
This is because we also have one, since '64. We found it in a garage in Pavia, owned by an Italian-American gentleman, who could no longer restore it and therefore put it up for sale.

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So we bought it.
To make it our home car, take care of it as a little bit unfortunate, put it back on its feet and then go for a nice ride around the Apennines and the Ligurian Riviera.
Work began in January 2017.
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A demanding job, long and in need of patience and calm. Very calm.
The whole family took part, after all we are all passionate.
But the results have arrived.
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Thanks to my wife's precision, all the Abarth friezes, the seats, the door panels, and the laying of the new carpet were recovered and restored;she rebuilt all the rubber seals starting from the worn out originals.
We found an original raw fusion of the abarth dashboard on eBay auction. so we bougth it and then adapted to the board.
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Excellent work, great looking results. Your family is very talented. Nice project choice that I'd like to have also. Thanks for sharing it with us, and hope to keep hearing more from you. :)
 
Oh, thank you a lot!
after almost three years of hard work, we began to do a few laps happily discovering that the car was going very well, perhaps too much. The engine is that of an Autobianchi A112 Abarth 70hp, a2000 series. The front brakes are of a fiat 850 sport coupé (piston diameter 54 mm) and they do their duty enough.
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oh, it's a lot of fun, too! the only thing to mount it you should change the flywheel / clutch lock. For safety, given the extra horses, I mounted the constant velocity joints instead of the original elastic ones. The change in the original configuration never gave problems. During a ride on the Apennines, uphill, along a straight, we touched 130 km / h! It looked like we were taking off ...
 
Looks great! The only way to fix that dang rust is to cut it away. And if you find more behind that area, cut more of it away until you find good metal. There's just no shortcut! Will have to go back and study all the photos when I have a moment. I sure wish I had a family of volunteers. :(

One nice feature of using an A112 engine in a 600 is that you don't need to reverse the rotation. The only really issue is that the A112 crank doesn't have a pilot bushing so the crank needs to be put on a lathe and a hole made in the end for a 600/850 bronze bushing for the transaxle input shaft.

What did you use for constant velocity joints? I used the ones from Motomax in Poland. The stock 600 rubber-filled ones don't last long with higher horsepower. Stock 633 cc HP is 22 compared to 70 for a 1050 cc A112 engine.

More photos and descriptions needed... :)
 
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the joints I took them from an ebay seller well stocked here in Italy, Sorajet, easily assembled and doing their duty.
The wheels are Maifrini MilleMiglia 5x13.
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the rims were not in poor condition, it was enough to sand them, paint them with nitro aluminum color and then a veil of transparent.
 
In these days i Will try to find another photos about joints...
Regarding the family, my father-in-law as soon as he got his license, he bought just a used 600 d. It was the 1960s, and the boys of the times were the ones who started the races on the Apennine passes that surround Genoa. So working in his father's workshop, he prepared the 600 engine to go for a run. My daughter, my wife, grew up in the workshop with him, stopped to work there and the passion continued. When we found this 600, it was not a resurfacing of memories and anecdotes, but above all thanks to him, we had a historical memory available to reconstruct everything.
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for example, the rear corners of the car were almost totally corroded by rust. Gian (my father-in-law) took sheet metal and reconstructed the corners exactly with the water drains in the right place, with the welder spots on the edges of the junction with the rest of the bodywork.

one last consideration on the joints. Audi derivation joints are also found on ebay Italy.
The sorajet ones have a tripod, the others are perhaps a little more modern and perhaps efficient.
This is the link
https://www.ebay.it/itm/223749901964 .
 
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Although it required some rust repair, it seemed to be a very sound car to work with. Together with the excellent workmanship it now looks to be a new original car. Fortunate to have the input of your father-in-law as well. Very nice indeed. :)
 
. Audi derivation joints are also found on ebay Italy.
The sorajet ones have a tripod, the others are perhaps a little more modern and perhaps efficient.
This is the link
https://www.ebay.it/itm/223749901964 .


That is a very nice set up and pretty reasonable from a cost perspective.

Oriebi do you have any comment about the quality and which design is better or if there really is much difference between them?

Thank you for sharing, I may need to arrange a purchase and shipment.

Google translate from that Ebay listing:

PRE-ASSEMBLED KIT FOR FLEXIBLE COUPLINGS, BETTER THAN TRIPODS BUT AT A LOWER PRICE!
MODIFICATION FOR 126 ALL, 500 F L R, 600, 850
NO CHANGES TO THE AXLE AND WHEEL HUB ARE REQUIRED
REPLACES THE ORIGINAL JOINT
INCLUDING SPECIFIC FAT AND VITERIE (?)
THE BRAND OF GREASE MAY VARY DEPENDING ON AVAILABILITY
FASTENING WITH THE HEADBAND LOCKING CLAMP MAY DIFFER FROM PHOTOGRAPHY
Recommended for original engines, mandatory for elaborate engines!

REPLACEMENT OF THE ORIGINAL JOINT THAT IS DAMAGED EASILY, THE SLIDING JOINT WILL NOT BE USED BECAUSE THERE IS NO LONGER THE RUBBER WHICH STRESSS AXIAL, ESPECIALLY WITH ELABORATED ENGINES. THERE ARE NO MODIFICATIONS TO DO, BUT ONLY DISASSEMBLE THE OLD COUPLING, REMOVE THE SPACER RING AND INSTALL THE NEW COUPLING AFTER FILLING IT WITH GREASE. Reassemble the nut with the right tightening torque and lock it. REASSEMBLE THE AXLE SHAFTS.

OUR EXCLUSIVE PRODUCTION, MADE IN ITALY

AUDI DERIVATION

LIST PRICE € 250.00
 
@ ghostdancing: Exactly!
@ kmead: I think the joints are better on an audi basis. to mount the sorajet couplings, I had to build a small modification to slide the handbrake cable a little further away from the rubber boot. This evening i try to find some photos about the modify.


In this lockdown period, most of the population is forced to stay at home and in the workshop (open because they are considered essential services), not much work. So we dedicate ourselves to our passion, trying to go a little forward with our project.
We decided to deal with two things that we left to do later: the engine, never fully checked, and my own, the subframe of fashion in those years.
The Abarth-like subframe had been in my head for some time, so I built it.
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As you will notice, I modified the back slightly because I have an oil cooler. It's a thing that bothered me a lot to do, because I built in a different piece than the original could have been, but if I hadn't done so, I would have made the function of the radiator useless. Also because not having the double front water / oil radiator, that is the only place where it can get more or less fresh air
 

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