600 Body panel's

59-600

Daily Driver
I've heard mixed reviews on a lot of the new replacement parts for 600's and was wondering if anyone had any issues with body panels from Mr. fiat?

I am looking to pick up driver side rocker panel, drivers side floor and possibly a front floor panel.

Thanks,

Erik
 
Well... I think I'm done with buying stuff from them. Just bought a pair of window regulators from them. They are really bad quality and I'm returning them. I've bought a few items there over the years and just about everything has been substandard quality. I just went to install the aluminum trim strip on the front hood that I bought a few years ago and put in my "storage room" and now found that it was so badly made that it is unusable and am using my original from '58 instead.

On body panels, if they're made using old dies, the dies can be worn out resulting in poorly fitting panels. Many panels today are made for Zastavas and don't have quite the same fitment as original 600s. In some cases you can rework them to fit, but can be many hours of extra work. Finding original NOS panels in Europe if you can is the best way to go, even if you have to pay more.

The first pair of new front fenders I bought were reproductions. I couldn't get them to fit, no way, no how. Were about 1/8" - 1/4" too short front to back. Then I ordered a pair from Mr Fiat. I even asked him beforehand about quality and fitment issues and his response was he'd never had a complaint. Turns out they were also a major fitment problem. After spending a lot of $$ already on two sets of fenders, I decided to make Mr. Fiat's pair fit.

Here's a couple of photos of what I had to deal with on the fenders. The rear area at the leading edge of the door did not have the double 90 degree lip like should have been there like OEM. No. 1 one shows the single 90 degree lip that came on them. No. 2 is what I salvaged off the old fenders and no. 3 is what I had to fabricate. This took hours upon hours to fix. In the 2nd photo, it shows how the fenders did not fit around the headlight buckets. I had to weld in some new metal as shown by no. 1 and then I had to fold over the lip shown by no. 2 and then weld a 90 degree return lip on that. This also took many hours to do. Not shown in a photo is that the fenders did not meet up properly to the front nose panel. I used half a dozen vise-grips to hold it in place after having to force it into position. Both fenders were wavy/ripply along the top and needed filler and sanding to smooth them out.

If you have to pay someone to rework panels, you most definitely want something that fits as nicely as possible from the start.

Another thing also is that repro. & Zastava panels can be thinner gauge, which may or may not be an issue.

This is my own personal experience and opinion. Next time, I would spend more on better quality quality and if at all possible, either NOS pieces or pieces salvaged from a parts car. Even then, there's no guarantee NOS panels will fit correctly. I bought a pair of NOS outer rockers off ebay.it and it turned out that the right side one needed some cutting and welding at the forward end to fit but the left side was perfect. If you want to good stuff, go talk to Chris Obert. It may cost more but he knows his @#$% and is far more likely to sell you good @#$%.

On panels made for Zastavas, some may not be an exact replica of Fiat 600 ones. The floor pans for example are a bit different and instead of 5 square depressions, there are 6 (or maybe it's 6 & 7, would have to go look). Seat rails are slightly different too IIRC and I re-used my original seat rails. If you were anal about a restoration and maybe working on a genuine Abarth, this sort of thing can matter. Beware of buying from the various Fiat 600 parts vendors in Europe as they can very well be reproduction or Zastava panels. Ebay.it can be a good source and there are a few vendors in Italy that have good stuff. The current virus outbreak is an issue for getting anything shipped from Europe, esp. Italy.

'Nuf said, gotta go. Heading off to return my window regulators. :mad:


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unfortunately the problem of substandard spare parts is also present here in Italy, contrary to what one might think. Since the 70s there was an invasion of badly printed pieces of competition and with poor materials. Even a certain period Fiat itself bought them from the competition and sold them branded with the fiat logo. Some time ago we followed the same procedure as Myredracer, that is, aiming for the recovery of the original part rather than assembling the spare part; in the case it was a hood of a fiat 500L that not only did not square on the edges but had the area of the hood hook even more inside than the original.
 
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