(G) The $120 (£47.24) Uno 45

Yesterday, James (jjhepburn) and I drove to Auckland to collect our - well, James' - Uno 45.

The trusty Alfa 164 did the job well, though it mysteriously used a lot of oil because the 'low oil level' warning light (dipstick symbol) appeared when re-starting. Owners of Italian cars with oil-level sensors will know this is usually a false indication, but in this case it was actually correct - the level was only halfway up to 'Min' on the dipstick.

Anyway the first shot shows a picture of James driving the 164, along a motorway across an estuary. This is because my Tom Tom identified two 'Pine Avenues' - one in Glen Eden, northwest Auckland, and the other one even further out of town in somewhere called 'Cornwallis'. Neither of these matched the 'Balmoral' description of the seller's suburb. Once we got to Pine Ave, ten minutes early, I managed to get the Tom Tom to find the location of Pine St., 20 minutes away...

When we found the car - which had been pushed out onto the road for us to collect - I took the second photo. The first impression was not that great, though obviously it is 'burgundy' rather than red! Both tyres on the left side were completely flat, so I used a jump-start pack to power a tyre inflator (top tip there - saves having to have a car nearby).

The other side - well, I'll let you look at the third picture and make up your own mind. The clearcoat was in amazing condition and looked like it was some sort of tape applied to the car. Which is what happened next, since we tied the driver's door closed with a rope around the middle pillar, and added some duck tape for good measure. The clearcoat peeled off later with the tape.

Inside the car, the interior was in the usual condition - though someone had taken a hammer to the stereo for good measure. The gear lever was especially sticky - what makes plastic turn to a sticky, shiny finish? The backseat was mouldy and there was some moss growing inside the boot. Someone had also kindly put the spare wheel on top of the boot floor...

... as in the picture below.

The front doors have both enjoyed some rust repairs - now re-rusting - and actually these are not the worst Uno doors we have seen - there is still a 'bottom' to the door and from the outside, they don't look too bad.

Anyway the third pic shows the Uno having arrived at my place - on the trailer - and today, we started work. Even though I have absolutely no free time and it's chucking down with rain today...

...I started by getting the driver's door latch replaced so that the door actually closes. That was easy enough though there was a small difference with the Mk2 latch that I fitted - the interior handle rod didn't fit because of there being a larger hole. This was solved by bodging it with another plastic fitting off the now-spare lock pin.

James cleaned the engine and waterblasted thoroughly with my (broken, leaking) waterblaster - quite a lot of the clearcoat came off the affected side and it looks better already.

In the engine bay we made real progress. I thought that the battery tray was in amazing condition, and, well, it was all pretty good really (see pic). The cam cover was cracked so I replaced it with a spare, which I gave a clean and a paint first. Similar heavy-handedness had broken/bent the choke linkage and smashed the choke pull-down capsule (how do people do this?)

James changed the carburettor for a known-good spare and replaced all the fuel pipes, fitting a new filter. James also splashed out on new woven brown seat covers (for all four of our spare, blue seats), new spark plugs, new 20W50 oil, and even a central locking kit (this is all surprising extravagance for someone with a Scottish-sounding name).

We had removed the tank yesterday (due to the long-term lack of a petrol cap, we had our doubts), so after tipping out the water (and putting some methylated spirits in) we refitted the tank today (new pipes on top) and put in 5L of petrol. We also treated the Uno to a petrol cap - and a locking petrol cap at that!

The engine received some engine flush and radiator cleaner. Several litres of water went in the radiator, so it remains to be seen if there's a leak.

The rear lights mostly didn't work, but with a wiggle of the plug and twist of the bulbs, one indicator, two brake lights, one tail light, and two reverse lights came to life (the others were already working for some reason).

After fitting a replacement battery (from my Punto, which had a new battery a week ago) the engine fired into life!

Because the vacuum advance capsule was broken, I plugged its pipe and checked that the timing was set to 10 degrees (engine idling).

We tried to go for a short and illegal testdrive, but this was cut short when we realised that the windscreen wiper didn't work (of course) and the visibility was thus difficult because it has just rained continuously, English-style, all day. Surprisingly, the heater - and fan - works!

Surprisingly also, the brakes seem to work - though of course we don't know that because we didn't take it for our illegal testdrive after all

We also noticed that the oil pressure light comes on with the engine idling. Either this is caused by great wear to the oil pump, or a faulty switch, or the flushing agent that we put in the oil (plus, maybe, some water or something else in the oil...)

So next, I shall - umm - get on with my work for the week (two weeks of work to do in four days) - and then perhaps next weekend, we shall get the wiper working, change the oil/coolant, diagnose the engine a little more (i.e. find if there is a big coolant leak), and get on with sprucing the car up a bit. I'd like to replace the taillights, but as James pointed out, that's pricey (he has three spare sets).

Alex's hint for the day is that when a car battery 'fizzes' (sparking sounds during charging), firstly it is probably dangerous to leave it on charge overnight (as I did), and secondly, when the volts drop from 12 to 6 as you turn the key, it's probably stuffed. So, you get a battery that's been removed from a modern car due to electrical gremlins from its voltage being 12.1 volts instead of 12.3... and it's fine in the Uno.

-Alex

Nice find, sounds like a car thats been sitting around for a few months/years and has been neglected??

What's the plan, get it back to legal roadworthy condition and allow someone else the pleasure of ownership? You must have owned every Uno ever exported to NZ by now, when you sell them do you ask that the owner contacts you when they're done so they can return it back to you for the required tart up and resell

I saw Chas's mint 70SX and the JAI UT yesterday and brooklands and has got me thinking a daily beater is required.......Mk1 Uno is top of my list....how much to ship to the UK

There's actually a surprising number of Mk1 Unos left on the roads over here - probably more than left in the UK! There's still very few Mk2 Unos here.

Oddly, two of the 11 Unos did get re-sold - one metallic-blue 70SL to James (which is what started him on the idea of Unos, over six years ago) which James re-sold years later, and the red 60 went back to the person that sold it to me, at a profit of course, which they then re-sold twice!

The plan for this 45, on the other hand, is to fix it up as economical daily transport. The only slight problem is that both James and I want it - at the moment! I've just completed a scooter journey at night in heavy rain - cold, soaked through - so I would love to have driven the old 45 instead.

In a month or two, I shall have my Punto fixed up (needs a replacement driveplate, dials, and at the moment the seats are apart). Then I shall use that and James will get the Uno. In the meantime, James braves the daily commute in his racer-Uno while I pour oil and petrol into the 164 when absolutely essential, and then drive off waiting for the oily cambelt to break. My Uno Turbo doesn't really enter the picture as it's de-reged (and not good in wet weather - leaks) and the bloody 166 (silver whale on the driveway) is hopefully going to a new owner soon (before that cambelt breaks) - the odometer is reading 100,005km so I don't want to make it higher than that magic mark.

We're not far off the Uno 45 being roadworthy - the wipers, indicator stalk, and some lights to do, and it will need tyres (it will probably end up with the wrong-size 155/80s, as they're cheaper to get than the 155/70s or even 135/80s...) The tyres are one of the few things we'll actually have to buy for the car. The other is the vacuum advance capsule.

We will probably also do some work on the brakes before we submit it for a WOF, though I see that one handbrake cable has been changed, and the other seems in good nick. The front discs are super-rusty so we'll probably swap them for some spares (with matching spare pads...)

As you said, basically the car has sat around for a long time and we don't know why - I'm a bit worried by how low the radiator water was - there must have been something that made it stop but we didn't really get that out of the owner.

I've never seen an oil pressure light come on with the engine idling before, so that might be a bad sign. But the engine seems to rev nicely (the light goes out and there's no knocking) so hopefully when we put the thick new oil in (does anyone else run 20W50 - the specified oil is 10W40...) the pressure will increase.

One good thing is that it doesn't actually seem that rusty - the doors are rusty, but that's about it. One of my old 5-dr Unos actually had rust in the roof, in the floor, in the engine bay crossmember, etc. etc.

Prior to being left, the car had steady ownership - four years and six years with the two previous keepers, who had some family-type relationship with each other, and James knew some of their family (but then, I guess you will be expecting that in NZ...)

We will be doing something about the bodywork, but one of the first jobs is to strip out the interior, clean the carpet (which is relatively good for one of these), wirebrush/paint the inevitable rust in the floor, which hopefully doesn't go right through, and then we shall be ready for a WOF to see what faults that throws up. Later we will repaint the doors etc. but I'm trying to convince James that much of the car's existing paint can be polished up well enough James repainted a whole Uno 45 once, in a weekend (pretty much).

The appeal for an Uno, for us, is always that we know how to fix them, and we have numerous spares for them, so there's the minimum of expenditure and none of the awful mysteries of, say, a Bravo head gasket change, or an Alfa 166 electrical gremlin...

Jobs are so much simpler on the Uno - as you can see from the space around the engine, you can see we cheated and pushed it into my garage, displacing the Alfa, and you can tell this because you can see the garage floor in all the empty space in the engine bay.

A cambelt and tensioner change on the Uno 45, for example, would take literally half an hour compared with probably six or seven hours on a 24V V6 - and the parts cost would be ~$100 compared with $600. But, thanks to the sticker in the engine bay of this Uno, we won't even bother with that :P No damage anyway if the belt does break.

FIAT really are best at small cars - the smaller and simpler, the least disappointing they seem to be...!

We know that we'll have the Uno 45 on the road soon, and it will owe us about $300-$400 at that point (mainly thanks to the new seat covers etc...)

Cheers!
-Alex

outstanding! those turrets look very good too, of course being you, you're not going to leave it standard....are you?

both of you want it?

CAGE FIGHT!!! TO THE DEATH!!!
LAST MAN STANDING TAKES HOME THE UNO!!!

So where was Pine St?

Hi Jai - cheers, glad you can see the potential!
There is no rust behind the headlights, under the battery tray, at the chassis legs, etc. - all the corners of the engine bay are fine. As usual, there is a rust bubble on one of the 'triangle' seams above the headlights where the bonnet rubber stops are.

The chassis side members and front slam panel are also buckle-free - no signs of a smash (rather too common on Unos probably due to the drivers/conditions they attract). No bumper repairs either!

When I first saw the scabby outside, I wondered what we'd done However, now I look forward to making it smart and functional. Since it's living at my place, hopefully there won't be much of a fight. James will have it once he's sold one of the numerous cars at his place...!

Actually we are planning to leave the Uno 45 mechanicals standard - so that it fufils its design purpose of economical reliability. James mentioned soundproofing today (wanted to jam some floormats under the carpet when we get it out) and I noticed the doors are ultra-tinny. Maybe we should set a limit of, say, 15kg for the total of all added luxuries. That will make quite a difference - a sound-deadening square in each door (3kg), some felt under the carpet (10kg) (after painting of course, and maybe sandwich the felt in plastic bags so it doesn't get wet), and a rear shelf in the back (1kg) 'cause it sounds like there's a door open when you drive along at the moment (can hear the water splashing off the tyres!) Another worthwhile place for soundproofing is the edges of the floor (1kg) - close off the holes, particularly the ones under the back seat, and you won't hear the fuel sloshing in the tank etc. that usually marks out driving the base-model Uno...

15kg extra shouldn't hurt the economy/performance too much - we could always leave out the spare wheel/jack to save 12kg We saved a couple of kilos by ripping off the (falling-apart) soundproofing from the bonnet. Is it worth having this? FIAT must have put it on the base model for a reason... they didn't fit much soundproofing, but they did fit that.

I'm thinking of stripping my Turbo (to make it a bit more hardcore) so perhaps the various sound-deadenings that I fitted to that (to try and make it luxurious, which didn't exactly work) could be better used on the relatively-quiet 45. Basically the noise in my Turbo is from the exhaust, the tyres, and the rather guttural engine. I tried to make the interior a quiet, nicer place to enjoy the super sound system, but it's too flimsy/shaky to be really luxurious. I think maybe I should celebrate the raucousness of the Turbo and make other cars quieter instead. And put the sound gear, including my round sub box, into the 164.

I think I might invest in a sound meter ($120) so that I can measure the actual dB level while driving under controlled conditions, say 50km/h and 100km/h, on a smooth surface and a rough surface. That way, I can do some measurements in my Turbo with the sound deadening mentioned, then without the sound deadening, then in the 45 without the sound deadening, then in the 45 with the sound deadening, and then in my Punto, the 164, and the 166. That way, we can make some qualitative statements about what improvements are possible (and where to do more than the factory...) I notice that my 164 is a beautifully quiet car. I suspect they tried much harder for that model than for something like the Uno or even the Punto. What would be interesting is if I could get the Punto as quiet as the 164 (efforts there are ongoing).

Haha - you found this thread. Whaddya think?
Pine St is near Dominion Road, back in Auckland. I think we went near your place on the way back there.

Pine Ave, on the other hand, is in Waitakere/Henderson I think it was. Miles out on the North-western motorway... we had to come back the way we'd come, except through traffic. James was ever so good about it considering all the gearchanging and the heavy clutch, and that it was my stuff-up. My excuse? The email said 'Pine Ave' (as well as Pine St) and I'd been up ALL NIGHT so my concentration was shot - that's why James was driving.

The 164 was great at towing an Uno on a trailer. Power was sufficient - burned off everyone at the lights once - and it got up the Bombay hills (heading south) in fifth gear maintaining 95km/h - just. We weren't sure what the speed limit for towing a trailer was.

When we towed an Uno on a trailer with an Uno, the swaying was horrendous. With the 164, you were aware that the back of the car was 'shunted' a little, but it was very stable. Also the back end was super-low but it didn't seem to matter too much - never heard/felt it bottom out.

-Alex

Sounds like a fun project.

I keep thinking of trying to find a "roadworthy" cheap UNO and sticking it into the garage then taking it apart and reconditioning it.

Hopefully a 5 seater this time.

Great to see things are progressing with the new Uno Alex Looks a bit 'sheddy', but looks can be deceiving (as Jai knows!) I'm still amazed at how solid Jai's bargain UT is. As we all know, the most important thing with Unos is the shell as most of the mechanical parts can be replaced. With mk1's the second most important thing is the switchgear and interior parts - they're nigh on impossible to find outside of owners clubs and people breaking Unos on Ebay.

Good luck with the project Alex and hope you manage to scrape all the mould off

Bet you wished you hadn't sold yours now! Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I regret not buying some of the Unos that came up on Ebay over the past year or so. Best one was a 45S in Brighton (metalic blue) that had only done something like 23K from new. Still, I got me a nice 35K Uno 70SX instead so I can't complain too much.

Oh and Alex, I think my 1986 45S beats yours for being a bargain by costing £1.24 less!

I don't know if you (or anyone you know) comes to Wellington very often, but if you do you can have the 5 rims and tyres from my MK1 for nix. There are 4x 155 x 13s which still have tons of tread on them and a 135 x 13 spare wheel. They even come with the original SL style wheel trims if you want

Talk about pipped to the post, then
Actually I spent about the same again today on some PARTS - there is a BIG coolant leak from somewhere behind/above the flywheel (with radiator cap removed and engine off, a jet of rusty water shoots out over the clutch) - well, at least I think we have now found what was wrong with it when the owner stopped driving it!

The 50mm core plug (which is where I suspect the leak is from) was only $8, but the vacuum advance capsule (I wanted a NEW one) was $70, air filter cheap at $12, and CV boot $20.


YTUNO - many thanks, you have a private message


-Alex

OK - bit of an update from the weekend...
I had a lot of work to do on the 12-page Excel VBA thing I write each month (in English), so James got stuck in pretty much on his own.

We were surprised to find that the gearbox had a correct quantity of what seemed like correct oil (non-smelly, non-EP gear oil).

The gearbox came off seemingly within minutes (under an hour, anyway), and the core plug was staring us in the face - it really was RUINED!

The new core plug went on, along with a different, lighter flywheel (did you know that the later engines seem to have a thicker flywheel that is about 3kg heavier? No, neither did we ) and a different clutch (there didn't look to be much life left in the old one, while a spare we had looked practically new). The release bearing sounded kinda 'dry' but I told James not to worry about it (after all, it only takes him 20 minutes to get a gearbox off... but also, the only time we've seen a release bearing fail was when the plastic carrier split apart due to the fork wearing through the metal pads - that wasn't happening here).

I'm still pondering the advantages of a lighter flywheel and whether it makes the car easier to drive or not

The driveshafts received a thorough makeover - just look at the trouble taken to keep the inner joint clean! - with four new boots. I thought we should use metal bands, but James assures me that cable ties will do the job. He's probably right - I've had problems with cable ties on larger FIATs where there is little clearance around the CV joint.

The gearbox was back on seemingly as quickly as it came off, though the starter motor almost generated some swearing...!

The result of the thinner, lighter flywheel (which came off a standard, early Uno 45) was that the clutch adjuster had to be wound right up to bring the pedal up to the correct height.

The engine is now holding its water - after a couple of flushes (system seems clean but recently neglected) I shall refill with proper green stuff at last, and also change the oil. Next on the list is 'brakes' (discs were wafer-thin) and then we shall begin on the bodywork - making it look like less of a shed.

Costs so far - umm, $8 for that core plug (three pounds)... and, umm... driveshaft boots for $10 each... plus one for $20 bought from the wrong place...! so, $58 for our weekend fun and satisfaction

Cheers,
-Alex

Yeah I do regret selling the Mk1, the shell was 99% solid only requiring a small patch to one of the rear arches. It also had some arch skirts that were genuine Fiat and made it look really mean. I paid £100 for it, with a short MOT and sold it for £250 with a full MOT. I filled the GTA today and it cost £67 and will give me about 250 miles. The price went up a further 1p since this morning, fuel prices are increasing on an almost daily basis now, I do wonder where or if it will stop. Perhaps this is the start of the effects of peak oil; anyway a little off track there, I think what I'm saying is that a 999cc Uno would be alot more economical than a 3179cc Alfa!

Dropped onto page 2 - finally! - it's been really quiet in the Uno forum lately

So - time for an update? And what have we done?

Last time we left the project with a running engine that held its water (core plug replaced), with the flywheel/gearbox/driveshafts back on. It was time to start on the bodywork. A quick glance at the first two photo sets confirms that this was necessary...

1. THE ROOF and the BACK END

I just happened to have some dark-red T-Cut and this product worked perfectly for the job - not too fine, not too coarse - it literally took only a few hours to deliver the transformation shown before/during/after.

So - no need for paint to the roof or tailgate - let's move on...

2. WHEELS

Front-left buckled and front-right badly kerbed. With two wheels from collections, I amassed the motley assortment shown first below. One silver rim actually from Brazil (different shaped ribs) - another quick Cambridge trip yielded yet another rusty rim.

All wheels wire-brushed on pedestal grinder before soaking in rust converter (>24hr) and final wire-brush, then etch-prime. This prep-work took several days!

Latest Duplicolor Wheel Coating has bright 'OEM-quality' luminous silver finish - apparently, tiny glass beads. One can goes a long way and almost did all four wheels, with a light dusting inside each (yes, I cleaned the wheels properly even on the inside, several cuts to the hands).

I decided that a 2K clearcoat would add durability (and be easier to clean than the dry finish of the Duplicolor coating). However, the clear does tend to leach the metallic effect and perhaps wasn't the best move - in the short-term at least.

Plastic centre-covers received special attention also - one had a crack, Supaglue fixed.

If someone says 'alloys', first show me some that don't need refinishing and haven't been kerbed, then show me some (in 13") that are narrow enough to take the fuel-saving 155/70 tyres we bought (set of four) for $260. Finally, check your weight - you'd be surprised to know that Uno steels are lighter than Uno Turbo alloys - let alone aftermarket alloys.

For serviceability (easy fitting), balance, lightness, and sheer elegant simplicity - hard to go past Uno steel wheels Unless you need fat tyres of course. This Uno is for around-town use.