Just wondering whether or not anyone would use their spider as their daily? I'm looking to buy one in my area that "needs restoration, but runs great." Its a '79 2000.
Any comments appreciated. Thanks!
Since it 'needs restoration', perhaps it's safe to assume that after a thorough rebuild of everything, you'll be able to expect reasonable (but not perfect) reliability.
Few cars are perfectly reliable (even Toyota have their moments) but in general, the more parts you replace and the simpler the design is, the more reliable it may work out to be. I completely rebuilt a 128 Coupe once and it was very reliable - no problems for over two years and then I sold it.
Actually, in 12 years of driving dozens of old FIATs, I've only been let down once or twice and only by the worst basket-cases. And even then, it was something simple-to-remedy, such as blocked carburettor jets.
It's a bit like the teach-a-man-to-fish saying. It really helps to work on these cars yourself - paying others to do it will drive you round the bend... and it will work out cheaper to drive a newer car.
You see - using my example - the trick is, if you clean the carburettor jets, the car runs for a week, maybe two.
If you take the carburettor apart and blow it out with compressed air, the car runs for months, maybe a year.
If you clean out and re-seal the fuel tank, replace the fuel lines, replace the fuel pump, repaint the air filter housing to sort out the flaking paint, fix the rust that you found when you removed the fuel tank, find and remove various bodges added by previous owners, fit a new fuel filter, find the correct fuel hose clamps after they leak on reassembly, oh and clean the carburettor... then the car runs for years.
I think you're getting the idea of the difference between quick-fixes and total rebuilds... cars that are nearly 30 years old often need the latter
-Alex