Hi all, new to the site, and new to Fiat 500s as well, but we took the plunge and bought this 1972 car A couple of months ago as a little runaround for nice days. The picture was on the first day we got it home - there’s nothing wrong with the handbrake, but it’s a sloping drive and I’d rather be safe than sorry until I knew it worked properly!!

All good so far, until this week. After about 20 minutes of driving, got a small misfire under load, which then got very quickly worse to the point where the car would idle, but cut out as soon as you touch the throttle. I called out the RAC, As had no tools or anything with me. They checked fuel, which flowed fine, checked the carb for blockage and cleaned it out, and checked for spark. There was a spark, but still no joy getting it to run - by now it wouldn’t even idle, just fire on the starter. He tried adjusting the ignition timing (turning the distributor), who seemed to make it marginally better, but it still won’t run.

The car has a flat distributor cap with one wire coming out, to a coil unit with 2 HT leads (wasted spark?), but I’m stumped on what to do next. My thoughts were try and find TDC So at least I know it’s timed about correctly, but there don’t seem to be any marks to time the distributor against. After that, I guess I need to check each component is working, but not really sure how. Can anyone help?

Check the points are opening and closing.
When points fully open check the gap is correct.

Have you tested the condenser? The modern items are renowned for their crap quality, and the 500 has a habit of going through them at the best of times! At the risk of being accused of banging on about this, if the condenser IS faulty, may I suggest you replace it with one of the competition condensers from "Swiftune". These were designed to be used incompetition cars where the rules stipulate that the original ignition systems have to be retained--everything from minis to GT40s! Admittedly they are not cheap (about £35 inc carriage), but you only get what you pay for.

the hobbler said:

Have you tested the condenser?

Click to expand...

? solid-state coil? Maybe they do have a condenser, I thought not, never had that setup though.

That is the standard ignition set up used on the late 80’s 126 cars. My thoughts like Tom are that the condenser is the most likely suspect. You should have the usual 10 degree BTC timing marks on the crankshaft pulley and timing chain cover so static timing with a simple 12v light should be no problem or a strobe timing light to test while running. You could fit a £35 electronic ignition and do away with points and condenser.

the hobbler said:

Have you tested the condenser?.

Click to expand...

Thanks all of you for the advice - it was indeed the condenser. All back up and running nicely (there was a new one in the big box of spares I got with the car), and went for a nice drive to test it yesterday.

I'll have a look into the alternatives out there, but for now at least I can drive her again

Sorry for the delay in replying - I can't find a reply button when viewing on my phone!

jackwhoo said:

Check the points are opening and closing.
When points fully open check the gap is correct.

Click to expand...

I also put a new set of points on it while I was at it