Introducing my new project. Before anyone complains it is not a Fiat, Well it almost is, the underbody is very much similar to the old Bravo afterall.

It was an MOT failure, the failure sheet filled 2 pages but the gist of it is the passengerside floorpan is rotted, rear brakes are knackered and the front wishbones have had it. The engine also makes a weird groaning noise which after a bit of prodding i suspect is power steering pump.

My plans are:
Remove all sound deadening (for weight saving and to access the rot.)
Learn to weld and fix the floorpan.
Do a light restoration on the whole underbody.
rebuild the rear brakes,
Replace the wishbones.
replace the timing belt leaving the balance shafts disconnected.

Few more pics:





Work started today and out came the interior and carpet:



under the carpet is a lot of sound deadening and underlay:



But in a few hours it was all done and the rust was exposed.

Close up:


This was the side that failed, and only 1 patch of the rust. The drivers side wasn't as bad:


My helpers for today:


A bit of sun last thursday so i grabbed the opertunity to do the front passenger side footwell.

I was surprised to see a lot of evidence of a coolent leak, the fibre insulation was sticky and pink:

I think this answers the question of why my floorpan was so bad.

It was such a hot day the tar mat just popped off the floor with virtually no effort:


This shows the extent of the damage in the Front Passenger footwell:


Whilst i was out there I had a quick check to see the power steering fluid as i suspect that the weird engine noise is the pump. Looks pretty bad:


Saturday
Today I tackled the drivers side. I was expecting an easy ride like the passenger side but no, The sound deadening material was different and was as pig to pick away at:

The stuff on the right was in all the other footwells and comes off easily and cleanly in large chunks, the stuff on the left has to be hit with a hammer and flat bladed screwdriver:


over an hour later it was clear:

only minimal rust too:


After all that I was left with a full bin bag of insulation and sound deadening:

I estimate this bag to be arround 15kg so that is a nice little weight saving. For info, i will be using foam floor covering to cover the footwells with after completion to dampen vibrations. I am going to remove all sound deadening with the exeption of the really thick stuff at the bulkhead. I am saving weight but i still want the car to be pleasant to drive.

Sunday
Under rear seats today:

Before


After.

The deadening on the left is the easy peel stuff, the deadening on the right is the solid tar-ey stuff. Slightly disapointed and how little this lot weighed, only a kilo or so but this had to be done as i didn't want to miss any rust.

Next weekend if i have the time the rear seat backs and all the side trim will come out. Then the whole floorpan from the rear seats to the tailgate will be wirebrushed to remove the rust, primered and painted.

Good luck with the project. Hope this 145 has more luck than the last!

nice work so far

Week 3. This week my plan was to bare the boot floor and then treat and protect all the floor and refit everything.

Things don't always go according to plan. So boot empty and ready to start stripping:


As you can see the boot floor uses the horrible type of underseal. I am going to chip this off.


Seats out, carpet all out and all side panels out. Is that impact damage i see? It is not bad though so i will leave it as it is.


These arches had 2 layers of sound deadening, the tar mats which i will leave on and the fibre stuff that is under all the carpets. The latter was pulled off and discarded as they hold water and I saw signs of water/leak damage.


one little bit..


and another. All to be repaired.

Unfortunately the tar had mixed with spilled oil in the boot so it was a pig to scrape off. 3 hours after i started this is how it was when i had to finish:



and the last bit of rust:

This was particularly fragile so it may be worth checking on your car. I don't know if i will weld it up or not as this hole is supposed to be there, just blanked off with a push-fit piece of metal.

Ran out of time after this, So far from all my posts i would say not bad for a total of 10 hours work.

the one on the cinq came of i just got a bit of poly sheets and cover it up from under

Nice wee project.

Ransoman said:

I was surprised to see a lot of evidence of a coolent leak, the fibre insulation was sticky and pink

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Ahhh..... have a good long look at the pipes to and from the heater matrix (and the matrix itself) for damage. I'm sure you've considered that already, but I had a bugger of a time fixing a problem on a Lancia that displayed similar issues when I stripped it down for welding. Some cars you have to pretty much take out the whole damn dashboard and that's a right pain in the ar5e.

What you going to do to the engine......

YcMing said:

the one on the cinq came of i just got a bit of poly sheets and cover it up from under

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mine is about to go on the cinq, my plan was to fibreglass over it

i would have used a old wood chisel for geting gunky stuff off bit wider than screwdriver & where did you get those helpers from as im looking for some like that

agree with the chisel that's how i got mine off! Hate the job lol.

Model post:- I look forward to watching your progress..what's the engine size?

gengis said:

..what's the engine size?

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I think the Cloverleaf 145's were all 2 litre twinsparks.... but I could be wrong :sunny:
Nice engine that, a relatively unstressed 150-ish bhp and can make much more with a wee bit of tweaking

Nice project indeed, seems like some good if arduous work's been too Liking the slightly faded 944 too by the way, have always fancied one of those

are you sure this is a cloverleaf?? thought they had leather seats as standard... S:

i could be wrong (probably am)

either way it still looks cool and i wish you luck!!!!

and yeh clovers are 2.0 beasts

He had one before in Yellow...and I could swear it didn't have a leather interior?

like i say i could be wrong haha.

Thanks for the comments/replies.

Nope, leather is an option on all 145's. I prefer the cloth interiors anyway. They are more supportive and comfier.

The engine is a 2.0 tspark with 150bhp. The plan is is to remove the balance belt to remove 5kg of rotational mass and I will get a CSC cat back exhaust. I reckon i have removed 20kg of sound deadening aswell. I am not expecting miracles but I am hoping this little lot will bring it up a minimum of 5bhp per ton. I will aslo heat wrap the exhaust and cash permitting a lightened flywheel. I'm not fussed about spending any money, i am looking for a Mint 145 at the moment and any mods will be transferred to the new car.

The porshe is going to be broken up and sold. The rust on the Alfa pales in comparison to the sills on the porsche. The engine and transaxle will go into storage and then I am going to use my soon to be newly learned welding skills and make it into a kit car. Maybe a porsche powered Lotus 7?

No updates though. Weather was pants last weekend

Good luck with your project...I remember disconnecting the balancer shafts on my Yamaha XS500 a few years ago, it made a slight difference to the performance. The difference was in the engine braking, as there was very little in comparison, probably more pronounced on two wheels.

I also had a stab at a Lotus 7 replica, with the engine that's in my Spider and sierra back end. It became an abandoned project as I couldn't see myself driving it...Know what I mean?...Strange!.

gengis said:

Good luck with your project...I remember disconnecting the balancer shafts on my Yamaha XS500 a few years ago, it made a slight difference to the performance. The difference was in the engine braking, as there was very little in comparison, probably more pronounced on two wheels.

I also had a stab at a Lotus 7 replica, with the engine that's in my Spider and sierra back end. It became an abandoned project as I couldn't see myself driving it...Know what I mean?...Strange!.

Click to expand...

lotus 7 rep? what happend to it?

Sold it on to a guy in Liverpool.

oh (gutted now) well