Panda (Classic) "Rusty" the lucky panda

Sadly I rusty failed his MOT on the last day of the bet, a small patch I had overlooked so the bet was lost. I had to my my workmates a full English. LOL

Thou the bet was a great motivator I and it passed the teat the next day




I didn't take many pictures over the next year, rusty slowly was tidied up and summer 2009 I repainted him in kabota orange.

Just after painting rusty he burnt out a exhaust valve, with the head removed I found the piston rings broken up causing massive oil consumption. Not having much spare money after buying our first house a wanted post was placed on here.

Markpanda, got in touch he was 16vaving his panda and offered my his old engine for free, I just had to take it out of his car. Living in East Devon a drive up the M5 to Birmingham on a wet Saturday. So a big thanks to markpanda. The engine was a spi so I swopped the heads over keeping the 4x4 cam shaft, and lift pump.


Not much has happened since then rusty is still my daily driver and gets some off road adventures

I'm currently reconditioning the old axle I took off recently.

rustypanda said:

It had been a wall, to a pig shed ,resting on the floor with no wheels for many years. The pig had managed to take the door skin off the drivers side and boy did it smell.

Click to expand...

When a car gets to the stage of life that its forming part of an animal enclosure, its dead to 99.9% of the population. Must have taken a hell of a lot of work

Fantastic.... Another one saved

Fantastic work, well done! Love the colour too just one thing I'm wondering about though... On a hot day do you ever get the faint whiff of bacon sandwiches

Inspirational story and an excellent colour choice. Hats off to you sir☺!

Great to see Rusty's story detailed. I had heard some of the stories but not seen all the pics. Really was an amazing recovery...

Rusty is looking a bit tatty now, corroded tailgate, bonnet, doors, and it was painted with cheep tractor paint. So the plan it's at some point to repainted it.

My dad when I was about 11 bought his second panda but the first I remember. He did have a mk1 when I was very young. Anyway the one I remember was a grey sergio tacchini.

So my plan with rusty is to make him in to a ST replica as best I can within reason, so il need to find out the paint code.

Iv already bought the decals from Italy and found a rear badge on eBay. I would like to replace the trim with green but this may not be possible due to how rare these are, so il make do with what is available.

Iv got a good bonnet and tailgate, and plan to sort out the door bottoms as they rant to bad
A quick pic off Google for those that haven't seen one before


This will not be an accurate replica as I would like to keep the 4x4 side trims and rear badge so maybe some sort of ST 4x4 hybrid.

The heater in rusty is so poor, and with my wife dressed up like she's going sking to keep warm when we take rusty out, I thought it about time I investigated the issue.

So with the heater box out I set about taking the valve off, problem of course was the nuts were so corroded the bolts just turned. I used a small disc cutter to remove the nut and take the vale off.

Valve was fine, so I blow in to the matrix and it was very blocke, I used compressed air, power washer to no avail. Still blocked so I took the end off to have a better look.


All the tubes were solid looked like rad weld had been used in the past and had going off like concrete, so order a new rad it was. I went for the cheapest option from my parts supplier, just the matrix, but when it turned up it also had a new valve attached,
Slightly different to the old one but I got it to work, I had previously bought new cables for the heater box which I also changed.

What a difference
Just got to sort out the heavy clutch now and swop the gearbox for the low mileage one jumpinjacks sold me then it's body work time.

If any one would like the old but working heater valve ( white type two bolt fixing) let me know

A grey Sergio you say.... A bit like my one then??...

https://www.fiatforum.com/members-motors/327976-kevs-6-000-mile-sergio-tacchini.html

purple haze said:

A grey Sergio you say.... A bit like my one then??...



https://www.fiatforum.com/members-motors/327976-kevs-6-000-mile-sergio-tacchini.html

Click to expand...

Yep that's the idea. My dad's was G989DAN he sold the reg plate and it was reregistered G???FAN can't remember the numbers he sold it to a workmate after having it 10+years. Sadly it was stolen from reading and written off.

So rusty lives up to his name, but at least it's not to bad this year two small patches on the o/s/r chassis leg.

I bought the floor pans off jumpinjacks last year so i hope to get to replacing the rear floor/ chassis over the summer

The other day I took a gamble on a rear leaf spring front bush the one not available from fiat. It turned up today and it's right I bought it on eBay. I pressed the old one out, and pushed the new one in picture to follow. eBay item no. 171118620028

Iv had a problem driving home tonight, I think its electrical the engine intermittently dies and the jumps back in to life. I don't think its a fuel problem, is there a way to test the ignition module ?

rustypanda said:

Iv had a problem driving home tonight, I think its electrical the engine intermittently dies and the jumps back in to life. I don't think its a fuel problem, is there a way to test the ignition module ?

Click to expand...

When it starts breaking down it cuts out when the engine is hot. Starts off with cutting out & gets worse until it will breakdown (with a loud bang usually!) and refuse to restart until the engine cools. When knackered it will cut out every time it reaches working temp.

You will get a very weak and intermittent spark with a breaking module, possibly none at all, if you want to test it.

Tbh that's the first thing that jumps out as being the cause, so just replace the module. They aren't massively expensive and you can always keep the old one in the unlikely event it turns out to be ok.

Palio said:

When it starts breaking down it cuts out when the engine is hot. Starts off with cutting out & gets worse until it will breakdown (with a loud bang usually!) and refuse to restart until the engine cools. When knackered it will cut out every time it reaches working temp.



You will get a very weak and intermittent spark with a breaking module, possibly none at all, if you want to test it.



Tbh that's the first thing that jumps out as being the cause, so just replace the module. They aren't massively expensive and you can always keep the old one in the unlikely event it turns out to be ok.

Click to expand...

I was thinking this would be the best place to start cheers

Quick update the cutting out turned out to be a perished fuel hose sucking in air as it was before the lift pump now all sorted .

Rusty is still going strong used daily I haven't got around to doing the bodywork as yet