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Cinquecento My Imola Cinquecento

Introduction

So I recently posted a thread about how I couldn't get this car to turn over. After 6 starter motors removal+refits, various wiring hacks, much swearing, and many headscratches...

...I fitted the battery from my Seicento and it fired up first time. Stupid cheap jump leads :bang: Don't know why I didn't do this first, glutton for punishment I guess :eek:

Anyway I kept driving past this on someones driveway for over a year at work and thought "If that ever comes up for sale i'll buy it and put it on the road". After about... 10 months? Of going past it it ended up with a for sale sign in. Called the guy up, he needed it gone asap but the brakes were gone, £100 and a heavy hammer later it was at mine :slayer:

So yeah, here it is. The bonnets just rest on for photo's as I took it off for access, 6'4" and a Cinq engine bay isn't the funnest combo! For now plans are fully overhaul the brakes and suspension, engine wise i'm not sure what to do, tempting a 1.2 bottom end with 1.1 everything else as mine leaks like it's going out of fashion.

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Space saver is on as the alloy has a slow leak. All 4 wheels have dents on the inside, can tell his wife drove it!

For now the plan is spin it round in my garage once i've cleared it out a bit, jack up the rear, drop the axle and fuel tank, rust remove, wire brush the underside and seal it. Wire down the rear axle and radius arms and either powder coat or hammerite (see how money goes) them, polybush, refit with new brakes. Paint the tank and refit as well, see how all the hard lines for fuel and brakes are and replace as needed. Deal with any other general shenanigans under there. Then move to the front, tempting a 1.2 bottom end rebuilt with the 1.1 top end and gearbox as this lump leaks like a sieve!
Made a little progress today... and I mean little. Spent 2 hours in the garage and all I achieved was turning it around, removing the backbox, removing the rear bumper (kissed an hour goodbye there, thanks to Fiats wonderous rotating bolts to attach the bumper), and attacking the rust on one of the rear bumper brackets. Also uncovered some of the rust (it was inevitable on a car that has been outside 3 years) but nothing majorly scary yet :)

Some boring pictures, sorry! :)

Rear bracket before:
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Rear bracket after (this will be hammerited black):
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And the small bit of rust (I'll be stripping the underside and undersealing it with fresh stuff once the axle, tank and general rear end is stripped):
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Gonna try and hammer some more out on Thursday. Friday i'm gonna go get some new axle stands and then I can hover the rear end much more safely than on a jack, and can drop the rear axle and tank etc get back to a bare chassis under the rear end :)

Side note, sounds awesome without the backbox on. Really nice sound, genuinely considering when I get an exhaust made up, having it with a very small straight through silencer where the OEM one is, and straight pipe back.
 
Little more work today, broke down the OSR suspension ready to drop the axle in the next week if all goes well. Going to Halfords tomorrow morning to pick a pair of axle stands, aiming to have the car up on them and the rest of the axle down on Monday, maybe even the fuel tank too. Bit of a catch 22 in that i'm running out of storage space so i'll have to work something out for that.

Anyway today I jacked it up off the rear beam and got the wheel off. After battling with the rear drum (this was stuck fast when we got it and wasn't much better now, I think the self adjusters were stuck) to get it off, I went for the brake line. This was a bit of a pain in that I couldn't remove the bleed nipple for access to the brake line fitting. In the end (as i'm replacing the rear brakes anyway) I used a chisel to attack the bleed nipple. Undoing the rear brake line lead to some fun, the rear lines must have been really week as I cracked the bolt and a turn later the line had rotated with it and snapped off! Glad I decided to rebuild it all now :)

After that there wasn't much drama, pretty straight forward. Unbolted the backplate and disassembled it off the car, undone the shock and dropped the radius arm down, removed the spring then unbolted the radius arm. One side complete :)

You can see the knackered brake line here:

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Given my baby boy will be in this car at some point i'm glad i'm going through it thoroughly! And lastly the final result of todays work and a better shot showing where the rust is (you can see the drivers side rear arch/bumper fitting in this picture)

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Edit: Thought there would be more interest in this than there has been, no comments or anything :(
 
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