Hello Everyone

I’m Steve and I’ve been meaning to join for ages and have finally gotten round to it.

Currently restoring a 1990 Panda 4x4 which I pulled out of a yard last November (it’s our one year anniversary, how sweet).

I’m not the most practical person but my mate whose and engineer assured me a good service would see her back on the road. Oh how wrong he was.

To bring you up to date. She’s had a very good service under the bonnet, new brakes, new brake lines and a new hand brake cable. That all passed without incident apart from braking the clips that prevent the pads from rubbing on the disc brakes. These have been quite difficult to find but more on that later.

The first snag was discovering a snapped leaf spring. Managed to get those shipped over from Italy and they are now on the car.

The car bless her has had a hard life, she has not been loved unfortunately. she appears to have spent most of her life outside and probably very wet. This has lead to quite a few battles with rusty bolts and having to snap bolts and we have become a dab hand with a bit splitter.

We have now moved on to the welding side of things and it has opened a can of worms too be honest. The car has been owned and work on by someone who I can only describe politely as lacking basic human intelligence. Someone instead of bolting the back seat down has simply hammered them do so the back seat wasn’t bolted down at all. I couldn’t believe it, someone’s kids might have sat on that. I think someone also has learned to weld on it and not been taught very well.
There is a lot of rust in the engine bay where the battery has leaked. We have stripped the interior and there’s quite a few heavy patches of rust which have to be dealt with. The outside has been stripped and wire wheeled ready for welding and we are just getting the interior ready.

We removed the fuel tank this weekend and there’s a huge hole unit so that needs to be replaced.

So that’s where we are and so plans for the future:
Full respray in Raptor Bed Liner two tone silver. Bottom half dark Silve and top half lighter silver. Inside will be done as well to seal it.
New fuel tank
New passenger side door.
New clips for front brakes
New oil pressure sensor (oil light on but oil is getting to rocket cover)
It is currently running on 3 cylinders. Hopefully just a HT lead but we’ll see
Welding to do.
New rear shock absorbers.
Will have a look at front suspension and will probably be replaced
New spare tyre.

Will add to this list as it been helpful to write it down.

Should have joined sooner as I’m so annoyed at how much expertise I’ve missed out on.

Will try upload some pictures for you.

This is what the passenger side seatbelt was ‘attached’ to

welcome to the forum!

yeah the grey ones seem to rust pretty bad.. mine was almost the same level of rot.. let me guess.. about 130k on the clock? haha

the fuel tank on mine was rotten and leaf spring was also snapped too.

check out the threads on my 2 pandas. may give you a little help on some things. could say i have been there and done that.

fuel tank is quite hard to get hold of so i just say fix the old one. few flushes with water and you are good to weld it. i had to on both of mine. i made a great "how to" on fixing a fuel tank.

engine running on 3 can only be down to a spark issue if you know the head gasket and valve seals are good. always nice to do a compression test just to see how the internals are doing.

be sure to check the gearbox out. on the panda the CV boots hold in the gearbox oil. if they fail you loose almost all of the oil. worth changing, but make sure you use good quality ones.

if replacing fuel lines DO NOT use ones from ebay. they will all be split in a few months. too many restored classics have died this way.

i do recommend getting the carb cleaned out, especially if the fuel tank has rotted..
dont worry about the cam belt for now, these engines are non interface so a cam belt snap is nothing but an inconvenience. i actually carry a spare around with me as they are that easy to change.

I'd leave the prop shaft till last as you can MOT and drive it around with it removed. i highly recommend rebuilding all of the joints. just make sure to mark every component because if you put it together in the wrong order it will vibrate like hell.

above all, make sure that after all of the welding, you go though insane levels of rust proofing.

I managed to get 2 full big cans of waxyol in ratchet (project fallout) i rigged up an old in tank fuel pump in an old bucket with a old deep fat fryer element in it to "inject" cavity wax everywhere. i made my own nozzle out of a bit of stiff PVC fish tank pipe using a hot sewing needle to poke holes into it at different angles. the jets were so powerful that when i was sealing the sills i got a jet to fire right up the inside of the B pillar and hit the roof! rig up some old roof guttering under the car to catch the over flowing wax back into the bucket.

you will never get rust issues again.

i actually kinda wish i had another panda project so i could do it all again.. real nice cars to work on.

oh and when it comes to snapped bolts, just keep rocking them back and forth.. sure it takes ages but they do come out eventually. i know the fuel tank bolts/studs (as some pandas have one or the other) can be a right pain in the ass.

good luck and happy Pandaing!