Looks good ��

cheeky update before everything gets manic for Christmas, had a good few hours spent under the Punto at the weekend and got a fair bit done.


Pic beforehand. sorry there won't be many photos, was racing the daylight all day!

First job was changing out rear springs, car sits far too low at the back to be practical, and is was bumpy as hell on motorways I remember.
wire brushed the stock springs and gave them a quick coat of black spray paint just to tidy them up a bit, there was a fair bit of rust




lowered springs were fairly easy to get out, but the taller stock ones were a bloody nightmare to get back in, managed it eventually with a crow bar and a good kicking!


Next job was a cooling system flush, as it still had just water in it since I replaced the head gasket and i thought it needed a good clean. bought a bottle of Wynne's radiator flush and let it run for a while, let it cool and then drained into a washing up basin (sorry mum)......


yeah I'd say that's better out than in.....

flushed once more with just water in the system then filled it up with blue readymix coolant, bled and tested the air blower for hot air, all good and ready to roll!

also discovered a perished rear exhaust hanger that was only just holding up the back box, replaced with a generic rubber mount and reinforced with a hose clamp that will hopefully hold for a while.


got some replacement rear licence plate bulbs to fit, and some niggling brakelight wiring trouble to fix and then MOT time i think. Hopefully not long into the new year

antifreeze looks yummy

It's great to see a mk1 that's loved. Fingers crossed you're able to keep it going for several more years! Sadly, a lot of mk1 Puntos are being used as engine donors by classic Panda enthusiasts.

puntofan01 said:

It's great to see a mk1 that's loved. Fingers crossed you're able to keep it going for several more years! Sadly, a lot of mk1 Puntos are being used as engine donors by classic Panda enthusiasts.

Click to expand...

those bastards

flisko said:

those bastards

Click to expand...

A bit harsh, lol!

puntofan01 said:

A bit harsh, lol!

Click to expand...

joke

flisko said:

joke

Click to expand...

Fair enough, lol!

tbf cento folk are far more likely to use P75 bits than panda folk.. Can't really blame them though, p75 engine is brilliant. And when it comes to 16v engines the mk1 16v was a better engine than the later ones, cams are better, ecu and things are pretty much a bolt in conversion as its cable throttle like a cento or panda too unlike mk2 puntos and other later cars. I find panda folk in general are much more anti engine conversions and are scared of fuel injection lol.

blu73 said:

tbf cento folk are far more likely to use P75 bits than panda folk.. Can't really blame them though, p75 engine is brilliant. And when it comes to 16v engines the mk1 16v was a better engine than the later ones, cams are better, ecu and things are pretty much a bolt in conversion as its cable throttle like a cento or panda too unlike mk2 puntos and other later cars. I find panda folk in general are much more anti engine conversions and are scared of fuel injection lol.

Click to expand...

Fair enough, lol! I hate the idea of killing a perfectly good car, just to make another car faster, lol! Especially when the donor cars themselves are getting rare.

flisko said:

antifreeze looks yummy

Click to expand...

I call it Gravy a la Oil, 10w40 flavour.
I'm gonna make up a batch for Christmas dinner

I hate the idea of killing a perfectly good car, just to make another car faster, lol! Especially when the donor cars themselves are getting rare.

Click to expand...

I can see the David Attenborough documentary now.....
"the small-engined vultures circle the crippled Punto, waiting for it's last breath to move in and pick the chassis clean......"

hopefully get this running and back on the road in some shape or form, didn't realise until having the car a few years that fuel injection was a luxury in these mk1's haha

well yeah, punto's are getting rare now but really i don't think such people are to blame for that really. I mean most have just been in such crap condition they have been scrapped, or traded in for a new car with a dealer and then just scrapped. They are rare yes but alot of the time they are not really worth saving from a financial point of view and then 99% of people will just throw in the towel with a 'its only a punto attitude'. Its sad but true (of most ageing fiats) that they just are not viewed as classics or being worth the money to restore. At least in the case of someone doing a conversion the parts still get used, alot of other spares from the car are usually sold on and reused as well. What I find really hard to swallow is when someone scraps one because of something like a headgasket when the actual car is decent shape - because if you can't fix it yourself the labour charge is more than the car is worth and people just scrap them and get a new car, pains me to think how many solid shells have been scrapped over time because of simple mechanical issues.

On the coolant flush.... You stick proper flushing agents in the cooling system and it 99.9% of the time it comes out looking horrid like that cause it breaks down all the crap stuck in there. When I had my bravo recently and did full flush I drained it and flushed through with clean, refilled and then stuck some flush in and went for a drive and then dropped what had been completely clear water in there half an hour earlier came out looking like milky PG Tips, was utterly disgusting!

Oh I'm not in any way badmouthing the people who snap up spare parts, I've been there myself as I'm sure we all have.

From a financial point of view this Punto isn't worth much; no longer stock, definitely not mint and not modified for any increased performance. But looking back the first work I did on this car was probably finding out what an air filter was, taking it out and giving it a hoover, putting it back in and thinking i was in a car tuning montage in 2 Fast 2 Furious. (As well as WD40-ing the brake disks obviously...)

Back then there were pages in the Haynes manual that made my head spin, and now I find myself years later following their instructions and getting this heap spluttering into life.
I wouldn't have done any of this on my budget without the many Punto mk1 owners before me who scrapped or sold their car for parts that eventually become part of mine, as well as this awesome forum!

Besides, we need the car-muggles to keep buying new cars fresh of the showroom floor, so we can buy them years down the line for nothing and start the whole cycle again hehehe

Thanks all for your input and kind words, maybe it'll be still around for the next FiatForum meet whenever that is........I've never even been to a car show before!

blu73 said:

well yeah, punto's are getting rare now but really i don't think such people are to blame for that really. I mean most have just been in such crap condition they have been scrapped, or traded in for a new car with a dealer and then just scrapped. They are rare yes but alot of the time they are not really worth saving from a financial point of view and then 99% of people will just throw in the towel with a 'its only a punto attitude'. Its sad but true (of most ageing fiats) that they just are not viewed as classics or being worth the money to restore. At least in the case of someone doing a conversion the parts still get used, alot of other spares from the car are usually sold on and reused as well. What I find really hard to swallow is when someone scraps one because of something like a headgasket when the actual car is decent shape - because if you can't fix it yourself the labour charge is more than the car is worth and people just scrap them and get a new car, pains me to think how many solid shells have been scrapped over time because of simple mechanical issues.

Click to expand...

In all fairness, a lot of car restoration is done purely for the love of the car, with any financial gain being nothing more than a bonus.

In the case of conversions, if somebody bought a rotten car from a scrapyard and used the engine from that, then fair enough, but to buy a roadworthy (and sometimes immaculate) car purely for the engine, that I think is wrong. I wouldn't buy a cheap 16v or T-Jet and replace my 1.4 8v with that.

I think that slowly, people are starting to realise that good mk1 Puntos are worth cherishing and looking after. A huge thumbs up to simon_16vpunto for saving an example that could well have ended up falling into the wrong hands.

kazer92 said:

Oh I'm not in any way badmouthing the people who snap up spare parts, I've been there myself as I'm sure we all have.

Click to expand...

That's perfectly fair enough.

puntofan01 said:

I think that slowly, people are starting to realise that good mk1 Puntos are worth cherishing and looking after. A huge thumbs up to simon_16vpunto for saving an example that could well have ended up falling into the wrong hands.

That's perfectly fair enough.

Click to expand...

well i too saved a punto mk1 gt,slowly fell in love with the car since owning her,

love this punto,why stock springs?

yeah i totally agree puntofan01, not trying to argue with it - just saying that people don't ever seem to think fiats are 'worth it' until there is next to none left.

Plus my point stands that there just isn't really many 'good cars' left when it comes to mk1 puntos - yes clearly there are some decent ones and it would be a really big shame for them to be broken - but not only are mk1s few and far between, but decent ones are even rarer. All the mk1s i see about look totally fubar'd really and only still exist cause they haven't broken down. Most people aren't car enthusiasts and fiats a cheap cars, yes restoring cars is mostly for the love of cars rather than a financial decision, but not alot of people are into little fiats in the scheme of things either.

I work in a fiat garage and am constantly getting the **** taken out of me about my car.

My car is off the road tucked away in the garage until the good weather comes back, everyone thinks I'm mental and don't understand as its 'just a punto'.

To me, it's priceless and a few times I've had it displayed in the showroom alongside brand new punto's and it does get some amount of attention from customers, most saying they can't remember the last time they seen one, and can't believe how quickly they have disappeared etc.

I shall never sell mine, I love it.

blu73 said:

yeah i totally agree puntofan01, not trying to argue with it - just saying that people don't ever seem to think fiats are 'worth it' until there is next to none left.

Plus my point stands that there just isn't really many 'good cars' left when it comes to mk1 puntos - yes clearly there are some decent ones and it would be a really big shame for them to be broken - but not only are mk1s few and far between, but decent ones are even rarer. All the mk1s i see about look totally fubar'd really and only still exist cause they haven't broken down. Most people aren't car enthusiasts and fiats a cheap cars, yes restoring cars is mostly for the love of cars rather than a financial decision, but not alot of people are into little fiats in the scheme of things either.

Click to expand...

Most people are morons: they need to realise the awesomeness of Fiats, lol!

simon_16vpunto: I constantly get teased as well. I used to get laughed at when I had my mk2b, and a lot of people were in disbelief when I traded that in for my Grande.

I think cars of the 1990s are just seen as bangers, and people struggle to see them as future classics, even more so than cars from the 80s.

buttflap212 said:

love this punto,why stock springs?

Click to expand...

The drop on the back was just too low/bouncy (especially with a sub in the boot hehe). Keeping the front lowered as it handles far better and is a nice height, and still keeping the G-max shocks on the rear, if it's still bouncy at the rear it'll point to the shocks rather than the springs but hey-ho.

thinking of getting some spacers for the rear to bring the wheels out in line with the arches a bit, maybe 16mm, anyone had any good/bad experiences with wheel spacers?