Seicento 2000 899 Seicento SX

[the green vanper]

WOW less than a thousand miles per year The interior and the engine look almost new Good luck!

 

[FiatMatt94]

WOW less than a thousand miles per year The interior and the engine look almost new Good luck!

Thanks, the irony was I wasn't even looking for one of these, I was just looking for a car so I typed in Fiat & I just happened to find it on Car & Classic so went to have a look as it was only about 30 mins from home & was impressed as the rear arches & outer sills etc haven't got a mark on them, apart from the surface rust spots underneath which I'm getting on top of already having done the worst bit this evening so it's just the odd ones on the floor now & small dots at the back of the inner sills to do then I'll give her a good polish & wax as it needs doing along with a grey door mirror to match the other factory one

 

[FiatMatt94]

I think I can now safely say after 2 evenings on the car going right through the underside I'm now on top of the surface rust (I think) after wire brushing it & then treated the affected areas with no nasty surprises revealed either so I think I'm onto a winner, so the next job will be to wax inside the cavities & box sections along with the underside, my chosen products are the Bilt Hamber range as I used this on the Panda with the underside lasting 2 years & the arches with cavities lasting 4 years. Also done a order with Ricambio for a spare clutch cable(modified type) & a crank sensor as I know these are prong for going along with the quadrant which I got a spare before picking the car up

 

[Just me22]

Is that the old fist 500 lol

 

[FiatMatt94]

Is that the old fist 500 lol

Lol it isn't that old it was the Cinquecento before this one which means 500 in Italian & Seicento means 600, the 100 series engine in this dates back to 1955 where it was first used in the original Fiat 600

 

[Just me22]

I know nothing about car it seem lol

 

[Sparkie90]

One of the best colours

 

[FiatMatt94]

Get the painting in the rear of the car done today which was 2 coats of zinc primer & 3 coats of Fiat Grigio Steel Metallic 647 paint, it's not the prettiest but a lot better than what was there & also the back half of the boot floor looks like it's been painted before as it looks a slightly different shade very up close so it doesn't quite match, it seems to match the original paint though, I need to get some white spirit or thinners as I accidentally got a tiny bit of paint on 1 of the rubber grommets

Yesterday I noticed oil around the offside inner CV boot, so after wiping my finger & smelling it to see what it was thankfully it's not gearbox oil it was just normal engine oil so I did some investigating this morning which didn't take too long to see the culprit, it's the rocker cover gasket leaking at the rear which the oil has been running down the back & onto the CV boot, I already have one ready to go on but I've ordered a new breather hose & will change the 2 together along with nice new clips as the hose feels a little brittle & looking very closely there are small cracks starting to appear, also a slight noise has started to appear every so often yesterday when pulling away so I thought back to when I had my Cinquecento as it seemed familiar & my number 1 suspect was the rear gearbox mount as I'm sure I did on that one as well & it was common on these, so I got under the car & had a look

Just as I suspected before even looking at it, it's just starting to split & deform so I've got a Febi Bilstein replacement mount coming for only £19, not a difficult job either just jack it up, put something under the gearbox to support it & 4 bolts later it's all out, I've seen people do these without supporting them & it not move but I'd rather not chance it & take a couple of minutes extra to support it whilst undoing the bracket to stop it having a chance of moving, my spare axle stand should do the trick just nicely, shouldn't take too long to do both little jobs , the other gearbox mount & engine mount look ok, the other gearbox one I'll probably just change it when we do the clutch anyway.

 

[FiatMatt94]

I fitted my new rear gearbox mount this morning, it was quite easy to do & the old one was a lot worse than it looked so I'm glad I changed it. The only fiddly bit was the top bolt on putting it back together as there's not a lot of room between the bracket & the body, but I did it by levering the gearbox forward slightly just enough to line the bolt up & it went straight in, bolted it all up FT then went for a drive to make sure it was all good. The car feels transformed just from changing that mount, she feels a bit more chuckable & I've had a small thing since I purchased the car where when changing from 1st to 2nd you couldn't rush it as it would crunch so you'd have to change gear quite slowly for it to be smooth, that's all gone now & she changes through the gears a lot better especially 1st to 2nd. The old girl is starting to feel as she should like I remember Cento's.

 

[The Panda Nut]

I fitted my new rear gearbox mount this morning, it was quite easy to do & the old one was a lot worse than it looked so I'm glad I changed it. The only fiddly bit was the top bolt on putting it back together as there's not a lot of room between the bracket & the body, but I did it by levering the gearbox forward slightly just enough to line the bolt up & it went straight in, bolted it all up FT then went for a drive to make sure it was all good. The car feels transformed just from changing that mount, she feels a bit more chuckable & I've had a small thing since I purchased the car where when changing from 1st to 2nd you couldn't rush it as it would crunch so you'd have to change gear quite slowly for it to be smooth, that's all gone now & she changes through the gears a lot better especially 1st to 2nd. The old girl is starting to feel as she should like I remember Cento's.
View attachment 456357View attachment 456358View attachment 456359

Whoa, that looks better. Very respectable indeed

 

[FiatMatt94]

Whoa, that looks better. Very respectable indeed

Thanks , I like to do things properly & as neat as I can as I think if you don't it'll only come back to bite at some point. The part was a Febi Bilstein OEM replacement using the part number of ePer & was only £19 delivered. I love ePer especially with the Seicento where some parts are a little hard to obtain it does help a lot. Thankfully there were no bolt casualties today either which made it a lot easier, although where I live now there is a friendly automotive bolt supplier just round the corner which I found when I needed new nuts & bolts for my anti roll bar fixings as for all the anti roll bar stuff they only charged me I think it was £4.30 so they are now my go to whenever I have nut or bolt casualties .

 

[FiatMatt94]

I picked up her refurbished wheels today after work which cost £200 for all 4 which seems like a bargain.

They'll be fitted to the Seicento after new year when I get tyres for them & centre caps, I already got the sporting wheel lugs which were genuine & quite pricey at just over £80 but I wanted genuine ones over cheap chinese copies which looked completely wrong.

 

[ben]

Is that a camera tint, or are they slightly maroon in color?

 

[FiatMatt94]

There's no maroon in them, I think it's the camera as the flash was on, the camera doesn't make them look as good as they do in person , they were done in gunmetal grey & look a lot better outside in natural light

 

[FiatMatt94]

This morning something on the car actually went according to plan with no breakages I changed the rocker cover as it was leaking along with a new genuine Fiat throttle body gasket & the air intake/breather hose as it had gone brittle & started to break up, also changed the horrible factory clips for stainless jubilee clips, then I cleaned the engine up a bit as far as I could get without stripping anything out as the rocket cover etc had remains of old oil on them so I got some Autoglym engine cleaner & gave it a quick spruce up so now she has an engine which looks a little more presentable, I much prefer a look of an honest engine rather than one that's been all tarted up, ignore the cable tie on the air intake hose, that's just a temporary measure as I had loads of stainless jubilee's but not one of them fitted so I need to get some more but she now seems a lot quieter & a bit quicker going down the road

 

[FiatMatt94]

Got my new Goodyear tyres fitted to the Sporting rims this afternoon, I think the tyre fitter was glad to see the back of them though as he had a bit of trouble fitting them but they are all done now.

I looked at the original spec 165/55/R13 but the only tyre available was Nankang's finest ditch finder speciale so I went against that & instead went for a 155/65/R13 as there is more of a variety & is also the same as the steels currently on the car. I got a really good deal on 155/65/R13 Goodyear Efficient Grip's for £54.50 each fully fitted & balanced from F1 Autocentre in Warrington, I've ordered some locking wheel bolts off eBay as the Fiat ones are no longer available so just the wait for them to arrive now, then sort out my insurance as my renewals coming up & they can then be fitted, I also purchased some new 4 inch JBL Stage 2 speakers as an upgrade for the current ones which are going I think, a Momo boss for a nicer steering wheel to be fitted & I've ordered a BMC air filter element as I had one in my Panda & I did notice the improvement so it should make the old girl breathe a little better, as it's for an 899 it's had to be ordered directly from BMC in Italy so will take about 3-4 weeks I've been told she's coming together quite nicely.

 

[FiatMatt94]

So today I decided to get behind one off the rear arch liners & see what I would be greeted with , so I did the near side as my thinking was that would be the worse side for crud etc & I was very surprised although I had to cut the heads off the screws there was only 1 surface area about the size of a 20p coin, even the sill underneath where the trim was is good so I cleaned it up with a small wire wheel on a dremel & treated the area with Bilt Hamber Dynax S50 as I did with the rest of the arch.

So all I need to do now is get some molegrips etc to get the remains of 3 screws out but I'm leaning towards keeping the liners off as they are just pointless ,broken as it's cracked & a rot trap. Also whilst I was in there I cleaned up some minor flaky paint on the subframe & gave it a quick coat of S50 as well.

& I got one of the new sporting rims out to see what it would look like, it looks better than I expected, I think the gunmetal was the right choice

I also fitted a pair of 4 inch JBL Stage 2 speakers onto the existing speaker grills which are a huge improvement over what was in there but they took a lot of trimming to fit in there right as I refuse to cut a perfect dash just to fit speakers so the speakers were trimmed until they fitted in the standard aperture in the dash on the standard grills.

 

[icheatatscrabble]

I take it that the tyre fitter had fun fitting the tyres because the tyres are a little narrower? How are you finding the Goodyears? The Efficient Grip tyres were fitted as standard on the Cactus we used have about 10 years ago and they weren't that amazing. Pretty poor grip in the wet.
I know VW fitted them as standard on their Up! GTI and I heard quite a few owners didtched them early before they found that proverbial ditch.
I've never bought Chinese tyres in my life, but I think I will buy the Nangkangs when I have to just because they are the correct size and have heard that they're not too bad - The Pirellis currently on my Cinq Sporting are pretty rubbish for grip anyway.

Good to see no grot behind the stone chip protectors. I took mine off last year, as I had been given a pair of the external stone protectors that would have been standard fit on the Sporting (someone must have removed the ones from my car in the past) and they weren't lining up.
Turned out somebody had snapped off the original screws holding the inner stone chip guard, as they couldn't get them out of the rivet nuts fitted to the wheel arch and then just drilled a small hole into the arch and then just screwed in a self tapper. Talk about bodge.
Thankfully, like with your Seicento there was no rot behind both inner stone chip guards. Used a Dremmel to cut out broken screws / original rivet nuts filled the drilled holes and put new rivet nuts back, Dinitrol sprayed, then all back including the external stone chip guards.

As for speakers i bought some 4" Rockford Fosgate Prime speakers, really nice sound and much better than the 15 quid JVC speakers I bought to replace the standard Fiat ones. Although I think one may be on its way out.... Also fitted an Inphase sub under the front passenger seat. £95, so very reasonable and improves the sound no end.

 

[FiatMatt94]

I take it that the tyre fitter had fun fitting the tyres because the tyres are a little narrower? How are you finding the Goodyears? The Efficient Grip tyres were fitted as standard on the Cactus we used have about 10 years ago and they weren't that amazing. Pretty poor grip in the wet.
I know VW fitted them as standard on their Up! GTI and I heard quite a few owners didtched them early before they found that proverbial ditch.
I've never bought Chinese tyres in my life, but I think I will buy the Nangkangs when I have to just because they are the correct size and have heard that they're not too bad - The Pirellis currently on my Cinq Sporting are pretty rubbish for grip anyway.

Good to see no grot behind the stone chip protectors. I took mine off last year, as I had been given a pair of the external stone protectors that would have been standard fit on the Sporting (someone must have removed the ones from my car in the past) and they weren't lining up.
Turned out somebody had snapped off the original screws holding the inner stone chip guard, as they couldn't get them out of the rivet nuts fitted to the wheel arch and then just drilled a small hole into the arch and then just screwed in a self tapper. Talk about bodge.
Thankfully, like with your Seicento there was no rot behind both inner stone chip guards. Used a Dremmel to cut out broken screws / original rivet nuts filled the drilled holes and put new rivet nuts back, Dinitrol sprayed, then all back including the external stone chip guards.

As for speakers i bought some 4" Rockford Fosgate Prime speakers, really nice sound and much better than the 15 quid JVC speakers I bought to replace the standard Fiat ones. Although I think one may be on its way out.... Also fitted an Inphase sub under the front passenger seat. £95, so very reasonable and improves the sound no end.

That was the reason , I have the exact same Goodyear tyres on my steel rims which I'm keeping just as a back up & they've been quite good to be fair although not quite as good as the Goodyear Duragrip's that came with my Panda from factory, they were just excellent, long lasting, very grippy dry or wet & I've seen sporting rims before with 155/65/13's so when I saw they had a good deal on Goodyear for the January sales I went straight in when I viewed the car it had matching Pirelli tyres all round but they must have been original as they weren't dated so as part of the sale the bloke I bought her from put the Goodyear's on, it was the same thing with these liners someone's painted them before as the paint just flakes off them, whoever did it they've used self tappers, rounded 3 of them & cracked the liner in the process whilst installing them, the only upside is they didn't drill new holes but I wanted to get behind it just in case there was any nasties lurking behind it so cutting them out was the only alternative, I've got to do the other side yet at some stage it's the only bodge I've come across on this car so it's doing alright so far. When I first got her only 1 speaker worked so I swapped them around to see if it was the speaker or the wires at fault, it turned out to be the speaker so at the time I just purchased some Vibe 4 inch speakers from Halfords for like £8 each just to have a working system but they recently started to sound a little distorted so I got JBL ones in the same size of eBay for just over £30 but the JBL speakers required quite a lot of trimming to fit in the standard aperture with the factory grills but I did it & now it still looks factory with the grill etc but they are a huge improvement.