Northern Auto Tech - ECU and Blue & Me Repairs
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Panda (Classic) Charmania

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Introduction

Just finished a little project in time for Brooklands, so some of you may have seen it there. Bought just before Christmas coz my Daughter needed to upgrade from a pushbike back into a car, and I wanted to get some ideas out of my head and into the metal ;).

I did lend her one of my Pandas while she waited for this one, so please don't think I made her cycle through the winter just coz Daddy wants to play :p.

Some pictures of the finished item.........











She's a Fiat Panda 750 Mania (Daughters name is Charmain, hence the threads title) Bought from Ebay for £103.
No tax or mot, poor performance, and no exhaust silencer, but bags of potential :). This was her the first day on my drive....





First part of the plan was to get her road legal, briefly, this involved

£80 of welding to inner sills.
Replace o/s/f wheel bearing.
New tailpipe.
Re-set cam timing.
Full service and clean up.

After this little lot the total cost was about £250 and this is how she now looked............



Now for the fun stuff :D.

Again, briefly, this is a list of work carried out to bring her from the above picture to finished.

Go faster stripe made from cutting up a couple of viper stripe kits and making my own design.
Wheels and tyres from a 127 sport, refurbed by myself and fitted with 10mm spacers on the rear.
New standard shocks with new Spax coil springs lowering car by about 40mm.
Replace side repeaters with Rover items fitted with chrome bulbs.
Replace orange front indicators with clear ones, also with chrome bulbs.
Clean and paint suspension and brake parts as I go.
Remove gearbox, free off and lubricate clutch mechanism and gearchange linkage.
Strip interior, refit using light grey trim from another of my Pandas.
Fit Seicento Sei front seats.
Fit sportier pedals, gearknob, steering wheel, and chequered trim to door handles and horn button, plus red/grey overmats.
Make custom roof lining to tie in with chequers theme.
Fit radio/cd player & six speakers (2 x dash, 2 x rear side panels, 2 x rear parcel shelf ).

I think that's everything. If anyone would like to know more,full build details can be seen in these two threads which have been running since before day of purchase..

https://www.fiatforum.com/auction-watch/215832-another-red-mania-birmingham.html

https://www.fiatforum.com/panda-classic/219521-charmania-chapter-two.html
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Getting Charmania ready for her new owner now, quite a few things to do.

Started off by removing the tow bar but before I did I needed to use it one last time.....







I will have to change the wheels on the trailer once I've decided which will be the new tow Panda. :rolleyes:

The seat needs to be mounted further back as Didge is a little taller than Charmain. Also replacing the steering column switch assy., fitting the rev counter and a radio.



Much to my surprise she's just started to drop oil at an alarming rate, only noticed this when I moved her into the workshop. On inspection I found that the oil filter had rusted through so an oil change will now be thrown in as part of the deal :(. Just glad it did it before it went to Didge.
 
They're Seicento Sporting seats so won't mount in the same way as yours John.

No subframes on this one though, I hadn't thought of them back then :p. They're just bolted through the floor. The problem I have in moving them back though is that the new bolt holes line up with a box section :(, so I will have to get a little creative.
 
Well on Friday, in between getting Pinky and the Sisley ready for Brooklands, I managed to get some more done.

First job was oil and filter change, so the engine fed rust proofing system no longer exists.
I also thought the water pump sounded noisy so I was going to fit a new one. Drained the cooling system, removed the cambelt, spun and wiggled the waterpump only to find that it was fine! Checked the cambelt tensioner, not too bad but more likely to be the cause of the noise than the pump. So, sorry Didge, no new water pump but you do get a new cambelt and tensioner, and new coolant.

Next was to start on the rev counter. Managed to make the bracket for it before the end of the day.









Just had time to paint it with etch primer, will be finished off with satin black when I get back to it. :)
 
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Thanks Vern for all the work you're putting into this, I know how busy you are. (y) Replaced cambelt and tensioner is good because I refuse to do that job myself (I'm to scared of getting it wrong and bending all my valves... :eek:) and always pay somebody else too so this leaves me longer before I have to get it done again.
 
Didge3 said:
Thanks Vern for all the work you're putting into this, I know how busy you are. (y) Replaced cambelt and tensioner is good because I refuse to do that job myself (I'm to scared of getting it wrong and bending all my valves... :eek:) and always pay somebody else too so this leaves me longer before I have to get it done again.
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Fire engines don't bend valves, they are what's known as safe engines. (y)
 
Most Easterly Pandas said:
:yeahthat: none interference :)
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I used to think that, then I saw what someone did to their 1.2 8v GP, supposed to be a non-interference engine yet somehow bent their valves when they set their timing wrong.
Its on the forum. I don't like setting timing on cars. I'll continue paying people to do it until I have more trust in myself.

Found it.
 
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Most Easterly Pandas said:
Oh hell. Does seem strange there are no pics though :rolleyes:
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I thought there were pics, but when I went back and read through it... Ah well I'm just too scaredy, I'll work my way up to it one day. Maybe someone can hold my hand whilst I do it for the first time :)
Dragon Man said:
maybe had the head skimmed quite a fair bit? if you skim a FIRE engine head too much it will then become interface.. you do however get a better compression ratio.
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I guess that's also a possibility. Never the less I payed someone to do the cambelt on my GP, although it had VVT so if I got it wrong could've bent the exhaust valves.
 
Went in for a couple of hours today.

Fitted some new no. plates, and put a couple of coats of satin black on the rev. counter bracket.

Then I turned my attention to the seats. The current mounting points are just in front of a box section, not ideal to move them back so that they come through into the box section so I had to move them about 120mm back. Worked out fine though (y).
 
Finished off fitting the rev counter today, wiring was very straightforward.



Can't test it yet though as the cambelt kit was delivered to my house instead of the workshop. :mad:.

While I had the dash apart I did a job that was long overdue, removal of the old and broken alarm system wiring, well 90% of it anyway. Also fitted a suitably period radio/cassette.



Now nobody is going to want to steel that! :p

So, dash all back together with correct steering column switch assembly and steering wheel finally fitted straight. :)

Just when I thought I only had the cambelt to fit tomorrow I remembered that I hadn't fixed the exhaust blow on the manifold. :(

I couldn't tell exactly which gasket was blowing so I'd decided to do them all, which meant removing the manifold completely. Now it wouldn't be a Panda if a couple of studs didn't break off would it! :bang:



Turned out that the studs didn't matter as I had a far more serious problem.......



Cracked manifold. :( Not sure of the cause, maybe fitted with a piece of old gasket left on the mating surface, or it could have bowed from old age, difficult to say. Fortunately I had a spare, which only had one broken stud :). So with that fixed and a double check that all mating surfaces were clean and flat I fitted the spare manifold. Again I can't check it till the cambelt has been fitted tomorrow but it looks good so far.
 
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