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Panda (Classic) Charmania

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
You can't say that after all those teething problems....
I'm home now, we had no incident on the motorway, she holds 70mph quite easily and didn't overheat in the M25 traffic (y)


True :eek:. Glad you had a good trip home though. :)

So not a great last day of ownership. :bang: It all started well had the cambelt fitted and engine running sweetly by 10am so told Didge to come and collect her. Dropped her down from the axle stands and got ready for a quick road test, wouldn't start! :eek:.

Turned out there was no power to the coil. Now when the alarm started playing up a couple of years ago I ran a feed to the coil from the idle solenoid so if the solenoid circuit was playing up this could be the problem. There was nothing for it but to run the coil feed correctly from the ign. switch, I was just finishing this when Didge arrived.

The engine ran now but the fuse for the idle solenoid was still blowing. :confused: the same fuse also stood guard over the guages, brake lights and reversing lights. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I managed to narrow the fault down to the brake light circuit. Didge went off for an hour and left me to sort it.

First thing I did was take out the drivers seat so that I could lift the carpet, and low and behold one of the seat bolts was pinching part of the loom, result. :)

After all that I hope that Charmania will now serve you well. (y)

:wave: Charmania.............

 
The drive home was lovely, despite being a 750, with just me in the car and 3/4 of a tank of petrol she holds 70 (indicated) up any hill (with my foot to the floor). I dread to think what 4 speed 750's are like on the motorway though, in 5th at 70 she's doing a steady 3900rpm.
The lovely radio you provided can pick up radio 2 anywhere and radio 1 when you're stationary.... Which is sort of annoying but I'll replace it soon.
I even got a thumb up from a Clio driver on the motorway :eek:
 
The drive home was lovely, despite being a 750, with just me in the car and 3/4 of a tank of petrol she holds 70 (indicated) up any hill (with my foot to the floor). I dread to think what 4 speed 750's are like on the motorway though, in 5th at 70 she's doing a steady 3900rpm.
The lovely radio you provided can pick up radio 2 anywhere and radio 1 when you're stationary.... Which is sort of annoying but I'll replace it soon.
I even got a thumb up from a Clio driver on the motorway :eek:

Glad you got her safely (y) I found she held motorway speeds fine.

Yes that would be extremely annoying. There must be a way of avoiding radio 1 :D
 
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