Great find Chas, looking forward to seeing it in the flesh and maybe giving you a hand to polish etc. might be nice to work up a sweat in the balmy English weather later this month
Cheers Alex! Yes, it was an unexpected find as I had all but given up on finding a decent mk1 70SX hence buying the mk2 70SX. But when I saw it on Ebay I just knew it had my name written on it!
It's really good that you've got stuck in to fixing it straight away... it would take me weeks/months to get around to starting that
I didn't have a lot of choice really. Firstly I had four cars on a three car drive (I was just waiting for the nighbours to moan, or the council to say 'regulations' had been breached). Secondly I was starting year two of my university course last Monday so it really had to be done by then. I'm not going to get much spare time until the summer now
So with the 70SX back on the road I could let a friend of mine borrow the Cinquecento Soleil to assess before buying it. If he likes it he will buy it off me, plus in the process I get a bit of space back on my driveway
I reckon the black paint on the sills would benefit from a quick mask-up and blow over with a semi-gloss black aerosol can - I've found in the past that makes a very quick difference to the 'sharpness' of the classic Uno style. The original black paint doesn't seem to last forever, almost as though it was also black aerosol paint... Up to you of course and always hard to judge these things in photos, but in the side view where it's wet it looks quite a bit darker at the moment.
The 'sills' are in fact black plastic sill covers - same as a Uno turbo mk1! The car could do with a wash and then some 'back to black' applied to the bumpers/ arches/ sill covers. I do agree with what you say about blacking the sills because my 45S looked so much better when I did the sills on it in black Smoothrite. One of many jobs to do for the future but not essential right now
I've been persuaded, after all these years, that plastic bumpers are best treated with silicone-type products rather than painted. I used to always paint them with a spraycan of 'Duplicolor Bumper Coating' and it gives a low-maintenance black finish in the short term - but in the longer term, there is always some flaking/peeling. So the best seems to be to keep conditioning them - over time, the plastic retains more silicones, builds up more resiliance, and the shine/blackness lasts longer. The first few applications seem to go nowhere, so you just have to keep it up . I think you know all these things but thought I'd put them here in case someone else is reading
I think this would apply to the wheelarch trims as well though they are a strange hard and springy plastic.
I'm not 100% sure what to do either. Back to black and silicone sprays make the bumpers look really nice when you first do them but the finish soon wears off. Even after many attempts, which might be something to do with our rubbish British weather. Also, on my 45S the rear bumper had been painted when I got it. I wish I knew what was used because the finish has lasted extremely well. As I have a few spare bumpers I might experiment with some bumper paint and see how it comes out.
The gearbox I'm guessing has a single gear linkage input with the 'concertina' type boot, and some rather odd (and rare) fittings to convert the two-rod Uno linkage to fit the one-rod gearbox. One of the pieces is a short link with a tiny balljoint that wears out.
Yup, that's the one. Apparently it's based on the Strada gearbox. When I was putting it all back together I thought I'd lost the bellcrank asembly as I couldn't work out how both rods fitted back on. I soon worked it out after a bit of head scratching. Surprisingly the gearchange is really quite good, but then it only has 36K miles on it!
To replace the gearbox input shaft seal, I have a feeling that you must take the gearbox apart. Some models you do, some you don't. I guess you know about being gentle with the removal of the seal from the tube-shaped carrier, something I've messed up before - preferable to cut the seal out with a dremel etc. rather than to accidentally bend or crush the 'tube' - the clutch release bearing slides on that and I've heard of a judder problem that results from damage when the seal gets replaced.
The outer input shaft oil seal is an interference fit in a metal tube housing that bolts onto the inside of the bellhousing. I had a nightmare trying to find one as Fiat dealers don't even recognise that my car exists thanks to Eper not going back far enough. "Chassis number not recognised" - argh! :bang: After a lot of wasted time and going from one dealer to the next I tried an Italian car specialists - Ricambio in Surrey. The chap I spoke to knew exactly what I was talking about AND had a seal in stock! The local Fiat dealer meanwhile had told me that I had to order a whole gasket kit for £18, which when it turned up had the wrong sized input shaft seal :bang:
The housing for the seal is held on with two bolts and the housing then slides off the input shaft. I thought it was made of aluminium so tried the heating it up over a gas stove trick. This didn't achieve anything other than burning my fingers, so I carefully used a small chisel and hammer to gently prise the old seal out. Well, the inner part came out fairly easily but the outer part was left behind. Judicious use of a hammer and chisel soon got that out.
The new seal was fitted using a hammer and large socket. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to use some sealant on the edges though there wasn't any signs of that when I removed the old one. It's done a few miles now and no signs of leaking oil (furious wood touching) so I assume all went together properly.
The carpets and seats are in a colour that I've never seen before! And what great condition! The more common 70SL had black carpets and seats in a slightly grey-er shade of tweed.
Yes, the seats are in a, erm, 'lovely' shade of beige corduroy! I'm fairly certain that only the 70SX got seats in this material. The material is in good condition though there is definite signs of wear on the drivers seat. Also the driver's door card has material coming away from the card and there's some evidence of bodging on the plastic top door sill cover.
As I'm 99% certain to be breaking the mk2 70SX I'm considering putting the interior from that in the mk1. That way the mk1 interior can be kept preserved while I can have a nice blue carpet and blue striped seats from the mk2 instead! I shall see how things progress.
Isn't there is a surprising difference in the softness/quietness of the interior compared with the base models... or even compared with a 45 'S' I suspect.
It is surprisingly VERY different to my 45S, to the point where it feels like a different car altogether. Some of this is down to the fact that it is in such good condition so lacks a lot of the rattles and squeaks and cocophany of noises that my 45 has. But the 70 also
feels much heavier (it's about 100kg more) than my 45, and though it doesn't have an anti-roll bar there's suprisingly little body roll. Saying that it doesn't corner as flat as my 45 (that does has an anti-roll bar fitted) but I will be fitting the roll bar from the mk2 SX to it.
The engine is very torquey but overall not that much faster than a 999cc FIRE. Acceleration from rest is much quicker though! The exhaust appears to be blowing so on a recent long trip I ended up cruising at a lower speed than I would in the 45. Plus the engine promotes a more relaxed style of driving compared to the FIRE unit which seems to want to be thrashed everywhere!
However, the 70SX has a bit of grunt at motorway speeds so can still accelerate when needed, whereas the 45 is very much a case of hold on and hope the speed does actually increase when you push the accelerator down. The other thing of note is that the 999cc FIRE engine is much more economical even when thrashed, so I was very concious of driving sensibly in the 70SX and not getting the second choke to kick in unless necessary.
I hope that you can get the rust repair in the door welded, for a lasting repair. The paint won't be hard to spray-in considering the disguise of all the decals!
I'm more hoping to find a good door and replace it, as with Unos (and Pandas) once the rot has set in the door bottoms that's pretty much it. I will attempt to halt the spread of the tin worm and tidy it up a bit when I get a spare moment.
When I first glanced at the top picture, I had to do a double-take to make sure it wasn't your previous 45S that I was looking at
You like that orangey-red, don't you
Lol! The colour was a coincidence! The 70SX actually has a darker red/ orange colour compared with my 45S. Plus it has two extra doors
As for the wheels, those SX wheel covers with the round holes must be pretty rare and if it were my car, I'd just sand/fill/repaint those. Silver wheel paint is great stuff, good adhesion and you can put on as many coats as you like. I think I'm the only person in the world who likes original plastic wheel covers
Alloy wheels are a hassle to clean/maintain (assuming that they don't already need a total restoration!) and you don't need bigger wheels on your daily driver which will presumably retain correct-sized 155/70 tyres.
I'm not a fan of wheel trims! I think they look cheap and tacky even though they are supposed to help with aerodynamics. I'll keep them on for now but a set of alloys is definitely on the cards for the future. Oh, and the tyres are 165/ 65's as they are much easier (and cheaper) to get hold of than 155's in the UK.
I don't like aftermarket plastic wheel covers and I would quickly fit a set of alloys if I was confronted with naked black wheels. That said, many basic Unos had silver-painted steel wheels and they look good when they are cleaned and repainted - functional and simple. You'd be surprised how light steel wheels are compared with most of the alloy wheels out there. I measured and found that the Uno steel wheels are almost a kilogram lighter than the Uno Turbo alloy wheels. Then, the aftermarket alloy wheels (and larger tyres) on my Uno are a whopping 7kg heavier each. Just don't go there
-Alex
Even worse are the aftermarket wheel trims that have 5 fake wheel studs and they are fitted to a car with four stud wheels. They look all wrong! I do agree about the standard steel wheels as they look surprisingly good when refurbished in silver paint. I did a pair on my 45S and they looked great until the rust came back :doh: However, the wheels I refurbished weren't that brilliant to begin with so if I were to fit painted steel wheels I'd refurbish a better set. I shall just have to see how things pan out
Anyway, I've now got to upload all the pictures of the clutch and gearbox overhaul from my camera onto my PC and then I can update this thread. It is nice to enjoy driving the 70SX at last, and I'm also looking forward to the summer when I can get cracking with my 45S MPi 1242 conversion :devil:
My Uno crazy? Never...
