1987 Fiat 126A

Off Topic My Ride
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To begin the August I bought a fantastic ride nearly completely sight unseen…
Only going by the description and pictures, trusting the seller he does not talk absolute BS about the car. Something i cannot fully recommend.
So I still decided to buy said car, rent a tow truck and pay aswell as pick it up.
Arriving at the place and seeing the car was a small disappointment to say the least. Several parts were just missing, apart from bushings and the engine nothing was really done.

But there it is now, at home and work can start.

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Isn’t it a beauty, it does not seem to bad from this perspective… but just wait…

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No Sunvisors, no mirror, no radio, no horn… oof.

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Where did the mat go?

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The engine however is fully rebuilt and needs to be worn in, starts fantastic but everything needs some adjustment. For the nerds: Its the 126A1.048 square head.

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And here you can see the misisng rest. No rear bumper, some badges are missing or just bleached out.

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The roof aswell is dented OMG.

Now that the shock settled in i went about to order parts. A correct bumper on the front and a new one on the rear, since the one on the front is for the second series but the body is already the 87+ series that has the big bumpers.
The ID-Plate is missing completely, noone knows where its gone aswell, but that is a fairly minor issue actually, more worringly is the lack of keys. I have an ignition key and thats about it.

Thats it for now. Once there is progress… there will be more here.

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My dad has one of those, says it was made in Italy. Bought it used in 2005, I’ll get it once it’s time for that.

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Why complain about missing bits…aren’t you in to “weight reduction, bro”? :grin:

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Honestly at this point I’m fairly sure this is the best way to buy a car. The best of my used purchases have been the ones I saw nothing of before they turned up on my drive. I know you’ve got the missing bits here but it looks like you’ve won in the solid vs rust game, and let’s be honest with cars like this that’s the important bit.

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Absolute winner in the non-rust department, which is a huge bonus for a car from 1987, esp that one, you are absolutely right, its most important.

Currently we search the paint, new parts arrive by next week from all over europe… Italy, Poland and Netherlands.

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Nice Maluch!

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I can concur - few examples of the 126 (especially Polish-built ones) survive to this day, and yours is expected to be in better shape than most once you have fully restored it to its former glory.

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Not many updates so far… as it turns out there is a whole slew of issues,and while all of them are small they do pile up to big stuff.

Valves are now shimmed correctly, instead of 0.25EX and 0.20IN they were setup all over the place… it was closer to Cylinder 1 0.5EX 0.0IN and Cylinder 2 0.0EX 0.0IN.
Ignition is properely set up, it was close to be spot on before.
Carburettor still needs fine adjustments but the car can idle on its own when warm without dying.

But then the issues start, the gearbox, esp the shifting mechanism is not set up properely at all, 2-4-R wont go in at all, 3rd is very hard to slot in with only the 1st being fine
Engine or gearbox mounts are hardened up or plain wrong, the car rattles more than it should. Car paint is “not as advertised” - claimed to be tornado red (which is BTW a VW Paint) turns out to be, and i am not joking here, Colorado Red from Rover.

On the bright side: The electrics seem to work fine, i installed a Relay for the H4 Halogens, the interior only needs small touch ups here and there and there is still no rust.

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Lovely 126p man!

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Time for another small update…!

The car seemingly had an accident, undocumented. My dad noticed something is crooked on the front… somethin i passed on until later. Indeed there is some issue with the seam going along the indicator topside. He tried something and indeed - whoops!

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Looks like we have a filler situation on our hands. Apparently the car had a teeny-tiny fender bender and the front-right went a bit in, not much by any stretch of imagination, but it has to be straightened out. Which also means stripping paint off partially, and while at that: Stripping all the paint off.
As the paintjob is fairly bad if you go upclose… on the pictures that issue does not really show.

That means taking the interior out completely, which frankly is not a huge issue considering it took me around 15 minutes to get to this stage:

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If your, the readers, eyes are as good (or as bad) as mine you can see… red paint here, red paint there, red paint fucking everywhere. Will be some wet-vac action coming to the yard soon.
But stripping the interior has its good sides, you find the real paint of the car.

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You can see, red on the door, red in the tachometer region. You can figure out what was not painted… But i like both tones of this red, i like the brighter flashy red more though.

All of this has one good side, the seats are in terrific condition! They probably just need some cleaning and vac and thats it. Very comfortable (for what they are)

!

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And i know why the engine was so rattly…

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This mount is not supposed to be tightened down to the max by the 200lb gorilla, if the spring is tight to the max it cannot absorb any vibrations, loosened it by around 3 turns, still holds A+ and the engine is MUCH smoother.

Thats it for now. Update will come in x Weeks.
X is random.

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