fiat spider

Tonight, since I am still lacking the 4th bolt for the water pump, I went to work on the heater core. I pulled it out last night and today/tonight, I cleaned out the vanes, flushed it out, sanded down the outside and gave it a light coat of rust-o-leum. Looks pretty nice. Re-installed and waiting for 2 gaskets I ordered today. Those should get here Friday, I hope.

Also cleaned and re-installed the crankcase breather. Not a hard job but it took me a while to figure out I could re-use some of the old rubber hose from the cooling system and get it done. Apparently the hose that connects the breather to the crankcase is hard to find or something.

Hopefully tomorrow I will have time to hit up Marshalls and get that bolt. I really want to get the cooling system going this weekend. That is the big hold up at this point. Getting all the hoses and parts back together. Once that's done I think I'll be able to try to start it. W00t!

Quick brain dump of things left to do:

• Get water pump bolt
  
• Get lengths of coolant hose from NAPA (small and large)
  
• put V-belt back on and tighten
  
• install radiator
  
• install new overflow tank (probably need more hose for it too)
  
• buy lots of coolant
  
• buy new battery
  
• put dash back together properly
  
• drain fuel tank + re-fill with good gas
  
• test electrical system
  
• get out fire extinguisher, turn ignition key
  

Tonight, I spent the night pulling out the old heater valve for replacement. After I got into it, I discovered a stuck heater control. So, looking into that I removed the heater box. And decided for good measure, to remove the heater core and examine/flush it out. And I got a little suprize. In addition to a lot of green coolant that I managed to collect in a tin can, I got a huge pile of leaves, twigs, bugs and trash. Probably about 3 inches of it. Glad I cleaned that sucker. Guess there is no filter between the outside vents and the heater. Maybe I should put one on there. Even a screen seems like a good idea after all the junk I pulled out.

Man, getting that heater valve out was a chore. Tiny space for the wrench and I had to work sideways and upside down to get under there. Plus coolant leaking out with every turn. Yeesh. Glad that's not something that goes bad often. Or at least I hope.

The pic in the top right is the 'short tube' and the 'long tube', revealed for the first time here, exclusively! ;) A half hour of polish made the tubes look great, as you can see before and after in the pics. Probably not worth it, but kind of fun when I didn't have anything else to do. Tomorrow I'll attempt to put it all back together, or at least what I can without all the right gaskets.

I also discovered something else. I ordered 2 'long heater hoses' from IAP. They're about a 2 feet long with an "S" curve in the end. I have no idea where these should go. Mine only requires the 2 shorter hoses. And these don't even fit. I'm kind of bummed at IAP for selling them to me. But I should have known exactly what to order in the first place. Dangit.