Green 1300 near A303

Do you fancy advertising in the mag Giles?

Regards

Rob

hi giles,giles,im in gillingham tomorrow,just off the 303,i need a throttle cable,whereabouts are you?...do you have an address please

From the DG Rally website:

You Can Contact us on 07971662703 or email us on dgrally@abarth-cars.co.uk

www.ekmpowershop18.com/ekmps/shops/dgrally/index.asp

Hi Giles, ah so it was you that got that car! I went to see it when it was for sale a couple of summers ago, as I was in the area anyway - some bloke was selling it from a car wash place in deepest Bedfordshire. It looked to be in very good nick as far as a 1300 goes. Only problem I recall was that some trim and a seat was missing and the carpet was filthy. Its scrubbed up very nicely! Did it take much work to get MOT'd and on the road?

Yes it sounds the same car. I managed to get it for a very very cheap price, not that my darling wife thought so at the time! It did have one seat missing which had been stolen and was hard to find. In the end I managed to track one down from the USA, but it will need re-covering in the end. other than that, I did a basic recommissioning on the engine and the brakes, painted one headlamp pod and the front spoiler and it has passed the MOT for the last two years with no advises.

The secret to this cars survival has been that it was zeibarted from new and this is like new virtually everywhere. The only down side is everything is covered in the brown sticky stuff.

There are no holes and the underside and boot areas are factory fresh. I am sad to say haven't even polished it yet since owning it, just washed the dust of from years of storage.

I always wanted a 1974 or earlier car due to the unique differences on them compared to the later 1300 cars, such as the sail trim, chrome surround, rear panel work, different roof catches, door seals, manual hand throttle and a host of other changes, many of which were later removed or cheaper options fitted.

All the best, Giles

Glad the car went to a good home and to someone who knew what they were doing with it and got it up and running rather than letting it decay further. Yes the early 1300's are stunning, a case of 'less is more' !

Agree totally with the Ziebart comment, I have two 1300 serie speciales - both have been ziebarted, one has been garaged all its life so predictably has zero rust... but the other has spent a lot of time outside, including being a daily driver through some heavy winters yet it has minimal rust!

Cheers,
Jim.

Hi Giles,
I am doing a V6 conversion on my exxy, which will put out around 170BHP.
Did you need to do any chassis stiffening mods to your 230hp powered car?
Did you keep the suspension and wishbones standard?
I am interested, as I would like to know at what power level you need to start bracing or stiffen the chassis.
I am about to do it as a matter of course, adding more metal in the cill areas and strenghten the central tunnel.
Regards
Adam

Hi Adam,

Whilst building the car we seam welded the whole shell as that is what we do in all the rally cars we build so that would have stiffened the shell alot. The suspension was standard other being lowered 35mm more than a 1300 car, bearing in mind I believe the rear struts on a 1300 have a lower seat perch. We used Koni struts which were available at the time with 50% uprated springs. The car felt like it could still take a lot more power without flexing badly.

The main area we had to uprate were the brakes. Here we used 38mm rear calipers at the rear with Uno turbo front calipers fitted with 5 finger pistons from Tarox. Again nowadays better caliper options are available.

In terms of the wishbones these were kept standard except for some trimming around the ZF Gearbox, however we are now trying to develope some fabricated tubular replacement units for the X1/9 with replaceable rear joints which would help anyone with engine conversions or the need for new arms.

Do you think there is a good market for these rear arms and also for uprated spring sets, which we have been thinking about having made for a while now.

Giles.

id say those bottom rear arms are a definate to remanufacture,i was looking for a brand new pair a couple of months back,couldnt get any anywhere,i already had two 2nd hand sets but didnt want to start putting the car back together with used stuff as i wanted everything new...in the end i drilled the ball joints out and removed them,then had the bottom arms sandblasted,then spend an afternoon looking through a room full of old stock to find some new replacement balljoints...the problem is that the fiat actually have a very thick ball joint,and nothing else fits,and you have to have the right size to enable it to fit the hub...i must have looked through 200 balljoints in my search,in the end i gave up,i took the two best joints from the 4 that i had and bolted and welded these back into the new arms,finishing off with poly dust covers....i even thought about making new arms for myself,but it kept coming back to ball joint size fitting the hubs....so if you do ever make any,and theyre a fair price,then drop me a line cos il have the first two

Giles Hopgood wrote: Do you think there is a good market for these rear arms and also for uprated spring sets, which we have been thinking about having made for a while now.

Giles.

I'd be interested in rear arms and an uprated spring set, if they were set at a reasonable price.

Would the uprated springs be progressive like others on offer?

what would x mm Lower and Y% stiff than stock be do you think?