Finally got the Fiat's thermostat replaced.

". ." (xllx) 07/21/2015 at 13:40 • Filed to: shoebox, blue torpedo

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Proper easy job, took less than 10 minutes. Now the cooling flap opens like so:

Yay!

I also got hold of a complete front suspension arm for the equivalent of 10 dollars. It’s always good to have a spare.

I also had the valves readjusted which gave the car some extra pep and got rid of the annoying rattling/grinding noise. I guess the refurbished head hasn’t properly set yet so I’ll probably have to do that once more at some point.

RustedSprinter > . . 07/21/2015 at 16:52

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Nice!

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > . . 07/22/2015 at 23:32

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Glad to hear the thermostat was a easy fix! It didn’t look too complex to change in the manual! :) That front suspension arm looks to be in good shape as well...did you get it from a salvage yard, or a garage, or?

Also glad to hear you managed to get rid of the grinding/rattling....I was worried it could be something worse (although it never really sounded that bad....I didn’t even really notice it in your videos), but if it was just out of adjustment valves, you dodged a little bullet there. Plus, more pep when you’ve only got 24hp is a bonus! :P Is the added “pep” noticeable?

. . > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 07/23/2015 at 06:37

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I got the suspension arm from one of the “weird old fat guys who hoard car parts”. I went there to buy a spare crank pulley for the Fiat (correct crank pulleys for my car can be bloody hard to find). I saw the arm lying around and I just asked him if that’s for sale as well. It was, so I got it. :D

The grinding sound got really bad at one point and everyone was really baffled as to what it could be. It really didn’t sound like valves. We suspected the colling fan, but since running the engine without an alternator belt didn’t solve anything we excluded that part. We ended up at it either being the timing chain or God knows what. The timing chain turned out to be OK, but the valve adjustment we did at the same time solved the problem. You couldn’t hear the issue in my videos because it wasn’t present yet. Seems like as the engine is wearing in after the overhaul, the refurbished head is still setting, so even though we had the valves set correctly after the engine was put together, by the time we checked 600 km later everything has changed.

And yeah, the extra power is definitely noticeable on the butt dyno. Before we readjusted the valves I had that weird feeling that the car didn’t feel as fast as it should, but I was 50% convinced it was just me being properly used to it by then. After the readjustment the car feels as quick as it felt in the beginning. I’d say I got another quarter of gas pedal travel worth of speed back.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > . . 07/25/2015 at 18:14

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Hahahaha! Pretty sure there is a “weird old fat guy who hoards car parts” in every country somewhere! :D We can all picture what one looks like in our heads, lol!

In seriousness, lucky you found such a fellow though - I’m surprised that your crank pulley is hard to find though...is the one on your Town model that much different that the pulleys found on other Maluch models?

Glad to hear the power increase is noticable as well - I know the 126 doesn’t have a lot of hp at all, but considering it’s size 24hp should be pretty adequate....I’ve also read that the 126 has fairly short gearing on the lower gears, so it feels faster when accelerating and scooting around town...?

“I’d say I got another quarter of gas pedal travel worth of speed back.” - This sentence just perfectly fits the car, haha! :)

. . > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 07/26/2015 at 02:15

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the crank pulley thing is a bit of a mystery actually. It’s easy to find a 126p crank pulley if you have an older model, without the electronic ignition module. With electronic ignition however, many sources claim that the kind of crank pulley you should get depends on the kind of module you have, they’re differentiated by the position of bumps used by the crank position sensor. My car has a blue Nanoplex module, so it uses the pulley that’s difficult to find. Pulleys for black and grey modules are common. Now many shops claim that there never were different kinds of crank pulleys on late 126p’s, so in the beginning we just got one off the shelf. However, after taking a caliper and checking the distances between sensor triggers there was a good 1cm difference compared to the pulley we had, which probably would have made a considerable difference. It was a bit of a mess, but in the end I managed to find a brand new pulley with the part number I wanted and with sensor triggers placed the same as the on the pulley on my car.

Cars with no electronic ignition will take any pulley as they don’t have a crank position sensor.

Here’s how a late pulley looks, arrows point to those triggers I mentioned.