Father inlaw is an electrician so we have talked about that already. A plan is already in place for such a thing. Ironically my father is a welder by trade (or was till he retired) so going to discuss with him some things I have planned, including potentially a custom stainless exhaust and his welder is a German made thing which would make mincemeat of a standard 13Amp socket so having a 30amp socket in the garage has been planned, on this round thought I just installed 4 13amp sockets down the wall and above my shelf for charging tools, batteries, the ultrasonic cleaner etc. nothing that uses loads of power.
When I repeatedly asked how big it was the best answer I got was "2 - 4" what ever that was supposed to mean.Indeed it could just be the main issue was the car was not clearly labelled..
In this case I am going to flush it. Basically the car is going to be sat up for a period, the engine is coming a part. Basically anything I can clean out with a flush before I strip it down will be a bonus where as if I were to rely on oil changes and running the car regularly well that's just not going to happen. I have a daily driver this is a project.
The Consumer unit is in the garage I can't remember what the rating of the breaker it is currently connected to, but initially there was only a single double socket connected via a radial circuit directly into the consumer unit. What i've done is replaced all the wiring right back to the consumer unit, for uprated 4mm cable and connected a much longer 4 double socket radial directly into the breaker at the consumer unit.
I never got the results of GUNK by using only diesel as a cleaner. GUNK, or WURTH etc, IMHO, has stuff in it that dissolves crud buildup
So just to keep this as a history of the restoration process I need to add some updates here, so while I am delving back a bit in time this will just give me scope to look back and to make it easier for people to follow the updates without having to read through all the discussion.
I picked the car up from Stockport, drove it 240 miles home without incident. I had to stop and get wiper fluid, the car was seemingly lacking in power the whole journey initally struggling to get above 60mph but after about half an hour of driving it seemed to free up and could get up to motorway speeds. The top speed on the car should be a touch over 100mph so something isn't quite right. More investigation needed.
The general condition of the car is pretty poor. That said what attracted me to this car is the lack of rust. Or that is to say very little obvious rust for a mk1 punto. Some of them are swiss cheese these days after 25 years on the road despite the older puntos having pretty good rust protection.
The body work is free from any major dents, but the paint is terrible. The car will need repainting.
The wheels are wrong. Currently fitted to the car are some late model Punto wheels from around 2015/16, these are 4x100 fitment and the car does not have wobble bolts so they have to go. Fortunately I have already procured some original Punto GT wheels which came in a horrible black/grey colour so they need to be restored and painted silver to match the OEM wheels this car would have had as an option from new.
The tires on these wheels are date stamped 2008 so they have not been on the road for quite some time, the tires will be taken off to help make refurbishment easier.
This is the 1.2 85hp 16 valve engine. It is the ELX model with all round electric windows and electric roof. it has a typically 90s/early 2000s stereo and the interior is pretty grotty. I have a plan to completely refurbish the interior including the carpet which appears to have been damaged behind the drivers seat in some sort of minor fire at some point. Which has also damaged the door card. No damage to the seat so these were either not in the car or have been replaced.
The Roof while not the original is still mainly waterproof but is in poor condition. Once all other work is done I think I will look at changing the roof.
So Engine, Body work, interior and roof, there isn't much of this car that doesn't need attention but so far at least the tin worm seems to have been resisted making it a good candidate for restoration.
Here is a little snap shot I found online for what I am aiming for.
you should, they're great..... if you can find one now.
Theres a yellow one for sale not too far from me... problem is not ULEZ and where I live is likely to become some sort of CAZ in the next handful of years
It’s not a bag it’s a cover that goes over the roof when it’s folded down, it used to be a legal requirement in some countries to have one to prevent injury to passers by should they feel the need to jam their hand into the roof mechanism.
Sadly I did not, I don't even remember there ever being fixings for it present on my car, I do recall the manual talking of one though. Honestly the lack of a cover was the least of my cabrio's problems
After all of the above there is no discernable improvement in the window. I think the motor may be very tired or something. I am plotting if there is a way I can swap only the motor for something more powerful.
looking around while regulators vary a lot from car to car the actual motors often seem to boil down to either having 3 bolts or 4 bolts to attach them to the regulator. even some Mercedes parts look to be the same as Fiat and are branded a Bosch so the unit costs of these motors is probably no more than a couple of pounds to the manufacturer.
