Project shall be recommencing by the end of the month (hopefully).
Thought i might as well share some pictures with you all and tell you where im actually up to.
Most of this took place back in the summer and due to the colder weather approaching the car was pushed back into the garage.
Pushed out onto my driveway and front bumber removed.
Had to drill one bolt out as it refused to move. Caked in WD40, plusgas etc but still wouldnt budge. Its currently a nice garden ornament.
'Old' rear beam was removed. Also finding where the ABS sensors go back under the car and into the floor pan just below the rear bench. Never noticed the gromits on my old Sei.
I was lucky with the weather forecast for the two weeks i had off (somehow) and cleaned the underside with some washing up liquid to degrease and wirebrushed everything.
Gave the underside a liberal coating of Waxoyl. Three coats in three days, with the good weather helping drying overnight.
Previously on the Shoebox it took 2/3 days for just the first coat to dry fully.
Always wear goggles when undersealing a car, they got covered in waxoyl drips.
With the rear beam removed and everything drying nicely, only then did i realise i had a minor problem.
When i first got Paws the front discs looked like they were the originals. So with my rear disc conversion taking the same size discs as standard cento ones, i duly put my new pair from my rear disc conversion on.
However with the rear of the car now up in the air i needed to get the discs back off the front and put on my 'good' rear beam.
I really dont recommend jacking the front up, whilst the rear isnt supported. Dont worry im an (un)trained idiot.
If i could get the discs off the front what would i replace them with though?
I grabbed my PGT discs and bolted them on. Minus the brake calipers, which were cable tied out of the way.
Putting the rear beam back on by myself wasnt a fun experience.
The handbrake was removed, was just messing around with test fitting. Wheels were attached and the car was then pushed back into the garage, with boxes of parts slowly building around it.
Due to the lack of space, these boxes (and several others that i have bought) have been moved into my bedroom since christmas.
Fuel tank was removed. Started plumbing in the brake pipes (as you can see from my Powerflex bag).
This is a clip that the brake pipe should clip into, so it is kept securely out of the way. I now have a hate of these!
Imagine the picture above is rotated 180 degrees so that the pipe clips into it from below. As i removed the old pipe i snapped one of the little butterfly clips, as you might be able to see above.
I thought they popped into the floor pan and set about putting a set of mole grips on them and pulling with all my strength / weight. The mole grips slipped off the plastic and hit me in top of my right eyesocket. Getting angry and feeling my eye starting to burn i hit the clip with my hand. Finding out that they are actually screwed onto the car very lightly. Only then do i start to note the blood running down my face.
Clip 1, Pirus nil.
Could i find an OEM spare easily that would fit? No.
Tried to explain it to some people breaking cars and it was too small a part for them to bother with, or they wanted silly money.
So I found the part number on
ePER rung up a local Fiat garage. They must have thought i was mad, i ordered over £30 of assorted plastic clips for my fuel lines, brake pipes and anything else. If i got annoyed with anymore id just rip them off the car and replace.
No more them broke either after that, so i wasnt very happy.
Fuel tank had a leaky seam and needed some attention. So in my usual fashion, i just binned it off.
Nearly new, genuine tank with less than 500 miles. Coated liberally in waxoyl. Should hopefully last the life of the car.
This is all the pictures i have of the mechanicals for now.
The fuel tank is back on the car, with an interesting story of how i couldnt get it back on. Then snapped some of the venting system as well. Will post pictures of that next time.
The car was rolled out of the garage last weekend as i now have an electric garage door with a functional lock (finally).
However i forgot to cable tie the powerflex bag back out of the way and found out that it had snagged on my driveway, allowing the brand new brake pipes to trail behind the car, get runover by a wheel, get caught and are now kinked.
So looks like it'll be fuel tank back off and time to order more brake pipes and redo the entire rear end.
Near side bush on the rear doesnt look like it did very well in the crash but should be alright. Brand new Strongflex bushes and engine mounts sat in a box for now. Hopefully wont have to redo the rears.
Ordered myself a new oil cooler, had to send one back when ordering the wrong size. (nothing ever seems to go well for me).
Also have a new metre of braided hose to cut to size. The guy at the hose place seemed a little shocked when he asked why i had brought in the old sections of pipe in a carrier bag. Thought id ask them if they could fix them for me
No i got him to check over the unions for me and ask about hose types.
Minor breather before i start typing about the world of wiring spagetti and why i still dont like it.
One reason its been a slow burn project is because i accidentally did this:
Someone parked over a residents driveway whilst i was at work and i reversed straight off and into them over road. Very slow speed crash, probably not even walking pace.
Sorted and fixed, they now longer park there either.
Wiring.
I still dont like wiring, though i am slowly getting better at understanding the spaggetti like drawings.
I managed to pick myself up an 18FD ECU from a 1998 1.2 16v Punto and set about labelling all the sensors and figuring out how to wire it all up to a MPi Sei that doesnt really use a D4 for anything. (lots of help from Todger for this)
This is the engine loom for an MPi Sei; simple, easy and organised.
14 year old 18FD wiring, not quite so easy.
Stripping off 14 year old electrical tape and all the grime wasnt fun. I had a basic wiring diagram for an 18FD ecu from when Slugworth's 16v conversion was done. I also managed to find a wiring diagram from a haynes manual and have all the 18FD variants.
I even had to send Whitz this photo as i wasnt sure if it was the D4 connector (it is).
I got my complete car sei loom out. Tried to find the D4 section on that. There was only one trouble.
Due to the damage to bulkhead i couldnt remove the whole loom complete and had to cut the cluster loom off. This has proved to cause a little confusion and quite a lot of multimetre pinging.
The only trouble was i now longer appeared to have one on my Sei loom, i had to cut it off to remove the wiring. The D4 was trapped by the brake master cylinder due to massive wing and pannel damage.
Dug around in my garage and boxes / bags of wiring and found it. Only it doesnt quite have as many connections on the 18FD D4.
18FD loom all labelled nicely and ready to be taken to Todgers so he could help me with sorting out the D4 connections and trying to figure out if what i had done was correct.
Took the loom to Todgers and spend an evening with him basically telling me where everything should go. Turns out id probably bodged and mislabled a few wires. Got it sorted though and labelled up correctly and figure out how to repin the D4 so it wont mess with any of the 'newer' wiring of an MPi sei.
So project on going and will be back up and running in the next month.
Wiring still giving me a headache but have everything i need written down and saved away.
Boxes and boxes of parts have been accumulating in my house for a few months.
Wont be long now

Will keep this updated as i go along.
Pirus