General Reliability -what makes some 500's more dependable than others?

[Ant Knox]

I created this thread out of curiosity really. I've owned my 500L for approaching two years now, and aside from some wear and tear issues, and faults brought on under previous ownership (overtightened wheel bolts, warped carb flange etc.), the little car has been reliable and a joy to own. I spend a fair bit of time on the forum, and I make a habit of reading others technical enquiries and woes to better prepare myself should anything happen to me.
What strikes me is that some members here seemingly encounter issue after issue, and there are certainly subjects that frequently arise, like hot starting issues, electrical gremlins and fuel flow problems.
Is there anything that can be attributed to the common problems encountered by others? Lack of use? Poor replacement parts? Or even just the odd 'Lemon'?
What advice can we give others to make their 500 more reliable? If I were asked, i'd say use the car on a regular basis, stick to good original parts where possible and drive the car sympathetically.

 

[bugsymike]

I agree, along with remembering they are not modern cars, so Motorway speed is taking the mickey, an A road at 40mph is fine.
The average 1960s car owner would expect to have to open the bonnet and check all the levels etc. regularly or have his petrol station do it at nearly every visit.
Also they were built in an era when cars had to have regular servicing at much lower intervals than modern cars, by mechanics that were adjusting valve clearances, stripping and cleaning carbs, fitting points, adjusting timing, overhauling brakes etc. every day of their working life so could easily recognise faults that today's technicians wouldn't have a clue where to start with, but in fairness to them old school mechanics have a problem with electronic diagnosis etc.

 

[porta]

I agree, along with remembering they are not modern cars, so Motorway speed is taking the mickey, an A road at 40mph is fine.
The average 1960s car owner would expect to have to open the bonnet and check all the levels etc. regularly or have his petrol station do it at nearly every visit.
Also they were built in an era when cars had to have regular servicing at much lower intervals than modern cars, by mechanics that were adjusting valve clearances, stripping and cleaning carbs, fitting points, adjusting timing, overhauling brakes etc. every day of their working life so could easily recognise faults that today's technicians wouldn't have a clue where to start with, but in fairness to them old school mechanics have a problem with electronic diagnosis etc.

I’m an old school auto-sparky and all this new fangled electrickery is witchcraft if you haven’t got access to AVO values

 

[bugsymike]

As an apprentice back then it was not unusual to come in Monday morning and be told to go up to Mr.***** and start his car, on arrival the car would be all spic and span, as Sunday morning the owners would often wash and polish their pride and joy which was great until their next thought was to give it a service, having managed an oil change (probably no filter done) then spark plugs, easy, next change the contact points, after all if an oily erk can do it how hard can it be.........
So on opening the bonnet on the Monday the oily erk quickly finds no spark and goes to the distributor where he finds the new points have been fitted incorrectly with the insulator washer wrong shorting wire straight to earth, or the gap set with points closed (not on the cam) so a massive gap all the time, these and many other simple mistakes were common and when the owner or his wife, if he had had to take a bus to work would deny any one had been there since it's last service months ago at the garage!!!

 

[Bleeding Knuckles]

Hi Ant, I would say that it's All of the above plus agreeing with Mike, these cars are from another era and some, if not most modern owners don't know about wiggly amps and oily filters. These cars NEED TLC, but it's amazing how some will keep going whilst falling apart, the major problem is the Rust !!!!!!
Ian.

 

[Toshi 975]

Jimi Hendrix comes to mind “Is is love baby or just corrosion”

You guys have just about summed it all up but I think that quite a few cars are prissed up to sell and are not necessarily coming up for sale by enthusiasts. Some forums are packed with so called pristine cars for sale in Italy and it has proved to be a real gamble for some. There also seems to be people with money who can afford these iconic cars but don’t know how to change a spark plug, that coupled with a huge shortage of people capable of fixing or understanding these cars compounds the situation. Successful owners are prepared to research the cars and their idiosyncrasies and get their hands dirty. Forget about a radio, listen to your car and feel the road, a 500 is far from a modern car which is the appeal for many.

 

[bugsymike]

As @ Bleeding Knuckles mentions Rust!!!!!!
It was always a good earner Mot welding, but unless completely cut out and repaired properly in a good dry work shop it tended to be the thin edge of the wedge. I used to say if a customers car needed an Mot "patch" it was time to move it on as each year on more would be required.
I suspect many of us have seen "classics" with a beautiful paint job that the owner is rightly proud of and then when we look underneath the true horrors are revealed.
I recall a 1960s E type Roadster that really looked show winning from first look, that the owner had spent many thousands to buy and claimed to have reached 135 Mph in, having seen the under side on a ramp patch welded upon patch, I thought "You are a braver man than me!"

 

[fiat500]

Hi Ant, I would say that it's All of the above plus agreeing with Mike, these cars are from another era and some, if not most modern owners don't know about wiggly amps and oily filters. These cars NEED TLC, but it's amazing how some will keep going whilst falling apart, the major problem is the Rust !!!!!!
Ian.

I'll second that!

 

[fiat500]

The key to reliability with the Fiat 500 is the same as with any other car, whether old or new.....it needs to be serviced and repaired with great attention to detail and using original-spec parts.

A major disadvantage faced by this and many other classic cars is that engine management is almost entirely the responsibility of the owner/driver.
Unlike inside the engines of modern cars, combustion is rarely optimal, and getting it as close as possible to the optimum is frequently a hit-and-miss operation. Ideally you need to use basic tools such an electronic strobe and a Colortune to get the dynamic timing and combustion exactly to spec and then only adjust it a small amount from that if the car is in standard tune.

The condition and adjustment of the valve-gear has a major influence on the running of this car.

Then drive it quite hard and regularly, and get used to listening for any noises that are outside the normal range. Never set off very far if there has been something that sounded or felt odd on your last journey until you have tracked down the cause and fixed it with great attention to detail and using original-spec parts.

 

[bugsymike]

A good strobe timing light is good as sometimes with old distributors the mechanical advance and retard can be either seized so not advancing or springs and bob weights worn so over advancing, plus on vehicles with vacuum advance it was very common for them to fail due to leaky diaphragm etc. so when engine revving a little by pulling the vacuum pipe off the strobe would show if working or not.
Colourtune is good , but my preference was to look at the plug colour after a run plus the exhaust tailpipe.
Plugs showing a nice light brown were considered good though I don't know if holds with modern fuels.

 

[fiat500]

A good strobe timing light is good as sometimes with old distributors the mechanical advance and retard can be either seized so not advancing or springs and bob weights worn so over advancing, plus on vehicles with vacuum advance it was very common for them to fail due to leaky diaphragm etc. so when engine revving a little by pulling the vacuum pipe off the strobe would show if working or not.
Colourtune is good , but my preference was to look at the plug colour after a run plus the exhaust tailpipe.
Plugs showing a nice light brown were considered good though I don't know if holds with modern fuels.

The problem is that you and I and many others know instinctively the right colour for the plugs and the right sounds and smells that an old, petrol engine should be giving off. But many people who never experienced "classic-cars" on the road, before the time when the cars had matured to have that double-barrelled name, are used to cars being more or less trouble-free in the engine department.

I think that a major reason why people struggle to get things right and reliable is that it's difficult to advise them in a binary way how to approach the poor-running problems. It's like trying to help them learn to play a musical instrument over the phone.

In my case I have gradually come to learn that my car runs best when I use those few simple tools to reassure myself that I have things within reasonable distance of Fiat workshop calibration and that I have a way to always retrieve those settings.......Colortune was a revelation for carburettor setup, although where it takes you is almost exactly where instinct and popular experience suggests that settings should be.

 

[bugsymike]

When working as foreman for Dealership in the 70s I always set the vehicles up old school , but it made the customers happy to see it confirmed on a Crypton machine with lots of patterns and dials etc. even though my adjustments were correct. Where I found it informative was looking at the voltages to fire the cylinders, using new plugs, new non resister plugs, new plugs cleaned? in the Crypton plug machine, copper or silicon leads, rotor arms with and without resisters etc. In the old days you could almost throw a bucket of water over an engine and it would keep running whereas now a heavy mist can cause problems, due I think to the over resisted (if that is a word) electrical system that in the past could happily fire and run a spark plug with 4000volts and now can use nearly ten times that, meaning the opportunity for the spark to take an easier route and cause a misfire unless all insulation is 100% is higher.
One of my sisters had an ongoing issue with a misfire on the Honda she bought and had serviced from new by the Dealer, they put new expensive coils on and problem persisted , until I told her to tell them to change the spark plugs which they had insisted was not due for many thousands of miles.
I know you can argue that modern plugs can do the miles, but I always replaced them when servicing my customers cars regardless of use/mileage along with other little things I did which kept their cars reliable. Recently I went for a meal with an old customer of over 40 years and his wife that I still see since retiring, he was saying something he doesn't get with his new and dealer serviced Toyota is when driving away from my garage the car always felt, "tighter/better" in his words.

 

[Goldnrust]

The problem is that you and I and many others know instinctively the right colour for the plugs and the right sounds and smells that an old, petrol engine should be giving off

Exactly, that instinct takes years to learn and perfect. The sort of issues @Ant Knox mentions in the first post, air leaks from a warped carb base for example, are fairly easily spotted for those of us with lots of experience, but can be seemingly impossible to find for someone just starting their journey.

The 500 engine is so simple, but similar to my experience with 2 stroke engines, that simplicity can make it even more baffling when the engine won’t run right and the obvious checks have been done.

…I think that a major reason why people struggle to get things right and reliable is that it's difficult to advise them in a binary way how to approach the poor-running problems. It's like trying to help them learn to play a musical instrument over the phone.

This I think is also an important point. It’s hard on a forum to find the line between overly patronising, and blowing the mind of the reader with over complexity when you don’t know who’s reading your reply.

It’s also fair to say that often people are looking for answers, which are very hard to give, as opposed to pointers or tools that help you solve the problem for yourself, which is what we can offer each other.

Going back to the warped carb base example, when I read that there are issues with the carb base, I knew how to check and how to rectify the issue. All I needed to know was the knowledge that warping is a problem. To know how to test for warping, how to fix it, and how to prevent is it a much harder thing to convey via forum posts.

What advice can we give others to make their 500 more reliable?

I think my best advice would be to try and use each breakdown as a learning experience. Rather than simply looking to blindly follow a fix someone suggests, the key is to learn why it might have broken down and how that can be fixed.

It goes hand in hand with the problem solving approach where you test, measure and investigate before jumping to conclusions and just throwing parts and money at the car before you have found a definitive problem.

For example, a few pounds spent on a multimeter, and a bit of time spent learning to use it will make so many electrical issues that people find baffling seem obvious.

 

[bugsymike]

If my customers had a problem with their vehicle I used to get them to give me all the symptoms they notice and when or how the problem occurs and by asking the right questions I would know which direction to go.
I didn't expect them to know what the problem was, however as they were the ones driving many more miles than I was likely to do in their vehicle, they would know what was different to normal.
Generally when I had found and fixed the problem they were interested to know about it when I explained it to them.
Sometimes an OP will only give a little detail and not even say what the vehicle is, so it can be like pulling teeth.
It can also be hard to tell if you are "trying to teach granny to suck eggs" or not

 

[Ant Knox]

Thanks for the thoughts everyone.
What i've noticed from my own observations are that the cars that appear to have the most problems are often the ones that have had the most 'restoration' or modification. I found the same was true of classic scooters, the glossiest restorations were often plagued with issues, usually due to poor quality reproduction parts, or more often than not, parts missing altogether. The common feature of both the 500 and Vespas is that they were cheap vehicles for the masses; Fiat and Piaggio would never fit parts that weren't required, no matter how superfluous they would appear.

 

[Ant Knox]

The reason I put restoration in inverted commas is that sometimes the vendors interpretation of restored falls far short of what is required!

 

[dangfiat]

Fun thread. For me the reliability is from worn out parts that keep failing. I'll slowly replace them as they fail, and eventually I'll have an entirely new motor/wiring loom. Nothing I've replaced has failed (yet)

I am a bit of a newbie just learning to troubleshoot an old car, this forum has been magic! Still have some issues that make me worry (like a hot start issue the other day when it was 35c or so here - eventually started but had me worried for a bit)

It really is a matter of "old car does old car things", and most of these are not built to concours standards so some of the ancient components let go

 

[bugsymike]

I think we have all become accustomed to the standard of modern vehicles, but need to remember classics came from an era where servicing needed to be more frequent and before every long trip everything was checked over as a matter of course, also when you went to get fuel the bonnet/hood was opened and oils and water etc checked by the attendant. Also average road speeds were much lower.