Noosa Classic Car Show

Last weekend Andy and I drove up the coast to the Noosa Classic Car Show.
It was billed as having the largest collection of Lamborghini's ever in one spot in Australia - it didn't disappoint. We travelled with a few of the Fiat Car Club members and I really had no intention of displaying my Spider. Once we got there, however, parking was scarce and we had a Ferrari 512TR right on our tail, so why the hell not?!? The gate keeper didn't look twice and just waved us straight through. The spider drew a reasonable amount of attention (once everyone had drooled over the Lambo's and Ferrari's of course).
All in all it was a great day, I need little excuse at the best of times to do the car enthusiast bit and I got to spend the day in Noosa with some great friends besides.

Look At Me! Look At Me!

It astounds me just how much attention our little Spider attracts. I can remember fairly vividly being one of those kids that would give himself whiplash to get a better look at a suitably interesting passing car and drooling over anything remotely exotic that I happened to get near enough to. So it is pretty cool being on the other end of it at times, even if it is a little mystifying.

The other day I pulled up at a set of traffic lights and noticed the guy in the new 5 series BMW next to me maneuvering around his daughter in the passenger seat to get a clearer view of the car (my wife wasn't in it at the time - so must've been the car.) That same day traveling along the freeway a 350Z matched speed in the adjacent lane and the driver spent more time looking at the Spider than the road. He could buy pretty close to 4 of them for the price he paid for his Z car... At Leyburn there were classic race cars galore and the moment I pulled up in the in-field there were half a dozen people crawling over it. Then Saturday afternoon we decided to go for a drive to a park on the Brisbane river and grab an ice cream. When we pulled into the car park there was a police car a couple of bays down. As we got out of the car he pulled up behind us and was genuinely interested in all the ins and outs of the car and its history. The parting comment of "Bloody nice car that!" was a nice touch. :)

My point, long winded as it is, is that it was never my intention to be gawked at by all and sundry. I am sure a hot pink Valiant would achieve that end for significantly less outlay. But it is a great feeling to have fellow enthusiasts admire our lovely little sports car. Tim summed it up really well in an email the other day:

The reason I wanted another old car was to have something I could be proud of, something interesting that people want to look at.

Leyburn

Andy and I went out to Leyburn Motor Sprints on Saturday. It was a little disappointing that the Italian participation wasn't stronger. No Ferrari's at all! The only one we saw for the day was the 328 that we passed (traveling in the opposite direction of course) just outside Leyburn as we were heading home. There were a handful of Fiats running, an Alfa and a Lancia Beta coupe. The field was actually a reasonably good spread from historics, including a 1926 Bugatti that would have to be irreplaceable/priceless, to a near current bi-turbo Porsche that unceremoniously met the curb-side hay bales on the first turn.

Carl raced his spider. He ended winning his class and was able to drive it home at the end of the weekend (which is doubly great knowing who would be heading out there again with a car trailer to collect him...)

There were two 124 coupes, an AC and a BC, that were impressively quick and an X1/9 in the 1300cc class.

Norm Singleton also had his Abarth Prototipo X1/9 replica on track and it was one of the most impressive of the day, in a league of some of the more purpose built race cars it was incredibly balanced through the chicane and showed amazing acceleration.

The award for Best Novelty Act of the day goes to the TAFE team's Suzuki Mighty Boy ute, with its supercharged Rover V8 filling the tray area and a trans-axle hanging out the back it's quite a site. They claim 0-100km/hr in 3+ seconds and to 200km/hr in less than 10 seconds! Damn impressive and what a great way to get mechanic and panel beating apprentices enthusiastic about their careers.

mmmm, smoooth...

On Sunday morning I attacked the nasty miss that the Spider had developed. All pretty simple really, while Tim was up he bought a new fuel filter for it, so fitted that. The old one looked pretty tidy and, though I haven't popped the top off it to check it out yet, I doubt it was the problem. Next in line for replacement were the spark plugs and HT leads. As I removed the leads, the plug end terminals just disintegrated and fell in pieces into the spark plug well. This is looking suspiciously more likely to be the culprit! Rather than have little pieces of rusty metal drop straight into the cylinders I vacuumed them out first. I must have looked a right sight vacuuming the engine bay. Getting the plugs out was an effort - seriously corroded in place. I'm yet to check the multitude of receipts to see when these were last replaced, but I suspect the NSW wounded bull at work again. With the state of the plugs and leads I would guess that at least 2 of the cylinders were only getting intermittent connection to the coil.

All appropriate bits replaced I went for a bit of a test drive around the block. Not a miss to be heard and she revved smoothly and strongly all the way to red-line. It did however lose that great little burble that it had when you backed off. The burble reminded me a little of a classic race car as it fuelled up off the throttle just before it bellows flames from it's exhaust pipe/s. Ah well, she attracts enough attention without the associated noise pollution.

With the Spider back in favour we took her to a friend's new house for lunch on Sunday. We got down the road a couple of blocks and the engine just cut out. ARRRRRRRGHHHHHHH!!! Turned out to simply be a loose earth connection on the ignition killer. I tightened the screw when we got to lunch and it has been fine since.

Lucky I was prepared for some tinkering...

F is for Pininfarina ?!?!

I have occasionally wondered why Pininfarina's logo is a crowned "f" and not a "p".

A Very Short History:

• 1893 - Battista Farina was born the youngest of 11 children and was quickly nicknamed "small" or "pinin" in Turinese dialect.
• 1904 - At 11 years old started working in his brother Giovanni's body-shop
• 1930 - Founded "Carrozzeria Pinin Farina". Carrozzeria = "Auto body" (very creative)
• 1961 - Italian President and Minister of Justice authorize the change of his last name to Pininfarina "in consideration of his achievements in social and industrial activities".
• 1966 - Battista "Pinin" Farina died.

He really did seem to be a noble character from the small amount of research that I have done. Not only has he left an indelible legacy on the auto industry, but he travelled extensively and dedicated a lot of his time to charitable and cultural works. Pinin was also a bit of a film maker, which sounds like my next challenge...

My, that's a nasty cough you've got!

My brother was up from Melbourne for a couple of days so I lent him the Spider while he was here. It's been running pretty smoothly since we un-seized the distributor, timed it and replaced the dizzy cap and rotor button that resembled a lightning generator. Not sure how that beaut Fiat specialist had been doing the tune ups he was charging the previous owner for. That distributor hadn't been touched in a very long time and the timing was so far out that it was the wrong side of TDC (but that’s another nightmare). Back to the point - the spider has developed a nasty missfire. Tim had to head out of town so he put some injector cleaner in and that didn’t seem to help, he also grabbed a new fuel filter from local Fiat part guy who reckons that the old one could have collapsed. Will fit the new filter, plugs and leads on the weekend and see how it goes. Lucky I was prepared for some tinkering...

New Toy

A couple of weeks ago we bought a Pininfarina (ex Fiat) 124 DS Spider in NSW and had it loaded onto the back of a truck and delivered to our door in Brisbane. We had planned to fly to Sydney, train it out to Nowra and pick it up in person then do the road trip home. The weeks around this time saw snow in central NSW and floods on the QLD/NSW border. Call me a wimp, but that’s not the sort of weather I want to be driving an unknown little Italian convertible through, besides that, I’ve owned a variety of Italian cars before and know better...The plan for this little beauty was to be a weekend drive and something that I could tinker with from time to time (yes, that prior knowledge of Italian cars again).

As this was sold as a roadworthy and registered vehicle that had been lovingly cared for by a Fiat specialist near Sydney, what happened next was just a little bit of a shock. Not long after getting back to my desk from dropping it at a local Fiat guy for the roadworthy inspection in QLD to get the registration transferred I got a call. "This thing's a mess, you might want to come down and look at this..." So, with my stomach starting to turn, off I went back to the mechanic. Long story short - the floor was riddled with rust and the front end was ready to fall out. My friendly interstate Fiat specialist had given this car a mechanical all clear around 6 months ago, and going through the pile of receipts I got with the car he never missed the previous owner for even quite minor things over the years. Got me beat how my guy picked up on the state of the body work in minutes and he missed it on regular visits over 8 years!

Quotes of $2000+ for the floor alone had me researching avenues of how to recover some of the money to get it to the state that it had been represented in the first place. RTA and Fair Trading in NSW took a lot of interest in the parties involved but it came down to me suing the previous owner and them recovering from the mechanic. Not a nice scenario and it would have to take place in NSW. I had intended the "tinkering" to start a little further down the track, but I got a rapid induction back into Italian car ownership. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Carl for the use of his shed, equipment, contacts and skills in getting all the work done over 2 weekends and to his lovely wife Bec for keeping the snacks and occasional beers up to us.

At the end of this little nightmare, I finally got to the Department of Transport with RWC in hand only to find that there was no entry in the registered vehicle database for a 1983 124 DS which, according to the nice lady behind the counter, means that ours is the first ever registered in QLD. All-in-all a pretty good feeling to cap of a couple of crappy weeks.

Welcome

We are a small group of Fiat and Pininfarina Spider owners in Australia. These are some of our tales of racing, restoration and general ownership of these beautiful contemporary Italian classics.