Spidey Stuff

When we found out our car was indeed modified by Sports Car Authority in Matthews, NC, we were pretty excited.  SCA has been in the Fiat business for many years and racing Fiats for over 20 years.  Here's some examples of what they have done to our 1982 Fiat Spider.

In these shots, you'll see how the  bumpers have been pulled in, eliminating that "bike rack" gap between them and the body work.  In the shot to the left, the hood is up.  According to the notes from the previous owner, SCA removed the bumper, shortened the shock mount and welded it back into place.  The difference is subtle, but noticable, especially when you see another Spider without this modification.

With this shot you see the  effect of SCA removing and "shaving" the springs to lower the rear of the car to eliminate that federally induced increase in ride height.  The wheels are 15 inch panasports shod with Falken high performance tires.   They give a classic racer look to a very sophisticated looking car.  Lurking up under the fender there are Koni adjustable shocks, also installed by the Sports Car Authority.

Ok, so much for SCA and their work (besides the motor looks like any other, you can't see the cams or the flowed heads or the increased compression ratio (althought I did send a guy looking for a quart of compression one time, but that's a different story).  Here's a shot of the interior, showing our new console cover and or arm rest.  The seats, arm rest and boot (top cover) are all made from the same "Mercedes" quality interior material.  It's not leather, so I'm not sure what makes it "Mercedes" material, but that's what the trim shop billed it as to the previous owner.  He included a pretty good sized piece of the material with the car when we bought it, stating that he always wanted a matching boot made, but never got around to it.  Well, after ordering and re-selling a tan that didn't match at all, we bit the bullet and had one "custom" made for us.  Now it looks great with the interior.  This Spider features the same "gansta lean" as most as the driver's seat back had given up some of it's rigidity over the years.  From the first time I got in it I wanted an arm rest.   My son (the Fiat driver, soon to be) and I were kicking around a local junk yard and found this one that fit perfectly.  A Chevrolet Celebrity sacrificed its arm rest so that it might live on in the Fiat.  We had it covered at the same time as the boot was made. 

From this shot (left) you can see the shiny new console cover I purchased from IAP.   It doesn't exactly match the seats but it's what we prefer to call a "complimentary contrast"!  Another good shot of the arm rest too.  We found, after the new console cover went in, that the aluminum frame for the arm rest would no longer fit.  The cover raised the arm rest just enough that it wouldn't rotate back up any longer.  We really didn't want to extend the aluminum frame, as the plastic cover on it would then be useless.  So, rather than have the rigid frame in place and raw aluminum exposed we just stuffed the arm rest back between the seats and secured it with the greatest invention in the world . . . . velcro!   It works great, one small tab keeps the arm rest in place, and we rarely use the little cup in the back of the arm rest (except to keep small parts that fall off while driving!). 

In this next shot, you can clearly see the console cover secured in place.   You'll notice that I did not replace the fan switch light when I installed the cover.  I was nervous enough cutting one small hole in it, much less two.   Besides, I felt the fan switch light was not all that necessary and the space taken up by it might be well used for the CD changer control or relocation of the A/C switches.

Somewhere here you're going to see the car with the top down and the roll bar installed.  I'm not sure I'd do that again, if I had the chance to do it over.   While it will offer some protection in the unlikely event of a rollover, it certainly has it's drawbacks.  First, it is short and barely comes as high as the headrests.  This blocks the rear view mirror, making it totally worthless.  In order to over come this rear view affliction, we considered lowering the mirror, but found it right in our line of sight forward.  Someone on the Fiat Forum pointed me to this dash mounted mirror from a Cobra replica catalog.  I really didn't know how it would work (and still not very sure) but we mounted on the dash with 3M trim mounting tape and it really looks very classy.  Kind of a retro look.  My son and I immediately fell in love with it.

As the summer wore on, however, we discovered that 3M trim tape on a black dash in the sun soon loses it's "sticktoitiveness".  Thus was born the need for a brace or bracket to secure the mirror, else I was looking at the back end of the console all the time!  My brace was fashioned out of a black windshield wiper arm, courtesy of an old Ford Van.  I tried several wiper arms before I found one that was straight and had some curve to it to begin with.  After measuring several times (and wasting an arm or two in the process) I finally got it right the right length.  I then ground down the end of it to make it thinner.  The hole I drilled in it did not allow any adjustment of the mirror, so I machined it out to an oval to give me some motion.  The nut tightens both resistance on the mirrors adjustment ball and the brace.  Before final installation, I gave the already black arm another coat of flat black paint.  I attached the milled end of the arm to the mirror and loosely attached the nut.  I then wrapped the other end of the brace with 3M trim mounting tape and pried up the black rubber gasket at the base of the antenna, holding the gap open with a large screwdriver.  With a new application of mounting tape to the foot of the mirror, I placed it in the appropriate location on the dash and butted the brace into newly exposed gap between the dash and windshield.  Satisfied with my locations, I just firmly pressed the mirror and brace into place to "set" the tape.  Now the mirror is rock steady and the brace is barely visible against the dash. 

The band of tint across the top of the windshield probably blocks your view of the roll bar from this angle.  We had the tint applied after we tore the sunvisors off and threw them out on the highway about the 16th or 17th time they flopped down on us while making a shift in morning commuter traffic!  Actually we decided it looked so nice without the sunvisors or mirror on the windshield frame, we'd just leave it that way and see if we could get by with tint and not sunvisors.

Finally, we'll wrap up this little tour of our Spider with one more shot of the interior.  I'd say the car is about 90% perfect (on the Fiat perfection scale, that is).  Everything works, heater controls, wipers, lights, a/c, everything!  The interior is now perfect, no rips, tears, or cracks in the dash or upholstery.  It has a Kenwood AM/FM/Cassette with a 100 watt amp under the passenger seat and a CD changer in the trunk.  I changed out all the dash bulbs to amber ones to match the orange read-out on the stereo display.  The body is straight and free from parking lot dings and chips.  The top fits well and looks great.  Only a couple of bubbles of rust at the bottom of the passenger front fender and driver's rear wheel well detract from this car.