So im restoring a car...

this is my first car ever, I bought it about a year ago and since then i´ve been restoring it. Its a 1979 Fiat Europa IAVA ("IAVA" was a local car maker that worked like Abarth in Europe, making some Fiat models into a sport spec introducing mechanical, aerodynamical and looking improves.). i wanted to share my work woth you guys so here i will post some photos from the begining of the work until today and i will update this every time I advance with the car... in this post you will see mostly how the looking of the car changed, but also the car has brand-new brakes, brand-new suspension, a new 40/40 carburetor, a totally restored engine and a new exhaust. All the electric system of the car was also completely restored and now works fine.



i started with this:

in this photo i was already painting it but in general it was in very bad conditions as you can see. The car would be black with a orange-to-red stripe (something that IAVA added to this model).

in this photo you can see an early improvement,


but when you looked the inside of the car it makes you almost cry.

the carpet has already been changed and the original steering wheel was put back in the car (in the photo its another steering wheel, not a Iava one, that I used to move the car). I still have to find the shift knob because the one it has is really awful

this is how the engine looked in the begining. i will post some actual photos soon


after a time the car looked like this



this is the restored instrumental panel (before it was restored)


when i assembled most of the parts it looked like this

in that photo you can see diferences with the original 128 mk2, thanks to the work of Iava . they are the headlights, bigger than the originals (indeed, the IAVA headlights are the same that were used in 1974 Ford Taunus), and also an added spoiler (that i hadnt painted at the time a took the photo.

but there was something missing, the IAVA wheels, perhaps the more significant looking change IAVA made to most of their cars... I travelled 1600 km but i´ve founded them (and restored of course )


in the car looked like this


after making a polish, painting the bumpers and adding details like the insignia, the car looks like this





In the following days/weeks i´ll post some photos of the inside of the car, that has been completely restored (altought its not 100% original because the original seats were destroyed, and it was cheaper, and safer, and more confortable to fit new seats instead of repairing the old ones, so i put Chevrolet Astra´s front and back seats!), and some photos of the engine at it looks today. I still have to put the mirrors in the right place (the moron that put them misplaced them and you cant even see the right one from inside the car ), put new seatbelts and it will be ready!

more updates soon
Cheers!!!

Dude, respect! Looks like you've put loads of effort into it!
This is awesome.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/2012 04:50AM by EC83.

amazing from what it was in the top shot

Nice work, you should be proud of what you have done.

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Very nice frantic. you have done an excellent job!

Excellent job!

It's strange to see how much difference something as simple as another set of wheels make. It transforms the car from something looking quite awkward to something that looks lovable yet slightly evil at the same time.

thank you guys!! and yes gav, changing rims made the car look completely different, first time i looked it with the new set really surprised me

here are two photos of the inside of the car... it still has to get better as there are some parts that i cannot find yet