FIAT Dino

Its a rare little car since with only 1133 of the 2.0 Spiders built as can be seen below.

Fiat Dino Spider 2,0L	1967-69	000026-001158	1133
Fiat Dino Spider 2,4L	1969-72	001159-001583	424

I found out when I got the car home and off the trailer, I had no idea what the various switches and levers did, some were obvious if you own a 124 FIAT Spider (as I do) but others were "what is this?" and since most of them do nothing on my car, I still don't know so as time goes on. I could not find the information on the web so I will fill out the interior picture below with text as to what they are. And also engine shots as I figure out what everything is, I don't know most of them since I come from a car background where relays and things like that don't exist. I don't work on my modern daily driver car but I do restore 1930's Singer's and trust me, relays and odd sending unit things are not on those cars.

So lets throw some pictures out for starters...I don't know how I will design this page but I have to start somewhere. This is just going to be a un-organized mess of FIAT Dino pages and as I work on the car and enjoy it, I will of course be adding to these pages. Hopefully it will be of some help to someone out there.

After the bath, it looks a lot better
So it is MINE !!! ALL MINE !!!

Hey, how come the wife gets to drive it first ?

Now that you have seen it...lets start with some details about this particular car. This is a rather lengthy e-mail that I posted on the Yahoo group about the car, detailing what is wrong with the car and what very little is right with the car. As time goes, I found it is much better than I thought. The car was listed on E-bay ( see the Ebay Advert ) and was said to be RUNNING ! however it was not. Here is a e-mail reply to someone detailing the car and my thoughts on it on the first proud day of ownership.

Now that it has been a week, I have gone through the car electricals and gotten most of them to work...the Dreaded Previous Owner (to be known at the DPO from now on) must have gotten a good deal on a large spool of Red wire because half the car is wired in Red wire. I will replace them as time goes on, already started a few of them. I can't run the car right now since I have the fuel tank out for repair. It was badly dented underneath and showed signs of having been poorly repaired more times than a tank containing explosive material should be. At least 2 solder repairs and 2 other Liquid Solder repair and one fibreglass patch...some pics and more details.

BIG UPDATE, the car is awesome ! 8-26-04. Its been a few months now since I updated this page, I did keep some of the other pages up to date but not this one. The cars electricals have been restored, the previous owner who loved Red wires did one nice thing, he did not cut up the old harness, just unplugged the things that no longer worked and ran new wire. He only cut one that I have found so far. This allowed me to make everything work again by just cleaning the grounds. There are still a few minor things but its pretty good so far. The engine seems ok, smokes sometimes but is really smokes far less than it used to and not much when it does. Driving it seems to be cleaning or unsticking something, I hope it continues but just in case I purchased the head gaskets and new guides/seals already. Rebuilt the carbs, changes all the hoses/lines and put on new tires and new stock exhaust, did a quickie on the breaks, just new brake fluid and bleeding for now as they are working fine. The car sounds like a dream and runs like one. Coming back from Monterey last weekend was something I will remember forever, Highway 1 and a Dino, life is GOOD.

December 2004 - I now have several thousand miles on the car and I am beginning to wonder how long the glue bottle will last, the car sticks to the road as if it is glued to the road, I just know the car is dripping glue on the road as I drive and the glue bottle must be getting low. This FIAT sure handles better than my FIAT 124. I have had to change a few parts like the rubber center drive shaft support and other parts that have worn out as I start driving the car more. All the rubber parts are deteriorating rather fast as I drive the car but I expected that and I am enjoying the car tremendously.

Broke the gearbox !!! Oh (insert nasty word here), I had a particuliarly scary road rage incident when someone actually forced me off the road by cutting me off purposely. Somehow during that incident, I missed a shift and found myself with no gearbox and no longer able to move and confronted by this guy. He ranted about "rich (nasty word) from L.A. coming up here and behaving as if we owned the road" by this time I was on my cell phone with 911 and I had several big tree trimmer guys that were working on a nearby property helping me push the car to the side of the road, so after cussing and verbally threatening me out he left without damaging my car or me, he knew I was on with 911 and I think he left because the tree trimmers were bigger than him and the police was on the way. I never did figure out what he had in his hand but it would have seriously hurt the Dino bodywork. I also still have no idea what I might have done to upset him, even one of the tree trimmers tried to calm him down by getting between me and him and asking what I did wrong or what was wrong and he never said. This was on State St. the main street of Santa Barbara, I can't imagine having done anything that wrong on a busy afternoon. Oh well, gearbox is broken. The shifter mechanism just flops around and the car is stuck in neutral. I have purchased a "new" gearbox that I hope will be ok and will either swap gearboxes or just take the shifter mechanism from the new one and put it in my original gearbox, this will happen very very soon so look here for all the cool pictures. Gearbox is out and progress is at last happening (1/11/06)

Well its back together and driving absolutely AWESOMELY, I sure do use that word a lot when talking about this car. I took a few steps backwards getting the gearbox in. The new gearbox is working quite well but has a howl or whine when decelerating, indicating at one time it had a dry bearing. Other than that it works great and I will live with that for now, but doing work, I broke some electricals in the dashboard that I now have to go through, no matter the car drives great. (4-06)

Car is doing GREAT, I really love driving this car, its been over 7 years and I just can't get enough of this car. Its a wonderful machine and I constantly get compliments when I drive it. I see its been a while since I updated this web page since its 2012 now, but the car just keeps getting better.

Is it a FIAT Spider or Spyder ? The facts are, that it is Spider and not Spyder because of an official statement by National Federation of Body makers in 1924 in Milan (Italy), that declared the word to be written that way. The "y" was not in the Italian alphabet since it was a fascist and nationalist period. It's, as you know, the equivalent for "roadster", "speedster" or "two-seater". Spyder comes from a kind of horse-cab manufactured by Holmes in Dublin (Ireland), developing an idea born in GB in 1860 as a mix of the Tilbury-type cab (two seats, two wheels) with the phaeton (four seats). Holmes named his cabs " Spyders ", as they resembled " Spiders " for their large and light wheels and the body (very light) suspended among them. The Spyder had two "main" seats (with a "cabriolet" cover)+ 2 "emergency" seats on the rear, for the "valets". So, when that decision was taken in 1924, they thought to oppose to "Anglicanism" but, as a matter of fact, they "corrected" Mr. Holmes! This was written by John Hertzman and posted to the Alfa-Digest.