speculari's Comments on FIATY

speculari's Comments on FIATY

This was also the year in which I discovered WD40! One evening, during a fierce rainstorm, I had left my place of work attempted to start the Fiat 124 to no avail! I went back into the building ( I was on the corporate staff of a major player in automotive replacement parts) and headed back to the "test" facility where they had a dynamometer other "goodies". There, I found a technician explained my little problem with the Fiat. He grabbed a can of this "stuff" said "let's go". We opened the hood of the car, he pulled off the air cleaner sent a great "blast" of this stuff into the carb said "try it now!" It fired up immediately! So, that evening . Ahhh! Bella! Bellisimo!. La Fortuna del Destino!!! Visions of. Ascari, Nuvolari, Fangio! The great Marques. Ferrari, AlfaRomeo, Lancia, Abarth! And then. I made the grave error of putting on my . stopped running. at 55 MPH! Well, what the hell, said I. must be some minor anomaly, Next was the factor of "moisture". it's definitive impact on the ignition system and any "wiring" in the car(perhaps "wiring" is a misnomer, I believe the auto was actually made with strands of pasta covering all electrical wires . in some demented attempt to bring . nouvelle cuisine to Italian car design!). In any event, "moisture" could (and did) take any number of "forms" such as, pudldles, rain. or, simply passing under a cloud. any of these symptoms of the mere presence of the dreaded. H2O, would stop the 124 dead in it's tracks. Keeping the front end aligned and balancing the tires with those great looking "mag" wheels was another losing proposition. On one great occasion, I left the car for the entire day with a highly regarded "shop" that dealt with Mercedes, BMW, Alfa, Fiat were reknowned for their expertise it was after 5 PM when I arrived there to see what they had determined. the shop was effectively "closed" at this hour. and as I entered the garage area, there . surrounding my 124 sport coupe, it's hood agape. were 4 or 5 white coated technicians, one of whom held a "wiring diagram". all were simply shaking their heads in disbelief. The guy with the "diagram" in hand turned to me said. we've replaced the turn signal "cluster" 3 times. and , it's still not right this diagram is not worth crap!I took the car home that evening, pulled into the driveway. my parking lights were still on, my foot was still down on the brake pedal and, . I turned the ignition to OFF. the car's engine . held my foot where it was on the brake pedal for about another 30 or 40 seconds . and then released it. Those bad memories are held by those that> did not understand the cars took a bit of maintenance and care to> keep them operating reliably. They were sporting, niche cars, the> kind of person who expected to get a Ford or Chevy sedan when they> bought one were ignorant.