"Here I go again"...
"What are you going to do with two identical Fiats"? Every person asked me this question, of course except Fiatians.
AUGUST 2010
I had found her around same time that I had bought BROWNIE (
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/post-w...illecento.html) but the young owner was reluctant to let her go. He was a TBHP visitor and had bought her for restoring himself in Jamshedpur.
But somewhere in my heart, I knew that this will not happen. So I made an offer and left it at that. We stayed in touch and I kept reminding him of my offer.
Come 2014, the young owner got married and his priorities changed and he accepted my offer. We negotiated further, because in last four year she had not moved from her place and from being washed everyday, she had now become untouchable. In her lifetime, she had had some awkward mods done to her tail lights & steering, probably due to unavailability of original parts but she also had some very hard to find parts including full set of original aluminium patties on outside.
NOVEMBER 2014
The computerization of local RTO delayed registration process and it took us almost 8 month for same. At last on one fine day of September 2014, I got the news that she was now officially MINE (To be true in my wife's name, who hails from Jsr). This also helped me in retaining the awesome VIP number.
BROWNIE's restoration had begun in November 2011 & was completed by April 2012. The restoration process and interaction with hardcore Fiatians had left me much wiser but during Brownie's restoration, I had noted one particular Fiat on net and I had dreamed of making an identical Fiat in future.
LONG BEFORE I BOUGHT HER, I KNEW WHAT MY NEXT FIAT WILL LOOK LIKE.
Thus began the hunt for proper restorer, who could give wings to my dream. PAVAN KADAM was the first choice and I made numerous calls to him. He shared my vision but the poor guy was so burdened with work load that he was unable to commit. Meanwhile the young owner wanted his parking lot cleared ASAP. I went to few other places in Bombay but found their tin work examples to be of very low standards.
So off I went back to the garage that restored BROWNIE. I knew that the affair will be expensive but then the love knows no bounds.
Her condition before we moved her from her resting location of last 5 years:
On 17th November 2014, she began her journey from Jsr and to my amusement the entire neighborhood came to see her off, alas in negative way. All aunties were very happy to see a rotting eyesore being towed away. Learning from similar journey of BROWNIE in past, I removed all the important parts, including original solex carb and brought them with me to Bombay. The Ranchi airport security had whale of a time going through my baggage.
How she arrived in Mumbai:
She was towed from her resting position to outskirts of Jamshedpur and from there a car carrier brought her to Pune (15K) . Though it was agreed that transporter will off-load it near outskirts of Mumbai but somewhere something went wrong and car landed at a transporter depot at Bhosari (Yes its a name of place near Pune). The transporter agreed to share half the cost (10K on Flatbed/upto garage) of transporting car from Bhosari location to Mumbai and thus began her last leg of journey before transformation:
Car at Bhosari depot:
Car on FB and enroute to Mumbai:
She arrived in Bombay on 06th December 2014 and was straightway taken to the garage.
Once stripped of her paint, we found that we had much more tin work to be done than anticipated.
The engine & other things were already thought upon but garage insisted to do it later and first go ahead with skin transplant.
...so here is my story of MODestoration (MODS+Restoration) of a HYPER FIAT while maintaining the SOUL of ORIGINALITY to my best ability.
Regards-Sonu