RESTORATION OF A FIAT DINO
These pages are about classic car restoration and will be moved to some sort of car forum where they belong when I get around to it..​
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This photo archive follows a painstaking five year restoration of my 1971 Fiat Dino Spider by internationally renowned Dino expert Mark Devaney. The car previously had a poor quality paint job that concealed corrosion and poor repairs. In other respects the car had a high level of originality and wherever possible rust issues were addressed retaining as much original metal as possible. Where required, new sections were hand fabricated using traditional techniques, precisely replicating every factory detail, resulting in "tool room copy" authenticity. The bodyshell was painted to the same level of uncompromising perfection. In total over twelve hundred hours went into restoring, painting, detailing and reassembling the car.
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MY CAR
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I bought my Fiat Dino 2400 Spider in Spain in 2014. These cars are pretty rare. I wanted a silver one, only a handful were made in this colour. My car is nearly the identical twin of this one which sold at auction in 2022.
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The Dino story is well known, but in case you're interested.. A handful of Dino branded models came about though a collaboration between Ferrari and Fiat which ultimately saw Fiat take a controlling stake in Ferrari. The Dino 2400 Spider was designed by Pininfarina and assembled on Ferrari’s new production line at Maranello alongside the 246GT. Both were powered by the Formula 2-derived Ferrari V6 engine named after Enzo's late son Dino. While the 246GT wore a Dino badge, Spiders were branded as Fiats and were distributed through Fiat's dealer network. Less than 500 2400 Spiders were built. It's not known how many survive
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​After enjoying the sound of that glorious engine for a summer I discovered that my car wasn't in great shape under the shiny paint. Dino bodyshells were finished by hand, meaning that there are often slight variations from car to car (and often between the left and right sides of the same car). The combination of complex unibody construction and hand built finish conspires to make Dinos hard to restore well. Consequently, most of them aren't.
RUST
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These cars received inadequate rust protection at the factory, even by the standards of the day. The bodyshells were dipped in a bath of rudimentary rust inhibiting primer, but there are period photos of bare shells awaiting paint outside the Pininfarina plant, open to the elements. When we disassembled my car we found evidence that the rust treatment had not penetrated cavities such as box sections and A pillar assemblies, internal surfaces were left as bare metal.
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​My car was sold new to a customer in Rome but spent most of its life in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark before coming to the UK via Spain. Some of the worst rust was in the footwells, which mostly appeared to be solid from beneath as the factory original underseal was fully intact. After stripping the shell we could see a plenty of daylight through them.
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The aim of this restoration was to return the bodyshell as close as possible to its factory original condition, including all the correct profiles and embellishments that can only be replicated with deep and specialist knowledge.