The 1979 Spider 2000 that I own and enjoy today was purchased by my late father in 1984.  I was a junior in high school and had just acquired my drivers license a few short months before.  I had the pleasure and privilege of driving this car through my remaining years of school.

Together my father and I worked to maintain and repair this Spider.  In my junior year of college, my father began a complete overhaul of the engine.  This work was done before the age of the internet.  Parts came from only one known vendor at the time.  The engine was rebuilt to complete stock specifications including all of the vacuum hoses associated with the carbureted 2-liter's franken-vac carburetor.  Little did we know of the car's true potential.

After my father's passing in 2000, I inherited the car and the maintenance responsibility that came with it.  I quickly turned to the internet and found several amazing on-line Fiat forums.  I learned more from these groups than I had known in the last years of ownership.  I gradually installed performance enhancements, beginning with a 34 ADF carburetor and early 1800 intake manifold.  I later installed a cylinder head from an 1800 engine with smaller combustion chambers in order to bump the compression ratio from stock 8.1:1 to ~ 8.6:1.  Later saw the installation of a pair of twin Weber IDF carburetors on a factory original manifold.  Final upgrade with my original engine was the installation of an Alquati 40/80 intake cam shaft.  This helped extend the rev range to well over stock levels.

Over several years I acquired parts to build a new no-holds barred dream-engine.  Oversize Mondial 4.5mm dome pistons were among those parts.  In the spring of 2005 I finished assembly of my dream engine.  The new engine has a fully balanced rotating assembly.  Rods were balanced end-to-end and together were fully balanced with the crank, pistons, flywheel, and front pulley.  Rebuild also included a newly designed crank scraper designed by Kevin Johnson.  A 2-liter fuel injected cylinder head was acquired and I rebuilt it with new guides, 3-angle valve seats, and new valves.  Intake ports were gasket matched and finished to remove casting seams.  The chambers were smoothed of all casting imperfections and high spots that could lead to detonation in the higher compression engine.

The new engine measured out to a very comfortable 10.1:1 compression ratio.  Returned to duty were the twin Weber IDFs and the Alquati cam shaft.  In addition to these items, I recruited the services of Terry Terizakis for a conversion to the stock electronic distributor.  The stock electronic distributor had a vacuum advance mechanism designed to run with the stock ADHA car (and later the FI system).  Since the IDF carburetors had no provision for the vacuum advance, Terry modified the electronic distributor to remove the vacuum advance plate, mounting the magnetic pickup directly to the distributor body.  The distributor's mechanical was then re-curved to meet the needs of the new engine.

See Hemmings Sport and Exotic Feature Article Here

From Avocation to Vocation - 1979 Fiat 2000 Spider