ThePog

Yea the brakes. I ordered the whole shebang, good old Brian at The Italian Job hasnt invoiced me yet so no idea what the damage is, but fuck it it needed to happen really. I pulled all the calipers and gave them a cursory clean up; The rears had a bit of pitting but not so much that I thought it worth replacing, I may order some pistons anyway for just in case. This is the worst of it; Then the bits didnt arrive til Saturday morning, but it was exciting when they did; I had already decided to spend some time giving the truck some new oil and filters, so I cracked on with that. After I drained the oil I did get distracted by that Honda S800, which ended up being a bad plan as when I got back I missed the quite important service stage where you put the sump plug back in before washing out the engine with 10 liters of pristine Delo 400MGX and dumping it onto the garage floor Fuckety fuck fuck. And fuck. Anyway after I had flagellated myself for a while I cleaned things up then went back to the X, at each corner replacing the seals and discs etc and bolting it all back together; Then today I enlisted the wife to help bleed the brakes, which I had to do many times as a lot of quite ugly fluid kept coming out. After that I took it for a gentle test drive which was pretty meh, then I bled them again and they came up mint. So hopefully a wof this week maybe....

I am pretty sure I drilled the ones that are in there and still have the drills and chuck somewhere. i kindof need to find out what is in there first anyway, then make a call on the sizes I will go for...

Yea I had a look on AliX, might take a punt.

Now I have a real wideband in the wee Fiat and it is telling me that the old girl is running pretty rich I probably want to give the tuning a tweak. Does anyone have a solid supplier at reasonable prices for jets etc? I recall I bought a few from overseas somewhere when I first tuned it up and they were pretty reasonable. Any leads or websites?

Not at all, it was just a timely reminder for me not to make assumptions about shit that I have only the flakiest knowledge of and that I should actually pay attention to the details

The wof this week is off the cards. I thought I had better check why the handbrake was so pathetic and discovered that both rear calipers were basically seized. I thought the brakes were not as good, now I know why. I may as well rebuild all the calipers and if my visa can take the punishment I might get new discs and pads as well, I might have to sell some shit So I to feel like I had achieved something I messed with wiring of the fuel sensing relay to try to make it work. @h4nd had given me a dose of RTFM so I reworked the wiring to suit, but now it doesn't work at all. I checked many things but no go. There is a good chance I toasted it when I wired it up wrong. I might just wire a normal relay up to and use the alternator as the signal wire. I also poo'd up the washer tank some more as it was still leaking, tomorrow morning may tell me some things; Then I decided to move the afr meter to somewhere where I could actually see it when driving. Basically lots of tinkering with shit and avoiding jobs around the house that I should be doing. Oh and yesterday I tuned/balanced the carbs a bit, hopefully it will run a little better. And also I noticed the gearbox drain plug was leaking.... Cool cool

Well I wired it properly and it doesnt work, I am guessing i may have toasted by using it with the wrong connections?

Hmm, I may have missed that and made some assumptions about it being essentially a relay with extra. Maybe I will revisit my wiring.... thanks.

Well the other terminal is just a switched +12v..

I have this fuel cutoff relay wired into the wee Fiat, but does not appear to be functioning correctly. https://themetricnut.co.nz/store/index.php?route=product/product&path=204&product_id=1724 It has the 4x normal terminals plus an additional wee one which theoretically is the go signal input. If the engine isnt running it should prime the carbs then cut off, but it runs continuously. I have wired the signal terminal to the coil pack output, the coil looks like this and serves all 4 cylinders; Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Yea so today I fixed a couple of issues with the windscreen washer, firstly trying to get the aftermarket nozzles to actually fire at the screen, then fixing the washer tank which for some reason is about 8 litres, most of which got dumped into the frunk overnight due to a crack. This I filled up with poo and hoped for the best. Then I addressed the extreme force needed to make the washer run, which meant pulling the stalks off and doing an excellent bodge which you dont need to know about in case my good name as an engineer is ruined, suffice to say they work perfectly now. Then with the few hours still left in the day I made a rear valance thing, although the mesh looks pretty sparse irl so I might smash something slightly denser on there; And I think thats pretty much it, I'll book a wof for next and see how that goes....

Fixed the rust hole, no pics cos boring. Made a heatshield for the alternator, first drilling and tapping some brass hex to stand it off, then some CAD, then some shiny so it reflects heat; Then I grabbed the pretty non functional catch can that I made for the truck, modified it so the wire wool was less in quantity and right before the outlet rather than at the inlet, which is why I suspected it didnt work well, then gave it some chode so it would fit in the engine bay; Went and filled it with some 95 as it was pretty low and it definitely needs some time spent on tuning, the low throttle popping and banging sounds good but the afr tells me its not right. Man it feels good to drive tho, the combo of the gogo and the noise is pretty great. If anything it sounds better now the air filter is on, a really purposeful growl.

I spent some time dicking round with the airbox as I didn't like the long studs coming up off the carbs, plus the carbs themselves seem to be mounted in a slightly different position and the airbox really didnt like sitting down in place. So I made a new baseplate that fitted nice and put some 16mm tube in there so the screws could clamp it directly through the baseplate. Its a bit cleaner looking too... Then I glued the windshield trim on with some extra and probably non standard fixing methodologies; I am missing the joiner bits but I might just poo the gap up for now once its cured in place. A new and marginally sexier fuel pump arrived and got placed; Ooh and here is my sexy top link what I made in place; So just the rear valance to make, plus probably a heat shield for the alternator as its still close regardless of the wrap. And the alternator light doesnt work for some reason. And I found another sneaky little rust hole in the drivers floor. I should have noticed it as there was a 20mm stalactite of bog hanging down underneath, but obviously I didnt up til now. There is an argument for step drilling it out to 25mm and calling it a drain hole, but I will make a closer investigation. Oh and I bolted most of the rest of the bits back on;

Yea it has that hard coming on cam sound that is pretty great irl. Gagging to get it legal and find some twisties....

Well I did sortof ease it in there, the header wrap had obviously never been run and started smoking like anything when I first got it running, then the idle kept creeping up when it got warm so I did a rough carb balance. Then I did a gentle(ish) run to see how it felt. Then I thought fuck it, I cant see why it wouldn't take it like it always had.... and it did.

Then I remembered the shitty fuel pump that I hacked into my ride-on a couple of years ago cos it was way too much money to buy OEM; Then naturally this; Dunno what the crackly business is, nevertheless it sounds glorious.

Driveshafts in Oil in Coolant in Popping and banging when I try to start it Realising the plug leads are 180deg out Boom Then realising the fuel pump is leaking like a sieve and it is a $14 AliX special so not unexpected. Then finding the original Facet pump and checking it works, it does Then realising you have no fittings to make it work so no driving

Bright and early this morning, firstly time to pour some liquid money into the box once the engine is kindof level. 3.2 liters of Redline MTL which all the cool kids say is the only shit to use in an X1/9 box. At $200 for 4x bottles it fucking better be. Then on to the main event; Then after half an hour of wiggling and jiggling, angling and dangling etc Then the rest of the day bolting shit back on; Just the driveshafts and some oil and it might be time for a skid. But thats tomorrow's effort.

Just glued the windscreen in cos I am too cheap to pay someone to do it. I should have done so. The experience is best described by this convo with @HumberSS

Pulled the tappet cover and sump, all looks well; Printed a new faceplate for the heater mech with the knobs set back a few mm as the cables were pulling it a bit, plus I printed a white insert for the indication to make it tidier, this just got coloured in with permanent marker for the red and blue bits; Clutch arrived; Also my younger self had bodged something for the top engine mount as the original one didnt work with the new engine, this was an unconvincing effort. So I spent some time with the lathe and the welder and made something much nicer with replaceable standard bushings;

Some bits from the UK arrived surprisingly quickly, a sump and tappet cover gasket, a boot for the gearshift, suspension bushes etc; I made a battery bracket to suit the most likely battery I found in my stash of many; All those untidy wires are not part of the car you will be pleased to know. I also printed some things; Cos that link for the lock on the passenger side has gone walkies somewhere. And over the last couple of weeks I have been designing and iterating a set of heater controls that I think actually should work. Cool beans. Also I wired up the clock. It works all nice. The clutch couldnt get uprated cos they couldn't find the parts to do it and additionally the man said it looked like that cover springs had been over extended, this might mean it was slipping due to wrong adjustment, so I will order a new standard clutch and see what happens. Also I found another X1/9, and have spoken to the owner, so there might be a very small Nelson X1/9 owners club.

It is absolutely identical to this one, down to the branding https://www.aemelectronics.com/products/dashes_and_gauges/wideband_gauges/classic_wideband/parts/30-4110

Yup

I bought this one off AliX a while ago, it is now installed in the Fiat. I came with what appears to be a genuine Bosch 4.9 sensor. The reviews both in AliX and in the wider world are positive. I can let you know in a week or three how well it goes.. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006080021720.html

I modelled and printed some door card clips which as always gives me the deepest pleasure. These worked pretty well after some tweaks. These are not exact copies and are designed so they are easier to print, but functionally they are sweet. The drivers side window winder mech was deeply wrong, the wire tension adjustment was maxed out, hacked and the maxed out again, but the wire was still as loose as fuck and while it kindof worked it made horrible grindy noises. This came from the barrel where the wire was straddling grooves cos it was so loose. It was all down in a difficult to reach place, and those mechanisms are notoriously cunty to pull out and put back. Amazing that I got a bollock into that shot as well. The passenger side was sweet and the wire connection looks like this; After a bit of thought and dicking around trying to take slack out of the wire a genius idea came to me; I routed the wire like that through both lift points, which took up enough slack that I could tension the mech properly. Another 1/4 hr of contortion with a torch, phone and screwdriver and I had the wire slipped back into its rightful track. It works perfectly again, yay!