ThePogs Fiat X1/9 - in, out, back in again.

[ThePog]

Fucksake this rattle is getting to me. Here is a non-exhastive list of things I have tightened up/cable tied/removed;

Door lock mech
Throttle actuator rod x3 positions
Heater air vent
Seat mount
Gearstick
Fuse link box in the loom
Fuse box
Frunk lever
Inner guard plastic
Broken glove box remnants
Window winder
Door pull
Heater hard piping

Edit; brake piping - no not that

Handbrake - no

Shitty floppy bracket under the seats - no

Tabs holding the wiring loom in - no

 

Every time being 'ah clearly thats the little fucker', feeling slightly smug and then going for a test drive and being taunted by absolutely no change in that fucker whatsoever.

GAHhh!

 

Second edit; with seats out and testing by revving up the engine til things reach the correct resonant frequency it appears to be vibrating through the gearshift shaft and into the cabin. It seems to happen at the same time that you can see the gearshift knob move back slightly. There is a funky joint that joins this shaft to the gearbox and it is possible that as the engine tilts it is unbinding and flopping this joint. There is a certain degree of slop in one bit of it.

Of course I am vaguely worried that the engine is producing enough vibration to do this but it could just be time for a rebalance of the carbs.

Anyway, I might look at improving that joint and possibly adding some isolation. At the mo it is basically bolted direct to the gearbox shaft.

What fun!

[ThePog]

Right so while I was out today I bought these boys;

 

Cos this is the gearshift setup (altho I had already unbolted it at this point)

 

And this joint is supposed to have some slop in it to allow for relative movement of the engine to the shaft. I cant remember if I dicked around with it in a previous life but there is a brass bushing/ spacer that allows that movement that looked home made. I might have made it tighter maybe.

 

Firstly I tweaked the rod, which is the lower bit shown, so the mating faces were parallel. Tbh this might have been enough to help but it will be a 20 min job to revert this, so I thought I would see first.

The fatter mounts were 45 shore A and felt very soft, so I changed to the 60 shore A thinner ones. These are possibly still a bit soft and have drastically changed the feel of the gearshift, but again I will suck it and see.

 

This kindof reverts this linkage back to the 'lollipop' type from early cars that had a bit of rubber bonded between the parts. Its kindof self explanatory why they are called this;

 

So we'll see what the results are on the next drive.

There is a strong possibility that the lower engine mount is slogged out which is why the engine is moving enough for this to be an issue. Ill try find a replacement....

[ThePog]

Didnt get a chance to go for a drive today but I was thinking about the lack of rotational stiffness in that joint and how it would make things probably sub optimal. The push pull felt fine but the sideways lever movement/shaft rotation felt pretty woolly.

So I came up with a plan that got implemented just now.

Should improve things.

Probably.

[ThePog]

Well you would not believe it, but it has not fixed the rattle.

It has however, improved the feel of the gearshift quite a bit.

Still.

[ThePog]

I thought it might be the clutch line running front to back, so I damped it out and today went for a spin - no, not that.

So I spent some time grovelling around underneath tapping things, and found a spot under the central tunnel that definitely had something bouncing around.

I invesigated with the endoscope and what do you know!

And after a ridiculous amount of fucking around with first a magnet taped to a bit of welding wire and then a bit of welding wire with wet silicone blobbed on the end to act as sticky because the second thing wasnt ferrous;

 

I then tested it to be 100% sure and do you know what?

 

It didnt fucking fix the rattle

 

[ThePog]

Found a friend

[ThePog]

Went to a Daffodil day parkup with Elliot today, talked to many people.

 

There is a pretty significant height difference going on there. Fortunately he has ordered new rear shocks and lowering springs, so this will be rectified.

[ThePog]

Part of the roof attachment mech is two hooks that are steel bits covered in rubber. After 40+ years this falls/wears off and the roof rattles like fuck. There are many fixes that involve packing shit with tape etc, but as I have the technology I thought I would solve it.

 

First I just drew the boys up and printed them in PLA with carbon fiber, these looked pretty schmick.

 

However the originals have a steel backbone and this was always going to be stronger. So I had the idea to trim all the old rubber off the originals and print a TPU sleeve to replace it.

 

I gooped these on with some leftover windscreen glue, they are working well.

The international X1/9 community got pretty fizzed about that let me tell you.

I then printed some more plus some of the plastic pads that fit on the car in the same junction for the black X/Elliot.

 

And while I am on a massive printing bender I modded the heater control faceplate by adding some lever detents to keep the levers in position, then drew up some vaguely factory looking knobs to interface with this detail.

I made the top layer of the print a Hilbert curve, it gave it an interesting texture;

 

And finally the rattle.

More investigation found more shit in there in a completely inaccessible place;

So I dumped a shitload of cavity wax (actually a bitumen ish thing) down there to glue it in place, and it kinda worked but not 100%. Shits quieter but still there.

Sigh.

[ThePog]

So this showed up on TM and I put a cheeky bid on it, this was done without the knowledge or consent of the boss, but easier to ask forgiveness etc.

It turned out to be just down the road.

The seller had a similar story to mine, sold it years ago and it was a show car, hence the probable mad rear wing and hood scoop to ventilate the frunk. It had an uno turbo motor at the time.

It got driven to Nelson from Tauranga and parked up, never to drive again until he saw it and bought it back, but its now dereg and turbo fucked so not worth doing anything to.

Anyway, its mine now. There are plenty of good bits, uno turbo front brakes mostly, and lots of little bits of useful goodness that my car will benefit from.

 

He had another rolling shell he wanted me to take, but it was way more fucked than this one altho it had ok lowering springs in it, so maybe I'll go back and pilfer those.

I will now spend a week or two appeasing my wife....

[ThePog]

Someone is an optimist

 

Also

Turbo fucked you mean 

[ThePog]

I pulled the rear valance off the green menace, like actually pulled it off as it was so rusty I didnt need to undo bolts.

Gave it a lick of paint and bolted it up to the blue meanie, came up nice.

 

I drew up some more random shit, this time the little caps that go at the end of the top inner door trim, this was for Elliot but the X community at large was pretty happy about it.

 

Speaking of Elliots black bitch, he came around today with some lowering springs and some new rear shocks, I smashed those in while he removed the heater so we could replace the tap and make it work...the springs took a 1/3 of the time the heater project did. I forgot to take pics but the results are pretty great.

He is fucking stoked.

Also, some artfully arranged X1/9's;

 

[ThePog]

Also this is what the green menace once looked like, check the fucking epic supercharger setup!

[ThePog]

 

[ThePog]

Been robbing bits off the green meanie, mostly things that will improve the overall experience of the blue.

Like this little bit of plastic that goes over the throttle mech under the pedals;

This is kindof important as @yoeddynz found out when he drove it, because it is surprisingly easy to accidentally wide open the throttle by pushing down on what you think is the floor as you enter the car, but is actually the throttle rod that runs under the pedals. I had to grab his trousers and forcibly lift his leg up, and he immediately got a totally inappropriate erection. So here is me trying to prevent that shit happening.

I really didnt want to drill out the broken off screws in the floor, plus all the plastic had broken off where the holes were meant to be anyway so I glued it in place and held down with what was to hand.

 

While I was grovelling in that area I also grabbed the footrest to replace the fudge one I had made, here it is getting some rust treatment and paint.

 

Obviously i was doing all this while I removed the filthy rat piss and oil soaked carpet. Getting this out wasnt a good time.

I waterblasted it then soaked it in toilet cleaner and blasted it again.

Better. Good enough actually given the state of the rest of the car.

I also grabbed the uno turbo front brakes, these looked ok.

I'll rebuild the calipers and see if I can find discs, they might get slipped on but someone in Canada wants them really badly. I might see how badly they want them, I need some cash right now.

Also GC @shizzl picked up a TM gearbox for me from some old dude in Manakau. I popped over to Picton to grab it as he was on the way through, but when I got home I had a decent look and it wasn't an X gearbox at all. I gently enquired of the old boy if he was trying to fuck me, but he tells me it was a genuine mistake. Unfortunately he is now in Prague or somewhere for a few weeks but assures me he will ship the right one free of charge when he is back. Sigh.

Also we fixed the black bitches brake lights that failed as the inevitable result of touching the loom when he removed the heater box. This turned out to be a sweet twist n tape join in the brake wire under the dash that despite using a tried and true method had somehow parted company. Elliot ended a happy boy and I got a bottle of nice beer, so totally worth the grovelling.

[ThePog]

I got the carpet into blue. It makes it marginally quieter and adds a certain scent that I am not sure is an improvement.

The drivers side is way worse than that but its fine.

I went at the green meanie today, I have collected lots of incredibly useful parts;

That dash isnt mint but is significantly tidier than mine, i might chuck it in.

It now looks pretty sad tho.

 

If anyone wants this Sportline steering wheel let me know. Its pretty dirty but sound enough. 

It also comes with what I assume is an OEM Fiat boss kit;

 

[ThePog]

Taking out the trash, but at least I got paid for it.

$7.55 grand total

[ThePog]

I have been collecting some maintenance parts cos the side and bottom mounts are a little floppy and the cambelt tensioner bearing looked dodgy and seemed to me making little sqeaky noises.

The last of it arrived this week so I thought I had better do some of it at least.

The side mount and cambelt stuff seemed the most important, but doing this was a bad decision cos the mount was a right cunt to get off. Two of the three bolts were a right bitch, and the third was significantly worse than those. I ended up making a tool to get to that, but the undoing and redoing up of these three bolts was about 2 hours of effort not including making the tool.

Im still not sure that top one is tight enough, but the gearbox will be coming out at some point soon so I will sort it properly then.

The bearing fell apart when I gently tapped it off the hangar;

The new one is appropriately shiny tho.

The cambelt was a breeze in comparison, although I did have to pull the rocker cover to check the valve positions as I stupidly decided to seat the belt using the the starter without properly tightening the bearing first and it all jumped some teeth, fucking twat. I was kinda tired at that point tho.

 

So the bottom mount will be another day.

[ThePog]

I did the bottom mount, that was piss easy.

It then got a clean sheet Wof (apart from a side repeater not working), so that was extremely pleasing.

Unfortunately the new stiffer mounts has meant that vibration coming from the motor that was pretty effectively masked by the soft mounts, has become noticable to the point where I kindof dont want to drive it.

Its bad enough that I want to pull the engine down and have a look.

This is kindof ok, because I should have two gearboxes arriving shortly from Auckland, this means I will have 4x boxes to build one good one out of. Apparently they are straightforward to repair and plenty of the wear items are readily available which is good.

This means i can drop the drivetrain, sort the gearbox and have a squiz at the engine all at the same time.

I did notice that one of the idle circuits wasnt doing anything when the screw was adjusted, I dont think thats the problem but I bought a cheap ultrasonic cleaner so I can give the carbs some loving, if the gods are smiling it might just be that, but I am not counting on it.

Meanwhile I drew up a center console in CAD to tidy things up. Back in the day I removed the factory one so I could actually use the clutch, but it left things looking a bit raggedy. Clearly time to sort it with some cool shit that still gives me legroom.

It took 3 iterations and I will probably print it again in a nicer/stronger/more uv resistent material, but it came out so nice anyway.

 

V1

 

V3

 

Clearly my aesthetic heart lies somewhere in the last century, cos that looks the tits.

I urge everyone to learn some cad and buy a machine, there is so much goodness awaiting...

[ThePog]

Well the ultrasonic cleaner seems to do something. I only used hot water and washing up liquid, 1/4hr at a time cos I didnt want the corrosion thing plus I am more interested in the holes being clear than showcar.

Still it looks better.

 

[ThePog]

Picked up these boys today

 

And tonights entertainment;

 

Nothing of concern so far apart from a very bent and rusted in clutch fork rod.