ThePogs Fiat X1/9 - Smashing box

[ThePog]

Went out in the old bitch on Friday, and coming home up my road things felt a little weird and draggy. When I got home and checked it I could see smoke coming off the passenger rear...

It was basically locked on, but came free when it all cooled down.

Naturally it has a weird screw self adjustor thing for the handbrake and this had gone wrong I was certain.

Today I pulled the caliper off for a look and found out that of the 4x stacked belleville washers that are part of the handbrake pusher/adjustment 2x had cracked, so this is probably it. While thinking about this issue I had found a really nice writup about rebuilding the rears and it had some useful advice.

But it also showed 6x bellevilles, whereas mine had 4x and a flat washer.

I needed at least 2 more, then remembered I had the spare calipers I pulled off the green meanie. So I grabbed those and dismantled them and found 6 stacked in each. While at it I saw the pistons were in way better condition that those in mine so I swapped those too.

 

Its all back together (with 6x washers) and waiting on someone to help me bleed them tomorrow, but I also noticed the hoses on the spares were basically brand new so I might swap those in case one of the old ones on the car are collapsed. Assuming I can get the hard line nuts off without fucking them, always fraught.

[ThePog]

Yea na

 

Edit;

Some faffing today. The magnificent and extremely comely @Willdat? came around to talk shit etc and help me bleed the boy.

It was clear something else was up as that right rear was giving a stiff pedal when bleeding, and the caliper was not releasing, so we decided to swap the flexi over. Will went and grabbed a 10 litre of brake fluid as we were getting through a lot during the process.

In the meantime I got the old flexi off with the help of an angle grinder, this wasnt pleasing and the nut still got fucked a bit.

That pic ^ shows the total lack of hole through the pipe that was clearly the actual issue.

We then bled it all again and somehow I forgot to top up the reservoir so we had to do it all again

We went for a test drive but it was pulling to the left, so we bled the right front again but no air came out.

I theorised that the right hand flexi was probably just as bad as the left so I swapped that one as well, sure enough that was mostly blocked too.

Will had left in frustration at my ineptitude by then so I rounded up a child to help me bleed it again, and all seems well now.

In hindsight (the best kind of sight), I had noted to myself earlier that the front brakes were doing a lot of work, and the backs not so much as they had very little wear showing. It is now obvious that the rears were basically doing nothing because of the blocked flexis. After the last test drive you can already see more of the disc is contacting the pads.

So the the lesson for today is always buy twice as much brake fluid as you think you need, and to totally pay attention to the blindingly obvious information presented to you on a plate.

[ThePog]

The roof off the green meanie was sitting there looking at me sadly, it was pretty rough so I sanded it back and spaffed some blue onto it to see what the old girl looked like with blue instead of the black, not bad I think.

 

Also I decided after looking at the landed prices for ally radiators out of the states, and deciding that the $150 AliX jobbies probably were not up to much I told my man to go ahead with a recore on the ex green meanie spare rad. I grabbed the frames while it was apart and replaced all the threaded bits, so it's like brand new now.

 

I might chuck that in this weekend but not before testing the sensor....

[ThePog]

Also I always forget how incredibly tiny this is, then I park next to a normal sized car

[ThePog]

Righto. I decided to chuck that radiator in today, easy as.

I started swapping things over from one rad to the other then thought I had better check that the thermoswitch worked ok, and it turns out the answer is no.

Thats a bit odd thinks I (the inevitable start of a new learning experience).

So I looked at the wiring diagrams to see if I had misunderstood how that shit works and noticed that the thermoswitch worked as expected but was wired to the signal side of a relay, which was not what I expected.

So now I began to understand some things, mostly that assumption makes a fuckwit out of just me.

So what has happened is that when I did the rewire I assumed that the wires coming out of the thermoswitch took current because they were fat, but actually the fan probably worked once or twice and then the switch burnt out. So that one time it got hot sitting in traffic without the fan coming on probably blew the head gasket, leading to all that other fuckery of the last few weeks.

Cool.

Or not probably.

So this time I put a second fan so I could manually switch it and then spent the rest of today creating and installing an entire new bit of loom that should solve that completely, one fan on the themoswitch, one on a manual switch. And all run through relays, natch.

 

So hopefully that is the only fuckup on the wiring... It was kindof a costly one really.      /facepalm

[ThePog]

The fucking things are proliferating

 

Elliots beast is running significantly worse than a bag of dicks, probably to do with the shitty OE points distributor. So I just put an electric fuel pump and some random points replacement system that he sourced, I just finished that up and it runs mint now.

Driving the two is interesting and really highlights the difference in livelyness, mostly that mine has a way, way fatter mid range as well as more top end. But the standard car is still a good time, you just would need more gearbox use to keep it in the top end.

In blue boy news, the new rad is working well, and apart from the indicator light in the dash needing a jiggle to get working again, all seems solid. Certainly solid enough to annoy the citizens of Nelson with dodgy cut in/passing maneuvers at full noise and a staggeringly unnecessary amount of popping and banging on the overrun.

100% mint then.

Except for the dripping gearbox plug

[ThePog]

Another clean sheet wof, what a wee gem.

The only non critical issues are a slow leak from the passenger front tyre and the gearbox plug leak, both of which will get sorted at some point. I might even have another go at that 'good' gearbox to see if I just didnt fuck it up, although any future box changes wont get the $200 Redline MTL again, just bog standard slippy shit I reckon.

Other than that it just goes like a stroppy, rowdy and unruly bitch, perfect.

[ThePog]

I got the tyre with the slow leak sorted (which was a valve), then though I would have a look at the front struts. These have a flat hardened steel washer running on a fiber type bush to provide the steering swivelling action, and these clag up and stop spinning freely. I thought the steering was a wee bit heavier at slow speeds than I though it should be, although some of this is the wider rubber I have on.

Anyway it was probably time.

I borrowed a set of spring compressors off @Willdat? to make the process a wee bit safer.. what a good man he is.

While unbolting the passenger strut and moving the wheel position to get bolt access the drivers side strut was making some funny noises.....  and so it turned out that the bearings were so clagged that the bit actually turning was the rubber in the top bush. I dismantled the tops, cleaned and greased the swivel and bolted things back together, hopefully improving that situation.

I did have to make a tool to grab the top of the damper to be able to unscrew the retaining nut.

It kindof looked like the nut was bottoming out on the damper thread which meant that the rubber probably wasnt getting as well clamped as it wanted, so I replaced the spacer in there with slightly longer bits I found in my box of bits, atho first I tried stacking washers, which didnt work.

My special tool

 

So thats all back together, but you can get a proper flat needle roller bearing to replace the fiber bit, so I might order a set of those as one of the fiber boys was looking a bit sorry...

 

Then it was time to address the gearbox leak, so I drove to Repco to warm the oil and buy some replacement 80/90 non EP gear oil.

I pulled the drain plug and modded it a bit to take an O ring rather than a flat copper washer. I did this by welding on a sleeve to create the crush stop and retain the Oring, hopefully this might work a bit better. The thicker oil will probably help too. I topped up the box and called it a day..

 

[ThePog]

Thats a funny looking puddle

[ThePog]

Yea so this was the wheel that got locked up a few months back due to swollen brake lines, it looks like the heat has cooked the seal and let it pass fluid. I figured this out after I pulled it apart;

 

The seal on the right is out of the green meanie, it is by no means in top nick but still looks better than the toasted version on the left - which was new when fitted.

 

I have found a seal kit so that should be on its way soon, but I backup ordered a kit from the UK, plus a couple of other goodies that we will get into later.

 

[ThePog]

Got the kit, assembled it all, bled the brakes. Jobs a goodun.

Then as I was wasting my Sunday on trivial car shite I thought I would waste some more of it installing these boys that had arrived sometime mid June and had been languishing on my desk ever since;

 

Those replace a fiber washer/top hat type thing that is supposed to be the main rotaty bit, but in my case wasn't as this job was being performed by the rubber bushing. 

Fortunately he magnificent @Willdat? has never asked for his spring compressors back so due to the rule of elapsed time I own them now, and used them to install the boys;

 

In a probably misguided attempt to make sure the rubber does not rotate I centerpunched the various mating faces of the contact components to give a bit more grip, as well as giving them a thorough degreasing.

 

I took it for a spin around the block and no more than the expected quantity of fluid had fallen out of the car and the steering felt good so I called that done.

[ThePog]

One of the other bits I got from the UK was a rebuild kit for Uno Turbo front calipers, these brakes being the ones from the green meanie. So it being Sunday and clearly the fuck about with cars day I thought I would have a squizz at the situation. 

Things looked pretty good, pistons were mint and even the pads were basically unworn, so shortly afterwards these were sorted;

 

The best thing about these brakes is they have a proper slider system, not the shitty sliding wedge, so are just better all round. They are the same spec ie piston and rotor diameter but the discs are vented not solid.

It was looking like hard work to find some new rotors so I took the ones off the green meanie to a brake place and they will sandblast and skim them. Apart from rust they were also basically unworn.

Ill pick them up this week, we will see what happens.

[ThePog]

 

Not as amazingly shmick as the boys said they would be, but good enough I reckon. 

It being 6 or 7 degrees in the shed right now it might be a job for the weekend though...

[ThePog]

I have been toying with the idea of a 1NZ swap, somewhat for the @Roman spec doorts, but mostly because i really want a gearbox less graunchy. The X boxes have a porsche designed syncro that is basically shit and even if you spent real money on a box rebuild it would still be pretty average.

However I am such a luddite that I struggle to bring myself to actually wanting an ECU and injectors and maps and such, to the point I wondered whether bike carbing a 1NZ would bring me the simple mechanical joy i so desire. But of course I would need something to fire the coil packs etc etc...

So as it is mostly about the gearbox (because IRL that shitty old SOHC engine goes hard) I thought that I would see how realistic it would be to fit a C series toyota box. I sourced a C52 for comparison and on the face of it they are incredibly similar in size and layout. Naughty Mr Toyota must have used a Fiat box as inspiration, never mind the improvements in quality and power handling and longevity etc etc.

 

And as I have the technology to compare geometry in a rather more precise manner, I did so.

The red arrow points to the most likely issue as the end of the Fiat box tucks kindof tight under the chassis rail, and the Toy box has a wee lump there. I can probably just smash that in with a hammer right?

Anyway I shall measure some things and ponder it a bit more, we shall see what the future holds...

[ThePog]

The internet told me that you can run an alfa romeo box, they pretty much bolt up.

The internet tells fucking lies

[ThePog]

I have been talking to a chap called Akos from somewhere in eastern Europe. He swapped in a VW 02a box which basically fits and as a bonus has the same output flange bolt pattern so the driveshafts do not need to change.

He sent me a cad model of the adapter plate he used which helpfully placed the output flanges central to the existing ones. He used the x1/9 starter and hacked off a chunk of the bellhousing to clear it, but I imagine using the vw flywheel/clutch/starter migh be a better option assuming there are no major issues.

Has anyone got an 02a or 02j box lying around?