'74 X1/9 Rebuild

I figured I would post up the on-going progress on my '74 X here. I bought this one about 5 years ago our of Missouri. Seems as though it spent most of it's life as an Autocross car. Here's what it looked like when I first got it:

It looks pretty good in those photos but it had a lot of problems that needed attention, like Fred Flintstone floor pans:

Here's the after shot of the driver's side, welded, primed with epoxy primer and painted with urethane.

Of course that was only the beginning of my rust repairs! Winshield channel rot:

Fixed:

More winshield rot, it was like this at both lower corners:

And that was just getting started on the rust. I guess I'm lucky, I got a fairly rust free one!

That is pretty. I've always wanted one of those and now it's decided. I WILL own one someday. Please keep us updated on your progress.

This car rusted in a very strange place, the top of the fender!

I bought a used fender that was rusted at the bottom but good at the top to source the patch panel:

Fully welded, smoothed, filled and blocked:

Thanks Joshua! It's definitely a labor of love.

Next, the Driver's side lower quarter between the door and wheel what pretty suspect. I dug in with a grinding wheel and there was lot's O bond and rust hiding:

I cut it where the scoop was installed so I only two small areas that wouldn't be plug welding:

Used patch panel after stripping and epoxy primer:

Had to fix the "inner" rocker that was underneath the outer panel:

Inner rocker panel welded in:

Getting there.

I hope you're keeping the wheels. They look great on the car!

Are you sticking with red, going back to yellow, or something else entirely?

Definitely keeping the wheels. The are 13 x 7 Revolutions. I think you can still buy them new, but they're pretty spendy.

The car is actually already been repainted red. I started this thread to compress 4 years of updates over on Xweb here.

Well the next issue I found was the passenger side rocker panel:

There were about a million little pin holes all the way down. The rocker is actually one stamping that makes up the inner door sill all the way up both the front and back. I found a NOS stamping, but replacing that would have entailed removing the front and rear passenger fenders which were in pretty good shape, so I cut out the just bottom rotten section:

And made up a patch:

Welded in:

The bottom corner of the front fender was holey too. The patch goes over the rocker patch but I was fitting up the panel I made here:

The driver's side fender was rusted in exactly the same spot, so it had the same small patch applied to it too.

Nice work.

Golly!

Nice, I feel your.pain from the rustmites

After I had finally cut out and fixed all the rust (or what I thought at the time was all the rust) I was fed up with the car. With two small kids and a 50+ hour work week I felt like it was a project just couldn't finish. I had found a Lotus Elise, in laser blue (favorite color ever) so the X was put it up for sale last year. Here's what the car looked like when I posted it for sale:

And here's what replaced the X in my garage that summer:

I wanted to buy that but it sold to quickly. Nice cars.

Wow, this thing is sweet! Am I weird for liking the X more than the Elise? Those wheels are just gorgeous on the Fiat!

In reply to mblommel:

Holy bodywork skills!!!

That is beautiful workmanship right there.

The car sits great--sweet stance and those wheels absolutely make it "right".

Great job.

You are not helping my automotive ADD with those Revolution wheels, ya know, and wish I could have another Exxie now. But if it had to get replaced with something newer, an Elise certainly works well.

I hope thats not the end of the story! You're back at it, right?

You do excellent work! Why are you keeping us in suspense??

Thanks for all the compliments guys, it's been a learning process for sure. All I can say is if you can buttweld Fiat fenders anything else has to be a piece of cake.

Sorry to stall out on the updates, but it's been a crazy holiday weekend. So, no it's not the end of the story at all. I had the Elise for a few months and buyer's remorse started to set in really bad. The Elise was great, but had some drawbacks. I was never in love with the powerband of the 2ZZ. I'm also not a big fan of car payments. Most of all I'm a tinkerer that loves to do the sort of work required by the X. So about nine months into Elise ownership I really started thinking about my X and how much I'd like to finish it. I made a call to the fellow I had sold it to, hoping to track the car down.

Luckily for me the new owner had really put some serious work into getting the car properly prepped and painted correctly with the paint I had given him as part of the sales deal. The car had not been prepped properly for it's previous paint job, so the paint was flaking a lot and it was generally a miserable job to get it ready for a repaint. He certainly did the job right, these are the photos he sent when I called:

He had pulled all remaining trim, door handles and such as well as the trunk lids.

And here it is back in my garage after the ride home from Ft. Lauderdale. That's the GRM project CRX keeping it company.

I ended up paying the guy about $800 more than what I had sold the X to him for. I figured it was reasonable considering the amount of labor and materials involved in getting it painted. I also got 2 new KYB struts and all my old parts back in the deal. I ended up selling the Elise for a little more than I had paid for it, so I sort of broke even there.

So, now the X is back all I have to do is put the trim and interior back and drive away right? Well, not so much. There was a whole bunch of work still ahead!

Wow, that looks great!

Man that thing is sick! Those wheels are works of art, and they just bring the whole package together! Can't wait to see more!

mblommel wrote: I ended up paying the guy about $800 more than what I had sold the X to him for.

OH THANK GOODNESS!!!!

I can not tell you how disappointed I was to read you had sold it. THANK YOU FOR CARRYING ON WITH THIS AND YES I AM USING CAPS.

Truly awesome work. Also shows the pride in 'building' a car rather than just 'buying' one.

Wow guys, thanks so much for all the support. It means a lot coming from the talented folks that frequent GRM.

Gearheadotaku wrote: Truly awesome work. Also shows the pride in 'building' a car rather than just 'buying' one.

That's one of many reasons I ditched the Elise. All I could say about it is that I had good credit and paid the payments. With the X I have so much more involved. Sometimes it drives you nuts, but at the core it's really fulfilling. I know folks here know exactly what I'm talking about.

So, after I got the car home I starting looking it over closely. The paint wasn't perfect, but the car had definitely been taken to the next level. The main thing that was letting it down now was the engine compartment. It was still the original yellow and generally looked tired and dingy.

Soon it looked like this:

I thought I could just sand and paint the bay with the engine in place, but the more parts I removed the more I could see to do the job right I was going to need to pull the drivetrain. There were a lot of things that needed freshening. So, a trip to harbor freight produced an engine hoist:

Of course to pull the axles I had to disassemble the rear suspension. It's struts so pull a few bolts and the whole thing comes apart. And all that was rusty, nasty and im need of attention, so I guess I'm into redoing the suspension....it really started to snowball.

I started prepping the bay for paint. In the process I pulled out the trunk floor and found this, MORE RUST!

Well, as you know there is only one way to fix that correctly. Out with the cutoff wheel.

The X1/9 has a "double" trunk floor. Between the two was what looked like insulation you'd find in the wall of your house. Perfect for holding moisture. Yecchh.

I couldn't find a new or repro panel for the trunk floor. So I had this one made up from 20GA:

Annnddd hopefully that is finally the last of the rust repairs.

Next up, engine bay and trunk prep and paint. Then suspension teardown, engine and trans inspection.

So after hours of degreasing, scubbing, grinding, hosing, cleaning, priming and finally masking; the engine bay looked like this:

Ready to shoot some more red. I bagged the whole car because this is urethane and it goes EVERYWHERE.

Now that looks so much better:

I tried to prep every nook and cranny properly so I wouldn't have flaking in a few months or years. Those sanding tools with the triangular pads work wonders.

Amazing work! I miss my'74 more than almost any car i've sold...and every time i see your it only makes me want another. And to make it worse, i let a set of revolutions and a set of campagnolo's go with.

I love Elise's, but i'm glad you got the X back!

I've had 5 X1/9's and I'm dying for another.... This thread is definately an enabler!!!