'74 X1/9 Rebuild

In reply to racerdave600:

Wow, you have a set of Revolutions AND a set of campy's? Care to share a picture of the those?

I think he meant they went with his car when he sold it. The revs fit the X perfect I think.

Nice metal work.

Wondering why you didn't bead the floor? Nice job!

dansxr2 wrote: This thread is definately an enabler!!!

Indeed! Great thread! I'd love to see how you made some of the patch panels.

Just gorgeous!

Yeah...they went with the car...i'm an idiot. I'll look for a pic. They were just like the Ferrari 5 spokes.

Sorry Dave, misread your post. Campy's are totally awesome. I get excited when I hear somebody may have a set!

I'll see if I can dig out any photos I may have of the patch panel creation. It was pretty basic stuff though. I have a decent vice, some harbor freight body hammers and dolly's, clamps and a few pieces of scrap steel plate. For the longer bends I have a sheet metal shop brake them. On the compound curve portions of the inner rockers I broke it up into flat pieces that I could make cardboard patterns for. I cut those out and TIG'ed them together to make the final shape. BTW I've found that the cardboard that sandpaper sheets comes packaged in is exactly the right thickness for making my templates.

The floor pans I bought new. The fender top and rear quarter bottom were good used salvage parts.

Great work on the Fiat! I have the same door handles on my 308 gt4 (I need a spare passenger). Bertone knew how to draw them for sure.

It's been a while since my last update soooo, On to the photos!

I know the local glass guy that does the Ferrari, Audi and other high end dealership work. I felt a lot better about having somebody like that come put in my windshield. I had to do a lot of prep work to dig out almost 40 year old sealant inside the moldings (they just glue on BTW). I'm pleased with the result:

With the windshield back in it looks so much more like a car instead of just a derelict shell.

I've made some progress on the suspension bits too. I stripped the uprights and took them and the hubs to work to glass bead them. I painted the bare uprights and hubs with POR15 and topcoated with black paint. They were assembled with all new bearings, seals and hardware:

All four ready to bolt back on:

I modified the rear control arms to better accept the aftermarket rear sway bar attachment points. Also the PO installed a beefy home made strut tower bar between the front two strut towers. The bar also reinforced the weak strut tower tops that are already cracked. The bad thing was the strut tower bar didn't allow the targa top to be installed in the front truck anymore. I rebuilt it using some DOM tubing. After my welding was done I sent those parts off to power coat and I just got them back:

I'm pretty dumb when it comes to transmissions. So I had my friend who reworks all the transmissions in our circle of friends go through the stock 4 speed. He was happy to report all the innards where in very good shape.

Hopefully my last bit of body work will be repainting the rear valance. '74's are the only year X to have the exhaust exit on the driver's side. Some yahoo bashed in the valance on the passenger side to route the exhaust outlet there. I banged it back into shape and filled a couple small dents in the process. The vents on the bottom of the valance had flaking paint around them too, so I stripped all that to bare metal. I hope it looks good when I get some paint on it, although nobody will probably notice all the way down there.

Well, that's about all I've got for now. I hope to have the suspension back under the X soon so it'll be a roller again. It's been a long haul, but my Miata is keeping me sane while the X get's done!

You could extend the steel plates over the wall of the front strut towers to lower the bar to coincide with the location of the stock rubber bumpers for the top.

The Fiat is so stout that a strut tower brace isn't needed. Steve Hoelscher's car didn't have one and he ran upwards of 600lb springs.

Anything new? Your car is what enticed me to keep looking for one.

Weird, I just saw a yellow '74 sitting on jack stands in a driveway this week. Can't remember the last time I've seen an X1/9 in the wild, much less a '74!

I always liked X19s, this one looks amazing.

J

turboswede wrote: You could extend the steel plates over the wall of the front strut towers to lower the bar to coincide with the location of the stock rubber bumpers for the top. The Fiat is so stout that a strut tower brace isn't needed. Steve Hoelscher's car didn't have one and he ran upwards of 600lb springs.

His were closer to 1000lb springs i believe. I've said this before here but his old X is the best driving car i've ever been in. The only issue was that on slick surfaces it didn't transfer enough weight, so you had a difficult time knowing if the front brakes were locked. Even with those spring rates it was not nearly as harsh as you might imagine.

Back on topic....great progress....i'm still jealous!

In reply to chandlerGTi:

Whew, I can't believe it's been 7 months since I posted an update. Sorry for the delay, but things have been a little crazy. I moved over the summer and that meant the X had to become a roller again. So that's a good thing.

Anyway I have to catch up on my progress. I had to get the engine to make it roller so first I had to finish the engine compartment. The old firewall pad was toast so I had a new one laser cut from a template provided by my pals over at Xweb:

Here's the engine ready to go back in. I did the timing belt, tensioner, waterpump, new clutch kit, and new oil pan gasket. The outside of the block got stripped of all old paint, then POR-15, then a coat of engine paint. The valance I was doing body work on got painted too.

I needed some help running the hoist, so my number 1 engine installation assistant was there to help. Actually did have him run the hoist, he did pretty well.

Engine in, starting to reassemble. I'm fixing or improving a lot of little stuff along the way that just needed it. I had re-wrapped the engine bay/tailight harness before the engine when back in because it was a total mess. I also Learned some Italian along the way too with the wiring diagram.

Suspension bits going back on. Lot's of prep here on the parts finally paying off.

Here's my fuel tank after it came back from powdercoat. Almost looks too nice to put back up under there.

I cleaned the inside of the tank with several rounds of the electrolysis cleaning trick with some baking soda, water, and my battery charge set on 10amps. After all the rust was out I used the POR-15 gas tank sealant kit. I've heard conflicting things about the sealers, but I figure if it starts to flake I'll pull the tank and fab a stainless or aluminum one. For what it's worth here's what the inside of the tank looked like after sealing:

I wish I had some pictures of the car during the move to the new house in late July, but it was just all to crazy. I had a rollback come get the car. After we made it to the new place there was a couple month period where no work was done at all. I started back in by wiring for the new radiator fans. I'm using GM style weather pack connectors.

Yes! Welcome back!

I've been working on the X this holiday weekend!

I've turned my attention the exhaust. Here's the header that came with the car:

I had planned to just clean it up and reuse it until I built something better. Unfortunately I found during a re-trial fitment that the header has to go in BEFORE the engine. Crap. Well, I wasn't pulling the engine back out. It had some big time dents and scrapes on the lower bends anyway. So my long tube header is now a not-so-long-tube header. Here's the parts after a trip thru the bead blaster at work:

I needed a flange for collector outlet. The PO had haphazardly MIG'ed and brazed the crap out of it. I just cut all that junk off.

I wanted a flange that had a shape where replacement gaskets would be easy and cheap to get. Since I've owned several air-cooled VW's in the past with headers a thought sprung to mind. Almost all VW performance exhausts share a common 3 bolt flange. A trip to Triangle Auto Parts in Winter Park and $12 later I had these beauties:

Fired up the TIG using an extension cord made from a drier cord and a wall outlet box and finished it off.

I painted it with some rattle can ceramic header paint. I'm going to try and follow the directions for curing it with an oven, but I have to get the wife out of the house with the kids for a few hours. The header is easy enough to remove/replace now, so If I like the way the car runs/sounds I'll get it properly ceramic coated.

I ordered up 2 of these from Speedway motors to build the rest of the exhaust. Mandrel bent 2" tube, 16 GA wall. At $15 each they are pretty cheap.

I've also got a Walker Dynomax 17602 turbo muffler with 2 inch inlet and outlet on the way that I got from Jegs for $25 with free shipping.

It won't be the fanciest exhaust, but it should be functional. I want to get the car back on the road! Thanks for looking.

Looks excellent!

Fine work.......... Love seeing pics of your son helping. I have similar photos from years way past.

I am actually in the search for a similar car. Would like to chat by phone if you PM me . Thanks.

Godspeed! Dave

I'm bringing this thread back from the dead. Zombification is due to me finally getting back to the X1/9 project. I got the car running last year (finally) and was actually able to run the car up and down the street a few times. The engine didn't sound right though so I pulled the cam cover and found wiped cam lobes and broken valve springs. At that point I was pretty pissed with the car so I put the engine back together and let it sit in the garage. Fast forward a year and the urge to get the X running has crept back in. Sooo, just ordered a rebuilt cylinder head from Midwest Bayless that will arrive with a new cam, shimmed and ready to bolt on. The head will be a Yugo casting for a compression bump and the cam will be similar to a FAZA 35/75 cam. I'm kinda excited, but don't want to get my hopes to high. The X can be a harsh mistress.

Boo, but yah!

YES! Glad to see this back at the top!

Matt & is wife are really great people. Visited them several years back to pick up a windshield for my '87 I had. Which I really miss! I've had a '79, '81, and 2x '87's. Keep up the great work!

So what remains on the punchlist aside from getting the engine back together? This is a great build!