Lemons X1/9 but more cylinders

That makes me feel better. I'll add the tube, but also the opinions of internet people do carry weight, so I'll stop worrying about it.

Love the build. The wheels appear to Epsilon mesh or Southern Ways in the jdm world. Don't know how you found a set for that car but they set the car off perfectly. I had a set on a 911 and loved them. It's a weird thing to nerd out on wheels on a Lemons car but anyway the whole theme is excellent.

They are indeed epsilons. It's hard to find 15" 4x98 wheels and these ones came off a scorpion, got lucky and found them locally. Sandblasting and painting the mesh section is on the todo list.

Done welding everything up.

In reply to rozap :

Love your project! For the rear engine w/ front rad maximize cooling challenge, not sure I'd place a second radiator above the exhaust.  Might have a benefit when in motion but when you stop... 

Don't forget about those coolant lines running from front to rear.  Not sure if they're inside or outside the floor in the Fiat, but my experience was with a Vanagon where they were outside.  Did a swap from a waterboxer to a 2.0 inline 4 that we pushed pretty hard.  All that coolant tubing running back and forth (mine was mostly stainless) was begging to be used, so I found fins that could be tacked on anywhere there was room.  No numbers to support it, but it definitely did provide more cooling headroom.  

In reply to GopherBrokeRacing :

Good point about the exhaust while stopped. I'm thinking I'll wrap the headers and do some heat shielding around the exhaust. I'd really like to just put a single, oversized radiator up front, but the fuel cell takes up that whole area. So a big duct over the top of the car to feed the second radiator and oil cooler I think is going to be plan A. As far as the coolant tubes go, they're contained in the center tunnel, and removing the sheet metal around them involves drilling out about a hundred spot welds, so I'll probably leave them.

Engine is in. Axles bolt up with no issues. Shift cables reach to where they need to reach. Fuel cell cage has been built. Next up is plumbing the clutch and making panels for the firewall. A lot got accomplished this weekend.

Oil cooler has been mounted. After lots of digging, I found that the oil cooler port on the block is a 3/4" 16tpi thing, so possibly the only non metric part on the car. But I think I'll be able to use a cheap remote oil filter adapter versus the much more expensive sandwich plate, which also protrudes farther forward and may not even fit. Those parts are in the mail, fingers crossed my plan works out. I started working on some heat shielding for the downpipe, and we'll retain the OEM heat shield for the manifold, which is not shown in this picture. There will also be a heat shield between coolers and muffler. My plan is to cut out sections of the back (the 3 rectangles behind the coolers) for the radiator outlets. The inlets will be over the top of th ecar.

Fuel cell cage is done, and it is also in. I'll need to make a new top plate for it with a filler neck that comes out the hood. Also it'll need a vent line since the manufacturer seems to have sent the wrong part and are not being responsive.

Electronics have been ordered to run the dash screen. We're just going to use the same parts (2.8" tft screen, stm32) and software i wrote to communicate with the speeduino that I used on the subaru-bus that I posted about on the previous page. This should save us some time because there was a fair amount of spelunking in the speeduino codebase to get everything going. And the list of things to do before April seems a little overwhelming at the moment. Hopefully the next time the team comes out to work on stuff, we can get the wiring knocked out and get the thing fired up.

Still on the lookout for cheap 15" 4x98 wheels. Currently we lack a spare set, which makes me very nervous.

Also I picked up a tow dolly with electric brakes, which will come in handy when we end up with a second race Fiat, in a few weeks. I can tow it with my F250, or I could tow it with a certain subaru powered bus and have a sleeping arrangement for the track. My plan is to yolo it until the 002 trans gives up and then get an 091 with a taller 4th gear. The bus drives really well, and has gobs of power, but spins way faster than it needs to at 60mph.

 Small updates

Oil filter has been moved to the trunk

Did lots of wiring

Wrote some software

Made this bypass plate with sensor holes to go where the OEM oil filter housing used to go, as the old housing was right up against the chassis and would have been destroyed quickly as the engine moved front and back.

Rear firewall panel.

Not really sure how to "bleed" the now much larger capacity oil circuit...just crank the motor over without starting it? It should self bleed but there is a big void right now from all the new lines.

Next on the list is...a lot of things. Still have more wiring to do, though the ECU and fuse/relay box and bulkhead fittings are mounted. The whole cooling system needs to get finished. Etc, etc etc. I had things going on over the last month so not a ton of progress. My goal is running/driving car by the end of this month, which would then give us a month and a half to do tuning and build the (required) engine cover out of fiberglass and test the car. We'll see if it all gets done.
 

Progress was derailed for a while due to flu/covid/whatever. Finally got everything wired and plumbed, and it would start but run totally wrong, sounding like the timing was inconsistent. After a lot of dorking around  with the oscilloscope, finally got it solved. Issue ended up being ringing in the ignition coil signal. This didn't happen on the mockup car because of the shorter wires and/or different placement of the wires and/or no alternator creating tons of noise. Solution was 200ohm resistors on the coil signal lines. Plenty of valve noise due to sitting for over a decade but I dumped some oil treatment in and I'll let that do its thing for a bit.

Oil pressure is great. Compression numbers after running it for a bit are far better than my street car.

Also, fuel cell filler and sender are done. Finished the throttle cable as well, the pedal throw had to be shortened by a lot, as the throttle body on the vr6 has a shorter throw. Came out nice and now it has the full range of motion.

First drive around the neighborhood is not far away.

Also, an exciting development. Another race fiat has been acquired. We may have open race seats soon.

Wow, I remember that car from like 12 years ago at Summit Point, how did it make it all the way to the PNW? 

I have a pic somewhere of when the transmission let go on #198 there, and put a football sized hole through the trans tunnel. I don't know if it was #198 then but it's a pretty distinctive car.

Sonic said:

Wow, I remember that car from like 12 years ago at Summit Point, how did it make it all the way to the PNW? 

Probably on a trailer...

Sorry, not sorry, couldn't resist...

dculberson said:

I have a pic somewhere of when the transmission let go on #198 there, and put a football sized hole through the trans tunnel. I don't know if it was #198 then but it's a pretty distinctive car.

Was that at njmp?  I remember the incident, just Maybe mixing up the track.

Sonic said:

Wow, I remember that car from like 12 years ago at Summit Point, how did it make it all the way to the PNW? 

We were racing the X1/9 at ORP in our second race, and some guy (Steve) walks up to our paddock space and is like "I love your car, I used to race a Fiat 128!" and we got to chatting, became friends. He joined our team and has raced with us at the last 3 races and spent plenty of hours wrenching on the X1/9. Eventually he dug the 128 out of his dad's garage and got it shipped over from the east coast to my place.

Current plans for the 128 are fuzzy. The transaxle has issues as do the driveshafts. We have 3 spare X1/9 5 speed transaxles and 2 spare engines, but obviously the shift linkage comes out the wrong end. It'd be great if we could rig up some solution to make it work with the 5 speed and more modern CV joints, but haven't looked too deeply at it yet since it has been all hands on deck with the VR6 swap.

wvumtnbkr said:

dculberson said:

I have a pic somewhere of when the transmission let go on #198 there, and put a football sized hole through the trans tunnel. I don't know if it was #198 then but it's a pretty distinctive car.

Was that at njmp?  I remember the incident, just Maybe mixing up the track.

Maybe? I'd have to look at the date on the pic to be sure. I'll try to find it later. I was at both njmp and summit that year and it's long enough ago to be fuzzy

dculberson said:

wvumtnbkr said:

dculberson said:

I have a pic somewhere of when the transmission let go on #198 there, and put a football sized hole through the trans tunnel. I don't know if it was #198 then but it's a pretty distinctive car.

Was that at njmp?  I remember the incident, just Maybe mixing up the track.

Maybe? I'd have to look at the date on the pic to be sure. I'll try to find it later. I was at both njmp and summit that year and it's long enough ago to be fuzzy

Would love to see the pic if you can dig it up

Now I'm not certain it's the same car. I guess if you have a patched trans tunnel you'd know!

it was njmp 2011

In reply to dculberson :

Ah yep, different car. That's a hell of a hole. Steve did tell me that the alternator fan machined itself off and sent shrapnel through the hood, narrowly missing a fuel line. So similar vibe but different inchident.

Well, first drive this weekend and this project suffered a major setback. I got about 20 minutes of glorious VR6 noises and an X1/9 that could really move. Then E36 M3 hit the fan.

I went for the first drive around the neighborhood. Tripling the horsepower in an 1800 pound car is a riot. Oil pressure is good - possibly too good (35psi at hot idle and 100psi with the RPMs up), temperatures are good as well. Then the engine siezes, horrible metallic noises, sadness.

Impression left from the bypass plate - the holes line up and I see oil on both sides. This was the major oiling system modification so it was my first suspect, but it looks fine. And it's such a simple thing I don't know how it can go wrong.

This is some of the junk in the oil pickup. It was not *all* of the junk. Yes, there was a lot.

So my two theories are:

Theory 1: I found a bunch of old timing chain guides in the oil pickup. The current timing chain guides look new. The craigslist seller like 15 years ago said it had a new head, and pulling the valve cover supports that statement. So - timing chains fail, seller replaces head, chains and guides, slaps it all back together. Shrapnel from old guides still present in the engine, which then sits for 15+ years and the plastic continues to degrade, start it up and it go boom. The fact that two pistons were completely unoiled but the other ones looked "okay" supports this theory as it would be a localized oil starvation, rather than the whole system failing to get oil. When I say the oil pressure was "too good", in my mind, a blockage could cause this as the oil had nowhere to go. I have another VR6 car and oil pressure at idle is not this high (35psi on the blowed up engine vs like 15psi at idle on my corrado)

Theory 2: I somehow screwed up something in the oil cooler modification. I've checked several times that the filter is plumbed correctly and not trying to force oil in through the outlet. I don't have a ton of evidence that makes this theory likely, but it has the highest prior in that "you changed it from OEM, you idiot" is often a good place to start.

Theory 3: Anyone have any thoughts?

What would be your course of action from this point? I'd really like to find a smoking gun so that I have confidence when I rebuild it it doesn't happen again.

As for rebuilding it, I going to start with polishing the crank but it'll likely need to get re-ground and get oversized bearings. And those connecting rods....trash?

Super bummed as I think we were on track to make it to the race in April if everything continued to go according to plan. But this is not according to plan, and I don't think there's any way we'll make it in time now. :(

Where the oil holes are in the block that you covered, did that go somewhere else as well?  

What I'm getting at is this...  was the oil pathway somehow blocked from getting to where it needs to go?  That would account for the high pressure and the destroyed bearings.

I would *assume* that the oil holes are an in and an out.

If there was trash on the pickup, you would have had E36 M3 pressure.

Edit to add...  not sure if it's the pic or what, but all of those bearings look like crap.  

wvumtnbkr said:

Where the oil holes are in the block that you covered, did that go somewhere else as well? 

One hole went out to the OEM oil filter housing and the other was an inlet for the filtered oil. The bypass plate just made it so oil would go out and come right back in.

And you're right, all the bearings look pretty bad but two of them were horrible and completely dry, the others were at least getting oil, but they do have bad wear on them. But I can't feel that wear with a fingernail. The 4 bearings that didn't spin look like they could just be high mileage and poor maintenance, vs the other two which are worse than anything I've ever seen before.

That's what I figured.  Is there a way to push oil into the return hole and see if it comes out where it's supposed to?

The "blockage" would need to be between the sensor and the crank.  Otherwise, you would have indicated low pressure.