1987 Fiat X1/9 Turbo

I think it’s on for £16k - lovely car but yikes, the price.

Thanks man! Not finished updating them yet, but getting there now

Good idea on the lower temp fan switch. There is a fair bit of stoplight angst and gauge-watching, although its not overheated yet (since sorting all the problems anyway). The only thing that's worrying me is that I haven't heard the fans cut in either, although the new modern fans are much quieter so could be muffled by general traffic around.

Perhaps what I need is just a fan override switch. It's one of the things I wanted to make sure was foolproof before taking it out on track, but perhaps just a switch I can flick on as I roll into the pits is the solution...



Another good point. I've been running it with 50/50 mix as it's alloy head/iron block. Each time I've changed the coolant it's come out very orange so I think it's been run on a lot less in the past, but it's been getting a bit better after the ~10 coolant flushes I've wound up doing!



Yeah I've got thoroughly mixed opinions on it. Two of my old cars were waxoyled (presumably pretty early on in their life), and they're definitely in much better nick than any of the others. On the other hand it does make them a royal pain to repair.

Ideally I think I'd get some form of dipping and electrophoretic epoxy-coating done, but need to scrape the pennies together to do that!



Ah gotcha. The Fiat has a watercooled turbo as well, but it's set up as a draw-through system so the movement of boiling water in the turbo to the reservoir pulls more water through it to cool it down after shutdown. I'm sure an electric pump could be set up to help that as well!

Personally I'm a great fan of watercooled turbos and I'm not sure why quite a few modern frames seem to be going for oil cooling only. There's a couple of T22 turbos that might just work for an upgrade but they're all just oil cooled.



Yeah I spotted that! My initial reaction (after audibly saying 'neat!') was 'yikes'

It's probably more that I got my one for an absolute screaming deal as they do seem to be worth quite a lot now (provided they're not rotboxes). Classics in general seem to have got more expensive over the past year or so. Not sure how much of it is driven by the dwindling supply and how much to do with them being seen as tax-free investments.

The green one looks in a bit better nick rust-wise than mine, although photos can be deceptive (and these cars do tend to hide it in places). The twincam swap is a fair bit trickier than an Uno Turbo engine as well, although not massively difficult still. So it's a bit higher spec than mine (although if all you're aiming for is 130bhp then a UT swap is both lighter and simpler).

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Linkage fixing - 3rd August 2020

So, I went to test the Fiat after its suspension repairs and I noticed that the gearstick was behaving strangely. It was returning to centre in different places depending on what gear it had come out of. Initially I thought the cable was slipping in the end I crimped on. Took everything apart and crimped it again in a different place, but that didn't change it at all so something else must have been happening.

Eventually, after I'd taken everything apart and poked around I found out what was happening. The steel wire that reinforces the rubber outer lining of the cable was migrating inside the sheath! You can see it poking out here.



That would explain the worsening shift quality. Also, because I assume it's been trying to force a gear in when it's just outside of its gate, the linkage housing has bent as well. Not surprising seeing as I've chopped so much out of it.



So, I bent it back into shape and did a bit of reinforcing to stop any flex in the housing.




I also pinched the smaller bellcrank from a spare set of linkages I have as I'd shaved down the other one to fit properly and tried to shim it out to fit the little bronze bush. As I don't have a lathe the shims were never perfectly the right size so there was additional play that wouldn't have helped. Turns out the whole exercise was unnecessary as it works perfectly fine without the modification.



I also found that the linkage was catching on itself when getting into reverse, so I clearanced that a little.



For the cables core movement issue I figured that the standard MG cable ends must have an end-stop inside them. Initially I thought of a spacer to bolt down against the wire reinforcement, but that would involve precise measuring and cutting. Then I found you can get M16 grub screws so I can bolt those down against the cable ends, then use the actual bolt to clamp the cable end to the bracket. Like so:



Had a couple of iterations drilling through the grub screws. Initially drilled a 7mm hole so the cables could draw all the way back, but it turns out that was too wide to act on the wire reinforcements. Drilled a smaller hole through, but that meant I didn't have enough travel. So what I ended up with was drilling a big hole for 4mm depth, and then a smaller one for the remaining 2.5mm (the one on the left).



I also took the opportunity to try and drill the centre-hole through the bolts a bit straighter using a method I'd seen on youtube with two chucks on a pillar drill. Worked quite nicely, although there was still runout and it took qite a bit of fiddling to get it straight. Having a short starting drill bit would help, as would having a good drill press that you don't need to shim quite so much to get everything square.



Lastly I lengthened the lever-arm on the gearbox-side so there's a bit more side-to-side travel which should lessen the force on the cable a little. With all of that done I now have a linkage that works again properly! I will say that it's still not the best gear shift in the world (by a long way). I think access to a lathe so I can drill stuff dead straight (and do things like make up little nylon bushes for the cable ends to run along) would do wonders. As would remaking the cables and cable ends as the former have got a bit mangled with repeated removals of the swaged ends and the latter aren't welded on straight enough.

Oh, and I think the issue with the clutch slave cylinder leaking (now resolved) has caused accelerated wear on the synchros as it's not quite as smooth going from gear to gear as it used to be. Unless it's just a fluid level issue as it's developed a bit of a leak...

But it works! Just a cracked coolant hose to replace then the Fiat's roadworthy again

Not sure of your timeline on these posts, but are the last two not mutually exclusive? Worn engine with possible ring issues on one hand and wanting to push it harder with a bigger turbo on the other?

Especially as it's the only form of transport. My son wants me to get the wrx mapped, bigger turbo, better flowing cat etc etc but it's my daily, so stock power is fine .....

Right! So now we're up to date here's some stuff that's been done this week!

MoT's rolled around and there was a fair bit to do. First off is a rust hole near one of the front suspension tie bars. Don't have a before pic, but here's the after:



Excuse the welds. The car's been waxoyled at some point in its history. Probably why it's survived as well as it has, but it does make welding a pain in the backside (especially upwards!).



Next step was a hole in the driver's floorpan. Pulling the carpet up I found there were 2 layers of sound deadening that were well past their best. First was this:



Followed by this:



A lot of this stuff was still stuck, but did chip off quite easily and is pretty thick so I took the lot off which uncovered some more crustyness.



Choppy choppy...



First panel was quite straight forward. No nasty curves, and used the press and two big sockets to form the little dropped-down drain, copied from the other side.




The next section by the side was a tricky compound curve. The actual curving went quite well, but I made the mistake of not leaving a good inch excess around the edge of the panel to take account of the curvature moving the edges around as its formed. Had to cut a bit off and reposition it to get the hole closed.




Painted on both sides. Alloy wheel paint on the underside as that's what I had at the time (and I'm doing a bit of a tester of the longevity of different rattle-cans), and a brief dusting of etch primer followed by proper 2k epoxy primer for the floor pan (again, a tester to see how well it works...I'm thinking jsut a light coat of etch might help the epoxy stick if the surface is less than ideal).




plop finish, but I prioritised getting good coverage over finish as it's going under dynamat anyway...



And everything back together the dynamat even saved 1.2kg over the old sound deadening so I might do it on the other side too!

gt1752 off a saab turbo ?

here is the original gt17 thread ..


www.turbominis.co.uk/forums/index.php?p=vt&tid=10263


on my Austin mini 1310 5 port head i got this on the dyno,


21 psi spike then tapering to 18 psi.

i think that dyno over read a little but not a huge amount . i had 190 odd bhp on 16 psi at NMS whose dyne agreed with mine , and i thinn is pretty spot on .

the 620 kg car has run , on old falkens and a none lsd dif , 112 mph in the quarter and a 13.1 s . on 19 psi.(wheelspinning to 3rd , and also on the 3rd to 4th shirt )


they work very well , the map is not out there , but i settled for a gt2056 map with a few percent off the airflow to account for the area change of the smaller wheel inducer .



regards
robert

yes t25 , 21 psi would have got you a fair bit more than that i would imagine

on my car i had a simple bleed valve on the wastegate line , triggered by a switch on the dash . i used a saab 5 psi wastegate cannister , then bled to 19 psi when i flicked the switch . i came off the line t 5 psi , then flicked to high boost on the 1st to 2nd gear gearchange ,this was really too much , i should have run a much faster time if i had run 3 levels , say 10 psi in 2nd then max boost in 3rd and 4th .

this turbo is normally fitted to a 2 litre , so no worries about low end surging.

i always used it on the street , it looks pretty stock , and often planted it at 1000 rpm in 4th , boost would start at 1400 , and 5 psi by... 2200 i think it was , no surging , generally , if you have not built a hybrid , with a larger compressor on a smaller turbine , surging is rare in my experience . i have a t25 on a 500cc bike , that went from 52 bhp to 135bhp , on 15 psi boost , and that does not surge at all .


i rally would not worry about it at all , i can put the mini in 4th , on a 3.1:1 diff , and pootle along , in fact it makes over 100 lbs ft at only 2800 rpm.