Breathing Life Into a Neglected '75

[jimmyx]

Made some progress but lots more to go. I'm waiting for the boom mat to arrive but luckily I had enough to do the underside of the trunk pockets. Very hard to access once the patches go in. Put in a couple of strands of 3M strip caulk on the pocket edge which will eventually smoothed out in the trunk pockets and provide a base for the seam sealer. Once the panels are tacked I always get the OMG what is this mess I've created feeling. 99% of all the weld is eventually ground away and usually works out in the end. I use a larger than normal gap on these for welding. The trick is for the weld to join the panel edges to fill the gap. If they are butt welded with a tight joint, once the weld is ground the joint is usually quite weak. If you don't grind it enough it takes tons of filler to hide the weld and usually turns out poorly. In the end, both side panels were able to be coaxed into place, but the next issue is the lower valance panel. About 1/8" too wide. I have to rig up the porta-power to spread the panels a hair. Still many hours to go before I can call this a wrap.

 

[jimmyx]

Tried some gentle nudging with the porta-power, but these panel attachment points are less than stout and are easily bent. I usually live by "if at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer" but in this case I just cut the mounting flange off the right side and recreated the flange. After a little flap-disc work it now slips into place. Have to get at it tomorrow - too dark to really see what I'm doing tonight. Once I get the fit right, I'll spot weld the end bracket on, install the grill, line it all up and drill the lower valance mounting holes. Getting there 1MM at a time....

 

[Ron Avery]

Again amazing work. This is going to me a very cool X1/9 when you are done. In one of the best colors.

 

[jimmyx]

Still plugging away. The lower valance panel shape is close, but no cigar. There was no curvature on the right hand side, so the bracket had to be reshaped, cut a small relief in the bottom edge and re-bent it. Still not exact yet. The "wings" at the bottom edge are not exactly formed the way they should be, so a little more surgery will be needed there. It'll eventually all fall into place. One of those projects that you do a little, walk away for a day and come back to it.......will be really glad when this one is in the rear view mirror.

 

[jimmyx]

Got everything as close as it's going to get. The replacement lower valance panel has different profiles on each side. Lots of cutting and welding, but I can't overcome everything. I'll probably source a factory panel to bolt in when one pops up. Meantime I'll finish up the bodywork as the rust mitigation has finally come to a close.

 

[Ron Avery]

Looks like new, you could do this for a living!

 

[jimmyx]

Looks like new, you could do this for a living!

Thanks, Ron. I'm getting too old and slow to make a living unless I can find people willing to pay an 80 hour billing rate for a 2 hour job!

 

[jimmyx]

Finally got out to my storage unit. I knew I had a factory lower valance hiding somewhere in there. As suspected the factory panel and Eurosport fabrication do have a different profile on the left side. The factory panel also fit the opening without sectioning 1/4" or so out of it. I'll try bead blasting this one and see how it comes out. If not, the Eurosport is close enough.

 

[jimmyx]

I had to move the '75 outside yesterday and it reminded me about the lower valence issue. I'm a big fan of Eurosport panels having used quite a few in the past, but this one is a no-go in every respect. The used valance I have for comparison is a little too far gone to use, but luckily MWB had a good one that I ordered today. By just eyeballing the contours of the left side it's really hard to gauge just how far out of whack the Eurosport panel is. I decided to just use a line that is unaltered in angle between the photos and there is a huge amount of difference. The panel beater might have been having a rough day because normally their panels are spot on. Not sure if the Euro version has a different contour, but if you're looking to fit this to a NA car it might not be what you expect.

 

[jimmyx]

The time came to finally drop out the drive train to prep and paint the engine compartment. Stripped out all the insulation. Must have been about 10-12 lbs. of that stuff in there. It'll get replaced with 1700 degree Boom Mat which is far lighter, but won't do anything for noise suppression. That's okay, I actually like all the mechanical noise.

Also started on the GM alternator conversion. I'm going to re-purpose the stock upper mount with some additional modifications, but I have to wait for the heim link to get here before I can see exactly what needs to be done.

The project is mission creep times 10, but there are so many things that need to be done on a car that sat for 20 years there is really no alternative. It's better to just do what needs to be done now than constantly fight the numerous failures I'd be in for if I just "got it running". Hopefully the trans is okay, but I'll soon find out when I split the cases to at least do a reseal. Luckily I have a perfect set of internals on the shelf if it's worse case. I quizzed the PO quite a bit on the operation prior to him retiring the car and he said the one thing on the car that was perfect was the transmission - this leads me to believe I'll be rebuilding this too, lol!

 

[jimmyx]

Finally got the heim link, so this is the final product. Pay no attention to the lawnmower belt, it's one of many v-belts on the shelf that I use for mock-up to try and determine the correct belt length. Looks to be an effective length of 34" for this one (Gates XL 7215). I'll see how it fits when it gets here.

 

[dllubin]

There were some old threads on the GM alternator conversion using Heim joints that had some durability issues with the joint. Your setup appears to have a pretty heavy duty joint so perhaps it will be fine. The custom upper mount looks good.

 

[jimmyx]

There were some old threads on the GM alternator conversion using Heim joints that had some durability issues with the joint.

I've made this mod on numerous cars, not just Fiats without any issues. The failure of the link can almost always be traced back to the rod ends being wound out too far at the turnbuckle, and it's magnified even further when the working angle of the link is incorrect. I designed the upper mount with room to drill additional mounting holes below the one shown. If more downward adjustment is ever needed than what's shown, the link needs to be mounted lower. Most I'll chance is leaving no less than 25% of the joint threads engaged in the turnbuckle. This particular unit has a steel turnbuckle which helps, but some are cast aluminum which seem to be prone to cracking. This assembly is very stout, but I have seen people try to use light weight components that are more suited to carburetor linkage that do fail in short order.

 

[jimmyx]

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the axles in the car. The CV and the tripod joints are as nice as the day they were made, but after 47 years the seals and boots had surpassed their useful life. So onward and upward with one of the filthiest jobs known to man. One down and one to go. There was no sign of prior leaks from the axle seals and no gouging or scoring on the sliding surface of the shafts so hopefully it'll all work out in the end............

And done....

 

[Ron Avery]

Great work and ingenuity, craftsmanship as usual.

 

[dllubin]

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the axles in the car. The CV and the tripod joints are as nice as the day they were made, but after 47 years the seals and boots had surpassed their useful life. So onward and upward with one of the filthiest jobs known to man. One down and one to go. There was no sign of prior leaks from the axle seals and no gouging or scoring on the sliding surface of the shafts so hopefully it'll all work out in the end............

While my car sat for 20+ years, a rodent evidently thought the tripode boot was good eating. Not sure if it liked taking a shower in transmission fluid. The hole was big enough to drain most of the fluid. My outer boots still looked new and I'm still using the originals. I'm on my third set of tripode boots although the second set was not necessary but purchased when I changed the synchros back in the 80s.

 

[jimmyx]

While my car sat for 20+ years, a rodent evidently thought the tripode boot was good eating

My left side inner had the same hole after sitting for about 20 years. Never gave it a thought until you posted this so I went back and looked at it; wasn't torn or split, just a nice chunk of rubber chewed out of it!

 

[jimmyx]

Like many of you, I've always used the carb fan support as the go-to Facet pump mounting location. Nice spot, but a bit too small to handle what I needed to mount so I just expanded it a little. Plate is 1/8" aluminum stock with a neoprene insulator.

 

[GregS]

Looks neat. Is there support behind the left side of the plate? Aluminium will fracture in time if it can flex with vibration.

 

[jimmyx]

Looks neat. Is there support behind the left side of the plate? Aluminium will fracture in time if it can flex with vibration.

The plate is 1/8" (3.1750 mm) thick. The entire assembly is very light, and if the vehicle harmonics were ever bad enough to fracture a non-stressed piece like this, I've got bigger problems than a left side support I think? .