But wait, there's more. I went to remove the rad and found more Cheap Bastard P.O. butchering. The air dam was held in place by Aluminum straps and stove bolts. The grill was barely in place, one "good" repair with J B Weld and the rest with Gaffer Tape. The hoses to the rad were "crunchy" and "squishy" at the same time. These looked like they were never replaced and were original. Found 3 very poor repairs on the rad. Have replacements for all of it. I have found wood screws, bolt holes that were stripped then a larger bolt hammered in place, S.A.E nuts on metric bolts, broken plastic parts with duck tape on the back to hold them together, useless switches added with shoddy wiring and bare live connectors, Holes drilled all over, tons of repairs that should have been looked after. Sad to say regular maintenance was not in this car's history. This car will be turnkey when I am done. I get the bored and decked block back today. I won't start the engine rebuild till next week as there is still more parts to clean and refurb or replace. The cost of the car was $3000 Canadian. The cost of all the parts and machining comes to just over $10,000, this does not include all the hours spent on the car that thankfully I don't have to pay for. We are sitting at 450 man hours on this car so far and we haven't started putting the engine back together yet. I think I have found the point of my discussion. The x1/9's worst enemy is the previous owner who refused to pay the price for the parts because he thought they were too expensive and he thought he could MacGyver it and that would be ok. Parts can be expensive because the car is 40+ years old. Use the internet and shop smartly. The parts for this car has come from Texas, California , Florida, New York, New Jersey, England, Latvia, China, France, Holland, Italy, Austria and Canada. These cars when properly looked after and are in very good shape are worth a lot more for this very reason. You should be happy, the value of these cars is going up, that means yours is worth more. People are seeing more of them on the street and the interest is going up with the price. I have owned 8 of these vehicles now including brand new 79 I bought in May of 79. Out of all these cars other than the 79 only the 84 I bought from Dennis from Woodstock was properly looked after before and after I owned it. That leaves 6 cars with questionable records before I touched them. Pretty piss poor odds. Hoping to see this change.
and I keep hearing his voice. Lmao.
