K20 project off to a good start, volume 2

[kmead]

Hmm. Glad my car has so far resisted that problem. I will however go and inspect it in any case.

The container Roger has is the newer style so it shouldn’t suffer this problem, as it affected the 1999-2001 cars (which my Golf does fall into).

Thanks. The hullabaloo over this one must have disapated quickly as it likely didn’t affect that many cars. Lord knows the VW Vortex Golf/Jetta IV forum would have been a sheet show over that one.

Thank you.

 

[fiatmonkey]

Rodger! Awesome write-up my man. I am now following your k20 build swap for tips

Thanks for putting all the content back together.

 

[Rodger]

Rodger! Awesome write-up my man. I am now following your k20 build swap for tips

Thanks for putting all the content back together.

Thanks for the encouragement, Tim. I got a lot of inspiration and ideas from you, so that's why I share my approach.

 

[Rodger]

Worked on the axle shafts and got those done. It's fun to put clean parts together.

 

[sub-zeroil]

Worked on the axle shafts and got those done. It's fun to put clean parts together.
View attachment 13648
View attachment 13649

yup you OCD !

 

[Rodger]

I also started on the exhaust. The base header is a cheapie off of eBay. I went with one for the K20A3 engine as the collector output is 2.5". It seems like all of the K20A2 headers have a 3" output but I plan to use 2.5" components for my system.

One of the guys from that works at the body shop is going to weld it for me at his own shop. He has a lot of welding experience and can TIG weld stainless. He cut off the flange and the end of the collector to get rid of the connector.

The tubes need to be tilted up from the way they come to allow the collector to exit through rear firewall opening into the muffler bay. He cut them at about the right angle, but it still took a while with my trusty hack saw and grinder to get the angle just right so he can weld the flange back on.

One thing that I did find when I put the flange on the head was that the openings in the flange were about three millimeters too small at the bottom of the openings. I assumed that this would create a fair amount of turbulence and restrict the airflow out so I spent some time grinding them to enlarge the openings to match the exhaust ports.

Once I got the angles on the tubes right, I compressed them in a vice to make them more oval shaped like the exhaust ports to get the best outflow.

 

[darwoodious]

Nice Rodger. Your welder should do something similar to this:

Proper fitment is to form the tubes to the flange.

 

[Rodger]

This would certainly work if you were building one from scratch, but I found that my tubes that were cut off had about the same inner diameter as the port opening in the flange. I would need to open the flange openings a lot more to fit the tubes inside. They are just going to be butt welded to the flange.

 

[Rodger]

My wife has been out of town for several days this week, so I have been able to make some significant progress. I got the rear suspension and axles in, plus all new brakes. Put the wheels on it and got it on the ground for the first time since disassembly four years ago. Wow, does time fly.

I did some preliminary alignment and set a tentative ride height. It’s either been on rotisserie or jack stands for so long that I kind of forgot how low these cars are.

 

[Rodger]

This is just a silly little thing, but it is part of my build. I bought my wheels from Vick's and although I really appreciate our vendors and the parts they supply, I really do not want their name on my car. Here is one of the center caps that came with the rims. It's hard to photograph as it is a very reflective chromed plastic dome.

I considered using the Abarth center caps, but there is really nothing Abarth on the car. I searched around and found these on ebay. I liked them because of the classic Fiat wreath logo and the blue background, similar to my paint job.

Only problem is that they were just a little small for the center hole of the rim. I searched for something to fill the gap and found that 2" ABS pipe fits into the opening very tightly with no adjusting. I did have to ream out the inside of the pipe to bring the wall thickness down to about 3 mm, then cut off the spring tabs on the Fiat caps and cemented them into a small section of the reamed pipe.

Here is how they came out. I like it, but I understand that taste in wheels, especially a newer style 15" on the X, is very personal. After having my '79 for so many years with 13" CD-30's, it took me a while to get used to the 15's but now I am liking them. Plus, the tire choices and performance are so much better.

 

[ng_randolph]

Nice! And I rather like the wheels too. I think 5 is the correct number of spokes for an X1/9.

 

[kmead]

If you were to take a more detail oriented approach to this conversion, it really would benefit from that little bit of extra effort, it just seems to always come up a bit short.


OK now back to the real world.

I am with you totally about the branding thing. We have a ‘92 Miata and the interior is beginning to have some tired elements in it. I am sure you can imagine with the vendors catering to that car how many logos one can jam in that small space between door openings, mats, seat covers, knobs etc etc. And of course to get the better quality things you are forced to accept logos. Ugh.

In any case your choice is a good one on the wheel caps, when Fiat went to its ‘modern’ logo it had just enough vintage to be nice on a vintage car. Your wheels definitely have a modern vibe and the cap looks good with it so the modern logo looks right at home. The reference is right, Fiat always had logo’d caps even on its steel wheels so this to me is correct and appropriate, not overlogo’d.

Nice job as always. Thanks for sharing the ‘how’ of getting it done, you tell the story of this conversion very well.

 

[Rodger]

I finished up the rear suspension, but didn’t really post any porn shots of it, so here are some. One unique feature is the rear sway bar. Doug Martin (rx1900) and I have struck up an online friendship since I started my build and as many of you know, he is always thinking of new and innovative improvements for the X1/9. Once he has them refined, he has often offered them for sale to us. They have always been well thought out and he only uses first class materials for his products.

One of the things he shared with me shortly after I started my build, were his ideas for potentially better sway bar designs other than the standard Addco products. I had installed the Addco ones on my long term ’79, and always thought that the mounting systems were pretty tacky, especially the rear, but I figured that was pretty much the only option out there. Doug felt the same and was sure that there was a better solution out there so he spent countless hours at the salvage yards looking at sway bars from many vehicles and came up with a front and rear sway bar alternative. He kind of hinted at this project in this post a few months ago. https://xwebforums.com/forum/index.php?threads/rear-addco-sway-bar-photos.27981/#post-286227

Anyway, when my car was at the body shop a few years ago, Doug was gracious enough to fabricate a couple of mounting brackets for a rear sway bar and sent them to me to have them welded on at that time as well as to let me know what his bar choices were so I could go to my local salvage yard to harvest them. His idea is to make a kit that can be bolted on with minimal effort, rather than require welding, that will be better than the Addco bar, and ideally be adjustable. What I am showing here is my development of the bar positioning and end link connections to the control arms, based on Doug's ideas and bar recommendation. My install is a little different than what Doug envisioned, as the mounting brackets are welded to the rear crossmember that has been reinforced with an extra rectangular steel bar. The reinforcing bar moves the brackets a little more to the rear than with a stock crossmember so I was having interference issues with the toe link ball joint/adjustment sleeve. I decided to try moving the bar higher which seemed to work out well for my application. I also used a double ball joint end link.

This is totally Doug's brainchild and I know he is still working on the specifics of his kit which most likely will vary from mine. He was nice enough to let me share what I have done with his idea, but he deserves full credit for this. Keep in mind, that there has been no actually road testing of this design and how it may perform (for better or worse) at this point.

Currently, I only have the rear bar installed. He does have a front bar choice as well, but I have not gotten to finalizing the mounting of that one. I have plenty of other things to do on this build, so will hold off on the front in hopes that Doug finishes his kit by the time I am ready to road test mine.

The above photos are of the suspension at full extension. Here is a photo of what it looks like in full compression that I took as I was working out the connection to the control arm. There is about 5 mm of clearance from the ball joint to the inner fender wall.

 

[lookforjoe]

So many shiny bits!!! It really looks lovely

If there was any way you could use this style end link - I personally feel the useable life is far longer than those small ball joint style links. Bushings are cheap when they do eventually need replacement. If you keep what you have, it looks like you need a large washer between the joint stud and the bracket on the frame, where it appears a nut is sitting against the plate. Since the bar is small, the load at that point may not be so great, but it seems a large washer would be prudent to offset any forces at that juncture.

 

[kmead]

Very nice as always.

To follow on the detail Hussein picked up on, perhaps a shouldered nut as is used on the opposite face at that same joint.

Looking forward to a future purchase from the honorable Mr Martin

 

[raillard]

Nice! And I rather like the wheels too. I think 5 is the correct number of spokes for an X1/9.

I like the way they spaced the 4 bolts on these wheels, too, with one bolt aligned to a spoke and another aligned to an opening. Too often, with 5 spoke / 4 bolt wheels the positioning of the bolts looks a bit random, but not so with these wheels!

 

[Rodger]

If you keep what you have, it looks like you need a large washer between the joint stud and the bracket on the frame, where it appears a nut is sitting against the plate. Since the bar is small, the load at that point may not be so great, but it seems a large washer would be prudent to offset any forces at that juncture.

The bottom photo above was from when I was trying out the geometry of everything, so I did not have a washer in at that point. The third photo down shows a washer on both sides of the bracket on the control arm. As far as using bushings instead of ball joints, the original application for this bar used a bushing through the eye of the bar. The trick is finding the right length of link to be able to attach it to the control arm but keep the eye level with the rotation axis of the bar. Doug has some other ideas on links that he is looking at that will probably be better than my solution. One thing with my setup is that I can "tune" the bar a little, by changing the distance between the ball joints. Not sure if it will make any difference though.

 

[rx1900]

Hey Rodger. Thanks for the kind words.

Yes, Rodger and I have been working on this project on and off for a couple of years now. It started when his X was gutted and in the body shop. My chosen rear donor bar required brackets for the mounting bushes to be either welded or bolted to the rear lower chassis member. For his car we decided on weld on. Nice and strong and neat. I made some up and shipped them to him. He had the body shop weld them in. Super strong, and after they were painted along with the rest of the underside, it looked like they were there from the factory. After that, everything else could just be bolted in. Worst case scenario, he could always use the brackets to support something needed for his K20 conversion, or at the very least he now had some nifty new jacking points.

As his project progressed and he got the rear suspension back in, we worked some more on the fitting details. Luckily, Rodger - like me - is rather fussy, and likes to do things right. And is a really smart guy. Together we explored some options, and his input was invaluable. His situation was a bit different because his rear lower crossmember had been heavily reinforced by the addition of some strengthening tubes. Which positioned his bar placement slightly different to mine. And he chose some fancy expensive adjustable racing type end links. Which were very nice, but frankly not ones I could use for making a kit to offer to all you frugal folks......

So our paths kinda differed a bit from that point on. My concept is to have more than one landing point on the control arm. This would of course make the bar adjustable in effective stiffness. So the development continues. At least for me. Rodger has wisely decided that his bar is now mounted, and will concentrate his efforts on getting his X to a running state. And worry about stiffness adjustments when the car is roadworthy and he can test. Smart move....

Meanwhile, at my end I have been working at it more. and have ordered in bits and hardware to begin making a run of them. I'm now sitting on about $3K of really nice high grade metric hardware, so this project will - eventually - come to fruition. And it will be nice. There has been very little in the way of X1/9 suspension development in a lot of years. Time for that to change, and make the most of modern tire advances.

And yes, Hussein, of course I considered that type of end link. Yeah, they are cheap, but I can assure you if you went to the effort of removing the spring and jacking the suspension through it's entire travel ( did you do that Hussein ? ) you would find that link would bind and twist in a most unsatisfactory manner. Not to mention the lost motion of the bar just compressing the rubbers instead of translating motion as it should.....

My current chosen end link though should make you happy Hussein. See the pic below. Yup, it is from a Volvo - a C30. Now that is much nicer.

I welcome all thoughts and input.

Cheers, Doug

 

[lookforjoe]

Rodger, forgive the digression

And yes, Hussein, of course I considered that type of end link. Yeah, they are cheap, but I can assure you if you went to the effort of removing the spring and jacking the suspension through it's entire travel ( did you do that Hussein ? ) you would find that link would bind and twist in a most unsatisfactory manner. Not to mention the lost motion of the bar just compressing the rubbers instead of translating motion as it should.....

My current chosen end link though should make you happy Hussein. See the pic below. Yup, it is from a Volvo - a C30. Now that is much nicer. View attachment 14483

I welcome all thoughts and input.

Cheers, Doug

I didn't check the front coilover (that you developed, continued thanks for that!) travel with the springs removed. I have no doubt upon reflection that I will have findings precisely as you describe . I will have to revisit them at some point.

I am indeed familiar with those joints, there's a pair of them holding my Corksport Mazda bar in my C30

 

[Rodger]

I finished up the intake/throttle body installation tonight. My advice to anyone doing this swap is to make sure you have enough clearance to get the bolts that connect the intake tube to the manifold started when you are making your firewall cuts and box. It was quite the contortion act to get the ones in on the firewall side. The top one was very tight clearance. Getting a socket on the bottom one to tighten it was really tough. I needed a universal joint and two extensions as well as a lot of luck and patience. I almost thought I was never going to get the top one started.

The mating plates for the throttle body/intake that MWB provides in their kit have a threaded hole to install a pair of fittings. A hose is run between them to maintain the Idle Air Control Valve (IACV) function. I deleted the IACV and replaced it with a block off plate from Karcepts, as they say it is not really needed. I could have just plugged the hole in the manifold side, but thought I would use it for an emissions connection to the charcoal canister. I couldn't find a pre-made one that would fit the 1/2-20 thread of the plate, so I made this connector from a Stromberg carburetor fitting I got from Summit Racing. I cut off the 3/16 hose fitting and used JB weld to fit a 1/8 inch barb fitting to it. This is about the same size as the small connection on the charcoal canister. This fitting is on the bottom side of the so it is not really visible with the tube installed.

Here are a couple of views of the completed intake/throttle body install with the throttle cable and all wiring connections made. Yeah!!