Ownership log for my '86 Bertone

[BoxheadTim]

First, a few words of introduction - I've actually been a "registered lurker" in this forum for longer than I thought I was, and had been casually looking for another X1/9 for almost a decade. For some reason, I never hit the intersection of money, the right car and me getting to it quickly enough during that time. I had owned X1/9s before - one in Germany and one in the UK - and it remained an itch to scratch. I did however know that I really, really wanted one in very good condition. The previous two had been in "meh to so-so" condition and I was looking at would fall into the "best I could find" category to minimize the risk. Not that I was expecting something that was in brand new condition, but I've got enough other classic car and motorcycle projects including one that makes X1/9 parts supply look spectacularly good and the last thing I need is another project.

After I missed out on yet another low mileage one somewhere in NJ that I couldn't get to enough, I found @JimD's for sale post for his '86 Bertone and a couple of weeks later I was on a plane to MWB to pick it up. Soon, I was barreling across WV on US-50 with a big grin on my face, remembering why I wanted one of these in the first place. Well, at least while I wasn't cursing and relearning how to drive a Fiat gearbox of this particular vintage.

A few weeks later, my wife and I took the autotrain to Florida to visit the in-laws. The only convertible that was working and road legal that we have which has space for more than a toothbrush was the X1/9, so we took that. After a few days in Florida we drove it back home via the Blue Ridge Parkway end-to-end. Other than some minor hiccups - the exhaust manifold gasket developed a leak, it wasn't always quite watertight enough to handle some thunderstorms we encountered and the rear end was getting a little frisky towards the end of the trip - we made it back home in one piece. And we agreed that an X1/9 is a surprisingly good road trip car, at least as long as one stays of the Interstate.

A short time after the trip, I also decided to make a video about the car - I had originally planned to document the trip in a video, but decided not to after I learned about the complications of making videos on land administered by the National Park Service that end up on YouTube.

 

[BoxheadTim]

At this point I was waiting for the 185/65 Michelins to arrive at MWB, having identified the state of the rear tires as potential major contributor to the frisky handling. It took a bit of effort to get the X1/9 on my Quick Jack - it's an even tighter fit than an NA Miata and it took three attempts until I got it positioned so I could actually get the rear wheels off, but I managed:

Not only were the tires on the car old, I think there might have been some other factors that make the rear end feel a bit squirrelly. The rear end of the car, that is. Either way, looks like the previous owner and myself got our money's worth out of those tires:

While I was in there, I also pulled out the rear brake calipers as the handbrake isn't spectacular (yes, I know, they're all like that, sir). Let's pretend we didn't see this, lubricated everything that needs to be lubricated and put this back together. Hey, at least I'm not worrying about overbraking the rear.

While I had the wheels off, I also notice that I'll have to take a closer look at the steering as it looks like the tire is hitting the body. Already have rust converter, primer and underbody protectant ready to go for when it's warm enough in spring to apply it. And yes, I've also got a new used rubber grommet that should be covering the hole. I'm probably going to try and get out any crud in the "leg" and dump some cavity wax in there as this car is pretty rust free and I'd like to keep it that way.

While I could get under the car easily I had a good look around underneath as it was really the first time I got a good chance to inspect the underside of the car since I bought it. Apparently it was too dark for the camera with the light I had, and I apologize for the "artsy" shots in search of focus.

What's not pictured is that the rear suspension bushings are all original and the rubber is cracking. Those arms are on my "must rebuild" list as that's not going to do wonders for the handling. Not sure yet if I'll go with OEM rubber or polyurethane - rubber appeals, but I have no idea how old the available OEM bushes are.

As I have to poke around the engine bay anyway - there's at least one nut missing from the original exhaust header flange and it's turned into a leak, so it's perfect time to replace the original exhaust with a header and sports exhaust so the car at least sounds faster - I'll probably want to find the source of the various oil leaks while I'm at it.

More concerning - and hopefully not the reason that the RF tire is hitting the body - is this:

I'm hoping it's just a matter of replacing the rubber boot and I already bought both as I suspect I'll have to pull out the rack anyway to properly replace the boots. If it's much worse, this might be a problem because I don't think you can get rebuilt steering racks for these anymore.

Oh, and the area around one of the front wheel bearings is also looking suspiciously oily and damp.

A local one man shop was more than happy enough to mount and balance the tires as most larger shops closer to home weren't keen on doing the work. Didn't matter that they couldn't get the tires, I don't think they wanted to touch these toy sized wheels.

 

[BoxheadTim]

During our trip up from Florida, we had noticed that the radio and speakers in the car had developed their own minds. Sometimes the audio would cut out completely if you touched the USB connector on the faceplate just so, sometimes one of the speakers would cut out and so on. Plus the headunit was a relatively restrained late 2000s one, but it still didn't fit the aesthetics of the original interior. So it was time to dig a bit deeper into the wallet and try to install something that looked more period correct.

Not unexpected, as soon as I pulled the radio, I encountered my nemesis, "interesting" wiring. Someone stripped the insulation, wrapped the new wire around the stock wiring and covered the whole shebang with some, now gooey, electrical tape. I'm a "little" OCD about wiring, so this had to be rectified.

Fortunately I had a tub of liquid insulation that I liberally slathered over the various cuts, obviously after removing the offending wraped wiring.
Oddly enough, none of this wire stripping had been necessary - all one needed was a handful of crimp-on spade connectors to plug the radio wiring into the existing factory harness. Yes, there are a couple of wires that have to be connected differently, but after multiple coats of liquid insulation, some crimping, some cable ties and a short length of proper Tesa wiring loom tape, this almost passes muster and satisfied my electrical OCD.

While I was in there, I figured it might be a good time to pull out the speakers in the car and replace them with new ones. One of them had already been replaced, but it's probably a good thing I replaced both.

Oh, and the period appropriate radio? That would be this one:

Looks like the old Blaupunkts I remember as I'm old enough to remember when the original was brand new, but it has USB connectors under the "tape" flap so you can plug in a USB stick or an iPhone. And most importantly, it looks right at home in this dash.

 

[kmead]

Great write up.

JimD you’ve got some splainin’ to do

I have yet to see an X where the radio wiring isn’t a complete horror show. They have all been a mess in my experience as almost all radios were a dealer installed accessory and then there has been forty years of other grubby hands like mine in there making it worse

It is unlikely the grease on the front hub is anything to worry about, with the caliper and pads, off spin the tire and listen for crunchy sounds. If it spins ok and is quiet you are likely fine.

The wear on inside wheel well can be several things, one of which is the caster angle of that wheel on that side, with the wrong setting it can move the wheel back (or forward) in the opening such that you get close to the body. I would look at the bushings at the front and find someone who can actually do a good four wheel alignment after you do the rack boot. Pre-loosen the tie rods on both sides as some mechanics will automatically say they are frozen.

The rear tires all wear pretty much like that, always the inside worn. This is due to the negative camber and the toe settings of the rear suspension. Completely normal. It is why you want to rotate front to back regularly to even the wear.

Congrats on the new ride and it sounds like a great trip.

Welcome out of the darkness of lurking, you are committed now. Or perhaps should be committed…

During our trip up from Florida, we had noticed that the radio and speakers in the car had developed their own minds. Sometimes the audio would cut out completely if you touched the USB connector on the faceplate just so, sometimes one of the speakers would cut out and so on. Plus the headunit was a relatively restrained late 2000s one, but it still didn't fit the aesthetics of the original interior. So it was time to dig a bit deeper into the wallet and try to install something that looked more period correct.

Not unexpected, as soon as I pulled the radio, I encountered my nemesis, "interesting" wiring. Someone stripped the insulation, wrapped the new wire around the stock wiring and covered the whole shebang with some, now gooey, electrical tape. I'm a "little" OCD about wiring, so this had to be rectified.

Fortunately I had a tub of liquid insulation that I liberally slathered over the various cuts, obviously after removing the offending wraped wiring.
Oddly enough, none of this wire stripping had been necessary - all one needed was a handful of crimp-on spade connectors to plug the radio wiring into the existing factory harness. Yes, there are a couple of wires that have to be connected differently, but after multiple coats of liquid insulation, some crimping, some cable ties and a short length of proper Tesa wiring loom tape, this almost passes muster and satisfied my electrical OCD.

While I was in there, I figured it might be a good time to pull out the speakers in the car and replace them with new ones. One of them had already been replaced, but it's probably a good thing I replaced both.

Oh, and the period appropriate radio? That would be this one:

View attachment 79456View attachment 79455

Looks like the old Blaupunkts I remember as I'm old enough to remember when the original was brand new, but it has USB connectors under the "tape" flap so you can plug in a USB stick or an iPhone. And most importantly, it looks right at home in this dash.

 

[BoxheadTim]

Great write up.

JimD you’ve got some splainin’ to do

I have yet to see an X where the radio wiring isn’t a complete horror show. They have all been a mess in my experience as almost all radios were a dealer installed accessory and then there has been forty years of other grubby hands like mine in there making it worse

It is unlikely the grease on the front hub is anything to worry about, with the caliper and pads, off spin the tire and listen for crunchy sounds. If it spins ok and is quiet you are likely fine.

The wear on inside wheel well can be several things, one of which is the caster angle of that wheel on that side, with the wrong setting it can move the wheel back (or forward) in the opening such that you get close to the body. I would look at the bushings at the front and find someone who can actually do a good four wheel alignment after you do the rack boot. Pre-loosen the tie rods on both sides as some mechanics will automatically say they are frozen.

The rear tires all wear pretty much like that, always the inside worn. This is due to the negative camber and the toe settings of the rear suspension. Completely normal. It is why you want to rotate front to back regularly to even the wear.

Congrats on the new ride and it sounds like a great trip.

Welcome out of the darkness of lurking, you are committed now. Or perhaps should be committed…

Thanks!

Heh, it's been suggested before that a nice padded room would be a suitable habitat for me and my vehicular choices .

Given how aged the rear suspension bushings were it stands to reason that I should probably have a good look at the front ones, too. Not unexpected for a car this age and it makes sense to have a closer look at them. Hopefully my go-to race shop down in Summit Point is willing to do an alignment on the car - they mainly work on Miatas but have been willing to accommodate some of my, erm, weirder choices in the past when it came to alignments. Not that I plan to track or autocross this car, but most other shops around here only do toe & goes.

Re the wiring, it's pretty much what I expected. For some reason it's just something that triggers my OCD, despite having played especially with Italian classics for a good 30 years.

 

[kmead]

Thanks!

Heh, it's been suggested before that a nice padded room would be a suitable habitat for me and my vehicular choices .

Given how aged the rear suspension bushings were it stands to reason that I should probably have a good look at the front ones, too. Not unexpected for a car this age and it makes sense to have a closer look at them. Hopefully my go-to race shop down in Summit Point is willing to do an alignment on the car - they mainly work on Miatas but have been willing to accommodate some of my, erm, weirder choices in the past when it came to alignments. Not that I plan to track or autocross this car, but most other shops around here only do toe & goes.

Re the wiring, it's pretty much what I expected. For some reason it's just something that triggers my OCD, despite having played especially with Italian classics for a good 30 years.

If they can align a Miata, the X is pretty simple as there isn’t much that is adjustable without adding a few more parts like camber bolts. The method of adjusting the caster is a little simple as in shifting washers about but easy enough to do. Just hand them the requisite pages of the manual.

Looking forward to seeing how you continue to improve the car.

 

[BoxheadTim]

It'll be a bit - currently it's trying to hide in between all my motorcycles in the driest garage in the house, but once I've got my track car back together I'll transfer it to my workshop and take care of the exhaust and the suspension updates.

 

[JimD]

Sorry you had issues with the car Tim.

Paint was redone in 2014. Here is Tim5055's post on that project. I forgot that his paint guys said they thought the whole car had been repainted previously. When I bought the car in 2006 it only had 21K on it. Seems odd that it would have been repainted in its first 20K miles, given the lack of any damage to the body. Maybe the guy I bought it from in 2006 had it painted? He bought it for his wife, so perhaps he cleaned it up for her.

This is a picture of the radio that was in the car when I got it in 2006 and still there when I sold it on 2010. Is that the unit you replaced? In my 2 ownerships I did not pull the radio out. I can't even remember if it worked when I sold it the first time. I kinda recall that this "original" stereo was just stuck in the dash and inoperable, but maybe that was a different X.

(update) Aha, nevermind! Watching your Youtube video answered my question. I see a more modern stereo in the dash, so Tim5055 had that installed during his ownership. I do recall noticing the stereo was working when I got the car back. Fortunately, Karl @kmead, this means I am not responsible for that wiring.

I did not drive this X much after I got it back. I bought it back intending to have it K swapped. Eventually I came to the decision it was too nice to cut into for a swap and sent my far from original condition 85 to MWB instead. Once the 85 k swap project was underway, I decided to sell the 86 as I would probably drive it even less once the 85 came back home. I ended up hauling the 86 to MWB for a new clutch master and eventual sale when I went to pick up the completed 85 last December.

 

[BoxheadTim]

Jim - no worries, to me that's just stuff you run into when you have old cars. It's minor stuff that I can all address over time, and I'm really happy with the car. Keep in mind that I bought it, drove it almost 400 miles home, checked that nothing had fallen off and then we took it to Florida and drove it back. That's at least 1500 miles on a car that hadn't been driven much, so of course I'll notice a few things that I need to address. It's not an "issue" if it doesn't involve a breakdown truck .

I agree it's too nice to be K swapped, and I'm really hard trying to reign in my tendencies to modify it. I probably won't be able to resist the header and exhaust, and maybe a higher compression head. IOW, mostly invisible or easily reverted modifications.

 

[JimD]

It'll be a bit - currently it's trying to hide in between all my motorcycles in the driest garage in the house, but once I've got my track car back together I'll transfer it to my workshop and take care of the exhaust and the suspension updates.

Tim,

Just FYI, I replaced the struts and strut top mounts in 2020 when I bought the car back from Tim5055. I put in the aluminum radiator and the fresh OEM front seat upholstery as well. MWB did have the upholstery adjusted while they had it, but it is supposed to be the last OEM set of that style in existence.

 

[BoxheadTim]

Oh, I hadn't realized that the upholstery was new. I had been wondering how it ended up in such good condition after all these years. The radiator and suspension I was aware of - I think that had been mentioned in the ad.

 

[JimD]

Oh, I hadn't realized that the upholstery was new. I had been wondering how it ended up in such good condition after all these years. The radiator and suspension I was aware of - I think that had been mentioned in the ad.

The original driver's seat upholstery had a small split on the door side from the day I first bought it. I didn't grow much over the intervening years, but when I saw a fresh set on Henk's web store, I couldn't resist. Here is a picture of the area taken right before I replaced the upholstery.

 

[BoxheadTim]

Well, the X1/9 was hibernating in the garage with most of my motorcycles, and that didn't help with access. Especially if you have to move a bike or two just to get to, let alone open the door. But finally, it's spring and I got it out in the open air. Well, mostly to move it into my other garage...

Anyway, in case you think that cars are getting bigger, they definitely are. Probably the one time an ND MX-5 actually looks big. Funnily enough I'd argue the X1/9 is still the more practical car.

 

[johnph]

Jim - no worries, to me that's just stuff you run into when you have old cars. It's minor stuff that I can all address over time, and I'm really happy with the car. Keep in mind that I bought it, drove it almost 400 miles home, checked that nothing had fallen off and then we took it to Florida and drove it back. That's at least 1500 miles on a car that hadn't been driven much, so of course I'll notice a few things that I need to address. It's not an "issue" if it doesn't involve a breakdown truck .

I agree it's too nice to be K swapped, and I'm really hard trying to reign in my tendencies to modify it. I probably won't be able to resist the header and exhaust, and maybe a higher compression head. IOW, mostly invisible or easily reverted modifications.

You enjoyed your freeway touring with the leaky stock exhaust. Chances are good that with a header and sport exhaust it will be way too noisy to hear the stereo and too tiring (noisy) for long days in the car. Consider going to a quietier exhaust (rather than a louder one) if your X is for touring use.

 

[BoxheadTim]

You enjoyed your freeway touring with the leaky stock exhaust. Chances are good that with a header and sport exhaust it will be way too noisy to hear the stereo and too tiring (noisy) for long days in the car. Consider going to a quietier exhaust (rather than a louder one) if your X is for touring use.

It's not really for touring use. We took it for a couple of reasons - I couldn't get my "three season daily" serviced in time and it was the next-most practical car we own that wasn't an SUV. Neither my wife nor myself are huge fans of loud cars, but about halfway through the journey we agreed that it needed to sound a bit sportier than the stock exhaust.

In other news, it just passed state inspection again, and while it was there I asked the shop to check the steering rack. There was a lot of grease that looked like it had squeezed out of the passenger side steering rack boot, and I couldn't find an obvious leak. So as I had to take it to a local shop anyway I asked them for a second opinion and they confirmed that the steering is in good shape and that they also couldn't find any damage to the boot. So I'm going to keep an eye on it but otherwise not worry about it much.

 

[BoxheadTim]

Not much to report on the X1/9. I still haven't got around to fixing the exhaust issue, but for the end of the season I managed to take it for the only proper drive this year. I did drive it occasionally, but only managed one mini road trip. So for the end of the season, I decided to take it up Spruce Knob (aka the highest point in West Virginia). Unfortunately I was a couple of weeks late to catch proper fall colour, but it made it with no hiccups. Here it is, being very proud of itself in the parking lot:

Note to self, next time check the fall colour calendar.

I love driving this car and it invokes fond memories of the trips I made in last two I owned, but it very much also reminds me that I'm not in my 20s and 30s anymore. This trip reminded me that the ergonomics aren't that easy anymore on this mid-fifties body, and with the arthritis in my knee getting worse, I ended up paying for this trip for a couple of days. I'll see how I feel about this next year, but it might be time to send this one on to its next custodian - obviously, after I finally get around to fixing the exhaust issue.