jnoiles
The Driver
After Black-tooths warm welcome in the 500 thread and request for info I thought I'd share the beginnings of what I hope will be a fun project.
The X1/9 is in a state of planning and collecting at the moment. I'm in the process of getting my hands on the Punto GT for the mechanicals. For now she's a normal Bertone 1500.
Well, I say normal. Her current state will probably offend the faithful here. We paid £200 and on reflection we paid over the odds. The accelerator cable had frayed and someone repaired it by tying a bolt to it. Yes really. Frightening. The bolt hops around and sometimes you get no throttle, sometimes it catches on random pieces of the engine bay and you get full throttle. The manual choke conversion is the least sophisticated solution I've ever seen.
I have some ideas in mind for her that we'll be exploring this year. The punto gt engine is up there, as are the brakes from the punto donor. I've got a full set of polybushes on the shelf waiting to go in, a long range fuel tank for the front and negotiating now for a set of custom coilovers that were for someone else's X project that's been abandoned.
At the moment I'm planning to strip her interior out and see how bad the rot is. Spend the next month or two cutting out crap, welding in patches, cutting the arches ready for the wide arch flares. Making a custom front nose I've got in my head and just need to make out of foam, take a mold and produce in glassfibre or carbon. Then a spray of paint. Bolt the arches on - yes, I'm going bolt ons - and stick the 14/15"s on her, mostly so I've got a decent tyre choice rather than any urge to go big wheels.
Then have some fun with her until the engine goes bang and I can head scratch enough to figure out the full punto engine swap.
Some pics of her now:
X, with my mk1 mr2 race car in the background
Note the glovebox held shut (sometimes) by packing tape
Behold the glory
Toothy grin
And oh so 70's bum
So yes, I'll update the thread as it progresses. I'm quite looking forward to it.
The X1/9 is in a state of planning and collecting at the moment. I'm in the process of getting my hands on the Punto GT for the mechanicals. For now she's a normal Bertone 1500.
Well, I say normal. Her current state will probably offend the faithful here. We paid £200 and on reflection we paid over the odds. The accelerator cable had frayed and someone repaired it by tying a bolt to it. Yes really. Frightening. The bolt hops around and sometimes you get no throttle, sometimes it catches on random pieces of the engine bay and you get full throttle. The manual choke conversion is the least sophisticated solution I've ever seen.
I have some ideas in mind for her that we'll be exploring this year. The punto gt engine is up there, as are the brakes from the punto donor. I've got a full set of polybushes on the shelf waiting to go in, a long range fuel tank for the front and negotiating now for a set of custom coilovers that were for someone else's X project that's been abandoned.
At the moment I'm planning to strip her interior out and see how bad the rot is. Spend the next month or two cutting out crap, welding in patches, cutting the arches ready for the wide arch flares. Making a custom front nose I've got in my head and just need to make out of foam, take a mold and produce in glassfibre or carbon. Then a spray of paint. Bolt the arches on - yes, I'm going bolt ons - and stick the 14/15"s on her, mostly so I've got a decent tyre choice rather than any urge to go big wheels.
Then have some fun with her until the engine goes bang and I can head scratch enough to figure out the full punto engine swap.
Some pics of her now:
X, with my mk1 mr2 race car in the background
Note the glovebox held shut (sometimes) by packing tape
Behold the glory
Toothy grin
And oh so 70's bum
So yes, I'll update the thread as it progresses. I'm quite looking forward to it.