OK... hear me out...
First, an introduction that may or may not be brief:
Yes, I'm the same guy who started the Chevy Astro V8 swap thread. The engine is at the machine shop. I'll get to that later. In that thread, I mentioned something about fatherhood requiring that I need to streamline my project life. I said that. But this is different, somehow...
I worked at Midwest-Bayless for three years. In that time, I was the "K20 swap and restoration lead." Most of my time there was spent building K20 swap X1/9s (five total including a supercharged one,) but I also built and took part in building a few different non-K20 projects, including a Uno Turbo swapped Dallara widebody X and a nifty stroker X that went to some dude in Dubai. I also developed the K20 swap kit and built, if memory serves, eleven of those. The "Fabricator 1.0" tag is a joke on me from my time at MWB. When I left, Matt referred to me and my decisions as "Fabricator 1.0."
Each time I built one of the K20 conversions, I refined the process and the design of the parts. I wanted to refine more, but at a point, the company owner put the kibosh on future refinements in the interest of uniformity among customer cars. That's a fair point, and it was his company, but it cut me off from the creative process of refinement that I enjoyed. I made mental notes each time I had an idea as to how to build a better K20 swapped X. I really wanted to build the in-house cars differently from the kits I sold, but the owner wanted to use the kits as a basis in part to expedite the process and in part for product placement of the kits. Also fair points. Those were Matt's decisions to make, which he made as a businessman (a pretty good one at that.)
The subframe and mounts that I designed did the job great and allowed many X owners who were not experienced fabricators and who also lacked the funds to pay MWB to build a car for them ($40k-70k,) but it was large and needlessly complicated for those capable (and willing) of positioning the engine correctly and building one-off mounts for it. My subframe reached out to all four mounting points for FIAT's engine saddle plus all four control arm mounts. The design was promoted as doubling as a suspension brace, but I don't see the need for cross bracing there. Plus, because of excessive variation in the X suspension pickup points, I built each subframe as two pieces that had to be joined together by the installer. I never liked that, but it was the way it had to be.
Here I am going to build the K20 conversion *I* want (and wanted) to build. There will be no big subframe like in the kits. In fact, if I can get away with it, there will be no subframe at all. I have the pieces on hand already to build a shifter box. I am also going to implement some product ideas on this car that I will attempt to bring to market. I have no illusions about taking over the X1/9 US market, but I will develop a couple of products that do not yet exist. If there is interest in them, I will produce them.
I will get some pics up tormorrow.