Fiat x1/9 + bike engine challenge build

In reply to RACEC4R:

Welcome to the board. I see you have gotten bitten pretty hard by The Challenge bug. Quite an effort for your second appearance at The Challenge.

Your plans look spectacular and I'm here on the sidelines rooting for your team.
Keep me apprised of any future working and engineering events. I am two hours away and would be more than willing to "lend a hand" which given your team would mostly comprise of standing idle and drinking beer (but I'm really good and experienced at it.)

John.
$2016: Nissan Quest.
$2015: Infiniti Q45#2, 10th Overall, Spirit of the Event winner.
$2014: Infiniti Q45#1, 11th Overall, People's Choice winner

alfadriver wrote: Where you are guys doing the build? There a GRM guy in my section, too- he doesn't post at all, but lurks. BTW, no reason you could not replicate what the Miata does with a tube frame- seems like the basic suspension is better than the struts on the 1/9. There has to be a FSAE guy among you all.... Anyway, have fun! That's the point afterall.

Car is located at Ian's place in Livonia right now. It will be there for the foreseeable future.

Come on down!

In reply to JohnRW1621:

John (and anyone else interested), we use a groupme group for communications and planning build days. We can add you to it if you have the app and then you will automatically get any and all updates surrounding when build is happening.

NOHOME wrote: Sure that is a real Fiat? Not nearly enough rust. Please tell me that you have an indoor place to work so that this does not come to a stop for the winter. Or failing that that the team is of polar bear disposition and wont give a berk.

Ian and I both used to live in Wisconsin. I think we will be ok.

(and by ok I mean we will be doing as much as possible in the basement).

jfryjfry wrote: I would offer that you might want to trade the j30 diff and axles for a 240sx diff and axles. Same rear end but different axles that you can actually buy replacements for. The j30's are as common as hen's teeth. And if you do that, I'll buy your j30 axles as spares for my track car. :) I'd love to swap them out for regular 240 axles but it would mean a lot of work to figure out which stub shafts and axles work with my unknown lsd in my jdm car.

this is an interesting thought. It has been a really long time since I owned my 240 and did the j30 diff swap, but I am 98% sure that the axles have to go with the stub shafts, but the stub shafts are interchangeable between the carriers.

Our plan is to use custom axles anyway, so hopefully there is no breakage. However, maybe a good budget move for us to sell the j30 axles if they are in fact rare. (I seem to remember that z32 axles are the same as j30 ones though, so that might be moot).

RACEC4R wrote: Here's the breakdown: Transmission and Drivetrain Engineers: Ian - RWD Technology and Innovation Neil - RWD Technology and Innovation Mark - Ford Performance Drivetrain Donovan - 10R Calibration Mike - 4WD Calibration Peter - 10R Calibration Hybrid Engineers: Taylor - MHT Calibration Jason - MHT Calibration Greg - EPE Calibration Team Engineer: Robbie - Rockstar, Team lead.

heh, heh, heh. I guess engineers love their PMs so much they call them "Team Leads"...

Just commenting so this shows up in my recent posts. Looking forward to see how this goes.

To the team- so you know, using the motorcycle motor means that the car isn't eligible for DM or EM. It's pretty specific in 18.1.D.1 in the SCCA rule book.

No need to stop working, but it's not going to be allowed to run DM or EM at any SCCA event.

It's still going to be a cool car.

In reply to alfadriver:

Whelp. That sucks, and I did miss that. Upon further reading, I guess anything with a bike motor is AM. I knew bike motor kicked you out of xp, but dang.

Nice work scca. "You can throw an ls6 in an Exocet or 7 kit but oh god no don't use that liter bike engine."

Big update from last weekend.

Got the car torn down basically completely, and up on stands in the garage ready for building up!

Some other pics of the emptyness:

While we were at it we used a bathroom scale to weigh and catalog everything we have removed so far. The results are pretty impressive!

Item Weight Change Running Total
Stock Fiat 1774 1774
Stock Motor block -165 1609
Stock Transmission -75 1534
Stock Starter+Head -60 1474
Stock Trunk Lid -18 1456
Stock Engine Cover -20 1436
Stock hood -30 1406
Stock Seat -30 1376
Stock Rear Bumper + shocks -22 1354
Stock Front Bumper -20 1334
Stock Roof -25 1309
Stock wheel + tire -120 1189
Stock Dashboard -11 1178
Stock lower dash + coolant expansion tank + various interior pieces -20 1158
Stock door cards + hood latch + hood release -10 1148
Stock heater core + fan + various hoses and wires -20 1128
Stock radiator + fan -25 1103
Stock wiring harness + wiper gear + windshield washer tank -25 1078
Stock center console + switchgear + visors -15 1063
Headlights + motors + brackets -25 1038
Stock gas tank + speedo cable -15 1023

So right now - we sit at an estimated 1023 lbs!!! We didn't weigh any of the suspension/hub/brake components since those will be going back on basically as break even, but I estimate that at 150 ish lbs for all 4 corners. Same with the steering column and wheel, and the pedal box. The car also still has all stock glass and both window regulators in the doors. We will also be able to pull the front bumper shocks for about 5lbs or so. And we haven't even cut any metal yet (the trunk area was cut before we got the car though).

All in all - I bet these x1/9 shells weigh in at right about 750 lbs. Pretty awesome! Even as it sits at 1100 ish we were able to easily move it around by leaving the 2 front tires on the ground and having 3 guys carry the rear end around. We didn't use a jack at all to set it up on the stands.

Whiskey business came over and gave us some good FSAE inside scoops on chain drive diffs and how to build them. He has offered to help with other parts of the build as well. THANKS whiskey!

Also, I got an oil pan in the mail from kevlarcorrola. This is specifically made for gsxr powered bike engine cars. Quite a nice piece! THANKS kevlar!

I owe a few people here some parts, but have been busy traveling with work and am about to leave for family vacation for thanksgiving. I will get detailed photos and shipping quotes upon return if you happen to be someone waiting for parts.

No problem buddy,look forward to seeing the build progress.

Man, I've been reading for years how the X1/9 are pretty overbuilt, and everyone always equates that to heavy for the size of the car. It is so nice to see some actual measurements here, and even nicer to see just how light the shell actually is!

Great progress, and don't worry about delays in shipping parts out on my account - I'm in no hurry.

This should be very cool. Sounds like you guys have a lot of brains to back it up as well. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

X1/9s are strong cars as they were built under the cloud of major roll over rules that could have banned 'verts. So to get the core to be that light is amazing

I, too, am quite excited about this build. Gotta stop by someday.

Updates! As always, life has been in the way with a new house, new garage, and the Saab for the pickup class.

Since the last posts here, we bought and sold a lot of parts, and bought another x1/9. There was a roll bar thread on it from back about a year ago.

This specimen was bought for $150 and was pulled from a field in southern Missouri. Notable parts include: fiberglass doors, hood, and trunk lid, widened stock steel wheels, and sway bars at both ends. Already converted to center steer, and complete with lots of years of neglect. The fuel cell has a manufacture date of 1/1978 on it, so I'm guessing this was built into a racecar in the late 70s!!!!

Anyway, the car was probably driven by Ron.

Here's the link to the roll cage thread:

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/calling-all-roll-cage-experts/127733/page1/

Is the color close enough to Burgundy you could name it Ron Burgundy?

Anyway, the sketchy "cage" had to go. I have also removed the giant bumpers and scrapped them for about $10 each, as well as sold a couple plastic parts flanking the engine cover. If we don't include shipping (challenge rules), then I'm into this car about $110. In case anyone is curious, the yellow car has sold enough to not only zero it's cost for challenge purposes, it has also covered almost all of the shipping to get the field Fiat home to me.

Pics of sketchy "cage".

So we finnally got the garage done, and now the Fiat is in it's new workspace. 

I started by removing all the square tubing. I was amazed that everything just unbolted! No cutting or grinding needed. 

Wound up with this pile of about 85 lbs of metal:

I plan to reuse most of that for mounting things like engines and stuff. Added to the 40ish lbs of the overhead hoop, there is about 125 lbs of metal taken out.

Finally, I had to test fit the $50 used roll bar I picked up from an xweb member last summer.

I figure I'll add a couple of forward bars angling down for nhra, but otherwise this is a much better starting point.

There's definitely some solid burgundy on the front fenders!

Today while the kids napped I built this:

After dinner and kids to bed, my brother in law came over. We put the car up on the "restoration cart". And started removing stuff. All the rear suspension came off easy, just unbolted. Even the brake lines!!! 

I think I need to get more southern Missouri cars.

So you're going to build up the field find then? Since it was so cheap?

Love that you scored all the fiberglass bits and I can't wait to see the weight difference between this car and the yellow one you started with.

You might consider doing an X while you are making the front diagonals.  that will make sure that the car structure is stiff enough front to back.  

Not sure if adding those would require another hoop in the front, but it would help a lot.  Heck, you might even be able to use the square tubes, since it's not the roll cage system.

Mezzanine said:

So you're going to build up the field find then? Since it was so cheap?

Love that you scored all the fiberglass bits and I can't wait to see the weight difference between this car and the yellow one you started with.

The current plan is to build up the field fiat and use the yellow one for parts. Rationale: Yellow one paid $0 in shipping and has been zeroed out with part sales, so everything from it is now budget neutral. The field one I did have shipped to me, at about $500. So if I only use it as parts, I need to put that shipping in budget. It's a bit wishy-washy for 'how much' of the field fiat needs to be used, but let's leave that aside. The field fiat has some cool parts that I would like to use for the build, including the fiberglass (I bet the 2 doors, trunk, and hood weight only 20lbs combined - I'll confirm that tonight). The other cool parts are front and rear sway bars, and the widened stock steel wheels. I need to measure the wheels but pretty sure they are 13x8 now rather than 13x4.5 or whatever was stock.

The field fiat also came with 4 (all used, but there) rear lower ball joints, which as an X1/9 person you probably know aren't cheap for good ones (NLA plus not separateable from the control arms). That means we now have 6 including the ones on the yellow car. I am hoping we can find the best two to run, and if we find 4 good ones then I can sell a couple from the field fiat and that alone should recoup the full purchase price.