FREE fiat x1/9 carcass with title - Detriot

Well, It has been a minute or two...

Mostly, I've been working on the house, but the threat of craigslist costing actual money prompted me to action. 

One "customer" later, I'm down to fifteen bucks shy of my allowable recoup.

 I'll admit, I could have held out for more cash, but a nice guy was trying to put his daughter-in-law's car back together after a wreck, and I got $235 for the front clip, including core support,tail light, trunk, and rear bumper. He traded me a driver's side tail light from a later model, so his resurrection would have matching lights, and was generally a pleasure to deal with. Plus, one-stop-shopping. 

He was thrilled to have near color matching panels, and I was equally thrilled to have the ball rolling.

Draining the radiator, things don't look so good, but a full rebuild is on the to-do list. Also, having such a ridiculously common/problem prone donor, I think I can work it out. 

Note, I discovered today, that I'm missing a MAF...off to the yards to find one...

In advance: apologies for the teaser. I've been busy with home improvements, which leaves plenty of time for reflection. I finally came up with a name.

Bertone-San. 

That is all.

In reply to wheelsmithy :

That works so long as you pronounce it Beartonaysan, which is correct on the Italian part. If you Megasquirt you do not need the MAF for the Datsun,er, Nissan.

wheelsmithy said:

In advance: apologies for the teaser. I've been busy with home improvements, which leaves plenty of time for reflection. I finally came up with a name.

Bertone-San. 

That is all.

Altimagnelli?

Fialtima?

Turinissan?

Sorry, I'll stop now.

Are you stuffing the front suspension from the Altima under the Fiat?

In reply to RandolphCarter :

Nope. The plan is AW-11 MR2 suspension, brakes, etc, front and rear.

TunerX19, that's the idea, with the San thrown in as a tip of the hat to the Japanese engine.

Megasquirt is not planned at this time. I'd like to adapt as much Nissan wiring as I can. Going to get it running/driving in the Altima chassis, then start hacking

Other pursuits have kept me very busy, but I finagled some time to work on the X. Really, the Altima.

Dropped the engine (really, lifted the car off it).

The plan here is do a tear-down, rebuild as necessary, reinstall in the Altima, get it running, and start paring down the harness before starting the REAL challenge of fitting and adapting this mess to the X. I am fortunate in that this is a non-cruise, non-ABS chassis. I'll take any simplification I can get. 

Some pictures more for my benefit than anyone else's:

The rear cat has been cored, and I'll bet this one has, too, which may be how this engine got past 100k (Cats blow back, ruining rings in these engines). Someone has been in here, also, pulling the engine quite sloppily. Broken connectors everywhere, the right ball joint had 1/2" of air below the nut. Sloppy wiring and brackets torn or missing. Good times, but maybe, fingers crossed that means some newer parts are in there -Clutch? Long block? We'll see.

Apologies for yet another tease. This thread really will have MEANINGFUL progress one of these days, but I needed to keep easy access to this picture. For belt routing in the future.Fun Fact: when I pulled it, the engine was locked up. ATF down the spark plug holes, and this POS gets to sleep inside. We will see how much trouble I'm in.

In reply to wheelsmithy :

That exhaust setup looks ripe for a nice little pipe elbow log manifold and a turbo. . .

In reply to whiskey_business :

Yeah, too bad the crank is made out of balsa wood.

In other news, there are almost never 4X100 wheels available on the local Craigslist. I've been looking nearly every day since January. Nothing at local Pull-a-Parts, either. I had almost given up hope, but this morning, magic.

Guy had sold his spec Miata, and wanted these gone. 15X7 Team Dynamic 1.2s. 13.6 lbs each. $100 bucks for the (shot) Falken Azenis tires, $250 for 4 wheels. He was even driving to town, and met me at the Panera 2 miles away. Nice fella. Chumpcar veteran.

44 bucks and change off ebay. Stainless. Free shipping.Less than a year left. I better start grinding to a start.

Well technically the yellow fiat build started before the field fiat, so it would be fitting it you get the yellow one to the challenge before I get the field fiat there!

Go go go!!!

Interesting engine choice for the build.  It's a good engine once the weird reliability issues are engineered out of it.  I have a QR25de in my Sentra rallycross car, I'm pulling the balance shaft out of it as soon as I have a free afternoon. 

That manifold was a screaming deal for $44.  You'd be hard pressed to find the raw materials for less.  Well done.  If the end results proves unreliable, then maybe...Faltima?

Fun thread, thanks.

Whelp, I said I'd roll in slow, right? 

My triumphant first half day got cut a bit short. 

Subframe off, check. Axles off, check. Transmission and starter off, check. Then It started getting a bit weird. Dual mass flywheel. My first experience with one of those. All this slop makes me feel funny inside. Weird pilot bearing. Throwout bearing is noisy. Wait, what is this bull E36 M3?

I don't have a tool to fit those flywheel bolts. Did this one back out, and beat the crap out of the flywheel? Surely not. It didn't fall out when I pulled the transmission off...I believe a hack did something shameful right here. Hopefully that bolt isn't broken off in the crank. Remember I said there was evidence of a poor engine pull? The thit plockens.

(EDIT: flywheel's off. T-55 torx. Bolt was missing completely, not broken off in the crank. All is well)

In reply to wheelsmithy :

I'm not familiar with that engine, but I could see the bolt interfering with the clutch disk if it backed out. Only other option that I see is that somebody stripped it out the bolt and had to hit it sideways with a drift to get it out. Def worth cleaning the threads...

I've been squeeking in the odd couple of minutes here and there to work on the QR25.

I got it on the stand, and started the teardown. It's still locked up, but it turned over when I got it, so I'm sure it can be freed.

So far, no smoking guns. In fact, two of the known killers of these engines have already been handled/were never a problem. The cat connected to the manifold has been knocked out, as has the second, as previously mentioned. Also, the butterflies in the intake are where they should be, along with all their screws. 

  There's lots of crap work- rounded/broken bolts, barely intact sensor wiring, etc, but Nothing scary yet.

The coolant is very rusty, but the oil looks okay, if totally black. Not much sludge under the valve cover.

So far, so good.

I had an altima of that gen, It liked to eat coilpacks and at one point 3 alternators in 6 months but it ran ok for the 150k miles it was in the family.

In reply to MrChaos :

Yeah, they are sort of POSs. The alternator is too close to the exhaust, Low redline, etc, etc. I'll try to minimize the weaknesses as much as I can, and heck, the price was right.

Teardown has not been smooth. I rounded out a head bolt, unless somebody did it before me.

Had to drill that sucker out.

It went downhill from there. Anyone seen anything like this before?

My best guess is that this is what an engine looks like when it eats its cat. Maybe the primary wasn't rodded out, and it all got sucked into the engine. 

Mains and crank don't look so bad. The cylinders are all seized tight, though. They are soaking in PB blaster. Again, this engine did turn over when I got it, so there may be a VERY slight glimmer of hope.

These engines are tough to pull, and disassemble, say at the Pull-a Part, so I've got some thinking to do.

Whelp, after some discussion , I decided to ditch donor #1.

I got basically $100 in scrap for the hulk. That leaves me about $165 in the hole, but I kept the transmission, clutch and flywheel, an airbag, clutch pedal, master and slave, brake master cylinder, and loads of precious nuts and bolts. Whatever, I'm an idiot, and none of this will be a hit to the budget.

Enter donor #2.

I know she's pretty, but she can punch, too.

It is a 5 speed, and this engine/transmission should need far less frame rail surgery to fit. 

Didn't golucky neon swap an x19?

Oof, I'm so glad you decided to cut bait on that engine. The Dodge engine is a proven swap and will serve well! 

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

Indeed I did. Happy to offer any insight or measures etc. I think that your new donor is way more better than the first one. If nothing else the Dodge makes it super easy to eliminate everything but the alternator.  

In reply to GoLucky :

Appreciated!

Let's get to it:

You ditched all the weird "dongle" (am I saying that right?) engine mounts, right?

Where you got your engine to sit, how in line with the wheel centerline was your axle centerline (from the trans)?

My firewall, tank, , and floor are gone, which should simplify all this. (My engine is quite a bit taller than yours-custom engine cover, or open engine bay, here we come).

I've been studying your thread, and plan to steal as much of your work as possible. Thank You for the inspiration.Heck, your thread is one of the main paths I followed to this donor. That, and blind Craigslist perusing luck.

Sweet. I'm glad you dumped that Nissan engine.  This should get you up and running sooner.

Also TURBO !!!!