Technical X-1/9 wont start amongst things

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Technical X-1/9 wont start amongst things

GlenRose

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hey everyone rather new to cars and that, got handed down an x-1/9 fiat (1300cc) i think its the 1978 model looking at some pics.

the guy we had it off got it working fine and my father bought it off him and drove it for quite some time. but then he just left it sit there for maybe a year or so and since then hasnt moved.

now i can drive im starting to restore it up again and have replaced the air tube that goes from the air filter to the carb cooling fan (the original was some perished paper thing) and done a fair bit more work to get the dash working.

however when i try to start it it will kick over initially but basically cut out as soon as its going. maybe a second after. and white smoke pours out the back... the dash says there is no oil in the thing but its full on the dipstick.

only thing i can really think of is to basically rip apart all the fuel lines and clean them out replace the fuel filter and drain out the oil and fill it again and see if that does anything. (further more heres an awesome n00b question what fuel can i put in it lol, ive been told premium unleaded but im sure theres some additive that needs to go in with it that evades me...

oh and when i got it, it came with these really hideous stickers on the side that have to go... only thing im worried about is the paint being less faded under them.. anyone have any tips there?

oh and im around the sydney area in australia, any other fiat owners about :D
 
The basic problem is going to be that everything rubber - particularly in the engine bay - is going to be junk or getting there fast. The odds are that you aren't getting any significant fuel through to the carb or more importantly out of the carb into the engine.

The next problem is that white smoke - you'll have to clarify this for me but it is either vaporised unburnt fuel or (and I'm sure you really didn't want to hear this) the head gasket has rotted (or blown) and the smoke is actually water vapour.

I would start with basic diagnostics - check oil and water to make sure there is no contamination. Disconnect one side of the coil low tension and turn the engine over for about 15 seconds. Take the plugs out and take a look. The plugs should be drenched in fuel but could equally be soaked in water. Assuming you have a good battery the engine should spin at much the same speed all the way through the burst but if it gets slower and slower it is likely drawing water from the cooling system and filling up the combustion chambers. Turn the engine over again without the plugs in to clear the build up (just don't stand near the engine bay when you do it unless you want to look like you live in a tar pit).

If the plugs come out completely dry then the headgasket is likely OK but you aren't getting any fuel through. Either the fuel pump is struggling and the carb is running dry *or* the carb is blocked up with debris. You can try cleaning out the jets (one at a time so you don't get them mixed up) but I suspect it will need splitting in which case you need a new gasket for it. Check the float level is right while you do it.

There are no special fuel requirements for the X1/9 - the heads were built to cope with low grade american unleaded fuel so should cope fine with modern premium unleaded but best is to use a higher octane fuel if you can get it.

The paintwork likely just needs going over with a cutting compound to remove oxidised paint - especially if it is a red colour. If it is a metallic you probably aren't going to be so lucky, even more so if it is a metallic red...
 
well after a week of poking about in the engine bay i finally remembered that it used to have a haggard old voxsom alarm in it that got removed as it was dead and weighed about 10kg lol.

i got a plug from work bridged the immobiliser point for the fuel pump and starts first time everytime. sounds like sex on wheels :D revs to 2000 when it starts though which is because of the automatic choke i presume.

ohhh im going to have some fun with this :slayer: videos and pics soon!
 
http://glen.botclips.net/Fiat start 1.wmv
http://glen.botclips.net/Fiat start 2.wmv

theres a vid of it starting. fired up fairly quick actually considering it hasnt been touched in a year.

next up is to fix the fuel guage which has decided to stop working all together (is this a common fault or would the guage need to be replace?) and fixing the plastic vents that sit either side of the engine bay which have split..

and one more q while im asking, does any one know whether the fiat has positive switching or negative switching door switches?
 
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GlenRose said:
http://glen.botclips.net/Fiat start 1.wmv
http://glen.botclips.net/Fiat start 2.wmv

theres a vid of it starting. fired up fairly quick actually considering it hasnt been touched in a year.

next up is to fix the fuel guage which has decided to stop working all together (is this a common fault or would the guage need to be replace?) and fixing the plastic vents that sit either side of the engine bay which have split..

and one more q while im asking, does any one know whether the fiat has positive switching or negative switching door switches?
Hi Glen,

and welcome to the forum! ;)
Looks in nice condition from what we can see, and sounds healthy. You're right, it is a 1300, but I thought that only 1500s had an automatic choke (obviously I was wrong).

Rather than the gauge, I would head straight for the sender. The float may have sprung a leak and filled up with petrol. I've heard that modern fuels cause problems with the plastics, but I think it's just an age-thing. Or, hopefully, you'll find just a broken wire in the sender, where it's attached to the resistor winding.

Plastic vents, I'm sure you'll work something out. When repairing similar plastic in the past, I've used 'Newtech' (fibre-reinforced grey filler).

The door switches are negative-switching. I don't think your X1/9 will have a time delay unit on the interior lights - but my '88 Bertone did :)

Cheers,
-Alex
 
havent had a chance to look for the fuel sender, may sound like a half-arsed question but where abouts is it mounted in the engine bay side of things? will save me a bit of time fiddling around looking for it if anyone knows :)

also noted the plastic around the gear shift is all cracked and one of the blank buttons at the base was missing, so i replaced it with my newest toy from my work. go the finger print immobiliser

http://glen.botclips.net/Fiat/Fiat FPA

the women love it :D

very tempted to look for another bombed out old exy and turn it into a little track racer for myself and use this one as run about for the day. im having so much fun with it :D
 
DSC03789.jpg


DSC03790.jpg


DSC03786.jpg
 
Looking very nice indeed!

The fuel sender is (obviously) in the fuel tank which is behind the left hand seat. You can access the top of the tank from the engine bay and the sender should just come straight out of the top.

The downside is that the seal is likely to breakup when you pull the lid off so be careful - even more so when undoing the screws that hold it down!

For the moment I would suggest being extra careful. I've known of a couple of over-enthusiastic owners who decided to drop the tank to give it a full working over and were left with a sieve.
 
jeez long time no progress. got a chance to look at the sender, both the wires where both on their, a bit corroded so i sandpapered them a little and crimped the spade connectors on a bit tighter and still no joy.

i pulled the dash off and looked at the plug behind it that has the wires for the fuel guage and there was fine connection their. the tracks on the circuit board on the back arent cracked or anything..

apparently the sender itself was replaced not so long ago so i dont think thats the problem. only thing i can put it down to myself is the gauge or the wiring between the sender and the gauge. so two questions.

- is there a way to test the fuel gauge itself, theres two wires a red/black and yellow/blue can i just apply positive or negative to one and see if the dial moves etc...

- i want to check if theres continuity between the sender itself and the wires on the dash but my multimeter wires arent that long, instead of hacking something up where do the wires for the sender actually come through? i thought perhaps they come through the spare wheel well but couldnt see them anywhere :chin:

and while im on a question asking spree im just removing all this useless wiring from a 1980s alarm that got shoe horned in there years back and ive gotten most of it (so much more room in that engine bay now!) and im sure theres an external immobiliser relay in the system somewhere. i see one thats bolted to the firewall of the engine bay right next to the carbuerettor fan, would anyone know if its for the fan itself or something. i was going to yank the wires off to see but ran out of time tonight :p

this fiddly stuff takes some time :rolleyes:
 
If everything else checks out then it has to be the dashboard itself. I can't remember exactly how the wiring goes - I did have it all drawn out as I was modifying the dashboard but that project got scrapped many years ago.

Some of the guys over on xweb have been modifying their dashboards and probably have a much better insight into the matter (and they have some very nice mods too - including converting to low power LEDs).

The wiring from the sender should go through either the spare wheel well or underneath through the backbone tunnel - there is nowhere else it can go... try following the brown wire (thick cable) from the battery to the engine bay.

The relay you mentioned is for the carburettor fan - it is very unlikely any alarm would have an external relay, it would make it too incredibly easy to bypass (not that they aren't already).
 
thanks for the advice mate,

took a look at the gauge. that was fine. checked the senders. both fine...

got sick of it and put the dash back together, put a new fuel filter on, new air filter cleaned all the alarm wiring and crap from it and touched up the paint on the engine bay so she was ready for its first run in some time.

took it about 2km up the road to get fuel where it seemed okay. i figured it was cause its not been run in ages. we put 5 liters of unleaded in to see how it would fare, stuck the additive in their as well (only used 5 liters as we had to weld the fuel tank together previously as it had split and wanted to make sure it wouldnt leak again).

on the return it was shuddering something shocking and felt like it had no guts.. i was well crapping myself as i thought i had stuck the wrong fuel in it :eek: , but after i ran it for a while seemed to pick up a bit so we ran it about 10km further to the next petrol station. no leaks in the tank seemed to be running fairly well but still shuddered abit.

soooo with no leaks we filled the tank up with a grand total of $20 of fuel lol seems its all it takes, and low and behold the freaking gauge works... was just out of fuel all this time :shakehead on a full tank it runs beatifully. so happy. will grab a video of it running properly soon!

but before that one item thats bothering me. the water temp gauge seems to read fairly well as it climps up as it should. BUT it runs up to nearly 90 degrees in the first 5 mins of driving and then 130 after 10. the radiator fan runs continuously as i rewired it and the little water tank at the back was full to the brim. left it sit for about 20 minutes and the needle was a tad under 100 degrees. took the filler cap off and no water explosion. didnt seem *that* hot. certainly not 100 degrees anyway. maybe the thermostat?

not sure what that could be. i want to get an IR temperature reader though so i can at least check it.
 
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I think there might be a lesson there - at least you know it works now!

I tend to buy stick on temperature strips rather than relying on gadgets. The downside is that they aren't reusable but it does allow you to find out how hot something has got even after you stop and get out.

It sounds very much like the gauge is misreading or the sender is faulty - but going on what has just been observed with the fuel gauge I would try and get a positive reading from a second source before chasing the problem.

It should reach 90 within the first 5 minutes - that is about right but it shouldn't go above 100 and certainly not 130, that would mean impending head gasket failure due to overheating... The fact the header tank is getting that hot suggests that the problem is not overheating.
 
hehe yes a lesson indeed. many lessons to learn from this little beast :D now i thought i might make a photo diary of what ive been doing.

removed the wiring from the alarm as the unit and everything weighed literally 10kg it was that huge (the speaker was a monster lol). and the installation was hideous.. wires where touching up against the engine block and such and some genius decided to add a pin switch in the engine bay when it already had one! so i took that all out. bit less weight, but less complexity is always a good thing.

DSC03905.jpg


before -
DSC03898.jpg


after! -
DSC03902.jpg


hmmm wrapping a bare wire around a ring terminal unsoldered?! wtf! :eek:
DSC03899.jpg


the air filter cover was quite chipped as my father was rather careless removing the bolts and tore all the paint off and it started rusting so i ground off the rust and repainted them both. didnt turn out that badly.

DSC03891.jpg


then did the standard air filter, fuel filter change and cleaned the works up. wanted to get the engine belt cover off to clean it but couldnt get the bolt at the bottom off... need to remove the whole engine soon anyway to replace or at least clean all the rust from it.

and because i am obsessive compulse about using socket head bolts in everything (or at least hex heads :p ) i tore every phillips head bolt out and replaced it hehe.

DSC03908.jpg

DSC03906.jpg


this after noon i got under the car to try dump the radiator and see what stuff comes out of it (stuck a stocking around the top pipe and shoved the garden hose up the bottom hose) and after doing that noticed the wires for one of the fans was disconnected and the wires in the loom bridged. WHY!? not even connected nor tied up... would love to know which auto elec worked on this thing before me :mad:

DSC03917.jpg


sounds good jimbro, seems to get up to 90 degrees in 5 minutes as you say. havent gotten the chance to drive it yet so im hoping this has finally fixed it.

and unfortunately as you can see the radiator pipes are rusted quite badly. fiatorque in granville looks to offer a non intrusive replacement so i may look into that.

anyone think that replacing the rather minimal radiator fans with some larger types (i have some quite huge ones from a nissan pintara 80s model) might help? would it be easy to convert?

thanks for enduring my shoddy pictures and ranting :D
 
*rips hair out*

argh so many problems. tested the cooling system out (still rust from everywhere inside the thing but im working on that), and gave it a bit of a rev. maybe 4500rpm but i noticed that the RPM noticably slowed at idle after this. then i revved it again to the same rpm and same thing...

is this an effect of running the unleaded petrol? does it need retiming?

also found one pipe from the carbon filter (the big can beside the header tank) that ran into the carb was kinked with a couple of cable ties. so i cut it and now theres a hideous hissing sound coming out of it. does anyone know what it does or why it would be kinked up?

curiosity electronic ignition doesnt look to hard what kinda performance increase does this gain?
 
You shouldn't really be getting any ill effects from running on unleaded and definitely not at idle like that. I would double check the choke mechanism to make sure it isn't the housing alignment or just the fast idle adjustment.

Can't help on the carbon cannister - never come across one in all my years working with exxies. Even the few cars I saw in the states had been generally modified to remove the emissions control circuit. Looking at the photos you posted I'm not sure I understand what you are referring to.
 
i was contemplating removing all that stuff. not to sure what the procedure is, does anyone know of a website guide etc.

with regards to the carbon filter heres a pic of it. the haynes manual says its an "activated carbon trap". i have a fair suspicion that someones actually plumbed it up wrong...

wtfsmallkinkDSC03904.jpg
 
Pipe from fuel tank goes to the cannister, then to the valve, then to carb/manifold. Have you got the right fuel cap? It should have a check valve on it. If the valve is faulty[ i suspect] after the cannister, it will be feeding vapours at the wrong time, which will mess up the idle speed. i can't see any problems junking it. Only one though, and thats emission laws. But i wont tell them !!!:)

Andy.
 
thanks! started looking around the emmissions gear and its left me with more questions than answers!!

firstly i traced everything back. as is my understanding this is all non emmision related (fuel splitter from the tank or some such..) thats all fine it seems.

DSC03948.jpg


nothing i can take off there i presume?

well this seems to be the source of the evil. the carbon trap.

DSC03945.jpg


the top left pipe - the largest runs off into nowhere and is blocked off with a spark plug :shakehead

the middle pipe goes off to the fuel tank.

theres also a pipe at the bottom that seems to run down under the car. not sure what thats for yet.

then the other top pipe runs off to this valve.

DSC03946.jpg


then off to the carb (its the lower of the two pipes that run into the carby.)

the bottom pipe from the carbon trap as you can see in the first pic, also is not connected to anything..

the other issue i think is with the two pipes that run up into the carb. a good friend believes theyve been put on the wrong way as when i unkink that pipe in a previous picture, the engine gains about 500rpm.

long story short i think this is just terribly wrong :confused: how does one replumb all of this!
 
thanks! started looking around the emmissions gear and its left me with more questions than answers!!

firstly i traced everything back. as is my understanding this is all non emmision related (fuel splitter from the tank or some such..) thats all fine it seems.

DSC03948.jpg


nothing i can take off there i presume?

well this seems to be the source of the evil. the carbon trap.

DSC03945.jpg


the top left pipe - the largest runs off into nowhere and is blocked off with a spark plug :shakehead

the middle pipe goes off to the fuel tank.

theres also a pipe at the bottom that seems to run down under the car. not sure what thats for yet.

then the other top pipe runs off to this valve.

DSC03946.jpg


then off to the carb (its the lower of the two pipes that run into the carby.)

the bottom pipe from the carbon trap as you can see in the first pic, also is not connected to anything..

the other issue i think is with the two pipes that run up into the carb. a good friend believes theyve been put on the wrong way as when i unkink that pipe in a previous picture, the engine gains about 500rpm.

long story short i think this is just terribly wrong :confused: how does one replumb all of this!

The culprit of poor idle is that valve. I think its faulty and permanently open.
I would junk all the pipe work, cannister and valve. find the pipe going to the fuel tank, shorten it so it goes to atmosphere to let the tank breath.
Where does the other pipe go from the carb [one you say goes to the valve]? I would blank both off, but you will prob need to retune the carb. You may also need air to one of the pipes. try putting your finger over the pipe fitment at carb and see if the engine stalls or faulters.

Andy.:)
 
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