A Work in Progress 4.4: 1978 Series Speciale Fiat X1/9 (Weight-reduction Issue)
Despite its Zapparian appearance, this item is not a First Church of Appliantology* fetish-satisfaction device. It is, in fact, a highly-advanced Fiat X1/9 weight reduction machine!
How so?, you ask. Without giving away too much, there are cables and hoses, hot water and suds. Plus a whole lotta suction. Not at all fetishistic!
Forty one years is a long time, so the state of my Series 1 X1/9's upholstery is actually amazingly good. Sure, there were four decades' worth of surface grime and stains but there weren't any tears, almost no scuffing and very little fading, either.
My X does, however, have its own unique smell**, quite possibly due to some sort of insecticide or other biological control agent sprayed into the car's erstwhile shipping container home when it was criss-crossing the world as a great big delivery box. Sometimes I think I can feel my cells mutating just by breathing in its vapours!
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| Above and below: driver's seat base. |
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| Driver's seat back. |
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| Immediately above and both shots below: passengers' seat. |
Back to our weight-loss machine ... . That great temple of D-I-Y - you know the one: Australia's weekend home of sizzling sausages, a "... beat it by 10 percent" price guarantee and the crushed dreams of independent hardware store owners - happens to also hire out Britex upholstery cleaners, as well as selling all the consumables required to detail your own car interiors.
So, putting aside my aversion to monopolistic conglomerates of any description, I succumbed to convenience and headed out to my nearest Britex-hire outlet and signed up for 24 hours' worth of suds 'n' suck for 38 bucks. Plus a $100 deposit and another tenner or so for the proprietary upholstery cleanser, of course!
As I said earlier, forty one years is a long time. And three bucket-fulls of turgid, watery black dirt, grunge and detritus - as shown above and below - is also a lot of muck to have sucked up after forty one years' worth of heavy-duty service cushioning the botties of the car's previous owners, not including the accumulated grime from the carpets! I had to spray a few stubborn stains with some Sard, as well as soaking some of the more recalcitrant spots in Biozet, but it all came out in the wash, as they say!
All up, I reckon that equals a fairly decent weight saving and, as a bonus, the upholstery's cleaned-up a treat, too, as evidenced by the following pics. The carpets also yielded a similar payload and, despite a big wear spot on the driver's floor, is looking quite rejuvenated.
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| Degrunged and back in the car. I've swapped the seats from side to side so that the areas showing slight wear get a rest. |
In my next post, I'll go all - the - waayyy with a tube of Sikaflex, some etch primer and a can of sound deadener. And I might stop making obscure references to the music of Frank Zappa, too.
U M P H
(uppermiddlepetrolhead.blogspot.com.au.)
All iPhone images.
** The car still smells weird.
The smell is not from its original shipping container but rather it is from one at Lewisham that it took over from my MGB. The active agent is fish oil that was used to preserve and protect the container, and it is quite possible that the former owner of the FIAT used some on it too.
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