They were prone to rust as soon as they left the factory. Yours is super clean and a nice nice example. A good idea is to get the one you want to buy up one the hoist and have a close inspection. Good video. Cheers.
Thank you! I'm starting to look for an X1/9 here in snowy Canada, to compliment my TR3 and my Rover P4 100. I know nothing about Italian cars, so this is a brilliant video of what to look for. Most of them were driven year-around here and rusted to nothing but there are a few about. Thank you again. Great video.
Spot on perfect advice what a lovely straight example of an X1/9 i hope you bought it I don’t know why the rust was sooo bad In the very distant past I’ve been told Italian steel was poorly smelted and had a high sulphur content - which apparently is not a good thing for rusting combined with a complete lack of dipping the body or being poorly dipped Not related to rust inspection - but when I look at vintage cars which I don’t do much any more but when I did I used to do a parasitic draw test quickly even using a $10 multimeter from supercheap auto Its a piece of cake you can google it on RU-vid on how to do it and sometimes you find huge parasitic drawers which tells you the wiring has got a short somewhere or partially earthing out in which case you might be able to negotiate them down….. Finding a short in the middle of a box channel somewhere is not a fun job when the wiring is old and every time you touch it the insolation crumbles away….. Could also indicate the switches need replacing and that can be expensive at worst and at best they come good with been cleaned Good video
If a car has no rust, shifts without grinding, and has a nice interior I'd say buy it. Everything else can be fixed without much fuss but these cars are disappearing and getting quite rare.
