(This post will be edited for names, references and picture content)
For those of you fairly new to X-Web, this is in reference to our Founder Ian "Mac" McIntosh's 1975 X19.
Mac branded his 1975 X1/9 as "the car that started it all"
I would like this post to become the beginning of a documentary of this restoration.
This will likely be my biggest post on X-Web, mainly because I'll be using references to some of Mac's own posts and (try) to define this project in as clear of terms as I can. Throughout this project, I'll be asking the opinions of the X-Web community regarding specific details of this restoration. Many folks here have had on-line dealings with Mac and shared much of his passion. I'm proud to say I'm also one of those folks.
I consider this restoration both a challenge and a privilege. When you see the car in person, the challenge becomes obvious. But this is no ordinary car. This car dodged a range of obstacles. Mac was forced to abandon this car to others on 3 occasions. If not for these folks stepping up to help and Mac "saving her from the crusher" at great personal sacrifice, this car would surely have been long gone.
With that, I want to thank Mike Mittelstead, Wayne Wright, Trent (?), Leslie Sickler, (Mac's mom), Greg Smith, and anyone else not immediately mentioned in having a hand with storing Mac-X and saving this car from extinction.
I took time over the last month to read every post made by Mac on X-Web 1.0, partly to find out what he wanted for his 1975 X1/9 and partly to know more of who Ian McIntosh was. There are literally hundreds of posts that reference his 1975 X, some describing his vision for the car and some describing his trials and tribulations. If you really want to know more of who Mac was at a personal level, I would encourage you to start on Page -362 of X-Web 1.0 and find / read every post initiated with the name "Mac". I can guarantee after reading 200 pages of his posts, you'll discover much of who he was. Aside from having a very strong passion for X1/9's, he was a leader, a talented XML and VB programmer, artistic, VERY knowledgeable with X1/9's, and a keeper of the PEACE. Every new member of X-Web was greeted by Mac with the saying "We always have room for 1 more" and "welcome to the addiction". He had high respect for those who were knowledgeable in his field of expertise and took situations "gone wrong" very personal. X-Web was his baby and he treated it that way throughout his 10-year tenure. He spent MANY hours at personal sacrifice to bring X-Web (both versions) to the masses in the form we so well enjoy today. These Forums are his creation and his legacy. Even in it's poor condition, Mac's 1975 X1/9 was his most valued possession, rivaling his 1980 X. He once said he'd let the 1980 X go before giving up on the 1975.
Back in early 2001, I (like many others) started off in "lurker mode" with X-Web. I had just begun the process of looking for another X1/9 and discovered X-Web in a Google search. There were a few X1/9 forums in existence at the time but this forum attracted me as being the best and most active of them all. I began saving images and posts from X-Web that seemed applicable to my anticipated needs and decided I'd create a library (of sorts) of all these posted images. I bought my trailer queen in the summer of 2001 but never posted on X-Web until nearly 2 years later. In that time I had a pretty good library and reference base, including the infamous "5-Speed 101" postings, pictures and all. Today, this photo library is in excess of 20 gigabytes of storage!
In saving all these pictures, it ends up they became an exclusive reference because all the links on early XWeb 1.0 were lost due to some "technical difficulty" with the image server X-Web was referencing. Though I thought it nice to have these photos, I never really acknowledged their real value until recent events of 2010.
One such post made back in 2004 was saved in my archive because the story struck me at a personal level. I am posting it below for all to read with links to the original photos exactly as it was posted back in the day. I don't know how long these photo links will remain, (ImageShack) but here is Mac's post with pictures from my archives as originally posted in 2004 that I believe expressed his true passion for this 1975 X1/9:
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[FONT=Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial]My beloved '75 X1/9, a drive down memory lane (long with lots of pics)...
[/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial]May 31 2004 at 2:35 PM[/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial] Mac
[/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial]haha I know about 20 pics were snapped of me in that car... so WHY did you have to use the one best featuring my giant schnoz?!
I've been told the celebrity I most resemble is Brent Spiner! Ugh. Why Lord? You know I actually dressed up like LtCdr Data once on haloween, I had the full uniform (a professionally made one I rented), scoured comic shops in Seattle, came up with a very convincing comm pin, hair color, white/green skin makeup, even an incredibly convincing next generation tricorder with lights and sounds. I tried to even get yellow costume contact lenses but that was just too expensive. Turns out it didn't matter. I ended up helping out at some friends' GIANT haloween party in Seattle (we're talking a couple thousand people attending in costume haloween night in a huge abandoned steel foundry on the waterfront, it was the biggest "underground" haloween party Seattle's seen to this day I believe, the fire department and the ATF broke it up in the wee hours if you can believe that, but that's another tale!) in any event they found the place for me, I was right at the entrance collecting the door money, and acting as bouncer / welcome wagon, and every person who came to the party got a huge laugh (helped they were all plowed) when they finally got through the line and up to the door they are greeted with LtCdr Data straight faced looking them over, scanning them for contraband with a tricorder, offering a pleasant greeting and taking the cover money. I'm not even a trekkie but someone told me I should do Data because I "have the nose for it" - gee thanks a lot! Anyway, I digress...
Back to Wayne's, and this picture... Yes this is the glorious sunset orange '75 X1/9, my very first X, I bought it sometime in 1991 if memory serves me, the one that started it all, ignited my passion, and caused SeaX and later Xweb to ever even exist... I was only the 3rd owner since new, and the first 2 didn't do much but drive her to death. In fact I bought her from a local mechanic shop (who here knows Tino Fortunato from Agafor's in Olympia? Yep that's where I saw her, sitting in Tino's yard, the owner took her in for a big bunch of work then decided not to pay the bill, so Tino leined the car and put it up for sale, that's when I saw her, and it was magic from the start!) - Here's a shot of what she looked like the day I brought her home for the very first time...
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Actually by the time I even snapped these I had already started in on her, blacked out the rockers under the doorline was the very first thing, then painted the wheels black (they were this awful cracked up gold when I got her). I set about immediately from there doing all the things to make her my own, blacked a strip across the nose (to this day I LOVE the way that worked out, especially when the little bug eyes were up, with that black strip across the tips), blacked the entire interior, wheel and tire upgrades, a new kickin stereo system, "dropped" the bumpers (lowered them with custom brackets to give her less of a "football helmet" look and a lower more agressive stance, basically like a single rail conversion but with the second rail still attached below) and even did a color matched hood scoop on the engine cover! (don't get me going about that one, or this post will never end) and what we ended up with by the time I took off for my first road trip across the country in her (I'm skipping WAY ahead here, you can thank me later
) was this...
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This was her in her glory days, that shot was taken in a field in Lake Forest Illinois in the summer of '95. This X and I traveled all over the US together. I set a 1300/4 speed personal record in this car driving solo from Seattle to Chicago in 35 hours! Here's a clearer shot of the glorious '75 sitting in Chicago...
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Ah she was looking fine that day. Stayed for a season, lots of memories, summer was hot, winter was COLD, this is the car that was (infamous tale) FROZEN to the ground in a McDonald's parking lot for 4 days in the flash freeze onset of Lake Michigan cold that winter. I had to use a blow dryer and an extension cord to melt my way to yanking the top off, climb in, and kick the door open from the inside, then melt the tires loose, I still recall finally got her out of there, 4 little tire shaped ice cups on the ground. That's when it was time to get the hell out of Chitown. So another trip across the USA, down through St Louis and through the Texas panhandle (the snow in the Ozarks was so bad I was plowing through it, deeper than my car, snow going over the top, at about 15mph, slip sliding all over at 3 am with these 18 wheelers just blasting by me blowing me all over, man, that was nuts) and finally made it to SUNNY San Diego where I took up residence for another year with my beloved '75 and at that point decided to reward her for her service with a full on engine rebuild...
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...the first I'd ever done, and I am proud to say, still in the car AND running (last time we tried to fire it up anyway) to this day! I must have done something right! And yes that's the top end in the passenger seat. After a long period on jack stands finally got it going and celebrated with another road trip, not so long this time, just to Sedona Arizona... here's a pic of me and a buddy taking off from San Diego on that ride, this shot was snapped literally at the last moment the X ever saw California...
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...and a slightly more forgiving profile of my schnoz!
Man I forgot what I looked like when I was getting some sun! Anyway, I also forgot that I did screw something up on that engine rebuild, I learned the value of proper machine shop selection, I had done everything right on the rebuild, but I had to pick a machinist blind and the one I got f*cked up the head resurface, so here we are oh about 3 am in the middle of NOWHERE Arizona, about 26 miles to Kingman (the next exit) when the FelPro gave up the ghost. Here's me performing a roadside tracheotomy in an effort to diagnose what went wrong...
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We were rescued after about a half hour of this by the coolest cop I think I've ever met, a very jolly Arizona State Trooper who not only arrived to see why we were there, but offered to PUSH the car with his cruiser ALL THE WAY to Kingman!! We got our kicks on Route 66 being pushed down it by a Crown Victoria hahah
Spent the night at "Crazy Fred's Truck Stop" (stay away from the eggs!) and in the morning were shocked and amazed to discover that we were less than a mile from (unbelievable to this day) not only the only mechanic shop within a hundred miles that probably even knew what a Fiat was, but (!!) a "factory authorized Fiat service center"! By the way if you ever need a head resurfaced in Arizona I hear TNT Auto in Kingman does a stellar job
Sadly I had to leave the car and get back to Cali, so my X stayed and I actually had to come back on a Greyhound bus a month later to get it, and when I did, it was OFF TO SEATTLE AGAIN, BABY! Woohoo!! Finally going back to where we came from... That was a fun drive. I recall sleeping in a cow pasture somewhere near Redding off the freeway in the grass, laying behind my X, waking up with about 5000 mosquito bites and a CHP trooper standing over me asking what I was doing there? Ok ok back on the road, and back to Seattle!
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After all we've been through, this is where the story starts to get really SAD... When I got back to Seattle I was actually homeless for a while, and looking to start my life back over again here. During this time I had nowhere for my '75 to go, I was working a throwaway job for a while installing car stereos in Lake City (a couple locals tell me they recall driving by that establishment back then and seeing the screaming orange X sitting outside a lot) and couch surfing friends' pads etc, but this just could not go on forever, and I had just gotten an old beater Honda through a fluke of circumstance and decided I would rather be running the wheels off that for a while and give the ol' girl a break (and certainly being homeless had nowhere to put TWO cars) so in a de-facto sense, I gave her to my dad to "keep and use" until I could get re-established in Seattle with a home and a "real" job etc. This was in the big boom of the late 90s and it took me a lot longer to get situated than I had hoped, with all the dot commers still crushing folks like me for housing and work etc. It was rough, and my dad ended up with the '75 a lot longer than I had initially planned. Thing about my dad is, he had NO SENSE AT ALL of the value of the car's paint for the sake of "originality", all he knew was that it (to him) was this hideous retina scorching 70s disco orange and since it was (de-facto) his car now, he decided without letting me know that he was just going to paint it BLACK. Worse yet? He did this in his garage in his spare time, WITH THICK GOOEY BLACK - HOUSE PAINT - AND A BRUSH... My dad was the kind that liked to use what he had on hand. Why go buy a bunch of paint when there's already a big bucket of it in the workshop, ya know? Then he got really wild and found the silver can. He was totally thrilled with the results, I still recall his sincerely regarding it as a major improvement when I finally heard about it... when I finally came back to claim my beloved '75 again, this is what greeted me: (ps that's just a parts car being stripped in the background)
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This was a real turning point in the story of my '75. This paint job, after all the years and miles and stories and memories and adventures, this paint job really somehow marked the beginning of the end for my poor beloved '75. I took the car back to Seattle, furious really, but said no such thing to my dad. I did not know really what to say, and I know he did not mean to upset me by it, so getting pissed at him would have done me no good, I just took the car back and left, then blew up when I got home. It was shortly after that that the car got hit by some drunk driver one night while it was parked on the street. I came out to see the left front fender smashed to sh*t and the driver side headlight pod mashed into the nosecone. At that point, I just grabbed some rattle can and shot it black all over. I was really really sad now... and from here on in, fortunes just got progressively worse for my dear old '75...
Suddenly we're up to the summer of '99 and my dad has passed away from cancer. I quit my job quit my life in Seattle and abandon everything to go back to Olympia and try to save my wicked step mother from losing his house to creditors. During this time I had the '75 stashed back in his garage, the same shop where it acquired the black paint job, and slowly between estate duties began the task of trying to get all that paint back off by hand rubbing with acetone rags...
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The good news was that, under all that goo house paint, the original sunset orange seemed remarkably well preserved! The bad news was that, using any kind of motorized method would probably have caught me on fire in a shop full of acetone vapor, and hand rubbing was killing me faster than I could wax on wax off. I will never forget the headaches I used to have trying to rub that car down. Six months I slaved away to settle my dad's estate and save that house from creditors for my step mom (it was his dying wish that I do this for her) and literally the day it was all finally done, and danger was gone, she booted me out on my ear. Scrambling Holly and I found a place nearby, and for the first stroke of good luck, it had a massive garage space!! I was thrilled I might finally have hope of bringing my poor X back from the dead. We dragged it over to the place and I set about totally disassembling it in the shop there, took it almost entirely down to a rolling chassis with engine and tranny in, and all the rest either lost, thrown out, broken, or boxed up in pieces. It was during this period that SeattleX1/9 held the now infamous "July 1st 2k" gig in the field behind my place, where the "ride that will live in infamy" took place, I drove the stripped out '75 out into the packed show field and with people in every possible seating position proceeded to do backward power sliding rooster tailing donuts all over the field, giving many a visiting FEN concours Spider owner a near fatal heart attack (and a few of their cars a near fatal miss! heh...)
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Sadly this was just about the final hurrah for me and my dear sweet '75. After this things did not go quite the way I had planned, and soon it was coming time to move again, this time back to Seattle proper, which was welcome news, but in that place I never did get far enough to start restoration in earnest. In fact, I knew where I was going I was not going to even have a garage at all. It was at this time that I spent many a sleepless night staring at the ceiling and thinking heavily on what to do. I had already owned my current black '80 X (known as "Little 80" which when said casually sounds remarkably like "little lady"
) for quite some time and it was work enough staying on top of all going on with her, to say nothing of all my old beater Hondas about a dozen of which had to be discarded before the move, oh yeah and the '79 Alfa Sport Sedan. All this had to go, it was the big shakedown, and as things were going away, I made the painfully difficult decision to GIVE MY '75 AWAY to WAYNE WRIGHT. He came and retrieved all the boxes of parts, and pulled the poor '75's carcass up onto his trailer, to haul it off to his shop. He told me he was thinking of turning it into some kind of project. I told him that he was free to do whatever he felt was best, even if that meant stripping and scrapping. I had to let it go. It was beyond anything I could do for it then. I stood there with one hand on my '80 and a tear in my eye as Wayne drove away with my '75 on the trailer....
That's it in a nutshell. From there on, the only times I got to see her again were at the SeaX gatherings at Wayne & Sandy's. I would show up in the '80, and at some point during the gig it became the running joke to see me silently slipping away from the crowd and wander off to the side of Wayne's garage to pay my respects to the ONE X THAT STARTED ALL OF THIS, the one that MADE SEATTLEX1/9 HAPPEN, the one that made me fall in love with these cars, and the one I can not seem to let go, even after I let it go. Everyone would get a good laugh watching me slip over, lift up the tarp, stick my head under, whisper a few sweet nothings then start cussing and swinging when the angry bees who had nested in the car came out to run me off. It's become almost an annual tradition at these gigs for me to get stung at least once each gathering while trying to touch my '75.
Well, this time, yesterday, when the pic at the top of this discussion thread was taken, Wayne and Sandy have moved out of Tacoma and down south of Chehalis. They dragged all the dead Xs along, and Wayne is stripping them out. Some are to be kept and some are to be scrapped. I learned yesterday that my old '75 (or what's left of her) is not going to make the cut. She is slated to be sent off to the crusher. It was upon hearing this rumor circulating among the crowd (I don't blame you Wayne for not coming out and telling me, I would not want to have to tell me that either, but I do understand, I never expected you to do anything with it but whatever you saw fit, I told you that when I gave it to you) that I went into the shop and began to dig the '75 out from under the pile of doors, fenders and tops stacked up on her... and climbed inside. I had my cherished moment and this time managed to dodge the only bee that came out, bucking the trend (maybe a good omen!?) and as I was having my moment with the old girl, I looked up to see damn near every camera at the gig clicking away at me, everyone laughing and grinning, I am a fool for this old car...
And there you have the pic at the start of this thread.
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Now, I am in a real fix. I have no money, no garage, and I am once again getting ready to be evicted from my current home. I can't even work on my '80, and certainly have no place to drag the dead '75 off to, but upon hearing it is on its way to the jaws of the crusher, I just about had a panic attack! I found myself telling Wayne, "NO NO, I'LL TAKE IT BACK! PLEASE HOLD OFF, I WILL FIND A PLACE, I WILL TAKE IT BACK."
So it looks like I am now going to try to take it back, I have no idea where I am going to take it TO, I don't even know whether I will be homeless in two months, let alone where I will put the Integra and the '80 X, so where am I going to put my '75 in pieces???
I can NOT let it go to the crusher. I can not. I am on a mission to find a place to put it so I can once and for all rub that black paint off piece the panels back together and get the car back to life. I don't even care if she's ever "Clean" again I just want her to RUN AND DRIVE. That is my goal, that is my mission... and that is my story. I hope you enjoyed it. Now it's off to pray like hell I find a place to take it!!!!
Peace, -Mac
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34949 6/75
135405 5/80
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Fast-forward to today. Mac-X has been transported from Seattle, WA, to Keene NH awaiting restoration. Since getting her, (Mac referred to his X as a 'her') she's been wrapped up securely, away from the elements while I collect the necessary parts. I've acquired a parts car (1985) with all good glass, doors, perfect nose-cone, good door seals etc. to get the small and intermediate parts in place. Also, with the help of the good folks on X-Web acquired original seats and headlight pods from a 1975 sunset orange X in CA. I'm keeping a list of folks involved with Mac-X's restoration that will remain with the car going forward. (that list is growing and will be published later on) My latest acquisitions include a rear skirt, (thanks Paul!) and a factory (not so fresh) left front fender.
Mac-X has had this black coating on it for over 12 years and we've all come to know it looking that way. Even the Seattle X1/9 crowd has never seen it looking anything other than this flat black color with a silver stripe down the sides. Mac really wanted the black to be gone (as his photo shows above) and he worked really hard to clean a little more than half the rear quarter panel on the driver's side using "spray acetone" and rags. Still, removing the black paint has become a bitter-sweet process, but the restoration of Mac-X requires it.
I've taken a range of photos both inside and out of the car before I got started, so the existing condition has been fairly well documented. The process of stripping the old paint has begun.
Rather than using acetone, I tested paint removal using methyl-ethyl keytone. (M.E.K.) This seems to work much better and still leaves the original paint finish relatively untouched. Home Depot sells this in quart sizes, so I got 4 quarts and started in.
Seems to work best / easiest if I lay paper towels down in strips and soak them with MEK for a few minutes prior to rubbing off the old finish.
It may look easy, but a considerable amount of "elbow grease" is required to remove the black paint completely.
Here you can see the car starting to look like it did back in the 1990's. The front hood has damage (to the right side of the photo) caused by the drunk driver Mac was talking about which also destroyed the headlight pod.
For the most, Mac-X's outside shell has now been stripped. (outside, not inside) The doors are not done because I've yet to decide if they'll be used. (I'll need help from X-Web folks to decide the fate of the doors.)
Well, I hope this post hasn't caused severe eye strain. There will be more to follow, (much more!) but this is a start and I hope to hear from you all with both suggestions and opinions. I'd like the X-Web community to be involved throughout the restoration process. I thank you all. Wish me luck!
For those of you fairly new to X-Web, this is in reference to our Founder Ian "Mac" McIntosh's 1975 X19.
Mac branded his 1975 X1/9 as "the car that started it all"
I would like this post to become the beginning of a documentary of this restoration.
This will likely be my biggest post on X-Web, mainly because I'll be using references to some of Mac's own posts and (try) to define this project in as clear of terms as I can. Throughout this project, I'll be asking the opinions of the X-Web community regarding specific details of this restoration. Many folks here have had on-line dealings with Mac and shared much of his passion. I'm proud to say I'm also one of those folks.
I consider this restoration both a challenge and a privilege. When you see the car in person, the challenge becomes obvious. But this is no ordinary car. This car dodged a range of obstacles. Mac was forced to abandon this car to others on 3 occasions. If not for these folks stepping up to help and Mac "saving her from the crusher" at great personal sacrifice, this car would surely have been long gone.
With that, I want to thank Mike Mittelstead, Wayne Wright, Trent (?), Leslie Sickler, (Mac's mom), Greg Smith, and anyone else not immediately mentioned in having a hand with storing Mac-X and saving this car from extinction.
I took time over the last month to read every post made by Mac on X-Web 1.0, partly to find out what he wanted for his 1975 X1/9 and partly to know more of who Ian McIntosh was. There are literally hundreds of posts that reference his 1975 X, some describing his vision for the car and some describing his trials and tribulations. If you really want to know more of who Mac was at a personal level, I would encourage you to start on Page -362 of X-Web 1.0 and find / read every post initiated with the name "Mac". I can guarantee after reading 200 pages of his posts, you'll discover much of who he was. Aside from having a very strong passion for X1/9's, he was a leader, a talented XML and VB programmer, artistic, VERY knowledgeable with X1/9's, and a keeper of the PEACE. Every new member of X-Web was greeted by Mac with the saying "We always have room for 1 more" and "welcome to the addiction". He had high respect for those who were knowledgeable in his field of expertise and took situations "gone wrong" very personal. X-Web was his baby and he treated it that way throughout his 10-year tenure. He spent MANY hours at personal sacrifice to bring X-Web (both versions) to the masses in the form we so well enjoy today. These Forums are his creation and his legacy. Even in it's poor condition, Mac's 1975 X1/9 was his most valued possession, rivaling his 1980 X. He once said he'd let the 1980 X go before giving up on the 1975.
Back in early 2001, I (like many others) started off in "lurker mode" with X-Web. I had just begun the process of looking for another X1/9 and discovered X-Web in a Google search. There were a few X1/9 forums in existence at the time but this forum attracted me as being the best and most active of them all. I began saving images and posts from X-Web that seemed applicable to my anticipated needs and decided I'd create a library (of sorts) of all these posted images. I bought my trailer queen in the summer of 2001 but never posted on X-Web until nearly 2 years later. In that time I had a pretty good library and reference base, including the infamous "5-Speed 101" postings, pictures and all. Today, this photo library is in excess of 20 gigabytes of storage!
In saving all these pictures, it ends up they became an exclusive reference because all the links on early XWeb 1.0 were lost due to some "technical difficulty" with the image server X-Web was referencing. Though I thought it nice to have these photos, I never really acknowledged their real value until recent events of 2010.
One such post made back in 2004 was saved in my archive because the story struck me at a personal level. I am posting it below for all to read with links to the original photos exactly as it was posted back in the day. I don't know how long these photo links will remain, (ImageShack) but here is Mac's post with pictures from my archives as originally posted in 2004 that I believe expressed his true passion for this 1975 X1/9:
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[FONT=Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial]My beloved '75 X1/9, a drive down memory lane (long with lots of pics)...
[/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial]May 31 2004 at 2:35 PM[/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial] Mac
[/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial]haha I know about 20 pics were snapped of me in that car... so WHY did you have to use the one best featuring my giant schnoz?!
I've been told the celebrity I most resemble is Brent Spiner! Ugh. Why Lord? You know I actually dressed up like LtCdr Data once on haloween, I had the full uniform (a professionally made one I rented), scoured comic shops in Seattle, came up with a very convincing comm pin, hair color, white/green skin makeup, even an incredibly convincing next generation tricorder with lights and sounds. I tried to even get yellow costume contact lenses but that was just too expensive. Turns out it didn't matter. I ended up helping out at some friends' GIANT haloween party in Seattle (we're talking a couple thousand people attending in costume haloween night in a huge abandoned steel foundry on the waterfront, it was the biggest "underground" haloween party Seattle's seen to this day I believe, the fire department and the ATF broke it up in the wee hours if you can believe that, but that's another tale!) in any event they found the place for me, I was right at the entrance collecting the door money, and acting as bouncer / welcome wagon, and every person who came to the party got a huge laugh (helped they were all plowed) when they finally got through the line and up to the door they are greeted with LtCdr Data straight faced looking them over, scanning them for contraband with a tricorder, offering a pleasant greeting and taking the cover money. I'm not even a trekkie but someone told me I should do Data because I "have the nose for it" - gee thanks a lot! Anyway, I digress...
Back to Wayne's, and this picture... Yes this is the glorious sunset orange '75 X1/9, my very first X, I bought it sometime in 1991 if memory serves me, the one that started it all, ignited my passion, and caused SeaX and later Xweb to ever even exist... I was only the 3rd owner since new, and the first 2 didn't do much but drive her to death. In fact I bought her from a local mechanic shop (who here knows Tino Fortunato from Agafor's in Olympia? Yep that's where I saw her, sitting in Tino's yard, the owner took her in for a big bunch of work then decided not to pay the bill, so Tino leined the car and put it up for sale, that's when I saw her, and it was magic from the start!) - Here's a shot of what she looked like the day I brought her home for the very first time...
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Actually by the time I even snapped these I had already started in on her, blacked out the rockers under the doorline was the very first thing, then painted the wheels black (they were this awful cracked up gold when I got her). I set about immediately from there doing all the things to make her my own, blacked a strip across the nose (to this day I LOVE the way that worked out, especially when the little bug eyes were up, with that black strip across the tips), blacked the entire interior, wheel and tire upgrades, a new kickin stereo system, "dropped" the bumpers (lowered them with custom brackets to give her less of a "football helmet" look and a lower more agressive stance, basically like a single rail conversion but with the second rail still attached below) and even did a color matched hood scoop on the engine cover! (don't get me going about that one, or this post will never end) and what we ended up with by the time I took off for my first road trip across the country in her (I'm skipping WAY ahead here, you can thank me later
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This was her in her glory days, that shot was taken in a field in Lake Forest Illinois in the summer of '95. This X and I traveled all over the US together. I set a 1300/4 speed personal record in this car driving solo from Seattle to Chicago in 35 hours! Here's a clearer shot of the glorious '75 sitting in Chicago...
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Ah she was looking fine that day. Stayed for a season, lots of memories, summer was hot, winter was COLD, this is the car that was (infamous tale) FROZEN to the ground in a McDonald's parking lot for 4 days in the flash freeze onset of Lake Michigan cold that winter. I had to use a blow dryer and an extension cord to melt my way to yanking the top off, climb in, and kick the door open from the inside, then melt the tires loose, I still recall finally got her out of there, 4 little tire shaped ice cups on the ground. That's when it was time to get the hell out of Chitown. So another trip across the USA, down through St Louis and through the Texas panhandle (the snow in the Ozarks was so bad I was plowing through it, deeper than my car, snow going over the top, at about 15mph, slip sliding all over at 3 am with these 18 wheelers just blasting by me blowing me all over, man, that was nuts) and finally made it to SUNNY San Diego where I took up residence for another year with my beloved '75 and at that point decided to reward her for her service with a full on engine rebuild...
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...the first I'd ever done, and I am proud to say, still in the car AND running (last time we tried to fire it up anyway) to this day! I must have done something right! And yes that's the top end in the passenger seat. After a long period on jack stands finally got it going and celebrated with another road trip, not so long this time, just to Sedona Arizona... here's a pic of me and a buddy taking off from San Diego on that ride, this shot was snapped literally at the last moment the X ever saw California...
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...and a slightly more forgiving profile of my schnoz!
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We were rescued after about a half hour of this by the coolest cop I think I've ever met, a very jolly Arizona State Trooper who not only arrived to see why we were there, but offered to PUSH the car with his cruiser ALL THE WAY to Kingman!! We got our kicks on Route 66 being pushed down it by a Crown Victoria hahah
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After all we've been through, this is where the story starts to get really SAD... When I got back to Seattle I was actually homeless for a while, and looking to start my life back over again here. During this time I had nowhere for my '75 to go, I was working a throwaway job for a while installing car stereos in Lake City (a couple locals tell me they recall driving by that establishment back then and seeing the screaming orange X sitting outside a lot) and couch surfing friends' pads etc, but this just could not go on forever, and I had just gotten an old beater Honda through a fluke of circumstance and decided I would rather be running the wheels off that for a while and give the ol' girl a break (and certainly being homeless had nowhere to put TWO cars) so in a de-facto sense, I gave her to my dad to "keep and use" until I could get re-established in Seattle with a home and a "real" job etc. This was in the big boom of the late 90s and it took me a lot longer to get situated than I had hoped, with all the dot commers still crushing folks like me for housing and work etc. It was rough, and my dad ended up with the '75 a lot longer than I had initially planned. Thing about my dad is, he had NO SENSE AT ALL of the value of the car's paint for the sake of "originality", all he knew was that it (to him) was this hideous retina scorching 70s disco orange and since it was (de-facto) his car now, he decided without letting me know that he was just going to paint it BLACK. Worse yet? He did this in his garage in his spare time, WITH THICK GOOEY BLACK - HOUSE PAINT - AND A BRUSH... My dad was the kind that liked to use what he had on hand. Why go buy a bunch of paint when there's already a big bucket of it in the workshop, ya know? Then he got really wild and found the silver can. He was totally thrilled with the results, I still recall his sincerely regarding it as a major improvement when I finally heard about it... when I finally came back to claim my beloved '75 again, this is what greeted me: (ps that's just a parts car being stripped in the background)
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This was a real turning point in the story of my '75. This paint job, after all the years and miles and stories and memories and adventures, this paint job really somehow marked the beginning of the end for my poor beloved '75. I took the car back to Seattle, furious really, but said no such thing to my dad. I did not know really what to say, and I know he did not mean to upset me by it, so getting pissed at him would have done me no good, I just took the car back and left, then blew up when I got home. It was shortly after that that the car got hit by some drunk driver one night while it was parked on the street. I came out to see the left front fender smashed to sh*t and the driver side headlight pod mashed into the nosecone. At that point, I just grabbed some rattle can and shot it black all over. I was really really sad now... and from here on in, fortunes just got progressively worse for my dear old '75...
Suddenly we're up to the summer of '99 and my dad has passed away from cancer. I quit my job quit my life in Seattle and abandon everything to go back to Olympia and try to save my wicked step mother from losing his house to creditors. During this time I had the '75 stashed back in his garage, the same shop where it acquired the black paint job, and slowly between estate duties began the task of trying to get all that paint back off by hand rubbing with acetone rags...
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The good news was that, under all that goo house paint, the original sunset orange seemed remarkably well preserved! The bad news was that, using any kind of motorized method would probably have caught me on fire in a shop full of acetone vapor, and hand rubbing was killing me faster than I could wax on wax off. I will never forget the headaches I used to have trying to rub that car down. Six months I slaved away to settle my dad's estate and save that house from creditors for my step mom (it was his dying wish that I do this for her) and literally the day it was all finally done, and danger was gone, she booted me out on my ear. Scrambling Holly and I found a place nearby, and for the first stroke of good luck, it had a massive garage space!! I was thrilled I might finally have hope of bringing my poor X back from the dead. We dragged it over to the place and I set about totally disassembling it in the shop there, took it almost entirely down to a rolling chassis with engine and tranny in, and all the rest either lost, thrown out, broken, or boxed up in pieces. It was during this period that SeattleX1/9 held the now infamous "July 1st 2k" gig in the field behind my place, where the "ride that will live in infamy" took place, I drove the stripped out '75 out into the packed show field and with people in every possible seating position proceeded to do backward power sliding rooster tailing donuts all over the field, giving many a visiting FEN concours Spider owner a near fatal heart attack (and a few of their cars a near fatal miss! heh...)
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Sadly this was just about the final hurrah for me and my dear sweet '75. After this things did not go quite the way I had planned, and soon it was coming time to move again, this time back to Seattle proper, which was welcome news, but in that place I never did get far enough to start restoration in earnest. In fact, I knew where I was going I was not going to even have a garage at all. It was at this time that I spent many a sleepless night staring at the ceiling and thinking heavily on what to do. I had already owned my current black '80 X (known as "Little 80" which when said casually sounds remarkably like "little lady"
That's it in a nutshell. From there on, the only times I got to see her again were at the SeaX gatherings at Wayne & Sandy's. I would show up in the '80, and at some point during the gig it became the running joke to see me silently slipping away from the crowd and wander off to the side of Wayne's garage to pay my respects to the ONE X THAT STARTED ALL OF THIS, the one that MADE SEATTLEX1/9 HAPPEN, the one that made me fall in love with these cars, and the one I can not seem to let go, even after I let it go. Everyone would get a good laugh watching me slip over, lift up the tarp, stick my head under, whisper a few sweet nothings then start cussing and swinging when the angry bees who had nested in the car came out to run me off. It's become almost an annual tradition at these gigs for me to get stung at least once each gathering while trying to touch my '75.
Well, this time, yesterday, when the pic at the top of this discussion thread was taken, Wayne and Sandy have moved out of Tacoma and down south of Chehalis. They dragged all the dead Xs along, and Wayne is stripping them out. Some are to be kept and some are to be scrapped. I learned yesterday that my old '75 (or what's left of her) is not going to make the cut. She is slated to be sent off to the crusher. It was upon hearing this rumor circulating among the crowd (I don't blame you Wayne for not coming out and telling me, I would not want to have to tell me that either, but I do understand, I never expected you to do anything with it but whatever you saw fit, I told you that when I gave it to you) that I went into the shop and began to dig the '75 out from under the pile of doors, fenders and tops stacked up on her... and climbed inside. I had my cherished moment and this time managed to dodge the only bee that came out, bucking the trend (maybe a good omen!?) and as I was having my moment with the old girl, I looked up to see damn near every camera at the gig clicking away at me, everyone laughing and grinning, I am a fool for this old car...
And there you have the pic at the start of this thread.
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Now, I am in a real fix. I have no money, no garage, and I am once again getting ready to be evicted from my current home. I can't even work on my '80, and certainly have no place to drag the dead '75 off to, but upon hearing it is on its way to the jaws of the crusher, I just about had a panic attack! I found myself telling Wayne, "NO NO, I'LL TAKE IT BACK! PLEASE HOLD OFF, I WILL FIND A PLACE, I WILL TAKE IT BACK."
So it looks like I am now going to try to take it back, I have no idea where I am going to take it TO, I don't even know whether I will be homeless in two months, let alone where I will put the Integra and the '80 X, so where am I going to put my '75 in pieces???
I can NOT let it go to the crusher. I can not. I am on a mission to find a place to put it so I can once and for all rub that black paint off piece the panels back together and get the car back to life. I don't even care if she's ever "Clean" again I just want her to RUN AND DRIVE. That is my goal, that is my mission... and that is my story. I hope you enjoyed it. Now it's off to pray like hell I find a place to take it!!!!
Peace, -Mac
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Fast-forward to today. Mac-X has been transported from Seattle, WA, to Keene NH awaiting restoration. Since getting her, (Mac referred to his X as a 'her') she's been wrapped up securely, away from the elements while I collect the necessary parts. I've acquired a parts car (1985) with all good glass, doors, perfect nose-cone, good door seals etc. to get the small and intermediate parts in place. Also, with the help of the good folks on X-Web acquired original seats and headlight pods from a 1975 sunset orange X in CA. I'm keeping a list of folks involved with Mac-X's restoration that will remain with the car going forward. (that list is growing and will be published later on) My latest acquisitions include a rear skirt, (thanks Paul!) and a factory (not so fresh) left front fender.
Mac-X has had this black coating on it for over 12 years and we've all come to know it looking that way. Even the Seattle X1/9 crowd has never seen it looking anything other than this flat black color with a silver stripe down the sides. Mac really wanted the black to be gone (as his photo shows above) and he worked really hard to clean a little more than half the rear quarter panel on the driver's side using "spray acetone" and rags. Still, removing the black paint has become a bitter-sweet process, but the restoration of Mac-X requires it.
I've taken a range of photos both inside and out of the car before I got started, so the existing condition has been fairly well documented. The process of stripping the old paint has begun.
Rather than using acetone, I tested paint removal using methyl-ethyl keytone. (M.E.K.) This seems to work much better and still leaves the original paint finish relatively untouched. Home Depot sells this in quart sizes, so I got 4 quarts and started in.
Seems to work best / easiest if I lay paper towels down in strips and soak them with MEK for a few minutes prior to rubbing off the old finish.
It may look easy, but a considerable amount of "elbow grease" is required to remove the black paint completely.
Here you can see the car starting to look like it did back in the 1990's. The front hood has damage (to the right side of the photo) caused by the drunk driver Mac was talking about which also destroyed the headlight pod.
For the most, Mac-X's outside shell has now been stripped. (outside, not inside) The doors are not done because I've yet to decide if they'll be used. (I'll need help from X-Web folks to decide the fate of the doors.)
Well, I hope this post hasn't caused severe eye strain. There will be more to follow, (much more!) but this is a start and I hope to hear from you all with both suggestions and opinions. I'd like the X-Web community to be involved throughout the restoration process. I thank you all. Wish me luck!
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