Using the X’s oil pan presents itself with a problem. There’s nowhere for oil in the turbo to return to the oil system. The Uno has a simple spout on the pan that oil returns through. At first, I had thought to cut the spout from the Uno pan and either bolt or weld it to the X’s pan. My welding skills leave a lot to be desired, so I didn’t even entertain the idea of trying to weld aluminum. After failing to find a flat enough spot to bolt the spout on, I went with a screw-in bung from a VW Golf 1.9TDI. It measures 18mm with a thread pitch of M1.5 so I bought the needed drill and tap and commenced to making a hole in my oil pan and threading it.

The bung fit perfectly, but drilling made a messy pan messier, so time to clean it up and put it all together.

The pipe bend comes from the power-steering system on a Humvee, something I had lying around that happened to fit. Later it will get replaced with steel flex hose mounted directly on the bung and turbo. In the meantime, the original rubber hose was clamped on the turbo down spout and double clamped on the Humvee hose fitting.

The X-1/9 lower alternator bracket was used because I kept the X-1/9 transmission and axles. The Uno lower alternator bracket has a mount for the center axle and takes up space. To accommodate the extra stress this setup puts on the mount, the Uno block has small studs that fit into the lower bracket. Bottom line: a hole needed to be cut (or drilled, I used a Dremel) into the X’s bracket to make it fit. For the upper mount, either bracket will fit, just use which ever one is in better shape.

Instead of modifying the Uno transmission to shift from the front, I stuck with the X-1/9 box. I didn’t have the time to play with it, but later I’ll try to find a way to take advantage of the Uno’s stronger gears. The X tranny is a direct match, and this let me use the original axles as well.

The story continues in Part 4...