Straaaange Previous Owner Mods

W

wallyo

Daily Driver
Probably been done before but I am curious about odd modifications/kludges found in second owner x's. Mine had a gas gauge sender float made out of a cork (Italian wine I assume) which for some reason was painted white. :)
 
Had a car brought to us over a decade ago for wiring issues that the new owner wasn't up to fixing. Quickly found that the whole car had been rewired front to back. All grey wires.
 
Strange headlight mod

The previous owner improperly swapped the relays in the fuse block, so to correct the fuse blowing situation, they ran a new wire to 2 toggle switches, then ran the wire out to the headlight motors to run them manually. :mallet: Power to the switch was un-fused. :grin:
 
PO tried

to wire in an alarm system, including flashing park lights and headlights.

Only the bare essentials in the car work, i.e. whatever needs power for the car to run. Everything else had to be disconnected in order to figure this mess out. I mean, this guy ran wires everywhere and tapped into things that should've been left alone.

Now that I think about it, how do flashing headlights help if the car has pop up lights?
 
On my first X

The previous owner had replaced the Magneti Marelli voltage regulator with a Lucas unit. :wall: :mallet: :dunce:

That's just swapping one Prince of Darkness...



...for another...



One we can all relate to...



And one we shouldn't!

 
bbrown said:
The previous owner improperly swapped the relays in the fuse block, so to correct the fuse blowing situation, they ran a new wire to 2 toggle switches, then ran the wire out to the headlight motors to run them manually. :mallet: Power to the switch was un-fused. :grin:
Click to expand...

BOOM!
 
87 Bert

I bought this car in '92 with 70K miles for $2K
The reason I got it so cheap was the "mods" the PO did:
The original 1500FI motor was replaced with a 1300 carb.
The original 5-speed was mated to the motor.
All emission plumbing was removed (a big pita!).
All A/C components removed.
He used as many 1500 parts as he could, the biggest kluge was the alternator. A bent bar was used to mount the alternator that could not be tightened or properly aligned. Belt squeal was awful and I could not drive the car in the rain due to belt slippage.
I could go on, but 23 years and 50,000 miles (and a lot of wrenching) later, it's a great driver! :nod:
 
My PO (or the PO before him) decided to rewire the fuse panel. ...and they ALMOST got it right. But had apparently swapped two wires incorrectly. One was an ignition sense line that feeds the ECU so it was non operational. They attempted to root-cause by hacking the injector wires with test lights (uh, instead of buying injector test lights) and ended up selling the car to me under the stipulation that "it just needs a new fuel pump." All of this ended up being good news for the X and me. It sat for several years I think which kept the mileage and New England rust to a minimum and I got her pretty cheap. So I'm ok w/it :)

http://xwebforums.com/forum/index.php?threads/15378/
http://xwebforums.com/forum/index.php?threads/15483/
 
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