Crazy like the Fox! A thorough inspection

A good deed never goes un-punished, and no 1973 Fox which has been sitting in a grassy area under a barn for over 15 years will be rust free. This we expect, know, and well, sort of take as a given. Jason has gotten the chance to do a very complete inspection of his super old, super rare 1973 Audi Fox and the news is both good and bad.



After a complimentary tow to the shop (thanks AAA! totally worth it if you don't have it), and the car was checked over, fueled up and fired up...and RAN we were really hoping for the best once the car was up in the air. Obviously some rust was expected, but things went a bit beyond that.



The first clue was the hood. It is virtually disintegrating in front of our eyes, and is barely hanging on by a latch...in fact the passenger driver's side has completely let go, consisting of more iron oxide than steel I suppose. The tops of the fenders weren't all that much better, and Jason was really beginning to worry about what the underside of the car was hiding.



Well...it was as bad as we thought, but all was not (and is not) a total loss. Although the inner fender literally came out in Jason's hand when he gave it a small tug, the main structure of the strut towers is quite solid and unharmed. Another year or so and it's hard to say, but as is, it's salvageable with some patch work and paying close attention to removing all the remaining surface rust.



Probably the biggest concern is the front subframe area. (no not the floors, although they need some work too)



The whole thing has sort of become one big hunk of rust, lightly sprinkled with holes...and the drive line needs to be removed to repair it. No biggie, but the removal of the subframe is going to be tricky.



This is not an area where Jason wants a broken, stripped or otherwise destroyed or non-removable bolt. The chances of that are pretty high, but with a little luck it won't happen. I'm not a betting man, but if I was, those are not odds that I would take. (What I'm saying is I would bet there will more likely be a problem than not.)



So. What else does the future hold? Well Jason is in the full swing of the Save the 8v™ movement and will be keeping the Fox carb'd and 8-valved. He's eyeballing an old GT4 spec head that once resided on a 1.6 Rabbit race car, along with a nice fat cam and a bigger carb. Naturally that will be down the road, but it's good to focus on the positive when you have so much potential negative on your plate now.



We'll let you know how things go after we tear into project Crazy like the Fox! In the meantime, I'm thinking we're the crazy ones....

_WRS