Inspiration and progress

It's Monterey Historics weekend which means that Friday is the Concorso Italiano. Despite vowing never to return after last year's debacle, and despite having tickets to another show, we decided that the opportunity to look at 105s was just too good to pass up, especially with all the questions I have about possible color combinations and what a stock engine bay and interior should look like.

Sadly there were only three step noses in attendance, and two were GTAs. All three were Alfa Rosso, which is lovely but doesn't help us with our decision regarding what color to paint the little car. We did manage to find an NOS front marker light, which was a nice find. And there were plenty of other beautiful Italian cars in attendance so it was worth the time and expense.

Suitably inspired I returned to the Cowpoke Racing garage first thing this morning to continue stripping paint, cutting out rust, and removing the headliner. A box from Alfaholics arrived this afternoon with more parts (we love parts!), including a repair section for the front corner of the front fender, as well as the headlamp support rings which are welded to the nose. Combined with my marker light and the six wheels I got the other day, it's been a good week for collecting Alfa parts. What? I didn't tell you about the wheels? When we got the car it had steel wheels, but they were 14s, for a later Alfa. With the objective of 100% original appearance I was in search of a set of the proper 15 inch steel wheels, which I learned are pretty hard to find. You'd think there'd be tons of them out there as most 105s I see have GTA replica wheels, but I had to make calls and send emails to parts houses all over the world before finding some at a European car restorer in Kansas.

I got six of them and will choose the best five. There's a little bit of rust on the insides around the valve stem holes but I think I can clean them up well enough that they won't leak.

Here's a picture of the repair panel so you can see where it will fit.

And here's a picture of the damaged portion that it will replace. I'm happy to have found this part as it would be very difficult to ever get that metal straight. It's been damaged and repaired so many times.