Winter's bone

The weather here in the Bay Area has been cold and wet for so long that the month long break we got in January is a distant memory. With the rain and chilly temperatures it's been much harder to muster enough enthusiasm to go out to the garage, move the motorcycles and the CSL, and start massaging metal. Welding and panel beating just aren't fun when you it's 45 degrees. And so I've spent more than one night watching TopGear, Chasing Classic Cars, or reading Alfa books in front of the fire.

Recently a long time friend, and fellow Alfista, found a nice Milano on Craigslist, parted with a small sum of cash, and brought the little Italian stallion home. It's a great car, and my short but inspired test drive confirmed a belief I saw in print the other day. "Alfa Romeo seems incapable of making uninteresting cars". The v6 engine's exhaust note is fantastic, although the feel of it is noticeably different for someone who has spent 20 years driving BMWs with their turbine smooth straight 6 power plants. With my Alfa lust sufficiently spiked, I hit up Craigslist and clicked through the usual morass of mid-70s Spiders. Not that I'm looking to buy but it's always fun to see what's available. "Ah well, there's nothing interesting here", I thought. "Wait, what's this?" The listing read "Alfa door panel-$149". Not very sexy copy, I'd seen it but not even paid attention to it for the first 10 minutes. I clicked on it and couldn't believe my eyes; it was a driver's side door for a 105 series Giulia Sprint Veloce.

Twenty minutes later I'd PayPal'd the funds to the owner, who lives just about 60 miles north of me, and who'd promised to bring it down the peninsula in the next week or two. Even from the poor quality picture I could tell the door was well worth my small investment. The driver's door on Chela's Alfa requires a lot of work to get it straight. It's been dented and damaged and has areas of rust that will require lots of work to be a usable part. The door I found on Craigslist needs only to be stripped and painted.

Last week the owner kindly delivered it to me and I wasted no time in bolting it in place. This is temporary of course, but it's fun to see it on the car.

A long dormant summer

It's been a long time since I've been able to post any news about the work on Chela's Alfa. I had another project that I needed to get out of the garage before I could put the little Italian car back inside. She was stored outside for a few months, covered, out of sight, but not out of mind. I could not wait to get her back in the garage and pick up where I left off last winter. Thankfully, the summer was a dry one, and the body got only a very light amount of easily removable surface rust during her time in the driveway.

With the other project gone I was able to push the Alfa back in to her new, and permanent spot in the Cowpoke Racing garage. It was nice to be able to reclaim some space, and with the Alfa's relatively small footprint, there's room for it, our CSL, and our motorcycles. Even better, I can work on the Alfa without having to move anything outside.

Picking up where I left off, I need to continue to remove rust, bump metal, and weld in new panels. Before I got pulled away I was welding the new nose, and tail sections on. They're aftermarket pieces and while the fit is not bad, it's not perfect either. Another common thread, one I'll repeat many times I'm sure, is that I don't really know what I'm doing, and I'm learning as I go. Cutting out old sections of metal and getting the replacement panel to fit in perfectly is not easy. The biggest challenge however, has been that I am having a hard time getting a consistent spot weld that doesn't burn away the metal panels. Before I started this job I considered both Tig and Mig welders. I ended up going with a Mig welder for the same reason that most people do; they're easy to operate, and they fit a lot of different applications. The benefit of Tig of course, is that when properly used, you can control the amount of heat that you put in to the metal very precisely. Of course with infinite control comes a lot of complexity, because only one setting is ideal, and finding that setting takes a lot of experience. Right now, a Tig welder in the hands of someone that knows how to use one, would be very much appreciated. The problem is, that with my Millermatic 210 Mig welder set on the lowest voltage setting, I have a very hard time getting enough of a weld started to bridge both panels, before it simply burns right through the edge of the panel. It's like chasing a never ending hole. I pull the trigger for only a second and I'll get a small spot started, but just as quickly, a hole appears on one of the panels. It's usually on the existing metal, as opposed to the new panel, and that metal is understandably old, somewhat contaminated, and thin in spots. It's frustrating because it's inconsistent. Some areas actually allow me to get good penetration while others burn like a hot knife touching butter. I did find that increasing the wirespeed to 30 seems to help, as the wire can fill faster without putting as much heat in the panel, which I believe to be the cause of the metal burning.

My welds and body panel fitting still need a lot of work, and I'm not done with it, but the tail is starting to look like one piece, rather than a panel just tacked in place.

This picture was made before I ground the welds down so it's pretty ugly. I had this idea that my body panels would be perfectly match, and with the perfect gap so that my welds would be small and tidy, but that's not realistic. I'll do my best to get the seams as straight and smooth as possible, but I will still need to use body filler to get them finished. A master welder and body man I am not.

Here's a picture of the panel after grinding the welds down with my angle grinder.

I still have some more touching up and grinding to do on this corner. There's also a small section where the metal is so thin that I could not get it to weld, and I cannot fill it. I'm going to need to cut it out and fabricate a small replacement piece and weld it in. Hopefully I'll be able to use the Mig welder and not have to find someone proficient at Tig welding who can do it for me. I may have to learn how to Tig weld, which means I'll have to buy one. While I would like to learn the skill, I'm really not interested in spending money on another welder at this point. We'll see what happens.

I need to spend a few more hours getting both rear corners welded, and smoothed before I move to another area. The new nose panel promises to be challenging as well. I'm hoping the existing metal there is healthier than that on the rear.

Stay tuned!

Not such a blast

I decided that rather than farming out the blasting of our Giulia I'd do it myself. It seemed to be much more economical and much less of a hassle. The closest blaster is a few hours away and it would require at least 2 trips up and back to get the car done, not to mention the harrowing ordeal of strapping a bodyshell to a dolly on to a trailer.........yuck.

After some research I ordered a relatively inexpensive dual-media blaster from Eastwood. I'm in a position where I need to clean up some metal in the nose and in the trunk section before I continue to repair some of the metal in those areas. I took a break from welding and finally got the blaster out and gave it a try last weekend. My compressor is an Ingersol Rand rated at 12.3 CFM@ 125PSI and it has a 40 gallon tank. The blaster is only supposed to require about 8CFM@80PSI, so I figured I'd have enough muscle for the job.

I started with aluminum oxide in the tank as I knew I'd be working on some areas with some sound deadener, some heavy glue, and some rust.

Now I know why people pay others to blast their cars for them. While it's rather satisfying, it's kind of a hassle, and it makes a helluva mess (I expected that part). Unfortunately I was not able to make much progress as I'd only get a short burst of usable blasting before the pressure would drop and I'd have to wait 30 seconds or more for the pressure in the blaster tank to build back up. It was extremely frustrating, and my compressor was running non-stop. After an hour or more of blasting intermittently like this I had only gotten a few small areas blasted, although the results were pretty good.

After thinking about it and discussing it with some friends I came to the conclusion that the reason my compressor couldn't keep the tank pressurized was the very long run I had in between it and the blaster. Just like a long extension cord, the volume of air I am able to move through my plumbed air lines to the tank is insufficient to refill the blaster.

With this in mind I set about to rectify the situation. I went to a local hose/fitting store and purchased 8 feet of 1/2 inch hose, along with several 1/2 inch high flow fittings. I wanted the run of hose to be as short as possible but I need at least enough to be able to get the blaster out of the garage and have some room to move it around. I will connect this 1/2 inch hose directly to the compressor tank and then in to the soda blaster. The only thing in between will be the regulator. I'm hoping that will be sufficient to help me to be able to blast for more than a few seconds before having to take a break.

Chela got in on the blasting action too. Here's some pictures of the process and the results:

Welding progress

The last couple of days in the Cowpoke Racing garage have been more fruitful. After a lot of trial and error and using some different techniques I am happy to report that I've actually gotten to a point where I can get the metal from the new tail section to tack to the rest of the car. The welds aren't pretty and I have lots of grinding to do, but I did get the tail section welded on. I still have lots more tacks to make to "connect the dots" but it's fairly well lined up and it's not coming off again. Due to the nature of the remanfactured panel, I could not get it to line up at all the critical points. I had to choose which seam I wanted lined up, and so I chose the top crease on the left rear fender. With this body line properly aligned, other areas don't line up, but I figure they're easier to modify and less likely to be noticed if they're not perfect. You can see the first area that will need to be worked (where the trunk lid shuts) in the picture below:

I've also started cutting out the rusted out gas tank mounting flange and fitting the section that Kevin sent me from his donor car (thanks Kevin!). I should have my soda/sand blaster in the next couple of days and I'm anxious to use it to prep some more of the trunk for more welding and eventually primer.

I had a friend who has restored several concours quality cars come over to the shop and take a look at my progress. I was more heartened by what he didn't say than what he did. He didn't say "dude, you're in way over your head and this is never going to look good, wtf are you thinking?", so that's good.

It's been a while

It's been a while since I've updated the blog or this thread. There's no good reason for it other than be being out of town on work-related travel, and the first good storm of the season here in Northern California which rendered us without power for a good portion of two days. Last weekend it was suitably dry and Chel and I set about making some progress on the Alfa. The last time I posted I was having trouble welding the front fender. I need to do some more metal prep on the nose before I can try welding some more and so we thought we'd move to another area, and take a break from the front of the car.

Taking the advice of the forum I set up the welder so that we could test some settings on old original metal I'd cut from the tail section. We cleaned it with Scotchbrite pads on our Dynabrade and tried to draw some welds. Then we cut a piece of the panel in two, and tried to weld it together. The results were not a surprise; the original metal does not like to be welded. With the welder on the lowest settings we could get small tacks started but it didn't take much to blow through the metal just like I'd experienced on the front of the car. The only thing that I didn't try was a wire brush. I've heard that they're very good at getting all the rust out of the metal, but I can't see any rust left after the Scotchbrite pad. Regardless, I'll give the pieces a once over with the wire brush in my angle grinder and try welding again. With that experiment complete we moved to the rear of the car.

Chel wanted to try her hand at metal bumping so I set her up with a hammer and some dollies and let her have at it. She did a great job, especially given the fact that it was her first try. I'm still trying to figure out the art of metal bumping myself, it's not simple.

While she was doing that I removed the tail section which I'd temporarily clamped in place. I prepped some of the metal where it will ultimately be welded, and again used the Scotchbrite pad to remove the paint from the remanufactured tail section. I'll need to drill holes along the rear where it was originally spot welded to the trunk floor but I wanted to see if I could get the panel tacked in temporarily. I clamped it in place and tried to weld the right rear corner; just a few tacks to see if I could get it lined up and in place. The results were not good as you can see.

You can see the metal burning away from the side where the original metal is. And these are very wimpy welds. I don't feel like I'm getting good penetration at all, because as soon as I pull the trigger I have to release it or the metal will............you know.

It's frustrating and more than a little troublesome because the metal in this area doesn't look bad. There are other areas of the car that need repair which have much worse metal than this. If I can't get this to weld, I don't know how I'll weld the places where the metal is worse. I met a guy a few weeks ago at Santana Row Cars and Coffee who claims to be a metal fabricator/ex restorer. I've seen some of his work and he's a nice guy and I asked if he'd come take a look at my work and tell me what I'm doing wrong. At this point I realize I'm in need of expert advice and so that's what I'm going to get. Here's another picture of the rear of the car.

I am hopeful that there is some trick that I'm missing. I can't believe that the body of this car is so bad that it's unusable. And if I need to get a Tig welder and spend a year or 10 learning how to Tig weld, that's what I'll do.

Ciao!

-tj

Still more nose work and an engine update

Over the past few days I've spent about 20 hours on the nose of the car. With the new panel trial fit in place I've focused on the driver's side front fender which I'm replacing with a panel I got from the good folks at Alfaholics. After lots and lots of measuring, fitting, measuring, fitting, trimming, measuring and fitting, this is what I have. Not quite there, but getting closer.



I also used a combination of wire brush and Zinc rust condition on the stringer that the nose piece mounts on, followed by a few coats of Wurth self etching primer.



The front has been banged up pretty good over the life of the car so I spent lots of time dollying and bumping the area around the bumper mounts, as well as on the bumper mounts themselves. This is crucial to ensure that the nose panel has proper orientation to the rest of the car. Combined with the stringer between the fenders, they're the only reference I have for getting it straight.

With a spirit level, masking tape, and a measuring tape I spent a good amount of time trying to get everything as straight as possible. There's some damage to the passenger side bumper mount which made it tricky, but I managed to get it within about a sixteenth of an inch of the driver's side mount.

I also ground off old welding material and removed rust from the cross member which the lower part of the nose piece is welded. With that in place I could again fit the nose and start working on that repair panel.



As you can see, the bumper is temporarily mounted in order to make sure that the fenders and nose piece are properly oriented. Assuming that everything will lined up and painting the car is not the right way to approach this. Essentially every component that attaches to the body must be trial fit several times before the car ever gets painted in order to ensure it will be right when the time comes for final assembly.

Here's another picture of the repair panel temporarily in place, during one of the 25 or so times I installed and removed it before taking another 32nd of an inch off the surrounding metal to get the fit right.



As you can see, the crease along the top of the fender as long as the waistline crease are still not lined up properly, so I've still got more work to do.

On another topic, Chel and I finally got around to measuring the valve clearances this afternoon. I was not surprised to find that nearly all of the shims that came with the head were not at all close to the right size. The head has a fresh valve job and the only shims I had were from before that happened, so as you'd expect, the clearances were all way off. At least I have a reference point now, and I know what size shims I need to get to set them properly. On a disappointing note, I could not get one of the studs that holds the rear camshaft cap on the intake size to torque down. The stud is pulling up through the head. I will have to take the head back to my machinist and see if he can install a timesert of do something to prevent it from pulling out. They're only torqued to 15 foot pounds but they need to hold that much torque.

I'm expecting at least 5 or 10 more hours of work trimming and fitting the metal on the nose before I can get serious about welding it, but hopefully I'm getting closer.

More nose work

I'm feeling pretty good about the front end of Chela's Alfa. I've spent about 10 or 15 hours over the past few days removing the original nose of the car. This time I decided to use a flap disc in my angle grinder to slowly grind off the old skin, rather than trying to drill out each individual spot well. Combined with my plasma cutter, a cut off wheel in my pneumatic angle grinder, and a hammer, I was able to get the original sheet metal off without doing any damage to the metal underneath. There is a stringer that locates the top of the nose panel and which has the hinges for the hood attached to it. This needs to stay in place in order to get the nose fit properly.

The nose, despite being a more complex piece, is actually easier to locate than the tail because of that stringer. It locates the entire piece very accurately, and as long as your bumper mount points aren't too bent (mine were) everything should line up fairly nicely. Since our car had sustained numerous concussions to the front end, both bumper mounts were off by about a half an inch, but some gentle persuading with a hammer, dolly and c-clamp reinforced with some square tubing to distribute the load were sufficient to get them in the proper location.

I still have lots of trimming work to do on both fenders, and also will have to graft in the corner section on the driver's side as there was a ton of unfixable damage there.

I am going to check alignment on every joint over and over until I'm sure I've got it proper before I start tacking it in place. But before that I've still got lots of metal prep and bumping to do around the headlight rings and in the sheet metal around the bumper mounts. I'm also a bit puzzled as to how exactly the headlight rings mount. As you can see, I've got the passenger side on in place, but it's just propped there, and I don't think it's in the right position. I'll have to check the pieces I cut out to try to get the orientation and alignment.

Nose and tail

Recent hours in the Cowpoke Racing garage have been dedicated to getting the tail section fitted properly to the body. I'm learning how very tricky it is to get the new piece matched properly to the body. I left lots of room for error when I cut the original metal out, and went very slowly with my angle grinder, taking off only sixteenths of an inch at a time. Obviously taking too much metal off could really make things tricky. The nice thing about this panel is that, provided they're straight, you can use the bumper brackets as reference points for the entire tail section. Also, where the trunk lid closes is a good reference point for the top. What I wasn't certain about was how much overhang the trunk lid has over the tail section, and thankfully my friend Carl sent me some pictures of his very nicely restored 66 Veloce for reference. I also visited a local friend with a 74 GTV so I could see what the panel looks like in person.

My job was made a bit easier with the arrival of some panel clamps that I got from Eastwood. These hold the panel in place, with a very small spacer, which guarantees proper fitment and alignment of the two panels. Here's a picture of one corner of the rear before I put the finishing touches on the metal. As you can see, there's a big gap, one that is too big to weld.

A few more passes with my flap disc and the gap is much closer now. Obviously I am still a few hours away from welding the panel in permanently as I have to remove rust from the trunk floor, prep it with primer and remove the paint from the replacement panel.

Here's a profile picture of the rear, illustrating the overhang with the trunk lid that I was trying to achieve.

Feeling confident in my ability to cut and fit body panels I decided to move to the front of the car. The nose has been damaged so many times that I knew there was no way I'd ever get it straight. I'd been holding off cutting it out because it's a bit complex and I didn't want to cut through the wrong parts. The trick is to leave the upper support piece (to which the hinges mount) in place, which is a little hard as it's spot welded to the entire section. I started at the bottom, with plasma torch in hand, and started removing metal. I've learned that trying to remove whole sections at one time is not the way to go. It's better to take out smaller areas, piece by piece, thus ensuring you don't cut through the wrong part. This front end has been buttered and leaded and brazed so many times it was incredible. Plasma cutting through body filler is interesting. It smokes, catches fire, and turns to good. I know the front end had been replaced, but it looked like whomever did so just laid one nose on top of the other, at least at the bottom. The entire lower valance was double thick metal. It was a dirty, smoky, messy job, but within a half an hour or so, this is what I had.

And this is what I cut out.

I still have to remove the top section, carefully I might add, as the piece beneath it must stay in place. Then I'll start removing rust, straightening the bent panels (and there are a few) before I start trimming more closely for the new panel. I also have a new section for the driver's side corner which will replace the original, very damaged metal. I think that piece will go in before I weld the entire front panel in, but I'm still working on figuring that out.

Rear end removal

Today Chela and I took a major step in the restoration of our old Alfa. We cut the damaged rear end of the car out. I've been spending a bit of time in the trunk over the past week and after drilling out the spot welds that run along the midsection of the tail panel and cutting the inner brace loose from the trunk floor we were ready. I clamped my new replacement panel on the rear of the car, traced the outline with a Sharpie, and turned on my plasma cutter. It didn't take more than 5 minutes and I was holding the extremely damaged rear panel in my hands.

Here's what the rear of the car looked like with the panel removed.

As you can see, I've got some pretty serious rust in the trunk panel. If I could find a good replacement trunk floor I'd buy one and weld it in, but I've yet to source that part. With the panel roughly removed I then turned to my Dynabrade angle grinder with a metal flap disc in it, and began slowly grinding metal away, stopping short of the Sharpie outline I'd made.

As I progressed I was able to get to a point where the rear bumper mounts were nearly flush with the indentation in the panel, indicating I was getting close to where I needed to be. I was able to temporarily hold the panel in place by installing the bolts that hold the bumper to the body, but this is where it gets tricky. Obviously cutting too much metal out would be disastrous so I need to go very slowly, make lots of measurements, and trial fit the panel after each pass.

I've also bolted the trunk lid back on to check the shut lines where it meets the top of the rear panel. Over the next few days I'll keep working on fitting that rear panel. Then I'll remove the rust from the lip of the trunk floor where it butts up against the inner part of the panel, primer it and start welding the panel in. It's really rewarding to remove rusted and damaged metal from an old car, and also to fit the new panel in place. I decided to start with the rear because this panel is not nearly as complex as the front, and I hoped I'd learn something without making too many mistakes.

Speaking of the front of the car, I found a used grill on eBay that is not perfect, but which should be a good candidate for re-chroming, assuming I can figure out how to get the stainless steel slats out without ruining the part. It looks to be an original grill and has none of the quality control issues that I've found in the reproductions. After getting it chromed it will no doubt cost as much as a new reproduction part, but hopefully it will look and fit much better.

Ciao!

Me and Giulia

Last night we went to see Julie and Julia, the very sweet and inspiring story of Julia Child, and a young woman who chronicled her attempt to cook every recipe from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year, in a blog. I mention this not because lovers of vintage Italian cars all love good food (although I suspect the majority do) but because cooking and restoring an old car are not terribly different. Both require technique, a basic skill set for task at hand, the right tool for the job, and of course plenty of patience. And so mastering the perfect beurre blanc is somewhat like drilling out the spot welds of a rusty body panel in order to remove it without ruining the underlying metal. Which is exactly what I spent an hour or so doing today.

The job requires a special sort of drill bit, which has flat blades and a nib in the center to keep it from wandering. The idea is to cut just through the top part of the metal, while not damaging the metal beneath the panel you're trying to remove. This was my first time using the tool and so far my results are mixed. It seems to require a lot of pressure to get the bit to bite in to the metal, and on one or two occasions it suddenly blew through both pieces of metal, leaving me with a perfect hole. Not the end of the world, but not ideal either. The area I'm working on is in the trunk, where the spare wheel well is, or was anyway. The original metal was so badly rusted that there was essentially no bottom. I have a replacement, but first the remnants of the old wheel well have to come out. The piece itself was assembled to the trunk floor with about 100 spot welds. An hour of drilling and chiseling and grinding and I'm almost half way done. Once the entire part is removed, I'll use my 3M Scotchbrite pad to remove all rust and paint, and then I'll apply some Wurth Weld-through Zinc primer to keep it from rusting. Then the new spare wheel well will get welded in.

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.

This is a picture of the area behind the front wheel on the driver's side, after removing the splash panel that is supposed to seal off the cavity inside the fender. As you can see, it's filled with a lot of stuff that's not supposed to be there, likely the former home of a rodent.

I didn't get as much work done as I'd hoped this weekend but I did manage to sort some fasteners and temporarily mount the upper part of the oil pan and figure out where some of the nuts and bolts that I have been cleaning in my solvent tank go. Part of any good restoration is in using the proper fasteners, and having them in good condition. I am looking forward to the Concorso Italiano next weekend so that I can make plenty of pictures of engines and engine compartments so that I can figure out what goes where, and what sort of plating is correct. I believe Alfa Romeo used black oxide on a lot of the nuts and bolts, including the ones on the head, so I'll be looking for a local plater who can do that sort of work.

I also spent some time working on the body. I did some more sanding but also worked on welding up holes on the driver's side of the car. It's very tricky with a MIG welder because you have to use very low voltage to keep from blowing through the thin sheet metal. Once the hole was filled I used my angle grinder to grind them flush. There's still lots more of this work to do, but I am making progress.

I received some more tools from Eastwood and I'm awaiting some parts from IAP which will hopefully show up next week. I have a few very small bushings and bearings that I need to source before I can assemble the intermediate gear, timing chains and front timing cover and I need to find a place to get those as well.

Next weekend is the aforementioned Concorso Italiano, as well as the Monterey Historic races. I'm hoping to see lots of Giulias and learn more about how a stock 67 should look.

Ciao!

-tj

Getting down to the bottom end

Today we finally got the bottom end of the Alfa's pretty little engine assembled. The crank is in, the pistons are in, and the rods are hung. We used a combination of Redline Assembly lube and some special assembly oil that my machinist gave us as the engine will not be started for at least a year while the body is straightened and painted. The only tricky part of the job was the circlip installation. For some reason the AE/Borgo piston kits come with plain circlips (rather than ones which are easily installed with circlip pliers) and pressing them in without scarring up fingers and the piston skirt is a little tricky. My right thumb has nice cut on it from my first attempt prior to putting on mechanic's gloves, which of course make handling a tiny sprung piece of wire that much harder.

We got the main bearing caps torqued and the cigarette seals installed. A nice trick on the latter, which the manuals say must be installed with a special tapered factory tool, is to put them in the freezer for a few hours prior to installation. This makes the rubber hard enough that you can tap/press them in gently with a small hammer until they're all the way seated. According to the manual, it's smart to leave them a little bit higher than the surface of the block so that the oil pan will compress them in the last few millimeters.

I need to get some lock tab washers for the rear main bearing cap prior to finishing the bottom, but for now I'm pleased with the progress.

Of bearings and body trim

It's been a while since I posted last (I hate it when life gets in the way of working in the garage) but the last time I posted I was facing some questions around my main bearings and why they didn't have holes that matched the holes in the main bearing saddles in the engine block.

Engine

It turns out that the 1600cc Alfa engine did not come from the factory with the number 2 and 4 main bearing saddles drilled. This was apparently a common upgrade and intended to supply more oil to the crank in racing situations. As this car will never be raced, and because the questionable nature of this upgrade in the first place, I will leave the bearings the way they are and not drill them to match the holes in the saddles. The Alfa engine is a strong and reliable unit and hundreds of thousands of them were made that ran for years without this modification.

I'm hoping to actually be able to assemble the bottom end sometime soon. Another of the challenges I've had is finding the right fasteners for the bottom end, as Alfa originally used some thin "tin" jam nuts, which are NLA. The common wisdom is to use Loctite instead, something I don't have a problem with.

Yesterday we drove up the peninsula to get a couple more engine components back from the machine shop, including the oil pan, valve cover and intake manifold, all of which were disassembled, bead blasted and hot tanked. They look beautiful and are ready for assembly.

Body

I continue to strip the body shell of paint and trim pieces. This job seems never ending but I finally managed to remove the last of the stainless steel trim that surrounds the windows and drip rail. The trim is held in with very small metal screws, a couple of which had rusted so badly that I could not remove them with a screw driver. I had to drill a couple of them out, which is always tricky because you don't want to enlarge the original hole, which would then require using a larger fastener when you're ready for reassembly. I still have much stripping to do, but the exterior of the shell is 98% done.

Confusion runs amok

I'm very much looking forward to assembling the bottom end of the engine but we've been stymied by confusion around several different topics. First, the bearings that I have had holes which did not line up with the holes in the main bearing saddles. Apparently a popular modification was to drill holes in the number 2 and 4 main bearing saddles to allow for extra oil circulation, but the bearings themselves have to be drilled to take advantage of this. Also, the bearings for number 1, 3, and 5 have two holes while the saddles themselves only have 1. I've been told that this is not a problem as the groove in the saddle will allow oil to flow properly through the engine, but it's still a bit disconcerting to not know for sure from an authoritative source (like an official manual).

Another area of confusion surrounds the pistons. The only manual I have, which is for a 2L motor, suggests that there should be an arrow on the piston crown which needs to point to the exhaust side of the head. Problem is, I'm not building a 2L engine, I'm building a 1600cc engine and the AE/Borgo pistons I have do not have such a marking on them. It's been suggested that these pistons are in fact symmetrical and that it does not matter which side faces which, but again, with an engine, you just want to know for sure.

And so the various engine components continue to sit in boxes on my workbench while I call and research and post questions to the Alfabb looking for answers.

Hopefully I'm getting closer to the truth and can start building an engine soon.

The Engine Returns

Last Saturday Chel and I drove up the peninsula to Cardelli Motorsports to pick up some of the engine that needed work. The head got new valve guides and seals, the seats were cut and all the components were blasted and thoroughly cleaned. The rods were reconditioned and fitted with new bushings. The new cylinder liners were pressed in to the block. Here's a picture of everything ready for reassembly. I ended up buying a set of new matched pistons and liners as it seemed false economy to re-use the old ones. Additionally, I'll be installing a new oil pump as it's one of the critical components to an engine's health, and I had no idea what sort of oil pressure I was getting with the old one as the car was never really driven before I began to disassemble it.

Chela and I are cleaning engine fasteners and trying to figure out where they all go, but the block is now mounted on the engine stand and soon we'll start to put it together. I love building engines! They're like big puzzles, and everything fits.

More tools

Today the UPS man dropped of a box from Eastwood Automotive, which specializes in products for restoring old cars. In the box was a "stud welder" which looks like this. It plugs in to a 110v outlet and with the push of a button welds a 2mm stud to the body panel you're trying to pull the dent from.

Here's what the stud looks like once it's welded on. You then use a slide hammer which grabs on to the stud to pull the dent out. Once that's done, you cut off the stud and grind it flush. I've only used it on a couple places and I have a lot to learn but so far it seems to work really well. The tool came with 100 studs. I'm definitely going to need more!

Here's a particularly nasty portion of the driver's side rocker panel which will need more than a little work to get straight. You can also see where the dent has gone upward, affecting the shutline between the bottom of the door and the top of the rocker panel.

For the next few weeks all the work on the Alfa will be about bumping metal, welding holes, filling and sanding.

Some tail

The replacement panel arrived today from the UK. Thankfully this part made it across the Atlantic without any damage. I'm hoping that I have all the metal pieces necessary to repair 40 years of rust and collision damage. For the next few months it's all about pounding out dings and getting the body as straight as possible. Once all four corners are as good as I can get them I'll cut out the nose and tail sections and weld them in. I still have lots of holes to weld up and many small dings to get out. Then I'll move to cutting out the rusted sections behind the wheels and replacing them with the patch panels from Wolf Steel.

On another note, I'm trying to find a replacement front grill. The one that was on the car is damaged and it doesn't sound practical to replace it. The reproduction grills that are available are apparently not very good, and they don't fit properly. So I'm looking for a very good used or New Old Stock part.

A bit of a break

I've been working on the car at least a couple hours a day lately, but this weekend we took a little time off for some other activities, including the Palo Alto Concours d'Elegance. We took our 73 BMW 3.0 CSL but were hoping to see lots of Alfas, both for inspiration, as well as to provide assistance and ideas on our own restoration. Sadly there were only a couple, and no stepnose versions of the Giulia Sprint GT.

Last Friday we received a box from the good people at Wolf Steel which contained replacement panels for the lower wheel arches as well as the metal pieces that go behind them (at the bottom of the A-pillar for example). They look to be well made and like they'll fit well, so I'm looking forward to getting them welded in.

Chela and I also spent some time on the right side of the car, welding the holes drilled by a previous owner for a rubber bumper strip. Chela got in to the action as well, using the Mig welder and grinder to finish the holes. Learning to weld up such small holes takes time and patience, but she's a good student and a quick learner and she's getting a lot better at it. Here's an action shot:

Here's a picture of the progress. So far we've managed to not get too much heat in to the metal even after welding and grinding.

Here's a picture of some of the panels from Wolf.