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.