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