Author: hamilton.mm

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1493.54.707 Sprint Heater with three hot air outlets -Part 1

I don’t know why, but I’ve always looked at the heater as something I didn’t want to mess with -probably because it’s under the dash, full of coolant and as such slightly difficult to deal with.  The car I’m working on was stripped most of the way -one of the few non-essentials to being rolled around still on the car?  Yep, the heater, which says I’m not the only one who felt this way about it.  Well, you can’t have a shabby heater in a nicely fixed up car, so I pulled it out and faced my fear like some kid with arachnophobia being forced to hold a spider.

The official version.  Item 26 is a single item here, while on my bench it’s a metal tube that acts as a bridge between the rubber elbow and paper hoses and the rubber elbow -2 separate parts.  I think an updated version should be made of this with sub parts for all the missing parts like the two halves of the heater, the flapper door, the 6 round (or is it binding??) head screws etc.

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Market 291: Driver Giulia SS in Texas

Update 7/16/12: This car has appeared for sale on eBay in Europe out of Southern California from a Zero feedback seller. Scam? Hmmm.

Update 3/17/11: 75 bids resulted in $62,750.  It’s no joke, game on for SS values!

Update 3/14/11: Bidding has reached  $40,000 and reserve is met with 2 days to go.  The suspense begins!

Giulia SS 10121*381379. This car is on eBay right now out of Texas.  Bidding is at just shy of $30,000 with 4 days left as I write.  This car is truly in ‘how you used to find them’ condition and frankly may be as much as $80,000 away from being a top money car, but for a capable DIY restorer that restoration number could get down to $40,000.  Why do I mention this?  See yesterdays post, which the seller references in their write up, a Giulietta SS sold for $140,000 at the Amelia Island auction.  This is a great place to start, but it still has to be reduced to nuts, bolts and bare metal and built back out to get in the league that car is in.  Then it has to find a buyer… Or it could be let alone, touched up, enjoyed and entered in the preservation class some day.

Looks great from this distance, through the lens of a camera after being hosed down.  Note dent above headlight.  Antennae has to go to.

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Market 430: Spider Veloce 750F 03454 use or restore

Update 7/21/12: No takers. Ended at $31,000. Reserve was probably closer to $40K.

Giulietta Spider Veloce 750F 1495*03454, 1315*32930 (unsure if original to car).  This car is on eBay right now from a seller who frequently has interesting early Giulietta’s and Giulietta stuff.  It’s a running driving car with a 1600 installed, but comes with a ’58 Veloce engine.  It’s unclear whether it’s the original engine.  Pictures are few, but it looks pretty good.

Looks pretty good.  Hood fit is a bit off.  No bumper over-riders.  Good start or use as is!

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Market 429: Spider Veloce 10118 390183 at FJ

Giulia Spider Veloce 10118*390183, 00536*20568 (not original). Fantasy Junction has this car listed on eBay right now. The car is in pretty good shape -with some details to sort out. The engine is simultaneously the best thing about the car -having been rebuilt by Conrad Stevenson, and the thing that will always keep this car from being a top of the market car.

Lovely in white as usual.  Hood fit is very good.  Trim all looks great -there’s a little bump in the drivers side leading edge of the bumper.

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Map analogy Part 2: You are here

Some people can be dropped on a random corner in an unknown country and find their way without a conscious thought about it.  Others need one of those language neutral maps with a big red dot -YOU ARE HERE.  When that project car you bought turns up, there’s a good chance you are effectively on that corner in that unknown country.  What are you going to do?  Where are you?  A map is useful because it shows you where you are, where you’re going (if you know it) and based on those, how to get there.

It looks something like this when you get all the fasteners gathered up from all those boxes are clean and in one place.  Most of you will be thinking ‘oh god -good luck’ but some of you are saying -‘hey, there are 7 drop link bolts there and a car only needs two!’ You will all agree that if you can identify quite a few of these, you know where you are.  In case you are wondering, I took this as a sanity check so I could identify what I sent to the electroplaters.

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Map analogy part 1: Where are you going?

A Sprint project lurks in your garage.  It’s in need of attention and you need a plan.  To have a plan you need to know what you want from it -where are you going with it.  So… -what do you want out of it?  What does your Sprint look like and drive like when it’s done?  This is the most important information for your restoration.  Why?  Defines your budget, timeline and a lot of other details.  So, what do you want?

This is a starting point that was all the excitement on the AlfaBB a few years ago.  The project has gone dark as far as I know, but this car is in a garage somewhere waiting for work to be done.  This is probably as difficult a starting point as you want to call a starting point.

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The car for you

So you’ve read and reread my post about restorations and decided to buy a project Giulietta (or 101 Giulia).  There is a reason you have decided to do this, and you need to try and identify it to make sure you find fulfillment in your purchase.  What do I mean?  Well, you need to ask yourself why and come up with a satisfying ‘because’.

For example… I had an Iso Rivolta 300GT.  How I came to possess it is unimportant, nor is the fact that it was a rusty hulk -a fast rusty hulk, but a rusty hulk no less.  Anyway, on the 2000 California Melee I chased a 750 Giulietta Sprint on the deliciously twisty and fast road from Leggett to Fort Bragg -45 minutes of 50 mph bliss.  If it was a scene in a movie it would have gone all slow motion and a Chopin prelude would have played sweet yet dramatic.  That’s the car for me I thought.  It took me a few years to round one up and the rest is history.

You never know when that first glimpse happened.  I sold my Fulvia to a guy who had a toy of one as a kid and it was his favorite toy.  Thirty years later…

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Thoughts on Restorations

Restoration (noun): The process of repairing or renovating a building, work of art, etc., so as to restore it to its original condition.

Over the weekend I was talking to a friend about my write ups of cars on the market and they asked why I was somewhat critical of some cars and forgiving of others.  I thought about it and decided I am usually critical of cars that are described as restored but lack the level of details in their description a restored car should have, and I’m easy on cars that are just, well… used cars.  I guess I’m also critical of cars where the ‘restorer’ should have been more sympathetic to the originality of the car, and work done would better be described as customization, modernization or some such, than restoration.

Henrik sent me this picture with the note: “Check out the fog lights”.  I also noted the ‘eyelids’ on the headlights. This is a car that, if it turned up in project form to be restored, requires some particular skills, including appreciation for the history of the car.  Restoration would likely be defined as returning it to the historically significant form seen above rather than it’s as-new form.

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Market 22: Mexico City Giulietta Sprint survivor

Update 7/1/12: 1 bid, reserve not met.  No sale.

Update 6/25/12: This car has turned up on eBay after 4 years with the same pictures and from the same seller. Sprint values have come a long way in the last 4 years. I expect it will find a buyer this time.

Original post 6/20/08: Reserve not met! $12,099 was the ending price, $1 less than the black plate car out of Cottonwood. Seller added some new pictures of the car outdoors in daylight that show it is a pretty nice car. I think either of these cars was a pretty good deal and would be a great basis for putting together very nice original driver. I think both suffered from somewhat poor presentation and the fact that they both went through eBay at the same time. There can’t be that many guys (or gals) out there looking for Sprints, so any more than 2 or 3 a month in a given area is market saturation, and we’ve been seeing 5 or 6 a month since I started this blog. Last, I suspect both these sellers, encouraged by the strong sale prices mentioned earlier for project cars, put these on the market just to kind of see what they would do, without a real necessity to sell them.

Added pictures include this nose shot, always a pleasant sight. I wonder if a yellow curb has the same meaning in Mexico.

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Market 415: Giulia Sprint Speciale 381399 -the last one

Update 7/1/12: Imagine that.

Update 6/23/12: Driver’s Source out of Houston, who seems to specialize in buying high and trying to sell even higher, has this SS for sale now for a whopping $198,000. It is, if photo’s be believed, a stunning car, but I’m not sure the world is ready for a Giulia SS at this price point. All prior high sales have been Giulietta’s (anyone??).

Original post 4/20/12: Giulia Sprint Speciale 10121*381399.  Michael has made me aware that Ferrari of Seattle is selling this car right now for $125,000.  A pretty good deal if the last two projects I listed for $60,000 each are really worth that.  Just think, no bodywork, no rust repair, no parts hunting.  Just fly in, write a check, add it to your insurance and drive home.  Oh, and if you’re one of those people who likes ‘interesting’ VIN’s, this is the last SS they made.

Great color!  Everything looks straight and clean in this picture.  Is there anything to the theory that a high-end dealer would risk reputation selling a less than perfect car? Maybe. This will sell immediately I think.

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