Author: hamilton.mm

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Suspension #6: The 410?

It’s official kids, I’m back on the SS. I bought a CAD plating kit today online from Caswell, ordered a set of tail light base and lens seal gaskets from Velocespace, requested a price quote for a new set of door latch buttons, a rear view mirror and some interior handles from Afra, and made a list of engine parts I still need to buy from Centerline.

As far as real work, I removed the brakes from a spare rear end I got that I am thinking I will use for the SS -but I guess I better back track a bit here before I get into the gory details. I bought a big group of parts last spring and among them was a complete rear end, which having the cable style emergency brake cable set-up meant it was from either an SS or a Sprint Veloce. I have been thinking a 4:10 rear end might make some sense for relaxed freeway cruising during commutes and with the engine being a somewhat hot 1600 it wouldn’t be too terrible off the line either. Anyhow, the other day I decided it was time to see what I had bought. It went something like this…

The gentle approach to removing drums involves tapping and pulling with your hands. That is followed by prying and hammering. Prying and hammering gives way to a big puller and when the fins start to break you call it a day and think about it until your next day at the shop. Today was that next day at the shop for me. Picture above is what it looked like today when I started.

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Cleaning up my SS and TI gauges

Update 11/23/09: I started back in on the SS so I thought another repost about working on it would be good. I am especially proud of my efforts on this post and the one that followed it.
I have spent a lot of time going through catalogs and making shopping lists so the GTV has to be sold soon to buy a bunch of the stuff I need. If you have any interest in a 69 GTV let me know. It wont be expensive. I am working on the SS rear end right now so look for another post about it soon.
Original post 6/27/09. I know it’s hard to believe but I did some work on my SS! The buyer of Market 1 SS, that had the incorrect earlier style gauges, bought the Italian/metric gauges that came out of my SS so I started cleaning up the US market gauges I had been contemplating using. Funny what a wad of cash can help you decide. The condition of the US gauges turned out to be one of those better and worse at the same time deals. Cosmetically they looked bad and the guts were in need of cleaning and lubricating, but the fundamental parts were presentable and most important, the plastic had not yellowed, so I could make a good set out of them with a little effort.

allgaugesThe fruit of my labor. Lot’s of spiffy gauges ready to tell me how I and my car(s) are doing. Still need to clean up the SS tach.

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Market 166: Scruffy but nice early Spider

Giulietta Spider 1495*02713.  This car has been on Bringatrailer, Craigslist and Alfa BB.  It may be still available, but I doubt it.  This car is a 1957 which makes it elligible for events not open to 58 and later cars.  Car is in San Diego and asking price of $14,000 is reasonable if it needs as little as the sellers description indicates.  I am primarily adding this car for posterity.

This is how you like to find them.  Straight, dry and in need of the kind of improvement that is fun to do between drives.  Hood and door fit looks excellent.  I don’t see any evidence of rust.

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Market 165: Used car lot Interim Spider -nice!

Update 11/30/09: 21 bidders, $27,000, reserve met.  A good result!

Giulietta Spider 10103*10786. This car is on eBay right now out of Illinois. Car is an interim car falling right in the middle of 1960 production range for 10103 Spiders. Title year being one after production is the norm for these cars in the US. Car is said to be all restored and from a long time (28 years) owner.

The source of my title: the big 61 used car lot style window sticker. Front of the car looks great. Hood fits perfectly, chrome is exemplary and paint looks wet it’s so shiny. Wipers are higher on the windshield than I would recommend. At this height they would chatter in the wind and scuff the glass.

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Suspension #1: Front lower wishbone and ball joint

Update 11/17/09: I’ll be moving the Fiat out tonight and moving the SS to front row center and starting to work on it again this weekend. All the suspension pieces could be assembled to the car by the end of the year if my plans to get floors in the car work out.

Original Post 5/22/08: I am going to use the parts book terms for these parts so there is no confusion as to what I am talking about.

The front suspension on my SS was lightly assembled without shocks to make the car a roller and it came apart without any problems. Most of the pieces just need cleaning and painting so I will deal with those as a group later, but there are some components that require great care in cleaning and restoring. The lower wishbone is one of these parts because there are several critical systems tied to it: the bushed suspension support pivots, lower ball joint, suspension limiting rebound strap, sway bar mount and lower spring seat. In this post I am going to look at the wishbone itself with regard to cleaning, and the disassembly of the ball joint. I was advised to leave the ball joints together but this one had enough play that I was worried about it having to come apart later anyway. The parts book has only one part number (101.00.21.030.00) for the wishbone that fits all 101 cars and 2 are required for each car so it must be symmetrical.

The suspension components on my SS were treated with some kind of rust inhibitor that is very hard to remove, requiring a combination of scraping and media blasting. Once I have the wishbone stripped bare I tape over the openings to the support pivot bushings, to prevent blast media from getting into the grease passage ways and I masked the ball joint opening to keep media out and grease from getting in the blast cabinet. For a first pass I spend about 10 minutes removing as much of the loose coating as possible and I focus on the snap ring on the ball joint threaded ring nut. This snap ring has to be removed to thread the ring nut out.

Wishbone masked off and ready to be blasted.

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Market 164: Another Spider racer roller

Update 12/5/09: This car sold for $5025. I would have to see the quality of the paint in person but this seems like a pretty good price for a car you can just start bolting parts onto. 

Giulietta Spider 10103*170861.  This car is on eBay right now out of New York. Seller says it’s a 1600 and it has a 1600 hood, but the vin number stated is that of a tipo 10103 1300. No big deal, it’s not going to get restored any time soon. 

170861 corner The car looks pretty good.  Wheel wells look to have been flared slightly.  Cage is pretty substantial.  Wheels are 105/115 era BWA’s I believe.  I kind of like these wheels and would put them on the 69 GTV given the chance.

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Fiat fresh-up five: finish line in sight

I keep having to steal time between ‘somewheres’ I’m supposed to be to work on the Fiat and I’m happy to report it has paid off.  The bell housing bolts, starter bolts, solenoid and other stuff I was waiting for showed up and last weekend I got to spend a few of those stolen moments installing it all along with the intake manifold and fuel pump, which I had removed to get access to the starter.  Way too much going on on the intake side of these Fiat twin cam engines!  Sunday I left the shop having turned the engine over with the starter – v e r y  s l o w l y I admit, but encouraging none-the-less. 

FIAT ONE ENGINEThis is a picture from this morning, about 1 hour before I started writing this post.  You will notice all sorts of funky stuff that I will go into later, but the important thing to take away from this picture is that it has the look of a car that runs.

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Market 163: Interim Spider racer project

Update 12/5/09: This car sold for $5000 even.  Seemingly the new norm for incomplete unremarkable Giulietta Spider rollers.

Giulietta Spider 1495*09110.  This car is on eBay right now from a seller in the north east US who seems to have a lot of Giulietta stuff in their barn.  This car is said to have been a long time race car, but seems to only be stickers, stripes and a roll bar away from being your usual remainder of a parted out Spider- very solid and rust free remainder I should add.

spider 09110 cornerRace number might help explain why it ended up years later stripped on anything of value and sold off.  Front looks tough with the bumper brackets and blanks where the signal lights go.  Certainly sits low for a car with no engine, supporting the race car claim.

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Fasteners #1: Introduction and cleaning oily fasteners

Update 11/9/09. Alas yes, I have gotten a bunch of work done on my projects but haven’t found time to write a proper post about it.  I started driving the GTV to work and tonight the battery gave up on my way home.  A friend picked me up, and we got it going.  I borrowed a new battery from another friend until I can figure out if it’s alternator or battery related.  On the bright side I had just spent a half an hour getting the heater core hooked up and heater fan working so I wont freeze on the way to work at 630 am tomorrow.

Enjoy the below post which maybe 3 people read the first time around.

Originally posted May 9th, 2008. Years ago when someone would ask me how I managed to get a project together, and wasn’t I daunted by all the parts that they saw laying about I would reply casually, ‘It’s all just nuts and bolts with a few special parts thrown in’. Little did I know how true this ingenuous response was. I didn’t however grasp the complexity and importance of those nuts and bolts.

I was thinking about this yesterday as I was working on the rear axle ‘casing and covers’ to quote the parts book. Besides a few big obvious parts I ended up with a pile of nuts bolts and washers. I usually bag and tag the fasteners after cleaning, or loosely assemble the parts if possible, but sometimes I get interrupted and 3 weeks later I find myself faced with a crusty pile of unfamiliar nuts and washers to try and identify. I looked at the parts bookto see how much information it had on these and it has a simple but useful nomenclature: what it is, what size it is, what it’s for. I guess if I get in any trouble I can reference the parts book.

Axle housing nut getting cleaned up.

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Bodywork #1: Full body workout

Update 11/7/09. I’m happy to say this rerun series seems to be doing well.  Todays installment should show clearly why this car is not on the road.  If I can display the same tenacity towards this car as I have the TI or Berlina it will get done.  It’s just going to take a while.

Originally posted May 2nd 2008, my third blog post! Just a quick guided tour of what the body needs. Remind yourself that surface rust looks worse than it is in pictures. The plan at this point is to scrape off the undercoating with a putty knife and use abrasive wheels etc on the rust. I have had lots of suggestions to take the body to the blasters and this is probably what I will end up doing.

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