Author: hamilton.mm

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Bodywork #2: Cutting corners

The scariest part of the bodywork for me is the drivers side headlight area.  The metal has been stretched like ‘wizards sleeve’ to quote Borat, the mounting surface for the headlight bucket is gone and the edge is ragged.  Once I decided I wasn’t going to try and tackle this job myself, I thought about what I could do while working on other stuff.  I didn’t really want to take the whole car anywhere but I needed professional help with this.  I talked to the owner of a restoration shop in Washington when he was picking up a friends car to get some rust repair done.   “What do you think about me cutting out the corner of my car with the messed up headlight and just sending that part of the car to you?”  I asked.  “Sure.”  Was his reply.  If this goes well, I may cut other chunks off to send to him. 

The extent of the damage is hard to see in this picture, though the headlight bucket mounting ring is obviously absent.

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Market 9: Original 1958 750 B barn find

Sprint ‘Normale’ 750B 1493*06329, engine 1315*05724.Sold on eBay 3/31/08 for $26,600. A nicer start for a total restoration couldn’t be found, but I don’t know if I could bring myself to erase the original patina of this machine, and it may not make any financial sense. Engine is loosely assembled to add to the pictures appeal. Mileage is a claimed 108K at which point it blew its head-gasket, in 1971. I would estimate $10,000 or more to bring this car up to a safe, reliable operating standard, and maybe another $2000 to get the interior in shape. Seller, operating out of Newport Beach California, is known for bringing well presented barn-find Alfa’s to eBay and this is in my opinion his finest offering to date.

The 750 Sprints were all hand made, with body panels hammered out on wood bucks and welded together. When you scrutinize these cars you see some very fine detail work beside some very rough welding, totally normal given the manufacturing circumstances. Any repairs to the body are hammer and dolly, or cut, shape and weld. The car is a true uni-body so there are no removable panels and this adds to the expense of restoration. Fortunately this car needs none of that.

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Clean, straight, original. This car sits like a car that was driven to this spot. Grills look great as do side spears and window surround trim. The nickname ‘eyebrow’ car comes from the two simple trims surrounding he openings on either side of the grill.

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Market #8: 1959 Interim 750 Sprint barn find

Sold! This car ended on 5/14/08 at $15,100. This is more than I expected, but not much, and I was not thinking of the current dollar weakness when I said $12,000. I expect this will be a sale that finalizes and the new owner will be very happy with their purchase. A couple of good showings for Sprints the last couple of months has me thinking I finally bought a car (or three) at the right time. I wonder what additional money would have been spent on this car if the original engine were included? Another win-win auction.

Sprint ‘Normale’ 750B 1493*08260, engine AR00112*01160. Another fantastic barn-find from the eBay seller out of Newport Beach area. This car is one of the Interim Sprints which were made from 1958 through 1960 and in a few cases beyond. The 750B and Tipo 10102 Sprints were made side by side with essentially whatever parts were on hand the day of the build. I suspect Bertone was told by Alfa to use up stock of old parts where they could. My 1959 Sprint is very similar to this car in most respects though it is a 10102 with a 1493 body number. The Fusi book of production Alfa’s lists the 59 750B’s starting with 07922 and ending with 10301. The 10102’s start with 20001 and end with 21487. I think that adds up to about 3500 examples made that year including Sprint Veloces, which were pulled at random from among the two series and labeled with an E between the Tipo prefix and number.

Stance looks right, body is straight as is the front brightwork. Too bad every mechanical part on a car like this will need attention before it can see the road.

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Brakes #2: Rear backing plates

The rear brake plates on an SS are the same as those on a Sprint Veloce. The gas tank capacity on these cars was increased by growing it in the direction of the differential so that it effectively surrounds the aluminum differential housing. To accommodate this, the emergency brake actuators had to be relocated so that they were in front of the rear axle assembly. Many other parts besides these backing plates changed, but I will go into those changes later when I talk about the emergency brake assembly as a whole. Important to the backing plates is that the new emergency brake actuation was via a single cable that was pulled from the center through a perch, and each end of the cable was secured to the backing plate by a welded on bracket.

My SS was missing the correct backing plates but Alfa Parts Exchange, a local Alfa wrecker, had a set still attached to a Veloce rear end. I bought all the emergency brake parts they had. One of the brackets on the backing plate was broken off but included and had to be welded, and both had major rust pitting. I spent an hour and blasted the plates to remove as much rust as possible. One of my friends at my shop was doing some welding so I had him weld the broken bracket back into place while he was at it. After the repair I painted them with POR 15, followed by a primer then a coat of epoxy based appliance paint.

The plate on the left is a standard Giulietta part and the plate on the right is the modified Veloce part.

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