Project cars – Page 16

April 29, 2009

Market 112: 2 Spider projects a Veloce project in Italy and a Normale project in Australia

Update 5/13/09: No bids either car. Oh well…

Giulietta Spider 750F 1495*07515, 1315*31998. This car is available right now on Italian eBay with an opening bid of €14,000 ($18,300 at time of writing). The Telaio number dates it as a 1959 so the vent windows are most likely correct and it may be a short wheel base car (passo corto). I’m still trying to work out when the vent windows came into production. I think they were always available as an accessory.

This car is rough looking but fairly straight and comes with a lot of the hard to find parts. Amazing that these cars keep turning up!

Doesn’t look much better or worse than my Spider but has the magic ‘F’ of the Veloce stamped on it and a Veloce Series engine.

Continue reading “Market 112: 2 Spider projects a Veloce project in Italy and a Normale project in Australia”

April 22, 2009

Market #12: Craigslist basket case 1963 Sprint

Update 5/1/09: 12 bidders chimed in and the result was $1525, reserve not met. A little lower than I would have thought, but getting all the bits together is going to cost. I have a lot of what it needs, I wonder what it would take to buy it?

Update 4/21/09: Giulia Sprint 385940 is now on eBay after either having all it’s trim, lights and other bits stripped and sold, or applied to another car the seller may have. I told you a bunch of Sprints would follow that $18.7K car.

I shouldn’t assume the current seller is the previous seller, but for convenience I will.

Wasn’t long ago this guy had his grills and lights and bumpers, hopefully someone is going to buy him and get him a fresh set… maybe.

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April 20, 2009

Exploring the Spider’s potential

Alas, I should be tearing into the Fiat’s bottom end, or fixing up the cooling system on the Sprint so I know when I’m overheating but I can’t leave the new car alone.
Digging through the glove-box, trunk and interior didn’t reveal any serious jewels, but did turn up a lot of the little stuff that can be a real pain to track down.

As usual, a teaser first. This is the original paint. Not easy to expose, but doable. I think I have mentioned many times that this is my favorite Alfa color.

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April 20, 2009

Market 110: One of the last 1300 Giulietta Spiders

Giulietta Spider 10103*370645. This car was available last week on Sacramento Craigslist, listed as a parts car to make an offer on. Seller stated the car was complete but rusty after having been sitting for years in various indoor and outdoor locations. The owner was the sellers father who finally admitted he was never going to get around to it.

If cars could talk, tell the story, relate the lonely years spent 15 feet from the open road, home to litters of kittens, mice and who knows what else while piled with boxes of ephemera waiting for either rebirth in the recycled form of Bob the singing big mouth bass on a Walgreen’s shelf or per chance another shot at the open road. Spider 370645 sees daylight for the first time in years, note it still has shackles on its chin.

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April 15, 2009

Market 107: UK based Giulia 1600 Sprint project

Giulia 1600 Sprint 10112*356956. This car is available right now on eBay.UK. According to the Production and Register it was made in 1963, making it one of the last Sprints. Lots of work has been done and it sounds like it is ready for paint and assembly.

Bodywork looks to have been done well. Wipers work in the opposite direction to mine.

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April 13, 2009

101 1300 20: the home stretch

I drove the Sprint to work this morning, 29 miles one way in moderate 6:30am traffic. It still has some wrinkles to iron out but all in all it is pretty good. A 101 1300 has to be driven to be believed. I have been spoiled by 1750 power over the last 6 months in the Berlina and with the 1300 powered Sprint I was expecting a noticably slower car, but honestly, other than having to adjust from the ‘power anywhere’ torque curve of the 1750 to a tendancy to stumble below about 3000 rpm in the 1300, the 1300 holds its own and is turbine smooth.

Since my last report on this car I have done a lot of work but I didn’t have the camera so it didn’t get documented.

Here it is in the parking lot at work. There is a hint of coolant under the nose so I’ll have to tighten the hose clamps when it cools down, but other than that, no problem.

Continue reading “101 1300 20: the home stretch”

April 1, 2009

101 1300 19: made it through another recession…

I know, you’ve all grown bored with my never ending engine rebuild. Well, let me tell you, no one is as tired of it as my back and shoulders! I wonder how Sisyfus would have felt about a never ending series of installation and removals of an Alfa transmission. Yeah yeah, boo hoo your thinking, I deserve all I get if I keep making these rookie moves.

Achem, okay, enough about that. In a mere 5 hours, spread out over three days, I managed to swap out the friction disk with a NEW one that I sourced from Glenn late Saturday afternoon while couch shopping. Now, once again I am on to the next thing and the next thing is on new ground, but first a short recap.

Old disk is .33665 inches or about 8.5mm. The shop manual says 6mm is the limit of wear. The linings were a little loose on the metal part of the disk so I suspect I could have compressed the disk a little more, maybe to 8mm. It’s possible a pressure plate adjustment to account for the springs settling over the years would have made this disk useable to 6mm. I’m not going to find out.

Continue reading “101 1300 19: made it through another recession…”

March 30, 2009

101 1300 18: more slow progress

Even though I haven’t mentioned it in a while I am continuing on with the Sprint. This Saturday I got back around to the Weber vacuum leak work. I installed the DCD again with the newly lapped mounting base and hooked it all back up, the car still refused to idle and runs rougher than it should off idle. Needing a reality check I decided to install the Solex that came with my old TI. It had been off the road for several years and looked bad on the outside but it was clean on the inside and I knew it worked since I drove the TI with this carb installed for 20,000 or more miles.

The Solex bolted into place. It’s hard to see but the PO spray painted the carb silver, screws, washers, springs, levers and all.

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March 29, 2009

Market 99: Two-tone Giulia SS project

Update 3/31/09: Auction ended at $32,299 with 32 bids. This is strong money and reaffirms that SS’s are sought after right now. If the new owner is happy with the cosmetic condition and drops it off at a shop to be made to run and drive they will probabkly be $50K into it when they take their first test drive. They will be pushing $60K if they decide the two-tone paint needs to be rectified. The DIY home mechanic could probably see this on the road for about $40K out of pocket. The white SS that was on eBay recently is looking better when all this is considered.

Update 3/29/09: A kind reader took some pictures when he went to see it in person. He reported that it needs more work than he thought it would before seeing it and that the paint was not as good as it looks in the pictures. Still, this is one of the better SS projects to show up in a while. Spy shots here.
Giulia Sprint Speciale 10121*381357, no engine number stated, but said to be original. Available right now on eBay out of La Habra Ca is this 1965 SS. Seller says it’s a 1966 but it was (according to Fusi and d&T) made in 1965, the year production ceased at car number 381399. The two tone treatment is reminiscent in my opinion to that seen on some Lotus Elites. Some assembly required.

This is a great angle for SS’s. I like the two-tone treatment, but would consider painting the roof to match the body color.

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March 27, 2009

Today I’m 101 200 603 72,434

The careful reader will know that the 101 is for the number of Market reports I’ve written. I suppose the same reader could guess that 200 is the total number of posts I’ve written for this blog. 603 is the most page views I’ve had in a day, there is no average to be seen, but I would guess around 275. 72,434 is my total visitors, doubtful if they are unique.

What good have I done? Not sure. I’ve been tempted to write a market wrap up but that sounds like a lot of work, maybe at the end of a year. I have this crazy idea that I could develop a Giulietta value calulator based on actual sale prices now that I have a pretty good catalog of auction results. I’ve gotten a lot of work done on my Sprint, enjoyed the daily commute company of a fine Berlina and gathered a lot of good parts for my SS project. Through all these I’ve had you here to keep me honest and on track. Thanks!

Oh, and check out my new ‘Production and Register’ page. I think the format has stabilized now that I have accepted it has to be edited in HTML. If your car’s not there drop me a line!

Random period SS photo to fulfill be word-to-photo quota.

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