Working on my Cars – Page 11

May 19, 2009

TI tidy up 8: the Bosch distributor

Some days it’s all I can do to find 20 minutes to tackle some small job on whatever project I’m working on, much less take the time to write about it. Yesterday afternoon I degreased, inspected and noted any parts needing replacement on the mechanical advance Bosch distributor that the TI is going to use. I get asked a lot how I manage to get these projects done seemingly fairly quickly and I always say it’s not the few long days that gets it done but the countless 20 minute sessions where I tackle one small job.

A quick test fit with the clamp in place of the newly spiffed up distributor. Red Cavis wires are like new. I’ll check the resistance through each wire to see if their all the same.

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May 16, 2009

Ti tidy 7: moving right along

The Giulia TI is coming along nicely. The greasy lump seen below showed up on Thursday afternoon. I had to give up the mid-seventies 1300 that came with the car but it was not the original engine so I wont lose sleep over the loss. All I have to do is remove the Spica intake parts, degrease it, do the head gasket and install a few parts appropriate to its new home and I’ll be on my way.

This fine unit started life in a 1973 Spider. One thing led to another and 36 years later it founds its way to me. Note the mechanical advance aluminum body distributor. Red wires are original Cavis made OEM items.

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May 12, 2009

TI Tidy 6 meets Sprint Surprises

Do you ever get the feeling that somehow the powers that be have conspired against us to take away free time and purify the cycle of sleeper/worker/consumer, gleaning the little joy that used to lubricate the cycle? Well, I’ve been busy like never before and thus I am writing a post at least two days after it was thought of.

There it is, returned from professional care, the Weber 28/36 DCD mounted at last, and with the airbox to boot! Yes, it now idles when warm, yes it is faster.

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May 7, 2009

TI Tidy-up part 5: The plan.

Now that I have successfully completed the Sprint engine rebuild I think I will try again to plan a project. I will lay out here the specification, schedule and budget to reach my desired outcome for the TI tidy-up. At the end you will find my nice to have’s and dream to have’s.

What do I want from the TI? The same thing functionally as the Berlina provided, a safe, fun, reliable daily driver. This time though, I want it to be presentable and plan on taking it on some weekend rallys and tours. Of course I want all this as inexpensively as possible and as soon as possible.

This picture borrowed from the AlfaBB shows the original color of my TI and the original 15″ wheels I hope to find a set of. Anyone?

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May 5, 2009

TI Tidy-up part 4: steady progress

As I get older I find myself and my expectations changing to adapt to the realization that there is a limit to what can be accomplished with the resources and time on hand, and frankly in most cases good enough really is good enough. For example the engine compartment on the TI. I could go over the top with prep and paint and the like, but considering how marginal the rest of the car is I don’t know that it makes any sense. In this spirit I decided to paint it black with truck bed-liner paint. My rationalizations? It would be tough, look good and mimic the finish of early Giulietta’s. If it was good enough for a Conrero prepared lightweight, it’s good enough for my VERY incorrect TI.

If I was a real hillbilly I would have managed to get over-spray all over the tail lights, windows and INSIDE the glove box. Phew, passed that test! C’mon, admit it, looks like it could work.

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May 4, 2009

I guess this is TI tidy-up part 3

I couldn’t sleep last night. I worked hard on the TI Sunday until 8pm and got inspired to fix it up and then when I tried to go to sleep I kept thinking about what I needed to do to put it together. Well, after dragging my tired, I-only-got-2-hours-of-sleep butt around the office I simply had to stop off at the shop on my way home to do at least a little something to the TI since I spent all night trying to get it out of my head.
The shop engine hoist came back from a service call so I put it to work and pulled the engine out while no one was looking. PO had 1 nut holding the engine in.

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May 3, 2009

Another busy Weekend, Berlina Tour and TI tidy-up

I guess the reason time goes by faster when you get older is you find more stuff to fill it. This weekend was another blur of activity starting with pulling the FIAT engine on saturday morning, the subject of my last post. Sunday I joined Andrew and the ARA for the Berlina Tour on rain-soaked roads in the East Bay hills. Click here to see my photo set from the drive.
The morning started out a little rough, fortunately the Berlina’s unreliable wipers behaved. For that matter the tired solenoid did too. Aaron is seen here on 580 braving the May showers.
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May 2, 2009

Fiat Fresh-up part 2: who’s knocking?

This is apparently the year of the engine rebuild for me! The attentive reader will know I have been lagging on pulling the FIAT engine, but no more. The engine came out today with a minimum of fuss and of course now I am faced with deciding what to do about the rod knock that led to these circumstances. You probably want to hear about the process first. It goes something like this…

Alfa’s have a built in lift point on the head, not so FIAT’s, so I rigged up some tie-downs looped through the engine mounts. The transmission and engine are only held together by 4 bolts, but they are M12’s or something. Once everything was free I hooked up the hoist and went to work.

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April 30, 2009

Happy Birthday to Giuliettas.com!

It’s been a year since I started giuliettas dot com and while I’ve entertained a few milestones along the way (100 posts, 200 posts etc) , I think this one is pretty big for me. If you told me I was going to accomplish the things I’ve accomplished over the last year I probably wouldn’t have believed you, so I’ll start with the numbers.

This is my 224th post meaning I’ve posted on average 4.25 times per week.
My posts average 1000 words, so I’ve written about 224,000 words; 1/3 of ‘War and Peace’ or a little more than the New Testament.
112 Market reports have been written covering 115 cars, not counting repeat sales or attempts at sales.
On March 24th, I had 605 page views, my most ever and about double my 2009 average of 308. 2008 average was 197, not bad for starting from zero!
If you are reading this on 4/30/09 you are a page view between 85,500 and 86,000 total.
I have identified 97 Sprint Speciales as existing, 4 as scrapped (but who knows what the future holds).
My register has grown to include 512 cars, not including reference cars.

I wanted to see what my Sprint would look like with the Zagato Lownose treatment.

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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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