Category: Working on my Cars

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Here is the news… general Giuliettas update

First item:  News flash! My first of two payments has been made on SS 10121*380211 after 3 months of exchanging emails and pictures and basically waiting for Spring to come.  The car is apart (has been apart for about 5 years -was a runner before that) and requires some rust repair and all, but is complete, matching numbers and comes with a lot of new parts.  It was basically one of those deals where I couldn’t not buy it knowing what I do now about these cars. 

Where does that leave me with 10120*00413?  We’ll see.  A local Alfa guy has been looking for an SS shell as the basis for a race car and now that a lot of the rust is repaired it’s probably a much more doable looking project.  No promises either way.  I did just spend a miniscule fortune on a radiator out of the UK for it…  Any interest??

This is how you find them or rather they find you.  Truth is this was the other car I was considering when I bought 00413 all those months ago.  The detail oriented in the crowed are right now trying to figure out what’s going on in the front behind the grill opening.  It’s just a repair panel laying in there.

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SS Veglia gauge restore part 2 -finale-

I am back from vacation but need a few days to see what’s going on and get back into the swing of things so another rerun for you all. 

Originally posted 7/28/09: Following on my success with the Super gauges intended for my TI and the two Sprint Speciale gauges, I decided tackling the last gauge for the SS was the thing to do yesterday when I spent some hours at the shop.

Outwardly the Tachometer was the middle child, not so cosmetically usable as is as the tri-gauge and not so obviously water damaged as the Speedometer. Functionally it was not much better off than the Speedometer. This is how it went:

tach front beforeI would probably have paid $40 for this on eBay and been disappointed when I received it if I didn’t know then what I know now. Needles are pointed where they belong but other than that it looks bad. At least the plastic insert is not yellowed.

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Brakes #1: Rear brake adjusters

To keep myself from getting bored I tend to work on whatever looks interesting at any given time. I didn’t have a lot of time yesterday (5/10/08) because I had to install an old Blaupunkt ‘Frankfurt’ in my wife’s 1972 Fiat 124 Sedan Special and I’m not the best at this sort of thing to begin with. It turned out the dial on the tuner was broken so I had to open up the deck and find stations using a tiny screwdriver to move the guts around then set the mechanical presets with it energized, scary. Now she has 5 choices to listen to and a DIN plug to run an Ipod into. Point of all this: I expected to have at least 2 hours to work on the SS, I ended up with 45 minutes.

When rummaging around looking for stuff to help with the stereo installation I came across the rear brake adjusters in a big zip-lock bag. I poured them out on the bench and squirted them with some WD40 I had on hand. These Girling units are the same as those found on the first few years of Austin Healey 100/3000 roadsters and probably a lot of other stuff that I don’t know about. I wipe down my work bench, get the couple of tools I will need to take them apart and clean them together and get to work.  I need two for my SS but the bag has 4 in it and I might as well do all four at once, preserving the last two for the next project.

The center shaft with the square drive is the adjuster, turn it clockwise to adjust the brake shoes out, anti-clockwise to adjust them in. The damaged threads can be seen about 6 turns down on the nearer stud.

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Bodywork 14: Somewhere in the early part of the middle

I have to fess up.  I started this blog post yesterday and then chickened out and stopped working on it because I felt a little embarassed by the quality of my work.  I feel like the rust repair is going okay, the metal is responding, but the finished product looks pretty marginal.  Good enough -yes, but I sort of imagined some unknown talent taking over and this coming out nicely.  I am aware that this is sort of how these things go, and skill development takes time but it’s hard to not get discouraged.  Oh well.  Good enough indeed.

Picking up where I left off last time.  Bumper mount recesses and tubes are removed and cutouts for back up lights are, well, cut out.  It’s reassuring to know that people exist who can undo all my efforts and make it right if someone wanted it so and money was available.

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SS 00121 rebuild 8: a few parts needed then the waiting begins

With all the focus lately on my questionable rust repair techniques, I haven’t said much about the engine.  I have a modest list of parts to source and buy, but basically, the engine is all torqued together and  is just waiting for me to get the body done and drop it in.  I have it displayed proudly on a wooden pallet so I get inspired everytime I turn on the shop lights.  This is how it looks.  I wonder how long after assembly it’s okay to wait before firing an engine up?  I expect to fire it up in June.

The valve cover is loosely assembled because most of the parts on my ‘still to source and buy’ list are under it.  Cams, tappets and shims feature prominently.  Another unresolved issue is the holes in the valve cover these valve cover bolts go through are not big enough -I need to drill them all.

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Bodywork 13: win-win rear end repair

It was nearly 2 years ago that I started work on this corner of the car -was the first body work I attempted.  Back then I didn’t really know what to do about some of the problems I faced, but as with all things, I figured when it came time to make a decision, I would somehow know what to do.  The bodywork was tweaked just enough in a crash, and rusted through in just enough places that getting it back to stock was going to be difficult.  Now that I am welding and unafraid and have to deal with it, I have decided to repair it by emulating the early lownose rearend -a much simpler design and hopefully easier to fabricate.  Check it out. 

A reminder of where I started and what I started with.  Now that I have experience I can tell you the dent to the left of the tail lights, in the gentle curve of the Kamm tail area is a harder thing to deal with than the edge chop.

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Bodywork 12: good enough is good enough

The title of this one has become my mantra. Welding is getting easier incrementally, as is shaping the metal. As I cut little areas open, remove the dead metal and add new in I am always telling myself to just get it good enough so I can grind it down, smear the weld with all metal filler, sand that down and hide any imperfections under some polyester filler. Here is the latest. This picture was taken about 2 hours before I sat down to write this.

You can’t really see much of the improvement, but this is what it looked like when I left tonight. I’m only looking forward to the sanding and filler stage because it will mean the welding stage is done. Did I mention welding is dirty work?

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Bodywork 11: extreme rust encapsulator

I got to the shop early this morning to continue some work I started Friday after work-painting most of the inside of the front end with rust encapsulating chassis paint.  I finished wire-wheeling all the crud and everything off the engine compartment surfaces, the insides of the fenders etc and it had been sitting for about a week and surface rust had begun to form so it was time to seal it.  Check it out.

Beginning at the end -this is what it looked like when I left today.  The light gray is self etching zinc oxide primer designed to inhibit rust.  The black is Eastwood rust encapsulating chassis paint.  Both are aromatic to put it mildly. Continue reading “Bodywork 11: extreme rust encapsulator”

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Body work 10: fixing cut corners

Another giant leap.  All it took is the happy convergence of a few things namely: a rudimentary understanding of welding, the realization that ‘good enough’ is good enough, and, well if it comes out total crap I can just cut it all out and try again -it’s only my time after all.  So what did I do with my new found intrepid spirit?  I welded that headlight area back on that I cut off about 18 months ago.  I didn’t have my camera through most of the hard part, but it looked a lot like the work I did in the rocker -rough, nasty and strong.

Near the finale.  I tried the headlight rings on to see how it looks.  It looks okay, but if I measure with a straight edge, the plane of the two headlight rings is not parallel one side to the other.  The outer edge is about 1/4″ too far out.

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Body work 9: rusty rocker remediation begins

I may regret not taking it to a professional at some point but I just can’t bring myself to let someone else do this job.  The whole point of this exercise -restoring the SS- was to learn a bunch of skills and see what I could do.  So, in that spirit I put on my grubby work clothes, got out the serious metal-cutting tools and went for it before I had time to turn back.

Friday afternoon I got to the shop at about 430.  I have been looking at this rusty mess since before I received the car and it struck me at that moment -now was the time to fix it. Under that rust hole is the support for the door, a sort of cup.  Fortunately it is VERY solidly attached and  I just need to work around it.

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