Category: Sprint Speciale

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Brakes #3: The SS Master Cylinder part 1.

I was moving stuff around my space and cleaning up on Sunday trying to organize the parts for my various concurrent projects when I came across this master cylinder that I set aside for use in the SS.  It was under some stuff in a plastic bag from when I took it to Glenn’s shop to get help removing the big end nut.  I hadn’t opened it so I figured it was a good time to peek inside to see if I need to look for another.  Next thing I knew I had spent an hour cleaning it.

mc-openSome rust and crust can be seen here, but I don’t think it’s too bad.  I pulled the seal and that weird washer that allows flow through the array of holes under the seal out and set to work with various implements to clean it up.

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SS Engine 00121 #1: Inspections

Drum roll please. The moment you’ve all been waiting for, I am back on the SS project. I know, I know, the 101 1300 I’ve been rebuilding for the last 4 months is not in the Sprint yet so why am I shifting gears and diving into this? Well, this engine rebuild is next on the list and I need to figure out what I need to replace (buy) and what performance modifications I am going to try and incorporate so cracking it open now will help my planning and give my wrench a smooth transition.

00121 veloce as found frontLooks like a greasy Alfa engine to me. Note early Marelli distributor, I think this may be destined for the 1300.

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Details #1: IPRA Torino Heater box markings

If you are restoring a Giulietta Sprint Speciale or Spider (or possibly many other late 50’s or early 60’s Italian cars Fiat, Ferrari, Maserati, Lancia etc among them) to as-new condition and are obsessed (I mean really obsessed) with originality, then you may have given thought to reproducing factory markings. These cars were made by hand then assembled by hand from parts that were made by hand. Hand written grease pencil notes on the backs of upholstery cards and on interior surfaces, hand stamped serial numbers, hand applied decals and rubber stamps all characterize these cars and the circumstances under which they were made. Erasing, preserving or recreating these markings during a restoration is a matter of personal choice. I don’t know if points are awarded or taken away during judging at serious concours events but if the spirit of the competition is to recreate the ‘new’ car then it seems to me these markings should be present.

The first item in my ‘Original Details’ section is this heaterbox, as removed from a very original Giulietta Sprint Speciale.

‘E’ in a box with an arrow pointing up. Water Entrata? Continue reading “Details #1: IPRA Torino Heater box markings”

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Suspension #4: Drivers side front assembly part 1

It’s nice to have a couple of working examples hanging around the shop to supplement the parts book when it comes to finalizing assemblies. Even when taking care to label and organize parts as they come apart it’s possible to mix them up and if they have been apart before, which on a 47 year old car you have to assume they have, it’s possible they are not put together correctly in the first place. I started on the complete sinestro (left) front suspension assembly with the goal of having it completely ready to bolt on the car before I moved on to the destro assembly. All of the upper wishbone parts had been cleaned and painted before I started this blog so I will deal with the assembly now as a whole for simplicity and look at most of the individual parts later in the blog as I work on the destro unit.

The first two pictures below are of the destro assembly to give an idea of the condition of the sinestro parts before I started work.

Complete lower Destro Wishbone assembly ready for hours of attention. This should give an idea of how much work went into the Sinestro assembly.

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Suspension #3: rear axle rebound straps

Rebound limit straps are very important, if the rear axle were allowed to rebound freely away from the body without them, due to a large bump, the single nut at the upper end of the shocks is the next limiting devise. This nut is small and the sheet metal it mounts the shock to is not thick so damage to this area is easily possible. The straps are a strip of layered canvas bonded with rubber which is clamped together by metal plates held together by nuts and bolts to form a loop. A rubber bump stop limits axle travel toward the body. Conveniently the strap and bump stop are incorporated into the same assembly.

This strap, although frayed, is still in one piece and functional.

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Bodywork #4: Scraping through 47 years of crud

Removal of the gas tank, the aerodynamic panel between the gas tank and rear body edge, the rear axle, rebound straps, clutch linkages, emergency brake linkages and lots of other little stuff was hard work made much more difficult by the presence of about 1/4″ of accumulated crud.  The crud is a mix of grease, road dirt and dust, oil, undercoating, and other debris hardened over the years by continual wetting and drying, heating and cooling.   In many cases I had to use a screwdriver and wire brush to expose the bolts holding an assembly together and clean the treads so I could get it apart.  I can’t complain too much about this crud though because it protected the metal in these areas from the elements and kept it free of rust.

The tools I used for this job were a 3″ wide putty knife/paint scraper with a sharp edge, a dull pocket knife, a wide bladed screwdriver and a course bristle wire brush.  Before climbing under the car I put all 6 of my jack stands under it in case I shook it loose with my scraping, I don’t want to end the project prematurely by having the clutch pivot mounting bracket pierce my lung when the car slips off of a stand.  I should add that I wore a respirator, eye protection, gloves and a ski cap.  Even with this safety equipment I usually went home with dirty fingernails, eyes red from frequently fishing chunks out of them that got around the glasses and black snot (sorry, I have allergies and blow my nose a lot…).  The hat was not so much a safety precaution as a practical way to keep from having to shampoo 6 times to get all the junk out of my hair, like I did the first night.

If not for the rebound strap this shot could be anywhere under the car.  I took this picture so I could refer to it later when putting the restored rebound strap assemblies on the car.

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Suspension #2: Rear axle locating triangle

The differential and axle assembly has to be able move around freely as the rear suspension absorbs bumps and loading changes caused during cornering and braking.  This travel in the axle has to be limited so that the wheels can’t come into contact with the body in any loading condition.  To accomplish this the axle assembly is attached to the body by a rear triangle at its center and a pair of trailing arms at either end.   These pivot together as a sort of 3 dimensional four-bar linkage through the center of the massive ball joint that connects the triangle to a boss nearly equidistant from the two rear wheels on the axle. The ball joint is the fulcrum of a teeter-totter between the two rear wheels.  With respect to each other and this point when one goes up, the other goes down.  This motion is softened with respect to the body by springs that are dampened by shock absorbers and the travel at either end is limited by canvas straps.  The entire assembly is isolated from the rest of the car by rubber bushings.

The ball joint pin is a taper fit into the boss it goes in on the axle housing.  Removing the triangle from the rear axle required heat and a ball joint separating tool commonly called a pickle fork.  The pickle fork works by acting as a wedge between the axle housing boss and the triangle.  I first scraped as much grease as I could off the boss to avoid a fire and to minimize stinky fumes, then heated the boss up, once it was hot I used a big hammer on the end of the pickle fork and the ball joint popped out of the taper. 

A lot of road grime attaches itself to everything on the underside of the car and the axle locating triangle is no exception.

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Bodywork #3: That dent in the corner

Warning:  I don’t have any training at what I am attempting here, this is all new territory for me, so use this as a guide at your own risk! 

I decided I could take on this dent in the corner without much trouble.  I made some measurements and found that the mounting face for the tail light bases had been pushed in about an inch in compared to the same face on the other side.  This is the  not so obvious effect of the dent on the edge.  The metal in this corner is still very sound so I don’t want to cut anything out that I don’t have to.  Secondary to this dent is the shallow dent, right in the seam about a foot to the left of the corner dent.  This will need straightening and shrinking.

I’m not sure how this dent happened, it’s very high and narrow and at an odd angle to the car.

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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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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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