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Market 342: Spider project 750D 02532

Update 12/17/11: Auction was ended because the vehicle is no longer available.

Giulietta Spider 750D 1495*02532, 1315*40155.  This car is on eBay right now, offered by Classic Investments out of Englewood Colorado.  Engine number 155 is pretty low for a mid-run 750D, and no build plate is present, so there is a pretty good chance it’s not original to the car.  On the good side the engine has been rebuilt at a claimed $10,000+ expense -seems a little high in my experience.  Whatever the case, this is a pretty decent start to a Spider project.

Yep -a Spider in need of a lot of help.  I see filler at the bottom grill opening -expect more.    Grill bars, headlight buckets and marker lights are present.

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Glas GT project: Cleaning parts and Making plans

I mentioned that I brought home a few parts last week when I did the deal.  The last few days at the shop after closing time I’ve been cleaning them up.  It’s frustrating to not have the whole car to mess with, but it’s also liberating since I can focus on the handful of parts I do have to mess with.  Cars are assembled from a finite number of parts and every part that gets cleaned, prepped and packaged for later assembly to the car is a step closer to the car being on the road.

The first round of cleaning included what you see here: the fuel pump, a wheel cylinder, the starter spacer and the combination oil pressure send unit/cam locating plate (maybe?).  I’m going to plate the screws and reassemble the pump tomorrow.
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Stolen Giulia Spider

Update 12/10/11: Car Has been found!!
Giulia Spider AR375897.  This car was Stolen recently.  I don’t have any details of the theft, just the vin and description.  Paint is dark gray -shiny but older repaint.  Interior is red.  Was stolen in Berkeley California.

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Market 340: Sprint set up for racing

Update 12/14/11: 34 bids were placed, but the car failed to sell for $15,000.  Rightfully so.  Makes me wonder about where the best place to market this car is.


Giulietta Sprint 10102 1493*24148.  Out of Southport CT comes this Sprint racer via eBay.  It has been listed a few times before but I don’t remember how much it got to without selling.  Car looks to have been imported from Italy.  This kind of set up seems like it should command some sort of premium, but with tastes seeming to favor restorations or originality these days, this will probably sell for less than you’d imagine.

Cool stuff.  Body and paint do look very nice.  Looks like a street car with stickers and driving lights -speaking of which the left driving light is set up to make a pool of light a few feet in front of the car -needs adjustment.
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Nature abhors a vacuum they say… I bought a Glas 1700 GT!

Preamble:  I, Matt, in order to keep hands from idle pursuits, to keep wallet light, to keep the wife up on her eye rolling exercises and to stay basically entertained, bought one cheap and rough looking (and truly rough in fact) Glas 1700GT.  All you really need take away is:  cheap, rough, crazy.
Okay, so I spent my day in Sacramento buying, paying for, inventorying and pulling the brake parts off of a 1966? Glas GT.  Norm bought it sight unseen off Craigslist a few years ago and it’s languished in the corner of his garage out of sight -mainly due to being more unsightly than he expected.
Proof that Alfa’s aren’t the only cars to literally suffer from the good intentions of their owners.  Yellowy-green is a primer of sorts circa 1990, brownish rough looking stuff is iron oxide, red is paint applied prior to 1979 and the stray glimmer of white on the nose is the original color.  All-in-all, sad looking but solid and straight.
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Market 339: Leafy Spider on eBay

Update 1/3/12: I have it on pretty good word that the car sold for $5500.
Update 12/14/11: Auction was pulled.  An off eBay deal?

Update 12/5/11: Giulia Spider Veloce 10118*390672.  She’s a Veloce!

Kip sent me a link to this Spider on eBay when it was first posted with the caption ‘car in a barn, without the barn’.  Pretty good description.  Car has a Pininfarina hard top guaranteeing it will sell for at least $1500.  Even the optimistic optimist in me thinks this is a parts car.

You can bet the left side of this car is REALLY rusty.  Looks like a reasonable car that got left for some reason and expired while waiting for it’s masters return.  What am I saying, buy this, fix it, run it.  Vroom!
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Nostalgia and classic cars

We had been going back and forth for 6 weeks about selling the Fiat 124 sedan and finally let it go on Sunday.  A charming young woman is the new owner and she couldn’t be happier.  I thought long and hard about the reason we had such a hard time letting it go.  Lots of good times were had in it and it represents a physical link to bygone days -albeit in this case not so long ago, having only been in our care for 5 years.  It got me thinking about the cars we’ve had over the years and the good times had in each -and in the big sense, how people everywhere experience similar nostalgic feelings around their old cars.

The take away here is the big smile.  She is in love with this car and excited to own, drive, care for and create good times in it.
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Market 337: Early Spider racer

Update later the same day:  Sold for $19,800.  A bargain?

Spider 750D 1495*02031.  This car is on eBay right now out of Denver Colorado.  Racing set up is as purposeful as they come, with lots of refinements that probably make it highly competitive.  These cars tend to be a bargain to buy compared to the expense of the development represented in the final product.  I’d have to tone it back a bit so it could be used on the street too.

Between the sun and the saturation of the red, the lines of the car are almost lost.  Widened steels look very tough.  I like the cut down windshield -reminds me of Conrad’s Spider Veloce.
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Project: Dads 1947 Chevy 3100 part 5

Sometimes taking it apart actually isn’t easy.  Last winter, when my dad called me to tell me the rear end was so locked up that the truck had to be dragged onto the flatbed, I got off the phone and looked up what the assembly looked like.  Torque tube rear ends have a bunch of extra bearings, some complicated assemblies, and lots of tapered splines etc.  I wasn’t looking forward to the day when I got to work on it, but today the day came and it really wasn’t that bad.

I showed up at my dads place about 11 and found him with a 6 foot pipe on the end of my 2 foot breaker bar trying to get the bolts that clamp the pre-load section of axles to the housing.  The four bolts pointing out at the camera.

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Market 336: Spider 1600 Veloce project

Update 12/3/11: Auction was ended early, car is no longer available.

Giulia Spider Veloce 1600 AR390369, 00121*01965.  This car is on eBay right now at $9500 with 5 days to go and perfectly represents the opposite end of the spectrum from Market 335’s nicely restored Spider Veloce 1600 AR390532 that is $68,500 and listed as ‘sale pending’.  Seller says it’s numbers matching and complete but in need of much metal work.
Am I the only one that looks at a car in this condition and has a hard time accounting for the degradation?  ‘I have a great idea’, says weekend warrior shade tree mechanic who fancies himself a restorer, either blind to, or imagining himself capable of seeing the very complex process through for 1000+ hours and at an expense of $60,000 over two or three years.  Taking it apart is easy…
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