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Market #54: Luzzago Giulietta Sprint Speciale auction 11/15

Giulietta Sprint Speciale 10120*00687, engine 00129*29819 (not original). This car is going to be auctioned 11/15/08 at the Luzzago in Italy. The engine is from a Giulietta TI which seems funny, but once the original is gone, almost any 101 1300 can serve as a basis to build an 00120 spec veloce engine, you just have to verify what was done. I really like the look of the car, lowered and with all extra trim removed. I’m not crazy about the white wheels and some of the interior treatments, but that’s all easy enough to deal with.

Paint looks great, note there is little reflection distortion across body lines. Home-made grill is simple but effective.

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Something about the devil and idle hands…

You know the beginning of Magnolia when the lady shoots a shotgun at her husband and misses him but hits her son who just jumped off the roof as he falls by the window? Well the pile of circumstances today wasn’t quite that profound but the result was pretty good. The story is something like this…

Possibly the most absurdly cute car ever. Don’t you just want to pinch its cheek?

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Market #53: Late 1600 Giulietta Sprint

Update 1/5/09:  This car is still available and the seller is looking to get about $25,000 for it. 

Giulia Sprint 1600 AR357309. This car is available right now on eBay and bidding is currently $18,000 Fusi says this is a 1963 Giulia Sprint 1600, no engine number is stated but it was originally a Tipo 00112 probably about 08000. Bertone number is probably about 6530000.

I’ve seen this car before on the AlfaBB and the seller seems to have a handle on what these cars are about so I am confident this is a car that is as good as it looks.

These late Sprints are neat because they have the classic Bertone Giulietta Sprint shape combined with the updated components being phased in with the Giulia Sprint Speciale, Giulia Sprint Veloce (step-nose GTV) and Giulia TI.

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Berlina project part 3: success!

My dad was in town and to keep him busy I brought him to the shop with me on Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago. We spent most of the time talking about the best approach and after one false start got the engine and transmission to mate up. Not an easy job when you leave the transmission in the car. Dropping the front swaybar turned out to be the trick to make two faces parallel. Once it was in I probably spent more time trying to find the correct bolts to bolt the motor mounts down than I did installing the engine.

Two successive afternoons the following week I put all the pieces together and to my amazement it fired right up. I didn’t want to try and retrofit the early 60’s 1600 Veloce airbox (though it probably would have looked very cool) so I traded it for the Euro airbox seen here. I spent $11 more than I paid for the car on a bag of parts from a local dealer including a new oil pressure send unit to put the finishing touches on the assembly part of the project.

Here it is in all its glory. I traded a late ‘scalloped with tabs’ valve cover for the smooth unit seen here with the 90 degree breather to match the airbox. Note the high out-put alternator from a late 80’s spider.

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101 1300 rebuild for Giulietta Sprint part 1: Out with the new, in with the old

If you have followed the Berlina recommission posts you know my plan was to pull the 1750 out of the Sprint, put it in the Berlina and then drop the original 101 1300 into the Sprint. A slight complication was revealed on Saturday when, while the sun dried the gas out of the Fiat gas tank, I set to work preparing the 1300 for its new (old) home. It seemed like a good idea to open the engine up enough to at least check the bores, a main bearing or two and the combustion chambers to establish a baseline of its condition.

It turned out that the spark plugs being out of the holes for 13 years (only 2 in my keeping…) allowed moisture to attack the bores and rings. I tried to hone one of the liners but wasn’t happy with the result. Oh well, piston and liner sets are not too expensive, but do I go for the 1300 normale 9.1:1, veloce 10:1 or a 1400 kit or really punch it out and go for the Conrero spec 1500? Time to fish through my wallet!

The business end of a Giulietta 1300. All and all pretty clean in here. Someone decided polishing the crank was the way to go. Note 101 1300 Nomales have the dip in the block side for the close in oil filter.

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Fiat centoventiquattro ongoing fix it again

Ahhhh yes. You think things are going your way but really the elements are conspiring against you. Within an hour of making the Berlina run I get a call from the better half. “Uh… I smell gas strong in the Fiat.”

“Where are you?”

“Right in front of work.”

“Where is it coming from? trunk? Engine compartment?” I am already pulling the gas tank out in my mind

If you’re reading this blog you’ve experienced this sort of thing. That night I spot a puddle forming under the passenger side rear corner below where the gas tank lives. Great.

There is dirt, there is gunk and a spaghetti of fuel lines and wires but no reason for the bottom of the gas tank to have rusted out.

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72 Berlina revival part 2

I don’t know if I should start this by saying I’m ahead or behind. I thought it would take me a few weeks to get the 1750 out of the Sprint and into the Berlina, but I guess I thought wrong. I will admit that taking a full time job, hosting my dad for a week, going out of town for most of the weekends between buying this car and my birthday a few weeks ago and other everyday life interruptions have played a part in retarding my progress, but I’ll also say hey, it is coming along. I’m in no danger of selling this thing on eBay in 20 years after cowering in the corner of procrastination.

To the point. Once I got the engine out of the Sprint it required a bunch of parts change over to prepare it for its new life in the Berlina. The biggest job was swapping the oil pan and pump. The second biggest job was cleaning it up after leaking around the rear main seal and valve cover gasket heavily over the last 20,000 miles in the Sprint.

I had never replaced an Alfa oil pump before this. The bull-nose or whatever you want to call it oil pan requires a specific oil pump. That’s the 1300 in the background that is going in the Sprint when all this Berlina hootenany is done.

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All Italian Day 2008

As usual I had a good time at the All Italian day in Alameda at the Lincoln elementary school. Vehicles on display were diverse on many levels but united in their statement about Italian mastery of design, from the humble small bore Fiats to the majestic Alfa 8C, evidence of the hand of the master craftsman, the cleverness of the engineer and the eye of the artist can be seen. The exhibitors and spectators alike are a polite, if odd bunch and the discussions I overheard ranged from minutiae of restoration details to hairy-chested boasts about speed and agility ‘back then’.

This Fiat was one of my favorites. I’ve got a thing for stationwagons (especially goofy early 60’s ones), a thing for gray cars, a thing for original black plate cars and as I find myself checking out Fiats more and more while casually browsing eBay and Craigslist, I guess I’m developing a thing for fiats. And why not, you can get a lot of car for your money.

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ARA Alameda all Italian car day 2008 this Sunday

ARA is hosting the Alameda All Italian Day car show this Sunday the 12th of October. If you like neat Italian cars and motorcycles (and even occasionally scooters and Italian designed French cars), a good spaghetti feed and an excuse to be out in the waning days of California sunshine before winter sets in, this show is for you. Admission has historically been $5 of which some charitable portion goes to the Special Olympics. If you bring an Italian vehicle whether a Ferrari 250 Lusso or an Alfa Romeo built Renault R4 to exhibit entry is free.

Elvis Costello shows Jack White his 1929 Maserati 24C5400. Sweet!! Actually none of that is correct except perhaps the Maserati part. Look for me and the Wife in the Fiat 124 Sedan Special with a 18″ crack in the windshield.

I added a modest photo set from the 2005 AAICD to the events page if you want to get an idea of what the event is like. I can tell you first hand that it is on a grassy ball field at a school in a quiet neighborhood. The setting is very casual and friendly. I can say without reservation that it is my favorite show of the year, not only for the interesting machinery on display , but for the crowd of local familiar faces inevitably encountered. See you there.

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Giulietta SS in the mountains

Norm sent me a link to this footage of a Giulietta SS at speed going through the mountains.  The exhaust note is familiar to driver of most Alfa’s from this period as is the tire scrub.  Driver has 4 Alias names and ‘Born to be WIld’ makes yet another appearance as the seeming ubiquitous soundtrack to a driving film.  At least ‘Shaft’ gets a little air time near the end.  It is shaft isn’t it?  Sorry, it’s early.  Enjoy.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN6pvAYtWpg]