Tag: Alfa Romeo

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1493.54.707 Sprint Heater with three hot air outlets -Part 1

I don’t know why, but I’ve always looked at the heater as something I didn’t want to mess with -probably because it’s under the dash, full of coolant and as such slightly difficult to deal with.  The car I’m working on was stripped most of the way -one of the few non-essentials to being rolled around still on the car?  Yep, the heater, which says I’m not the only one who felt this way about it.  Well, you can’t have a shabby heater in a nicely fixed up car, so I pulled it out and faced my fear like some kid with arachnophobia being forced to hold a spider.

The official version.  Item 26 is a single item here, while on my bench it’s a metal tube that acts as a bridge between the rubber elbow and paper hoses and the rubber elbow -2 separate parts.  I think an updated version should be made of this with sub parts for all the missing parts like the two halves of the heater, the flapper door, the 6 round (or is it binding??) head screws etc.

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Market 291: Driver Giulia SS in Texas

Update 7/16/12: This car has appeared for sale on eBay in Europe out of Southern California from a Zero feedback seller. Scam? Hmmm.

Update 3/17/11: 75 bids resulted in $62,750.  It’s no joke, game on for SS values!

Update 3/14/11: Bidding has reached  $40,000 and reserve is met with 2 days to go.  The suspense begins!

Giulia SS 10121*381379. This car is on eBay right now out of Texas.  Bidding is at just shy of $30,000 with 4 days left as I write.  This car is truly in ‘how you used to find them’ condition and frankly may be as much as $80,000 away from being a top money car, but for a capable DIY restorer that restoration number could get down to $40,000.  Why do I mention this?  See yesterdays post, which the seller references in their write up, a Giulietta SS sold for $140,000 at the Amelia Island auction.  This is a great place to start, but it still has to be reduced to nuts, bolts and bare metal and built back out to get in the league that car is in.  Then it has to find a buyer… Or it could be let alone, touched up, enjoyed and entered in the preservation class some day.

Looks great from this distance, through the lens of a camera after being hosed down.  Note dent above headlight.  Antennae has to go to.

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Market 430: Spider Veloce 750F 03454 use or restore

Update 7/21/12: No takers. Ended at $31,000. Reserve was probably closer to $40K.

Giulietta Spider Veloce 750F 1495*03454, 1315*32930 (unsure if original to car).  This car is on eBay right now from a seller who frequently has interesting early Giulietta’s and Giulietta stuff.  It’s a running driving car with a 1600 installed, but comes with a ’58 Veloce engine.  It’s unclear whether it’s the original engine.  Pictures are few, but it looks pretty good.

Looks pretty good.  Hood fit is a bit off.  No bumper over-riders.  Good start or use as is!

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Market 429: Spider Veloce 10118 390183 at FJ

Giulia Spider Veloce 10118*390183, 00536*20568 (not original). Fantasy Junction has this car listed on eBay right now. The car is in pretty good shape -with some details to sort out. The engine is simultaneously the best thing about the car -having been rebuilt by Conrad Stevenson, and the thing that will always keep this car from being a top of the market car.

Lovely in white as usual.  Hood fit is very good.  Trim all looks great -there’s a little bump in the drivers side leading edge of the bumper.

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Map analogy part 1: Where are you going?

A Sprint project lurks in your garage.  It’s in need of attention and you need a plan.  To have a plan you need to know what you want from it -where are you going with it.  So… -what do you want out of it?  What does your Sprint look like and drive like when it’s done?  This is the most important information for your restoration.  Why?  Defines your budget, timeline and a lot of other details.  So, what do you want?

This is a starting point that was all the excitement on the AlfaBB a few years ago.  The project has gone dark as far as I know, but this car is in a garage somewhere waiting for work to be done.  This is probably as difficult a starting point as you want to call a starting point.

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The car for you

So you’ve read and reread my post about restorations and decided to buy a project Giulietta (or 101 Giulia).  There is a reason you have decided to do this, and you need to try and identify it to make sure you find fulfillment in your purchase.  What do I mean?  Well, you need to ask yourself why and come up with a satisfying ‘because’.

For example… I had an Iso Rivolta 300GT.  How I came to possess it is unimportant, nor is the fact that it was a rusty hulk -a fast rusty hulk, but a rusty hulk no less.  Anyway, on the 2000 California Melee I chased a 750 Giulietta Sprint on the deliciously twisty and fast road from Leggett to Fort Bragg -45 minutes of 50 mph bliss.  If it was a scene in a movie it would have gone all slow motion and a Chopin prelude would have played sweet yet dramatic.  That’s the car for me I thought.  It took me a few years to round one up and the rest is history.

You never know when that first glimpse happened.  I sold my Fulvia to a guy who had a toy of one as a kid and it was his favorite toy.  Thirty years later…

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Market 415: Giulia Sprint Speciale 381399 -the last one

Update 7/1/12: Imagine that.

Update 6/23/12: Driver’s Source out of Houston, who seems to specialize in buying high and trying to sell even higher, has this SS for sale now for a whopping $198,000. It is, if photo’s be believed, a stunning car, but I’m not sure the world is ready for a Giulia SS at this price point. All prior high sales have been Giulietta’s (anyone??).

Original post 4/20/12: Giulia Sprint Speciale 10121*381399.  Michael has made me aware that Ferrari of Seattle is selling this car right now for $125,000.  A pretty good deal if the last two projects I listed for $60,000 each are really worth that.  Just think, no bodywork, no rust repair, no parts hunting.  Just fly in, write a check, add it to your insurance and drive home.  Oh, and if you’re one of those people who likes ‘interesting’ VIN’s, this is the last SS they made.

Great color!  Everything looks straight and clean in this picture.  Is there anything to the theory that a high-end dealer would risk reputation selling a less than perfect car? Maybe. This will sell immediately I think.

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Market 333: SS Project 00486 in Ohio

Update 6/21/12: Didn’t take long for the 50+% dealer tax to be added to this car.  More pictures show it to be complete and needy.  Here it is in Denver.

I definitely don’t like the look of knock-offs. Pretty straight car.

Original post 11/5/11: Giulietta Sprint Speciale 10120*00486, 00120*00949.  Frank pointed me in the direction of this car listed on Hemmings.  Condition is pretty good and it should make for a straight-forward restoration to ‘clean driver’ without going too far under water at the $40,000 asking price.  For a full on restoration it will require just as much work as a car like the disassembled project I listed recently.  Wheels are very rare (on a Giulietta) Borrani wires complete with a spare.  I’m personally not a big fan of the wire wheel look, but many are.

Am I blue?  Yes, but not the right shade.  Looks pretty good as far as derelict SS’s goes.

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Market 425: Spider 00739 on eBay

Update 7/1/12: $9500. Not too bad for a fairly straight ’56 with the matching engine. You’ll see more from this car soon.

Giulietta Spider 750D 1495*00739, 1315*40574. This car is on eBay right now out of Denver. It looks fairly complete and in reasonable shape to restore. Will need a lot of work and $ to get it together, but as the seller states, these early cars do bring real money.

Looks like the usual ‘been apart for a while’ Spider project.  Door fits well. 

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Sprint front bumper and rocker trim mounting

My goal for the black Sprint right now is to get a lot of the big delicate stuff mounted on it, like bumpers, grills, and trim etc so I don’t have to find places to store it.  You probably saw the front bumper on the ground in front of the Sprint in the pictures of my new space -well, on the car seemed like the best place to store it, so I got to work mounting it.  Of course, it wasn’t straight forward, I had to chase a lot of threads, straighten some parts and go on and off a bunch of times with it until I was happy with how it fit.  It took several hours and went something like this.

Starting at the middle.  These grills and bumper are original, warts and all, I just polished them by hand as well as I could with steel wool and Mothers mag polish.  I’ll get some electricity involved and polish the heck out of them at some point.  Note the spacing between the grills and bumper is fairly even -took a lot of bumper mount bending to make that happen.  Grills will have to come back off to fit the lights but this was a good exercise.

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