Tag: cars

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Alfa Sprint crash from ‘Les Choses de la Vie’ 1970

I enjoy movies set in Europe in the 1960’s where they have real street scenes.  I watched ‘How to steal a million’ with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole the other night and the street scenes were amazing.  I was reminded I haven’t been featuring video’s in a while and it brought to mind this video.  I know, you’ve seen this before but paying close attention to the details will get you thinking.  If you’ve never seen it watch it before you read the comments after it. 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeKtzX1pAXo]

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Market 189: Early Sprint project 750B 01996 in Italy

Giulietta Sprint 750B 01996 is available right now on Italian eBay out of Padua Italy.  While incomplete, it looks like a good, albeit expensive start for someone looking for an early car.  I’ll be in the market for one when the SS is done -but that may be a while.

Not exactly straight and ready for paint, the drivers side lower grill area looks to be pushed in a little.  Dig the string holding the glass in place.  Must have been shipped recently.

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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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Market 170: Nicely restored silver Giulia SS

Update 2/13/10: I had the nephew of the seller contact me with some links to videos and more pictures.  Car is still available.  Enjoy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIj1IhpRJ5U&feature=related]

The start up -nice induction bark.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx01dZM0bSs&NR=1]

Too bad they couldn’t get out on a track and really go for it.

Looking good -very good.  More pictures here.

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Market 188: Spider 1600 372427 project in Italy

Giulia Spider 10123*372427, 00112*00662. This car, like the Sprint in market 187, is available in Italy from Ghibli Auto Classiche in Umbria.  No details are available on their website, but enough pictures are posted to form an opinion.  This is a typical example of your ‘fairly complete but needs a lot’ restoration basis.

Curiously both this car and the Sprint they have on offer are missing left hand side headlights.  Grill bar from the same side is missing as well.  One of the three cars in this picture are what generally come to mind when an American of a certain age sees or hears the words ‘foreign sports car’, and they are taken aback when told there are coupe versions of these cars.

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Market 152: Bargain Interim Sprint project

Update 12/28/10: You can follow Bob’s restoration on the Alfa BB. Here are a few pictures I lifted.

It takes a lot of persistence (or check writing capabilities) to get it to this state.

I like the rotisserie -makes the stripping of the body a lot easier.

Update 2/10/10: 15 bibbers fought it out and a winner emerged paying $9000 for this car.  Reserve was met and sale is hopefully final.  Kind of sad when a car has to change hands so many times to find a loving home- of course it could be on the boat to Belgium for another mark up.  So it goes.

Update 12/23/09: Will a $9850 high bid buy it?  Nope.  Where do we go from here?

Update 12/14/09: This car is back on eBay. There are extensive pictures and it does look like a pretty fair project, as I said earlier, it’s a shame an enthusiast looking for a Sprint didn’t snap this up when it was first listed out of Santa Barbara for $7500. The resale tax means this car has to make about $9000 to just break even for the current owner who has towing, clean up and eBay listing fees to recoup.

Update 10/20/09: 21 bids, $8200, reserve not met? I expect we will be seeing more from this car. I thought $7500 was a reasonable price and an enthusiast could have gotten it going and cleaned it up without ending up too underwater in it. If I were selling this I would put a few hours into it and make it run before relisting it. Maybe they would trade for my 69 GTV…

Update 10/12/09: Now on eBay. Someone smelled a chance to make a few thousand dollars. Still a good deal if it’s as good as it looks.

Update: Oops, I guess I should have seen if this was still available. Apparently it has been sold and has packed its bags in anticipation of a new life.

Giulietta Sprint 750B 1493*08631, 1315*07393. This car is has been available for a while as the least valuable in a package deal including two first series small headlight, column shift Sprints. The Ventura CA based seller has broken up the family and this car is now listed casually around the internet, check it out at the Alfa BB where the asking price is $7500 These early 750/101 transition cars have a lot of character and are great drivers when set up well.

2980995565_f068d76445_oLooks like a runner/driver just parked in the shade, waiting to do service as a errand runner. I guess the front ride height does suggest the lack of an engine. There is a small dent in the drivers side grill and the paint is definitely dead, but I’d happily drive this as is. I wouldn’t even put hubcaps on it.

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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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Market 185: Sprint 07448 project -most pictures ever!

Update 2/16/10: 27 bidders pushed the price to $1575.  Reasonable considering the lack of rust and engine/suspension pieces intact.  I bet it ends up a parts car this time around.  Anyone here buy it?

Giulietta Sprint 750B 1493*07448. This project is on eBay out of El Paso Texas right now.  The price as I write this is $203 and by the looks of things it might stay sub-$1000.  This car was probably a Willys-Overland assembled car as it is said to have spent its whole life in Mexico.  What you see is what you get.  And at close to 150 pictures, there is lots to see!

This is how they look.  Wrinkled, uneven and, well, just abused.  Shouldn’t be too hard to tap this back out to right.

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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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