Tag: Classic cars

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TI Tidy-up part 5: The plan.

Now that I have successfully completed the Sprint engine rebuild I think I will try again to plan a project. I will lay out here the specification, schedule and budget to reach my desired outcome for the TI tidy-up. At the end you will find my nice to have’s and dream to have’s.

What do I want from the TI? The same thing functionally as the Berlina provided, a safe, fun, reliable daily driver. This time though, I want it to be presentable and plan on taking it on some weekend rallys and tours. Of course I want all this as inexpensively as possible and as soon as possible.

alfablue4This picture borrowed from the AlfaBB shows the original color of my TI and the original 15″ wheels I hope to find a set of. Anyone?

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Market 114: Giulietta Sprint Veloce?

Giulietta Sprint 750 1493*08625, Engine 13156*32468.  This car is in Canada and advertised for sale on Anamera.  I had the pleasure of answering a bunch of questions about this car last year when it was for sale in Autoweek out of the South East (Georgia?) for I think it was $29,000.  Well, the car has gotten around as these cars do and now it is as seen here.    The $30,000 question is: Is it a Veloce?

2aeb7c52ccSo far so good.  A very well done car with much attention to detail spent.  Someone in the market for a nice one would be asking for more pictures and information.

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TI Tidy-up part 4: steady progress

As I get older I find myself and my expectations changing to adapt to the realization that there is a limit to what can be accomplished with the resources and time on hand, and frankly in most cases good enough really is good enough. For example the engine compartment on the TI. I could go over the top with prep and paint and the like, but considering how marginal the rest of the car is I don’t know that it makes any sense. In this spirit I decided to paint it black with truck bed-liner paint. My rationalizations? It would be tough, look good and mimic the finish of early Giulietta’s. If it was good enough for a Conrero prepared lightweight, it’s good enough for my VERY incorrect TI.

img_8385If I was a real hillbilly I would have managed to get over-spray all over the tail lights, windows and INSIDE the glove box. Phew, passed that test! C’mon, admit it, looks like it could work.

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I guess this is TI tidy-up part 3

I couldn’t sleep last night. I worked hard on the TI Sunday until 8pm and got inspired to fix it up and then when I tried to go to sleep I kept thinking about what I needed to do to put it together. Well, after dragging my tired, I-only-got-2-hours-of-sleep butt around the office I simply had to stop off at the shop on my way home to do at least a little something to the TI since I spent all night trying to get it out of my head.
TI 1300 coming outThe shop engine hoist came back from a service call so I put it to work and pulled the engine out while no one was looking.  PO had 1 nut holding the engine in.

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Another busy Weekend, Berlina Tour and TI tidy-up

I guess the reason time goes by faster when you get older is you find more stuff to fill it. This weekend was another blur of activity starting with pulling the FIAT engine on saturday morning, the subject of my last post. Sunday I joined Andrew and the ARA for the Berlina Tour on rain-soaked roads in the East Bay hills. Click here to see my photo set from the drive.
aaron in the mistThe morning started out a little rough, fortunately the Berlina’s unreliable wipers behaved. For that matter the tired solenoid did too. Aaron is seen here on 580 braving the May showers.
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Market 113: Spider 10103*171443. Nice!

Update 5/13/09: $31,100 with 18 bidders was the result of the auction.  I told you this was a nice car.  Hopefully it finds a caring new home.

Giulietta Spider 10103*171443, 00102*28914 (now 00536*21681). This Spider is available now on eBay out of North Carolina. This is the rare Spider that has been allowed to be a nice old car. Sure there is an alluring shine on the red-because-I-was-made-that-way rather than resale-red paint. Admitted, the fog and headlights are wide of the mark and probably more was spent than an honest stone-chipped set of correct Carellos would have cost, but the overall feel of the car is that of a car appreciated and enjoyed by an owner who knows how special what they have is and took good care of it.

Spider 171443 noseLooking pretty good. There is an admirable shine on the hood, the trim is present and well fitted. Fog lights do look good in this position. Do all Spiders have windshield wipers that park in this position?

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Happy Birthday to Giuliettas.com!

It’s been a year since I started giuliettas dot com and while I’ve entertained a few milestones along the way (100 posts, 200 posts etc) , I think  this one is pretty big for me.  If you told me I was going to accomplish the things I’ve accomplished over the last year I probably wouldn’t have believed you, so I’ll start with the numbers.

  • This is my 224th post meaning I’ve posted on average 4.25 times per week.
  • My posts average 1000 words, so I’ve written about 224,000 words; 1/3 of ‘War and Peace’ or a little more than the New Testament.
  • 112 Market reports have been written covering 115 cars, not counting repeat sales or attempts at sales.
  • On March 24th, I had 605 page views, my most ever and about double my 2009 average of 308.  2008 average was 197, not bad for starting from zero!
  • If you are reading this on 4/30/09 you are a page view between 85,500 and 86,000 total.
  • I have identified 97 Sprint Speciales as existing, 4 as scrapped (but who knows what the future holds).
  • My register has grown to include 512 cars, not including reference cars. 

truck-close-upI wanted to see what my Sprint would look like with the Zagato Lownose treatment.

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Market 112: 2 Spider projects a Veloce project in Italy and a Normale project in Australia

Update 5/13/09: No bids either car.  Oh well…

Giulietta Spider 750F 1495*07515, 1315*31998. This car is available right now on Italian eBay with an opening bid of €14,000 ($18,300 at time of writing). The Telaio number dates it as a 1959 so the vent windows are most likely correct and it may be a short wheel base car (passo corto). I’m still trying to work out when the vent windows came into production. I think they were always available as an accessory.

This car is rough looking but fairly straight and comes with a lot of the hard to find parts. Amazing that these cars keep turning up!

bqycswcgkkgrhgoh-cwejlllghbj65gho4g_1Doesn’t look much better or worse than my Spider but has the magic ‘F’ of the Veloce stamped on it and a Veloce Series engine.

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Weekend fun: Pixar’s ‘ Up ‘ movie premier, Snowball rally and California Mille send-offs

To help meet the requirement that I take 5 days off work this quarter I took Friday off which allowed me to run some weekday errands. As it was my weekend was planned with the precision of the gold heist in ‘The Italian Job’, so this extra day was welcome. Datebook entries for the weekend included The Snowball Rally send off, a Saturday class (part of a Masters Program I am going through), the Pixar Company premier of ‘UP’ at the Broadway Theatre in Oakland with an after party at the newly renovated FOX theatre and then Sunday morning a visit to The Fairmont in San Francisco to have a look at this years California Mille entries.

I started out early Friday to meet up with Larry to rummage his crates of 750/101 series Alfa parts for bits I needed for the SS and Spider and to pick up what might be the most difficult to find 101 Veloce part: the tapered top tube 00120/00106 type DCOE intake manifold. More on the parts run later in the week.

mrs-and-spidersThe Mrs. poses with Spider’s Veloce in front of the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. I saw 4 black, 2 red, one silver and one white Giulietta Spider, not to mention a Sprint Veloce Confortevole and a Sprint 750B.

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Market #91: Early Spider Veloce project

Update 5/2: This car ended at $22,224 with an amazing 42 bids.  This seems a little low for such an original and complete running early  Spider Veloce, but times are still tight.  Reserve was not met, so barring an off-eBay sale look for it to be back on the market.

Update 4/27: This car is back up for sale, this time on eBay. I’m not sure if it’s a spiff-up and resell or something more along the lines of what happens to me when I buy a good deal and then two months later realize I shouldn’t have spent the money, good deal or no and I have to resell.

86a8_3Car looks a little better here with both grills and everything shined up a bit.

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