Tag: Italian cars

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Suspension #2: Rear axle locating triangle

The differential and axle assembly has to be able move around freely as the rear suspension absorbs bumps and loading changes caused during cornering and braking.  This travel in the axle has to be limited so that the wheels can’t come into contact with the body in any loading condition.  To accomplish this the axle assembly is attached to the body by a rear triangle at its center and a pair of trailing arms at either end.   These pivot together as a sort of 3 dimensional four-bar linkage through the center of the massive ball joint that connects the triangle to a boss nearly equidistant from the two rear wheels on the axle. The ball joint is the fulcrum of a teeter-totter between the two rear wheels.  With respect to each other and this point when one goes up, the other goes down.  This motion is softened with respect to the body by springs that are dampened by shock absorbers and the travel at either end is limited by canvas straps.  The entire assembly is isolated from the rest of the car by rubber bushings.

The ball joint pin is a taper fit into the boss it goes in on the axle housing.  Removing the triangle from the rear axle required heat and a ball joint separating tool commonly called a pickle fork.  The pickle fork works by acting as a wedge between the axle housing boss and the triangle.  I first scraped as much grease as I could off the boss to avoid a fire and to minimize stinky fumes, then heated the boss up, once it was hot I used a big hammer on the end of the pickle fork and the ball joint popped out of the taper. 

A lot of road grime attaches itself to everything on the underside of the car and the axle locating triangle is no exception.

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Market #11 1965 Sprint 1300 project

Sold! This car ended on 5/20/08 for $5300. A decent buy for parts if nothing else. I imagine the buyer and seller will both be pleased. I am wondering if the success of this sellers last 2 Sprint projects is bringing more cars out of hiding, and if the market has the capacity to digest any more Sprints at these strong prices. I guess we will see since there has been a seeming steady stream of them the last two months.

Giulietta Sprint 101 10102*385744, engines 00102*33631 and 00536*17120. A third project Sprint from the eBay seller out of Newport Beach, though not nearly as nice as the prior two. Body has some very serious though not terminal rust and everything needs rebuilding, which detracts significantly, but the car appears to be complete and unhit which is good. According to Fusi, the two engines that come with the car are a 1600 from a 67 Giulia Sprint GT that is installed, and an 00102 1300 from a 1962 Giulietta Sprint or Spider. Since the 1300 is not the original engine for the car I would stick with the 1600. If it can’t be original, it might as well be fun.

Car doesn’t look too bad in this picture. Grills, bumper and light rings all appear to be fine. There is probably $1500 – $2000 worth of value in those parts alone. I am not sure if the sill plates are original.

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Market #10: Shiny red 10102 Sprint ‘Driver’

Sold! This car ended on eBay at $12,301.57 on 5/17/08. I said it wouldn’t be a bad deal for less than $12K, hopefully I am right. Another curious aspect is there were no questions answered and added during the auction. If I were bidding I would have asked a lot of questions. Compare this car to Special Sprints #3 and you get a sense of what Giulietta buyers want. As always, we’ll see if the auction sale is final.

Giulietta Sprint ‘Normale’ 10105 1493*20428. Seller lists the car as a 1961, but Fusi says it falls in the 1959 101 Sprint number range. There is actually no real information in the sellers description other than paint and interior were ‘done to driver standard’ and most chrome work was recently done. These are items whose quality can vary wildly, so I would want someone to look at the car in person for me. The information in the eBay ad is so scant I would have to send an email with a tiresome list of questions if I was interested in buying.

The condition of this car is very interesting. It looks great at first flush, and someone who is new to these cars would be wowed by all the shiny stuff, but if you know how these cars are supposed to be that wowing slowly gives way to uncertainty. I am going to critique this car, comparing it with originality, but one has to remember that there were about 35 years in this cars life when any sort of non-mechanical parts were simply unobtainable for most people and this car looks to have been put together from what was on hand during this period. If it wasn’t for this approach, this car probably would have been scrapped a long time ago

Nice looking car for the right price. Wheels are later 105 Giulia Sedan or GT items. I wonder if the hub caps had to be modified to fit? I think the marker lights are Fiat 500 items.

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Market 9: Original 1958 750 B barn find

Sprint ‘Normale’ 750B 1493*06329, engine 1315*05724.Sold on eBay 3/31/08 for $26,600. A nicer start for a total restoration couldn’t be found, but I don’t know if I could bring myself to erase the original patina of this machine, and it may not make any financial sense. Engine is loosely assembled to add to the pictures appeal. Mileage is a claimed 108K at which point it blew its head-gasket, in 1971. I would estimate $10,000 or more to bring this car up to a safe, reliable operating standard, and maybe another $2000 to get the interior in shape. Seller, operating out of Newport Beach California, is known for bringing well presented barn-find Alfa’s to eBay and this is in my opinion his finest offering to date.

The 750 Sprints were all hand made, with body panels hammered out on wood bucks and welded together. When you scrutinize these cars you see some very fine detail work beside some very rough welding, totally normal given the manufacturing circumstances. Any repairs to the body are hammer and dolly, or cut, shape and weld. The car is a true uni-body so there are no removable panels and this adds to the expense of restoration. Fortunately this car needs none of that.

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Clean, straight, original. This car sits like a car that was driven to this spot. Grills look great as do side spears and window surround trim. The nickname ‘eyebrow’ car comes from the two simple trims surrounding he openings on either side of the grill.

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Market #8: 1959 Interim 750 Sprint barn find

Sold! This car ended on 5/14/08 at $15,100. This is more than I expected, but not much, and I was not thinking of the current dollar weakness when I said $12,000. I expect this will be a sale that finalizes and the new owner will be very happy with their purchase. A couple of good showings for Sprints the last couple of months has me thinking I finally bought a car (or three) at the right time. I wonder what additional money would have been spent on this car if the original engine were included? Another win-win auction.

Sprint ‘Normale’ 750B 1493*08260, engine AR00112*01160. Another fantastic barn-find from the eBay seller out of Newport Beach area. This car is one of the Interim Sprints which were made from 1958 through 1960 and in a few cases beyond. The 750B and Tipo 10102 Sprints were made side by side with essentially whatever parts were on hand the day of the build. I suspect Bertone was told by Alfa to use up stock of old parts where they could. My 1959 Sprint is very similar to this car in most respects though it is a 10102 with a 1493 body number. The Fusi book of production Alfa’s lists the 59 750B’s starting with 07922 and ending with 10301. The 10102’s start with 20001 and end with 21487. I think that adds up to about 3500 examples made that year including Sprint Veloces, which were pulled at random from among the two series and labeled with an E between the Tipo prefix and number.

Stance looks right, body is straight as is the front brightwork. Too bad every mechanical part on a car like this will need attention before it can see the road.

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Market #6: Crushed Sprint Veloce 750*E Confortevole

SOLD! Ebay auction ended tonight, 5/8/08, for $9500! If all parts are present as the seller states this is not a bad deal, though I was thinking about $7000 was where this would end. I think proper representation with a thoroughly researched and presented parts inventory would have added at least $1000 to the final price. As with any eBay auction, we’ll have to see if the sale is final.

Sprint Veloce ‘Confortevole’ 1493E*06476, engine 1315*30853.

Wow is what the seller begins his ebay description with and I have to agree. The production total of the Confortevole (comfortable) variant of the Sprint Veloce (SVC) is 199, the first 50 having aluminum framed windows. An SVC seems to be an SV which falls between the SVAlleggerita (SVA) and the 101 body based SV which began production in early 1958 and upon which 101 mechanical components were gradually phased in until the 750 bits were all used up, sometime in 1960. Alfa factory documentation ends the run of SVC’s at car 06600, but recent pictures of 06611 indicate it is an SVC as well. There is a lot of speculation as to exactly what Confortevole means to the Giulietta Sprint line but I will go with Greig Smiths assertion from a discussion on the Alfa BB that a Bertone body starting with ’65’ and ending with an ‘*A’ is a Confortevole. Any other differences are circumstantial. One thing is certain, the frequently held misconception that a Confortevole is simply a Sprint with a back seat is false.

Seller has had the car 30 years and says it was in bad, non-running shape when they got it and despite being stored indoors all those years, which no doubt arrested the spread of the rust, a snow-laden barn did manage to collapse on it. It’s a shame they didn’t start on it sooner when the Veloce specific mechanical parts were cheaper.

Not the most encouraging start for your project. At least the collapsing barn spared the windshield trim. An original Bluette car?

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Market #5: Giulietta SS Low-nose 00014

Giulietta Sprint Speciale 10120-00014, Engine 00120-00024. Available from Heinbrand for 54,000 Euros, about $75,000 when written. This car has 750SS on its build plaque, I’m not sure yet what that means but looking carefully at the engine compartment picture a 750 series Veloce head can clearly be seen along with the separate water-pipe style intake manifold and the headers don’t appear to be the standard SS tubular style. In the picture showing the build plaque a Weber 40DCO3 is barely visible. I’m not sure if the bodywork is supposed to be aluminum but it is described as ‘der ursprünglichsten Version’ in the brief ad copy, which I think means it is a lightweight version, perhaps having aluminum hood, trunk, doors and maybe other parts. Alfa was never one to worry about standardization among its special cars such as the Veloce’s and Speciale’s, so it’s no surprise to me that despite reading claims that all SS’s are based on 101 components here sits essentially a 750 Sprint Veloce Speciale.

Note the driving lamp bar mounting holes in the nose and black stripe. There also seem to be holes in the roof above the windshield.

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Market #4: Giulietta SS Low-nose 00001

An early low-nose SS doesn’t come on the market often and I get to feature two in quick succession. In the world of hand-made aluminum bodied Italian cars of the 1950’s there are many whose performance and reliability don’t live up to the promise of the sleek, beautiful body. Not so the SS. The argument could probably be made that without their comparatively plentiful ancestors, the steel bodied Giulietta and Giulia SS’s that regularly change hands, these early cars would be as expensive or more-so than their cousins the SZ and TZ. If Ferrari made a twin cam 4 cylinder car in the 1950’s and it looked and performed like this, it would be half a million dollars or more. What does all this speculation mean for these cars? Undervaluation? Real world use? Who knows for sure, but if the surge in pricing of SS’s over the last few years is any indication, now is the time to buy one of these jewels if you can.

Giulietta Sprint Speciale 10120-00001, Engine 00120-00003. Owned more than 20 years by a ‘prominent collector’ in Southern California, this car is the top of the market. Only an SS with serious race provenance might be worth more, but there are only perhaps 3 such cars and none has changed hands that I’ve heard about. Seller claims this car was retained by Alfa Romeo for several years after being built, finally sold to a private individual in 1960. If this car is in ‘as-built’ condition, any flaws are irrelevant, but no indication is made in the ad copy to this effect. I suspect it has seen some ‘up-grading’ over the years.

Not so otherworldly as the later cars with their prominent edges and busy bright-work, the SS above, number one of a line that stretched 8 years and about 2500 examples, is understated and elegant while purposefully aerodynamic and lightweight.

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Market #3: Giulietta SS vent window option car

Giulietta Sprint Speciale 10120-177061, engine 00120-01476. Available for 44,500 Euro’s (close to $70K at date of writing) from www.marreyt-classics.com in January 2008, but now listed as sold. Intrigued by the vent windows on the car, and wanting to see the condition it took to ask this kind of money for an SS, I sent them an inquiry. They replied with a group of low-to-medium resolution pictures stating the car was restored in Belgium by a restoration shop owner for his son. The car has seen little use other than as store-front eye-candy since it was completed. Greig Smith, multiple Giulietta owner, Alfa historian and all around nice guy from South Africa assures me the vent windows were an option available on special order from the factory. The small driving lights busy up the front a bit, but in a good way in my opinion, though I doubt this car will ever be driven in the kind of weather that requires extra lighting.

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