Tag: sprint

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F.I.S.P.A. Air cleaner for most single carb Sprints and Spiders + mystery

I got this FISPA (TIPO: FATS 5032, DISEGNO: 9815) air filter canister from a reader as sort of partial payment for helping sell a car.  I thought it would be right for my Sprint but it turns out it’s got a slightly different shape than another one I had on hand for a Sprint.

Applications: I decided to check the parts book and found there are three versions of this part.  If anyone has an original older Sprint or Spider I’d be interested in hearing which box you have.

  • 1315.53.820: For Spider up to engine 1315.43709; after that see 1315.53.832.
  • 1315.53.832: for Sprint from engine 1315.05874 to 1315.09002 – for Spider from engine 1315.43710 to 1315.45854; after those numbers see 101.02.08.010.00.
  • 101.02.08.010.00: for Sprint and Spider after numbers above.

Failure mode: rusts out, stabilizing mount to valve cover Splits, it gets lost.

Current state of parts: Classic Alfa UK sells a new repro.  eBay usually has a one listed in need of restoration for about $400.

Notes: Early versions seem to have a bolt instead of the loop (part 11 below) for tightening to the top of the carb.  I have seen several sorts of FISPA labels, from a stamped metal plate to a screened on decal.  Bill Gillham has repro’s of some of these.

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Heater part 3: Air intake, front, with motor 1493.54.708

The car I’m working on will eventually retire to a leisurely life in Washington -a state well known for its rainfall.  As such, I decided a good forced air system to heat the cabin and defog the windscreen was a good idea.  I have the original fan impeller mounted on a modern motor in my Sprint and it works okay -you can feel a little moving air, but it’s not very impressive (admittedly most of my ducting is leaky original BS or ill-fitting replacement BS, so maybe an unfair test).  Anyway, I was perusing the McMaster catalog when I found a 4″, 12 volt all-in-one in-line blower fan.

Applications: Sprint and sprint Veloce.

Failure mode: electric motor failure.

Current state of parts: repair original or find something to adapt in place of the original.

This is where the Air intake plenum lives.  It’s designed to act as a ram-air and I imagine at over about 40 mph the air forced in is moving faster than the original fan could push it in.  The rest under here looks pretty nice…

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Order of Operations (pretty please my dear aunt sally*)

You’ve done it.  You are at the nadir!  Anything you do from this point forward will temporarily counteract the entropic tendencies of that system known as your car -assuming an asteroid or flood doesn’t stop by for an afternoon chat.  From here on you’ll be moving closer to that first turn of the ignition key, that first drive, that first stone chip.  Or:  your car is as apart as you can get it without employing cutting tools.  Everything from here on out is part of the process of putting it back together.

As with any process, there are things that need to be done in preparation, things that just need to happen at some point for the process to be considered complete, things that can be done simultaneously, and things that need to be done in a specific order because if they are not, they either can’t be done or a lot of time will be wasted.  Some are obvious -you wouldn’t paint before the rust repair or torque the head before putting the head gasket on for example, but others are a little more subtle, like assembling the front turn signal lights –  but mostly it’s a matter of not doing things more than once or twice if possible, and taking advantage of big blocks of time the car will spend with experts -such as when getting rust repair and paint.  If you are doing every single thing to the car yourself then the process will take however long it will take because you can’t do more than 1 hour per hour.

Car manufacturers are keenly aware of the dependent and independent processes that go into putting a car together.  Everything is prepared and on hand for trained staff to do the job efficiently.  Here some Montreal’s and Dino’s (?) get coupons for Pizza delivery tucked under their windscreen wipers.  I got this image off Alfa-male, a great Alfa site.

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Heater part 2: Heater valve 1493.54.709 and control cable 1488.31.723

Last installment we looked at the heat exchanger box itself, this time I’ll focus on the bits that hook it up and control the incoming hot water: the heater valve and the push/pull cable that controls the valve.  The first generation of Sprint’s had a heater valve (1483.54.711) that looked not far removed from a garden tap and you actually had to pop the hood and get out to turn on the flow of hot water to the heater core (if you didn’t realize you were going to want heat before you started out).  At some point this was deemed a little old fashioned so a cable operated valve was put to use -cousins of which can be found on Alfa’s for many years to follow.

Valve failure mode(s): hardening of rubber diverter seal, oxidation leading to through pits or breakage, loss.

Control cable failure mode(s): still/difficult operation, cable breakage/cut leading to too short, loss.

The current state of the parts supply has:

1493.54.709 with new diaphragm seal installed.  Like all rubber things, it just got hard and cracked after 50+ years.  The inner plateau seals against the port in the valve body, keeping the water out of the core when not wanted, the outer ring seals to the body to keep it from leaking when it’s open.

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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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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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My new space / Engauged part 2

It’s been a while since I had a dedicated space to work on my cars.  I thought I could do with one car and one parking space.  I thought I could keep my tools and parts at my dad’s place.  My acquisitive nature has thwarted those thoughts.  I now have: Giulietta Sprint, Glas 1700 GT, Lancia Appia (plus parts car), Toyota Stout, NSU Prima IIIKL Scooter and a 1963 Honda Trail 55.  As the Byrd’s paraphrased in some old book: there’s a time to gather stones together.  I moved out of my one car garage and storage space and signed on with another acquisitive Giulietta owner for a nice big space for very reasonable money.  Check it out -it’s why I haven’t been posting much (besides Rufus)!

The space.  1000 sq ft.  High ceilings.  Lights.  Skylights.  Giulietta’s waiting for help.

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Market 419: 1750 powered 101 Sprint 23176 at Coys

Update 5/19/12: Some of you may have noticed this car didn’t go through the auction.  The seller contacted me to let me know he pulled it due to what he described as a lack of enthusiasm for the car and a desire to not give it away.  It is available for 43,000 Euro’s (about $55,000) out of Munich Germany.  Check out the pictures linked to by the vin number below.  It’s a great looking car.  If you’d like to contact the owner drop me a line at sprints @ giuliettas.com

Giulietta Sprint 10102 1493*23176. This car is being auctioned by Coys on May 12th in Monaco.  Car looks amazing and, though not entirely original, is tastefully done.  I like the body color, it looks pretty close to what I think of when I say Bluette, and the interior color also, though not an original option, suits the body color.  I’m not a fan of the body color on the wheels -adds a cartoonish aspect to it, but repainting wheels is among the easiest tasks.  I like that they tout the condition of the trunk yet fail to provide a picture.  Maybe they need a continuity editor…

Shut lines are great, trim looks wonderful and the car has a capable poise -no doubt matched by the 1750!  I’m trying to like those wheels -honest!  Is that rear view mirror positioned correctly?  I always thought the wide part went to the outside.

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La V Coppa Sant Ambroeus

Maurizo sends me a note: “I put this interesting video on YouTube.”  That’s an understatement -this is like the first time I saw the Shell Coup Des Alps video -except a little more lingering on the cars here.  Wow.  How many stills from this film or photographs have I seen from this day 54-ish years ago!

Post a comment with your favorite moment below.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7HqVhtbUKk&feature=email]

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1493.80.711 Sprint and Sprint Veloce Light, rear number plate (Carello)

This is the first post in a new series I’ve been working on, that will coincide with a car I’m working on and some other endeavors.  Project cars are called basket cases because many times you get baskets full of mystery parts.  The car I’m working on is no different except that occasionally an unmarked sandwich bag holds all the bits to a particular assembly, as was the case with this one, the famous ‘airplane’ rear plate light housing and trim flourish.  This assembly is pretty straight forward, a plated casting with some mounting studs (at least one of which is usually broken off), a light socket assembly with a mount, a lens and some screws.  This assembly is tricky, because all those parts are specific to it -except possibly the screws.

Not the best picture, but good enough -it’s hard to show those little screws and the big casting in the same picture.  That little Alfa emblem is and has been unavailable for years.  This one is pretty good, with only some light crazing.  Not sure if the triangular Carello lens is available.  Maybe Alfastop?

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