Tag: Vintage cars

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Modified Sprint Speciales

A rerun since I’m tropically indisposed.  Enjoy.

Originally posted July 5th, 2008: While not considered competitive on the race track in retrospect, the Sprint Speciale must none the less have been a somewhat attractive option for wealthy amateurs when it was first sold. The combination of an aerodynamic shape and powerful engine must surely have seemed like a winner if some weight could be shed and current engine tuning tricks being used by Conrero, Bosato and others could further improve the engine. This is supported by period race photographs and entry lists which document the occasional SS among the field of SV’s, SVZ’s and SZ’s.

An early SS (00045) running the 1960 Targa Florio, 00029 and 00040 also ran. 00045 went on to run in ’61 – ’64. Anyone know where 00045 is now?

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Market #2: Giulietta SS project 00237

Update 2/1/10: This is a detail of writing market reports that I hadn’t really anticipated.  An update from the purchaser of a car with some progress pictures.  This car originally sold in May of 2008 and the owner has just gotten it back from the media blasters.  Makes me think I should get mine blasted.  Very cool!

I think I need a rotisserie.   The rockers look very good.

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Suspension #1: Front lower wishbone and ball joint

Update 11/17/09: I’ll be moving the Fiat out tonight and moving the SS to front row center and starting to work on it again this weekend. All the suspension pieces could be assembled to the car by the end of the year if my plans to get floors in the car work out.

Original Post 5/22/08: I am going to use the parts book terms for these parts so there is no confusion as to what I am talking about.

The front suspension on my SS was lightly assembled without shocks to make the car a roller and it came apart without any problems. Most of the pieces just need cleaning and painting so I will deal with those as a group later, but there are some components that require great care in cleaning and restoring. The lower wishbone is one of these parts because there are several critical systems tied to it: the bushed suspension support pivots, lower ball joint, suspension limiting rebound strap, sway bar mount and lower spring seat. In this post I am going to look at the wishbone itself with regard to cleaning, and the disassembly of the ball joint. I was advised to leave the ball joints together but this one had enough play that I was worried about it having to come apart later anyway. The parts book has only one part number (101.00.21.030.00) for the wishbone that fits all 101 cars and 2 are required for each car so it must be symmetrical.

The suspension components on my SS were treated with some kind of rust inhibitor that is very hard to remove, requiring a combination of scraping and media blasting. Once I have the wishbone stripped bare I tape over the openings to the support pivot bushings, to prevent blast media from getting into the grease passage ways and I masked the ball joint opening to keep media out and grease from getting in the blast cabinet. For a first pass I spend about 10 minutes removing as much of the loose coating as possible and I focus on the snap ring on the ball joint threaded ring nut. This snap ring has to be removed to thread the ring nut out.

Wishbone masked off and ready to be blasted.

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Market #12: Craigslist basket case 1963 Sprint

Update 5/1/09: 12 bidders chimed in and the result was $1525, reserve not met.  A little lower than I would have thought, but getting all the bits together is going to cost.  I have a lot of what it needs, I wonder what it would take to buy it?

Update 4/21/09: Giulia Sprint 385940 is now on eBay after either having all it’s trim, lights and other bits stripped and sold, or applied to another car the seller may have. I told you a bunch of Sprints would follow that $18.7K car.

I shouldn’t assume the current seller is the previous seller, but for convenience I will.

giulia sprint frontWasn’t long ago this guy had his grills and lights and bumpers, hopefully someone is going to buy him and get him a fresh set… maybe.

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Market #34: Barn find Giulia Spider Normale

Sold!  33 bids and an ending price of $8700.  Almost exactly what I sold mine for a few years back.  If it can be brought to life and put on the road without much fuss then a very good buy.

Giulia Spider AR10123*373944, Engine 00112*04458.  Available now on eBay is this 1962 Spider.  Seller says it doesn’t run but rolls and steers fine.  Rust is reported to be limited to the shelf behind the seats and the hood edges.  From the pictures it appears this car has the 3 shoe drum brake set-up and a later split case 5-speed.  No mileage is stated but these cars seem to accrue about 80 – 100,000 before they are taken off the road for lack of some small repair only to turn up as barn finds 20 years later.

I owned a 1962 Spider very similar to this car.  It was a single carb 1600 with a split case 5 speed and 3 shoe drum brakes (you can read about it here).  It had similar patina but no rust.  The engine looked about the same and with a little coaxing came to life easily enough.

Originally white, now red, with over-spray all over the place.  Looks like a straight forward honest car, not quite a wax and go, but almost.  All the trim is in place and there are no obvious problems.

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Giulietta Sprint Accessories part 2

Right after the last installment on Giulietta accessories these two black and white pictures were discovered. I have read that a Bertone technical booklet exists detailing all of the possible accessories but I don’t suppose I’ll ever see it.

The first picture is of a 750 series Sprint and shows several accessories and an anomaly I’ve never seen elsewhere. The most obvious accessory in this picture is the fog lamp kit. It differs from the 101 kit in that the grill opening surrounds are unmodified, just the grill bars were modified to mount the fog lights. The lights really look a lot like Hella 128 items in this picture. I wonder what sort of switch they used and where it was mounted.

This 750 Sprint wears a lot of the available accessories. I wonder if it is one of the early prototypes?

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Sprint Veloce Fuel pump almost final fix

I have this approach I’ve noticed when faced with a job I don’t necessarily want to do on one of my cars, it’s called procrastination, you might have heard of it.  As necessity is the mother of invention it is just as strongly the enemy of procrastination and I it took me having two unavoidable reasons and a little good luck to effect an almost final fix for this fuel pump issue.  The first good reason was the need to give Kip back his SU fuel pump that was given temporary duties on the SV (I was going to see him on Sunday at a shop warming party), the second is the requested attendance of this car at Pixar’s Motorama this Friday afternoon.  The little bit of good luck was a friend having a new Facet fuel pump kit bought specifically for a weber equipped Giulietta Spider that was no longer in his life.  With no good rationalization left to enable procrastinate, I went to my shop yesterday determined to mount, plumb and wire the new fuel pump.

Nice new Facet fuel pump hanging out with 50 years of scummy crud on the underside of the Sprint Veloce.  Note shock isolation mounts, like little motor mounts, and grounding wire.

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Market #32: Giulietta 750B half-off sale

Giulietta Sprint 750B 1493*01864. On eBay right now, starting bid is $1000. Vin on this seemingly very straight Sprint nose corresponds to early 1956. This would probably be ideal for the buyer of the smashed Confortevole or perhaps the basis of an interesting project for the right person. I know project?? Am I crazy? Well, if you know something about the origins of the Sprint Zagato you may have heard of the group of cars collectively known as Sprint Veloce Zagato’s.

I goes something like this: You go off the road, down an embankment into a ravine and end up upside down wedged between a tree and some rocks. You climb bruised and battered from your recently purchased and expensive Sprint Veloce. Two weeks later you deliver the car to carrozzeria Zagato to get it fixed. Elio looks it over and tells you it would be cheaper to cut most of the original crushed body work away and make a new body from aluminum than to restore it. Oh, and by the way he can make it lighter and more aerodynamic in the process, you’ve seen the ‘double-bubble’ roof right?

Only Sprint Veloce Zagato’s were not all Veloce’s or even Sprints for that matter. A modern SVZ recreation if sold as such is still a very sought after and expensive car.

Nice nose. No deep rot to be seen, lots of small parts that are hard to find still bolted and screwed into place etc.

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Giulietta Sprint Accessories

When I went shopping for a modern car last year I was surprised by the number of accessories available, the fact that cars came pre-optioned for the most part, and how expensive additional accessories were.  Accessories are nothing new when it comes to cars, windows and lights were accessories in the early days!  The Giuliettas were no exception and the picture below, from a 1958 brochure, reprinted in the Alfieri book shows some interesting accessories that could be missed by the casual observer.

“Fog lamps fittings. It can be ordered as a seperate unit complete with mounting brackets and hollow intake fairing, painted in the colour of the car. Please specify No. of chassis.”

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Market #30: Orange 750B project in Europe

Update 7/14/08: Price is now 15,999 Euros.

Update: Overnight the price went from 12,499 to 16,999 Euro’s.  I wonder what they are thinking.  See the comment below for a European perspective.  Perhaps they saw this car.

1957 Sprint 750B 1493*04327, Engine 1315*03847. This car, with an asking price of 12,499 Euro’s, verifies my claim that 750B’s are regarded as being worth a premium compared to 101 style cars. This makes sense considering the hand made nature and relative rarity of this model, with roughly 6500 being made, Veloce’s included, compared to probably more than 25,000 of the later style.

Classified text reads: “CH Fahrzeug aus 3.Hand – 1968 zerlegt & total Restauriert – Seit 30 Jahren Stillgelegt – Zylinderkopf demontiert, mit Doppel Weber Vergaser (Sprint Veloce). Die Orig. Farbe des Gulietta war weiss ! – Fahrzeug ist complet, wenig Rost, zum Restaurieren!”

Or via Google language tools if you prefer English: “CH vehicle 3.Hand – 1968 decomposed & total Restored – For 30 years Decommissioned – cylinder head dismantled, with double Weber carburetor (Sprint Veloce). The color of Orig Gulietta was white! — Vehicle is complet, little rust, to restore!”

Not too bad really. The nose looks straight as does all the trim. Drivers side headlight ring is missing. I like the fog lights. Apparently this car was in the sun long enough to fade the paint.

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