Ratty Ti Club

Prowling craigslist late at night can lead a person in many different directions… chance encounters? planned encounters? Job opportunities? Antiques? Housing? How about a 1948 utility trailer for sale, $300? SOLD!

I found this little gem while prowling for antique travel trailers (a dirty little obsession on which I shall never act upon), I liked it for the price, but also it had the benefit of good tires on full size wheels. The full size wheels are a big deal, and I’ll tell you why: those little wheels on the harbor freight trailers are much much smaller (in diameter) than the wheels on your towing vehicle, smaller wheels have to spin faster to go the same distance, this gearing-down of the final drive means the bearings not only have a huge load on them, but they are forced to spin faster than those that are on full size tires. The high load high RPM combo makes a small shitty trailer what it is. Small and shitty.

This one on the other hand had big beefy wheels and good tires and a cool old school torsion bar suspension (the wheels are cantilevered off of a torsion bar fixed to the bed, the bending of the bar acts as a spring for the wheels).

Take that and add that its little enough to push around by hand, hitch up by hand, and balanced enough around the axle so that you can pretty well move it by hand even when its loaded. I couldn’t say no.

I bought it and used it for a few days as a rough hauler, I even packed most of the welding tools on it and did an Onsite installation of some handrails at sightglass coffee.

In the end though it was plauged with tons of questionable welds, tatty wood, rusty fasteners and it was dirty.

So I decided to spruce it up, or “fir” it up as the case may be. It took only a few hours to strip it down to the metal frame, cut the janky welds, and replace with MANLY-man welds.

Stripping down your $300 craigslist score is always the easy part, fixing it into a decision you don’t regret the next day is the hard part (casual encounters pun).

So the next evening the ever willing Sacha Bean, came in and helped me spread a layer of boat paint over the whole frame. That night I also ordered a boat winch (friggin $18 on the internets!) and I fabbed some loading ramps and hangars for the rig.

Finishing it out required a bunch of cheap hardware store wood, a trip to Bowlin fasteners (to replace all the carriage bolts with stainless and acorn equivalents), and a full day with two people drilling holes and anchoring fasteners. In the end though its a real cutie and was a surprisingly short and rewarding job. I use this thing all the time now! and its small enough I think I might even be able to tow it behind the mini without too much hassle.

Ti starter.

I had an intermittent no start condition for a good long while. After a long time though it became increasingly more frequent to the point where I really had to do something about it.

I tried to be diligent and check all the components

• Battery

o   Checked voltage both at rest and under load

• Starter switch

o   Checked switching functionality both at rest, and under load

o   Tried to short out the starting wires to see if eliminating switch solved problem

• Starter terminals

o   Checked switched voltage at main starter terminal

o   Ran an extra grounding cable to the negative terminal of the battery from the starter housing

At the end of this exercise I could find no obvious fault with any of the components and thus blamed the starter. I understood that the starter solenoid finds ground through the motor brushes and if they’re worn I could experience intermittent failures like I had, without having found a fault with any of the above diagnostics.

SHIT.

After converting the Ti to dual carbs,  replacing the starter is actually a really big job. There is very limited access to unbolt the starter housing , and even less room to extract the starter considering the airbox/carbs/carb support strut/fuel line&mechanical pump/ and distributor all share the same 2 cubic feet of egress space.

Off came the airbox and carbs and out came the starter in what turned into a 9 hour festival of cleaning/refreshing and repairing the above listed items. I also converted to electronic  ignition while I was in there (nothing against points/condensers, but the cam lobes in the distributor were old and not firing correctly, I was hence suffering from a slew of poor ignition problems that were all remedied by a cheap pertronix electric ignition kit!)

At the end of which, with a new starter in place (I had one at the shop, thankfully didn’t go to get mine rebuilt) I found the actual problem to be a stressed terminal at the wire that connects the starter switch to the starter motor! After routing a new wire I have 100% success rate of starting the old girl!

Sometimes it’s the little things! I was very happy to have had to spend some quality time under the hood though. And as a result the under hood shows better, and the Giulia goes better.

After weeks of staring at two rusty non running Alfas (the Ti with the trunk being grafted back to health, and the Giulietta hibernating from the trauma of being my main focus for so many months) I had to get something finished in order to participate in the wonder that is the SNOWBALL rally. My keen insight into the flow of workshop chi, led me to believe that I needed to finish the Ti, it being the path of least resistance.


After frantically installing new headlights, license plate, putting the wheels back on, wiring the taillights back up by braille, and mounting the exhaust. I re-connected the battery for the first time in weeks and started the engine to warm up before the rally.

I had opted into the optional “night stage” which left from just under the marin side of the golden gate bridge and took a circuitous route up to sacramento. To my delight, the start of the stage was casual (late) and I arrived in plenty of time to get checked in, and oogle the other cars and bump elbows with a few friends in the drivers meeting.


I chased a little mini cooper all along a river road and had a blast of it. He had really really good fog lights and was a fun car to follow.
I got pulled over once in the night for not having any tail-lights, but I showed the officer the magical trick of spinning the fuse in the fuse box and watching electrical functionality restore itself! He could have got me for so many other things, but I think he was impressed with our showing.
I had heard for ages that the Ti front bench seat reclined to make a “bed” and so planned on sleeping in the car this first night. Some friends insisted I share their room at the vagabond inn, but after trying to poach a vacant room after a party thrown by some volvo guys I was vociferously ejected by the management and forced to pursue my initial plan. Its a pretty comfortable sleeper cabin, definetly comparable to the vagabond inn, but you have to be motivated and find the right angle, and the right downtown Sacramento neighborhood!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14386738@N06/5731422909/in/set-72157626745581946

After a good nights snooze I woke up at metro espresso to a beautiful La San Marco Lever espresso machine. These machines are my Achilles heel for coffee. I think there is nothing sexier. Unfortunately the shots were watery and hot and the machine was less of a showpiece and more of a survivor. Still a trill to wake up to!

Along with the sexy espresso machine, came a host of beautiful cars arriving for the formal start of the rally!




I was glad to see such a continuum of vintage machinery, while I was initially a bit shy of the scars the Ti was wearing, those feelings melted away into a mutual camaraderie that looked beyond skin deep. I think the Ti made a pretty good showing as I even got to trade keys with a gent driving an exquisite Porsche 356.


On the drive we encountered beautiful roads and as promised by the name.. SNOW. 70MPH one handed snow banked sweepers? check.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14386738@N06/5731467023/in/set-72157626745581946/

Oh and did you notice the little ratty ti with the trunk held firmly in place? that one is mine!
We arrived after a beautiful day of twisties and small towns at the CalNeva hotel on the border of california and nevada, where I parked the TI right in front of the whole mess of ralliers! we were bursting with pride.

The stay at the CalNeva was wonderful and beat sleeping in the front of the Giulia by a good margin. There was a wonderful social gathering in the evening and a better glimpse into the many cool people who populate these events. I returned home the next day invigorated and proceeeded to scrape a few zillion bugs from the front of the car. This would be the burning man analog to “playa dust” (not that I’d know from experience) as they seemed to be everywhere.

I am officially reviving the ratty Ti blog.

For how long have I been wanting to address the bounty of rust and the sagging trunk on my ti? for a long time. I have worn the title of rustiest, nastiest fenders for too long. Often when removing the tires on the ti, I would get caught on some jagged rusty protrusion thus flaring out the rusty holes that surrounded my wheels. I probably should have run wider tires and claimed it as a performance mod, but I’m heavily invested in vredenstien 155′s as it is, something had to give..

That something turned out to be only tangentially related to the rust… It was the trunk latch! When hitting bumps on the freeway, the rear of the car would flex so hard that the trunk latch would pop leaving my trunk ajar such that I would have to pull over and refasten it. Unsuitable for a “daily” commuter!

I had been sitting on a reasonably good rear clip, and some good reproduction patch panels for some time now. I thought they looked cool sitting around the shop, but the thought of grafting them to the car was too scary to deal with. but as my alfa addiction sets in to full strength, the words “too scary to deal with” become muted into some sort of zombie slur “braaaaiiins… chop it up and feed it to the dogs”, “crap your pants and dive in” “fretting is harder than doing” “there ain’t nothing to it, but to do it”… choose your favorite, they all mean the same thing.. buy a case of zip-disks and welding wire. The shit is going down!

To start, it was important to know the extent of the damage, this required grinding away at the existing trunk for hours upon hours to find an appropriate seam to make the incisions.

Comparing the old and the new.. What have ya got? and what do you want?

The new rear clip was pretty sound. With a few dents to bang out and a little surface rust to remove. Its impressive that a 40 year old scavenged rear end could hold up so much better than the one that was on the car.

After some clean-up, it seemed the best place to make the cuts was along the wheel well seam and just up the top of the back wall. The cuts should match on both the donor and the wounded car so that the replacement part can be mated “seamlessly” I tried to think of natural reference points that would be identical on both trunks and that would aid alignment and fit up of the donor part. I also tried to make the cuts that “showed” on areas that wouldn’t be as prone to heat warping as there were long seams to be welded in order to make things work.

With the donor part prepped, it was time to make the “scary” cuts in the car that I wanted to be driving.

When you actually go looking for it, the rust is always worse than it appears. There was so much rot in the ti trunk, I’m sure many people would have been shocked that I drove the car all over the place, even with a full trunk. The weight of the fuel tank and the spare tire really don’t help matters as they basically are balanced on a “crush zone” of unsupported sheetmetal. With no real structural members in sight.

Would YOU save this car? On the plus side, it is very sound mechanically. And its one of the earliest 4 door 105 series Alfa that is state side. Add that to a 5 speed column shift, tatty red leather seats and the fact that the yuppies are trading pristine examples at such high dollar, I might be priced out of ever owning one again.. and… and.. well, I couldn’t say no.

Yikes! This is REAL. Though I do a lot of welding, I am not a body work professional. This kind of thing really makes me nervous.

Holy shit. Its happening. Buddy looks a bit nervous and confused and I cant blame him, they say dogs can pick up on their owners emotions.

Here is a ratty ti glamor shot I never wanted to see.

The rust doesn’t just stop at any one point? It keeps going and going and going.

It’s no fun to leave your shop with this behind you. Go home and try to sleep.

There were long debates as to if the car would be better suited as a true “coda-tonca” y’know for improved aerodynamics.

You can see the rust went way up the wheel wells on both sides. Lots more work to do before you can even get started on the work you set out to do. Although that lesson is getting tired and predictable.

Here it is with some new metal grafted in, It’s not as easy as it seems it would be, and In these areas I don’t even care too much about appearances. Scary to think about work ahead in the areas I really do care about.

I painted and sealed this area, Alfa never did originally. I hope that it means the repairs will last a long while.

And on to the other side….

When you get overwhelmed and frustrated, clean something. Here I am scrubbing away my worries into a giant toxic pile of road grime.

The areas in the strut towers were rusty, this area seemed to be pretty important to the integrity of the trunk area and the rear suspension. I decided to make some 11 gauge metal reinforcements for these areas. A cardboard pattern was traced onto the plates, and the shape cut out with a zip disc, then plunging the zip disk along the bend lines makes it an easy chore to bend the pattern up by hand in the vice. After everything is bent and fits, the seams get welded and you have a real nice set of strut braces!






Then it was time to start fitting the donor section up and welding it in! the donor section turned out to have a little rust as well and needed the rear arches replaced. thankfully I had bought the patches earlier.

Long story short, (because I’m out of blogging time) It all went together pretty well, I might re-visit a few sections to try to get a straighter repair, but the rear end is now solid and rust free! I finished within minutes of when I needed to be road worthy for the Snowball rally! several hundred miles of sierra nevada road and the trunk stayed firmly closed, gas tank held securely in place and far less cockpit fumes than I previously had. I’ll tune up this post when I get a longer free-moment to write up the finale..

Today I suffered the DMV and got my black plates (courtesy of Aaron at blackplate.org) assigned to the Ti. I had been getting tickets from the neighborhood parking patrol for no license plates displayed on  the front of the vehicle and no neighborhood permit parking.

I tend to think that its a crime to ticket a guy who parks in front of his own house, and who hates the way a plate ruins the lines on the front of his otherwise beauti-mus car, but several tickets later I learned its best not to try to fight the system with apathetic stubborness.

There fore I visited the temple of apathy (and stubbornness), my local CA DMV. Three hours, three pieces of paper, two black plates, a hundred bucks or so and a sticker later we came to an agreement. I’ll put my plates on the Ti, and a neighborhood parking sticker on my fender, and they’ll only ticket me for other things.

That is all…

Wow, the last few weeks have been great. A kind of frenetic and crazy pace that breaks through your first wind, then your second wind,  then leaves you feeling energized and metabolically at a higher level wanting to do more.

I had originally (and foolishly)  set a date to have the car done for the Motherlode car rally in June. Little did I know how challenging it would be to get things apart and back together to an “acceptable” degree.

Well, as of August 25th I found myself finally about done with the brakes debacle and the front spindle mess, and my fiasco with floppy Fergats. The front suspension cleaned, metal tended to and everything looking pretty good but the rear axle out of the car, and lots of holes where trunk sheet-metal should be… in fact all the sheet-metal below the belt for the rear quarter of the car was rotten and removed.

My new deadline was that I was moving shop spaces out of the American Steel building and into a nice tidy space that should facilitate some really wonderful work. I had to be out by Sept 1′st which meant that not only did I have to move a warehouse full of tools and parts and junk, including some really big items like the Lift and the milling machine. But wouldn’t it be nice if the spider was a rolling chassis? It’s been on the lift for months.

Thus I dove in head first with the trunk repairs. I was unhappy with my original attempt at fabricating the ribbed trunk section, because things weren’t laid out carefully enough and it just looked a little “off”, so I figured I could start over again, leveraging everything I had learned and it would likely turn out better and go a bit faster.  And so it was! but a tremendous amount of work none the less.

Rather than exhaust myself further by trying to write up something clever, I’ll give the abbreviated version in text and let the pictures and captions tell the story.

Long story short: I did it! with some compromises along the way, but she rolls and the trunk and rear end are solid.  All the tools and Equipment are in the new space, and I was totally moved out and cleaned up  by 5:30Am on the 1st. I got my deposit back and the new shop is unpacking quite well. There will have to be a few things revisited with the spider, but I am feeling very very close to being ready to drop the motor and Tranny in, and to start working on fuel and wiring systems, floor-pans and seating, gauges and……

The photos that tell the story:

Cutting ou t a section after it was already welded in, because the parent matrial on the car was too thin and caused "blow through". by moving the cut up a little furhter from the rust damaged area I get some more stable metal and a better patch. At the cost though of a few more welding "scars" If I had unlimited time, I would have replaced the whole bottom patch rather than adding one.

patched, and rounding the corner of the upper valence. This all went well enough, but there is some distortion, some blow through and a few thin spots that will need re-visiting. all in all its a decent repair though, and on-par with my theme for the car which is semi-polished semi-ratty, gutted and fast.

upper valence getting pretty well wrapped up

The second iteration of the trunk floor. just trial fitting and laying things out.

Another angle, showing the yet to be fabbed trunk floor with the almost done patching upper valence.

Just like that the beads are in! (actually lots of fretting and layout and rolling and hammering took place, but lets pretend)

another blurry veiw.. looks pretty close right? actually there are untold hours left to finish the details.

all of the corners need to fit up simultaneously, the rear wheel wells need to be butted up tight, and the rear flange that bends up, while maintaining proper oreintation of features such as the gas tank holes and such.. details details that attempt to drown you. I got very good at treading water though!

The other side wheel well getting lined up.

With the wheel wells lined up, its ok to position the holes for the gas tank etc.. line up the tank hangers that I made in the "big deals for little things" post, and line up the end for the rear flange.. order of operations here was important and It was a lesson learned from the first attempt.

bending the rear flange.. I would have worried and worried about using the proper tool for this a week ago, but team do-work says "fretting is harder than doin" so I just jumped in and made a little "getto-sheetmetal-break" Clamping the trunk to the table and fabbing a bender bar that grabbed the metal. This actually worked pretty good and even put the right size radius at the bottom of the flange.

A lot of rough edges still, but the details are getting put in correctly.

Lining up the tank hangers, and drilled out the spots for rosette welding in place on the newly bent back flange.

lining things up.

With the tank hangers welded in place it was time to add all the access holes for the tank.

a long way down the road from the flat sheet it all was a week ago.

from the backside, all those little holes filled with weld.

getting ready for welding to the main channels in the car. I love all those holes!

I know what you're thinking.. this much shining metal has no buisness back here! I'm so relieved to have gotten this far.

Front alloys on. rear trunk metal fixed, rear axle cleaned and brakes rebuilt, ready to go back in the car.

here's another view of the rear ready to go back in, and the trunk repairs all ptached up.

The trunk repairs look pretty good with the bottom valence back on.

A peek up the skirt.

from teh other side, you can see the new section of wheel well that war replaced too. new straps look good, but wont look that way after fifteen minutes of motoring.

holy crapples! we practically have a car here! The rear koni's were the wrong size somehow? so I had to put in the old shocks to get everything bolted up. I'll be undoing the axle again, but at least its a roller now and I can move it. This shot is around 4:30 Am Sept 1st.

from the underside. Now the front end sheetmetal is pretty well buttoned, the rear end is close, which leaves the middle!

Well that about wraps up the last few weeks for the car.  Lets see how the rest of sept goes with no real deadlines looming..

Sometimes small things have a large presence. Ask my dog Buddy, or my daughter Camille. Buddy’s not a huge dog by any standard, in fact he’s …he’s.. a little dog. Still, little or not, he has this presence about him that takes up space and commands attention. Camille is about as docile as a ‘tweenager can be but when she opens up she is a wrestle-y sassy little thing.

Such was the tank mounts for the trunk. The ones that came off the car were well crusted I could have probably salvaged them, but why. They were beyond hoping that I could stop the rust.

So I had to wrap my head around making some new ones.. the strategy was simple. Bend some flanges, copy the profile and weld a strip to the top.. 3 pieces of flat welded up to make what Alfa did in one stamping. For some reason this little chore took up a lot of mental space.. I fussed and fussed and waited and waited to cut and bend the flanges. Once I got the ball rolling it was easy and the plan unfolded just as I would have hoped.

These things have a way of working out once you apply your attention to them, I just need to spend less time worrying about how it MIGHT go and more time jumping in. Here are a few pictures of the process.. all in all it took about a week worth of worry and planning, and 4 hours of fabrication spread over two evenings.

What you see here is maybe 15 minutes of fabrication.. with a weeks worth of worry and fret leading up to it. bent flanges on the bench with the profile sketched on..

I cut the profile in with the electric sheet metal nibblers.. everyone should have this tool. simply amazing.

After I had two profiles cut I clamped them together and ground them on the sander to match eacthother perfectly.

Withthe two profile strips set up side by side, I was able to bend a flat strip to the profile and tack it in place. I used the TIG machine for this work.

The old one and the new one.. A pretty good replication less some of the contours from stamping.. From a originality standpoint, mine are obviously not stampings but functionally I expect the new ones to be perfect.

I TIG'd the seam using no filler rod, just heat and push the puddle along the seam, as a resut there is very little heat warpage and less grinding required to smooth out the welds

satisfied withthe way things worked onthe first one I used it as a template to make the second one.. This is not good practice for serious multiple runs of parts, you can get a sort of Andy Warhol degredation effect, but for these onesie twosies that I'm grinding to match it works out Ok.

Self replicationg trunk parts!

Now we have two parts that are starting to look like something!

A little finish grinding/blending of the seams and some holes punched for rosette welds and we're just about done! Looking at the new parts next to the old one I'm glad I finally jumped in and made these.

Checkingthe fit on the tanks, these are dimensionally correct and will work out just fine..

Here you can see the contour of the tank that these parts have to follow.. Much ado about nothing! It was just not that hard!

A shot of the trunk floor waiting for the tank mounts to be welded to it... the pieces are all coming togehter.

All in all it’s taken a long time, but most of the time has been spent worrying and fretting and getting it done has been easier than imagined and very rewarding.  All bark and no bite!

Here’s just a brief post as I don’t want the impression to be that I never get to drive these lumps!

This weekend I drove from Oakland up the 101 to Santa Rosa where my Girlfriend was doing some work. I picked her up and we hauled out for a dinner and took the pup for a walk on the town.  Then we had a dusk drive up hwy 12 to 29 on to hwy 53 to Clearlake and further on to hwy 20 through the bottom of the Mendocino hills. Then down hwy 16 to cache creek where we spent the night.  All in all it was about 175 miles of driving, mostly windy mountain roads (with a lot of nasty downhill off-camber turns). The Ti performed flawlessly. We passed Sunday drivers in Subarus and family vans in comfort and ease going through the hills and the car was comfortable and FUN for the whole trip!

In any other car this much driving would have been a total chore, but the Ti left me feeling invigorated and full of inspiration to explore the area, and to get the Giulietta on the F#$&ing road! We will definitely be back, there is a Guatemalan Ice cream Joint in SR to try and we both want to spend a night at the Flamingo hotel there as well.

Furthermore, The dusk/night driving was awesome! I’m inspired to host a small night time rally with Camping or something where we can all outfit our cars with driving lights and go make lots of vintage noise in the otherwise quiet forest night!

Ok.. just too happy and excited to not share a story.. I’m off to the workshop to replace some rusty metal on the Giulietta.

G’night Bay area!

-Luigi

Little to report, but I wanted to post something!

With the rear axle dropped and the trunk repair still midway done I decided to continue to work on that. I dropped the rear valence and started to clean it up so that I could salvage it. The top lip required all the rusty layers of trunk to be ground off, which turned out to be quite the chore. The girlfriend worked on it for a long while. Then the next day I put a few hours into it and was shocked at how long it took.

Rusty lower valence. Getting the grind on it! Tons of scaly red stuff reduced to dust. Only half of which made it to my boogers.

The wheels on my 1964 Ti were going flat every morning. I took them to the shop for new valve stems. It fixed one tire but the other was constantly flat in the morning from a slow leak. After taking it back to the tire shop I finally found a crack in the rim where the center meets the hoop  (these are on 105 wheels, not the fergats). I was thinking of ways to fix the cracked rim when fed up with the whole process I dumped two new sets of alloys onto the credit card (eep!). The fergats I spent all that money on to procure and blast and straighten will get a nice finish coat in silver and hit e-bay. I’m hoping the alloys will last a long while and be hassle free.  Both cars have new vredenstien 155′s so I hope to be done shuffling wheels and tires around for a good while.

Everyone likes opening boxes (unless the box contains your credit card bill)

The rims now might have surpassed the passenger spindle for part most fussed with before ultimately abandoned! Although the new spindle that I installed had one last surprise up its sleeve! The threaded section is too short for the castellated nut to reach the hole for the cotter pin! Possibilities are: there are different length spindles (with possible varying upright geometries?), that the bearings were simply not seated well in the hubs? … …Possible solutions are: re-seat the bearings, futz the castellated nut to work, or seek new part.. I re-installed the wheel studs and it was a bear, requiring the torch on the hub holes and the studs to spend the night in the freezer, They all still needed a tap with the hammer to get into place.

The bead rolling got finished, and now I’ve yet to drill all the holes and to form the flange for the gas sender hole. I did a little more fitment to the trunk floor piece.

I reworked the inner fenderwell, there is still a tiny bit here that is unsatisfactory… ah well third times the charm.

ratty fitment and welding needs some attention

This is the backside of the same part. I welded both sides because the fit was poor and I needed to ensure a water tight joint. At least no-one will be looking in here.

With the fender well in and the lower valence  in place I clamped in the trunk floor and sussed things out.

The trunk and the valence clamped into place from the underside. Things are generally fitting up OK and I think I wont suffer too much shame considering I'll be leaving the cosmetics of the car full on ratty.

With everything in place I wanted to tend to REALLY making the lower valence clean and nice..This meant cutting out some chunky sections..

The lower valence hid plenty of rusty mess. This stuff has to come off! Here I am sizing up a patch.

I tried to make the patch as simple as possible leaving the contour that wraps the wheel arch. I still had to put a little compund bend in this one to fit right. Its easy enough to do an eyeball fit with the rubber hammer and something to form on. the flange got shrunk on the cheap-o eastwood shrinker stretcher kit. More to follow on these tools as I plan to use them extensivly to fix the upper valence.

here you can see the little flare that needed putting in in order to meet the wheel arch..

With a haphazardly cut hole to match the patch! I should really go a bit slower when it comes to the pretty stuff.

Welded up and half-blended. This patch actually fits pretty well and wont require much (if any) bog to make perfect

Here's a better angle to see the fit of the patch. I think I can make this work out pretty good.

Finally I drew sharpie lines in the trunk floor, for the spot weld holes to be drilled, and I started trimming up some more patch pieces for the trunk. My power was out to my welder today or I’d have made a lot more progress. I’ll try to get it sorted and have some more welding done to the trunk tomorrow. Goal is to have the trunk Done-done by the end of this week.

Still up:

• holes cut in floor for filler batt cable etc..
• new tank supports fabbed up
• upper valence fabbed up and tied into body
• trunk rear transition patch fabbed and welded in..

Plenty left to do, but a little bit more done each week. Please if you’re reading this blog. post a comment. We stay up late to write this stuff (hence the grammar/typos) and I hope someone is reading it!

Lots on my plate this month as I prepare to move my shop to a new location, so I’ll keep this post brief and more in the style of a photo narrative.

The Giulietta has been disassembled on the lift for over 2 months now. With the impending shop move, It’s high time this car was able to roll around.  Dan and I dropped the rear axle one night. It had some frozen bushings that needed tending to  and was altogether filthy. Further more, you pretty much need to drop the rear axle just to service the shocks!

Going a little deeper down the rabbit hole I figured with all that stuff out of the way it was a good time to address the trunk rust.

Here’s where I am so far:

All journeys have a beginning.. This journey starts with a car some people have already told me they would have scrapped!

The rust from the battery area of the trunk went on to claim the upper valence, and the passenger wheel well.

Extremely blurry shot of the trunk rust.. My hands must have been shaking!

Witht the lower valence removed, and the rust in the trunk about to be removed, you get a sense of how much sheetmetal needs to be replaced! YIKES!

one more shot to further illustrate the task at hand.

Some of the debris from cutting the rot out.. I'm actually a little thrilled when I see this. I'm glad its no longer ON the car!

Fabbing up a patch from some 20ga steel I had laying around.. I eventually decided that this stuff was too thin, and ripped this patch out and re-fabbed it all again!

Bending up a little flared section for the outer edge of the wheel well. I wanted this stuff to look "factory-ish" not just slabbed on, so I took some time to recreate the joinery and shapes.

A full sheet of 18ga ready to be turned into an alfa trunk.. they say skilled wood workers look into the grain and individual piece of wood to determine what it will become. There can be no crossover to the world of metal , cause this looks nothing like what I will beat it into.

Trimming and fitting and trimming again to get a pattern for the trunk..

Detail of the corner getting its shape. I beat up a flange around the wheel well. Am getting the fit close enough so that I can start mapping out and rolling in some beads.

the battery side, you can see my old patch on the wheel well. the new piece fits up just fine.. a third piece will span the back side.

This is supposed to be a low budget, high sweat equity ratty hooligan style build, not a concourse restoration. “git-er-done”  has got to take pretty high precedence. That said, I couldn’t keep myself from wanting the thing to look decent. Anyhow, I ended up cutting a new set of dies for my cheap-o bead roller. I wanted to get something at least kind of close to the factory profile. This gave me an excuse to fire up my little south-bend lathe as well. It was a joy to work with.

rolling the beads for the trunk panel. I had considered many options for replacing the trunk metal. Originally I was going to create a CAD drawing and have lots of trunks fabbed at a professional sheet metal shop with a laser cutter and a progressive hammer die on a CNC punch press. I also considered buying wolf steel panels which are probably as good or superior to my own efforts here at a fraction of the time and cost. I decided to make my own, cause.. well thats just what I tend to do.

Bead rolling something this big with such a deep bead is a two-person operation. My second person here looking chipper, as she is!

Halfway done with the beads.. we had to cut out before finishing to tend to family stuff and sleep.

The second attempt at the wheel well patch. this time pre-assembled and out of 18ga.

A gratuitous shot of the dog. Everyone loves a ratty Ti post with a dog in it! Buddy and I are looking at something with serious intent.

That’s it for now.  Lots of pictures.. not a lot of rambling.. hopefully I’ll have more to post soon as I really need to power through this part of the build and get this thing rolling. I’m very much looking forward to having a rust-free Giulietta spider!