33 days on the clock.. 5lbs less dirt under the car

This week has been the dirtiest week of the bunch, This is the week that the front suspension came out, the wheel wells got scraped and scrubbed, the suspension came apart and  was cleaned and inspected.

In tandem the shop got re-arrainged, new pallet racks installed, while this may seem like a diversion, it has been necessary and I hope that a more organized shop will pay off in speed and efficiency toward the home stretch.

I follow the rule of small steps and one side at a time (that way you always have the otherside still in its assembled state for reference. )

Small steps are important because its often too easy to tackle a job and get things apart right up until something difficult stops you.. then move on to taking something else apart. In the end you wind up with a lot of little pieces and only the big problems left. For my own motivation, I need to keep things moving towards the light at the end of the tunnel.

This week was also the week of volunteers. I gotta give it up for Sacha who stayed up late in the shop with me and took on the daunting task of cleaning the wheel wells and chassis. Armed with a wire brush,  3M roloc pad, and a bevy of scrapers she attacked the sills fastidiously until she saw nothing but shiny metal.. so many people commented on the  bare mental wheel wells Its hard to believe that I’m going to rubberize them. I think the shopmates were all a little green too that my girl was so happlily and professionally scraping away undercoating.  It’s all in the name of quality time, and I’m glad to share the goal with her, and most especially grateful for her help.

I managed to completely disassemble the drivers side suspension, and clean it, back to the original metal and bushings, painted the black parts black, left a few parts in rubbed patina, and epoxy clear-coated some beautiful cast pieces.

I must say that the bronze bushed A-arms on the giulietta have me totally impressed, I have only ever done 105 suspensions before, and the comparison in terms of expense and ingenuity is vast. The giulietta suspension is an engineers dream, a bronze bushing in each pivot, bronze thrust washers, hardened steel shafts cast into iron struts, grease zerks at each ball and pivot. It’s truly a Beautiful work of engineering.  Verging on art. If that last statement sounds odd, just check the art work of my shopmate Benjamin Cowden for comparison.. twentysevengears.com

Big props also go to Dan, for helping me with my other responsibilities around the shop while sacha plugged away on the car.

Lastly but not least, thanks to Matt Hamilton of Giuliettas.com for his expertise in the field and for generously searching his parts cache for a set of decent front drum brakes..The spiders appear to be pretty badly scored on the drum liner, and I had question about using them.

Once settled on the drums I’m going to use, I’ll take a measurement of the liner and send the pads off to Porterfield for re-surfacing.

I bought a lot of stuff this week including headlights, rubber bits, and re-build kits for the brake cyls..

I have yet to DO the cylinder rebuilds as well as deal with cleaning/replacing the brake  lines, but I hope to be well on my way with both tasks by the end of the coming weekend.

I’ll also need to look around for exhaust bits.. source the pertronix unit….

Well, It seemed like a busy week but so far, there’s not as much to show for it as I might have liked.

33 days left on the clock…