Keeping It Light (Post # 27)

The Alfatross was built to race.  The faster, the better.  There are only two ways to make a car faster: increase the horsepower or reduce weight.  The Alfa engine was tweaked about as far as it could be, but it still made only a little over 100 HP.  These days a lot of production motorcycles make more HP that that, so getting the overall weight down was crucial.  There wasn't much they could do about the steel frame to lighten it, but making the body in aluminum instead of the normal steel dropped hundreds of pounds compared to a factory Alfa 1900.  Giving that body its svelte shape added the advantage of improved aerodynamics at high speeds.  On some cars even bumpers were deleted.  When they were present, they were aluminum. 

The interior, too, was put on a diet.  The aluminum dash probably weighs less than 5 lbs.  The tall, imposing central transmission hump is all aluminum.  The back seat is just a pad about three inches thick.  Of course there is no radio, no stereo system, no power windows, no air conditioning, and no handy drink holders, to name just a few items that used to be considered luxury accessories but are now standard.  The only items that could be considered accessories are the single sun visor for the driver and a rear view mirror in the center of the dash. 

The "skeletonized" driver and passenger seats weigh less than 30 lbs each. 

Beneath the simple seat cushions the only support is a band of
some kind of fabric stretched across the seat frame. Everything
you need to go fast . . . and nothing that you don't!

The third weight-saving strategy was to make all the windows except for the windshield out of Plexiglas instead of glass. This works brilliantly on a race car, but it also demonstrates vividly why there is a reason normal cars have glass windows instead of plastic--durability.  All the Alfatross' Plexiglas windows needed replacement due primarily to micro-cracks that can't be buffed out or cleaned away.  I had new ones made from the originals at a shop in Houston that makes windows for airplanes.  The door windows and back seat windows were easy, just fairly small pieces with simple gentle curves.  But the rear window is pretty large and has a compound curve.  I bet it's going to be a challenge to install.

This is one of the original Plexiglas rear seat windows.  After almost 60 years
it is hazy, cracked, and discolored.

 


And this is the way it's supposed to look.  Plexiglas is easy to scratch and you
shouldn't use glass cleaners on it.

The original drivers side window.  The long vertical scrapes on the right side that make the window almost opaque were created by an out-of-adjustment roller in the door.  That is something I will guard against when I reassemble it.

The new Plexiglas window is almost invisible in this view.

The windshield is more problematic than the Plexiglas windows.  It had no cracks or dings, but was marred by a long wiper scratch on the passengers' side that looked like it was too deep to polish away.  Should I try to replace it?  I was reluctant to take it out.  What if if breaks?  Where would I find another one?  So I did some research to find out how I would replace it if something went wrong.  Rich Heinrich put me touch with a company in Pennsylvania called ProCurve Glass that makes windshields.  The reply to my inquiry was a terse "2500 for 1, 3200 for 2  6 weeks." The Alfa 1900 Yahoo Groups source put me in touch with Antti Wihanto whose company in Turko, Finland, also makes windshields to specification and has lots of patterns on hand.  His prices were competitive, but what about shipping by air?

The problem in both cases is that you can't make a windshield without a pattern, and there is enough variation between individual Zagatos to make you wonder if the patterns that exist will work for your particular car.  The windshield itself is cheap.  Making the pattern is the expensive part.  The best way to get a good result is to send your windshield to whichever company you pick so they can check for a pattern match, or if there is no match, make a new pattern just for your car.  Here's where it gets both expensive and risky.  How do you pack a windshield for shipment to Pennsylvania or Finland?  It's going to have to go by air, so how much is that going to cost?  And you might as well make two at the same time in case one gets broken later.  And then you have to fly the original and at least two copies back . . . cha-ching!

The Alfatross' windshield packed for transportation from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Santa Fe.

The only problem: a wiper scratch on the passengers' side.  How much of it can be removed by polishing?  Is it bad enough
to warrant replacement? 

In the end, the windshield came out without damage, but of course the wiper scratch was still there.  If the scratch can't be polished out, does replacing the windshield for clarity's sake outweigh keeping it for originality's sake?  It's a decision that has to be made soon so that the windshield--whether original or new--doesn't hold up reassembly of the Alfatross.