The PerfOMeter (Post # 90)

No, this is not The Alfatross' heater fan motor before
cleaning. The Antikythera Mechanism, found on a ship
that wrecked more than 2,000 years ago, remained
 unidentified for 50 years after its discovery.
Wikimedia Commons.

In archaeology it is not unusual to find an object you can't identify.  If it is incomplete, a part of something else, identification is even harder. A good example is the "Antikythera Mechanism".  Discovered on an ancient Roman shipwreck in 1900, it was not identified until half a century later when a researcher realized it was some kind of mechanical device devised 2,200 years ago to predict astronomical and calendrical events. The scientific world was flabbergasted. More than 1,000 years ahead of its time, it has been called the first analog computer.

The Alfatross' Burg Dynometer

That doesn't happen as often in "carchaeology". After all, automotive technology is barely 120 years old, and is pretty well documented throughout the whole period. The Alfatross' version of the Antikythera Mechanism is its Burg Dynometer, which I have mentioned a couple of times previously, mainly in frustration over our inability to identify it and learn how it works.  

Thanks to the burgeoning internet and researchers like Wayne Mikosz who know how to use it efficiently, we recently discovered another example of the Dynometer being offered on a European auction site. By the time we learned about it the item was no longer being offered. Apparently there were no bids.

PerfOMeter road test results reported in Auto Age, 1951.
They loved it! 

But Wayne was not discouraged.  He turned to his own "archive" of old automotive literature where he hit pay-dirt: an advertisement in the first issue of a magazine called Auto Age for the "PerfOMeter," along with the results of a "road test" performed by the Auto Age staff!

The road test was conducted in a classy Jaguar
 MkVII saloon!

The advertisement was wildly enthusiastic. Would you like to know your car's actual horsepower? Its wind and rolling resistance? Its stopping distance in feet? The condition of your brakes? The gasoline best suited for your car? The results of an expensive repair job on your car? Well, the wait is over! Now, for only $22.50 you can have the answers to these and many more questions about your car's performance with the PerfOMeter De Luxe Model 104 available from the Autosphere Corporation of New York City.

The PerfOMeter, like the Burg Dynometer, works on the pendulum principle with the internal pendulum's motion dampened by baffles in oil and mechanical compensation for variations in temperature and atmospheric pressure.

The Alfatross' Burg Dynometer is virtually identical to this
illustration in the PerfOMeter ad.  We were particularly
interested in the configuration of the mounting strap that
allows the meter to swing freely under the dash.

We weren't interested in the advertising hype as much as in the explanation of how the instrument worked and how it should be mounted to the instrument panel. The reviewers at Auto Age spent a considerable time testing an example they were given under actual road conditions and were impressed. Their explanation for how the manufacturer could make so many claims about the information it could produce was succinct:

" How can one instrument supply so much valuable data? First you must realize that many of the items of information listed above are interdependent, that figures for one can be transposed into facts about another if you're willing to go through the math involved. (You must also realize that to obtain really useful results from the PerfOMeter you'll have to read the 64-page instruction manual carefully and spend some time absorbing it.)"

The PerfOMeter dial face is somewhat different than that of The Alfatross' Burg
Dynometer,  and a whole lot more visually complicated, but the functions are the
same.

But we still have questions.  We now know that the Dynometer was not a new-fangled contraption in 1955, but when did The Alfatross acquire it? It seems unlikely that it was a feature provided by Zagato, even though it is clearly meant for an Italian market.  More likely it was added by the first or second owner while the car was still in Italy.  Regardless of when that happened it is yet another indication of an as-yet undiscovered racing history.  

Suspension Animation (Post # 89)

Not suspended animation, suspension animation--the state of working vigorously on the suspension system. The Alfatross' front suspension with double A-arms, telescoping shock absorbers, and coil springs and its worm-and-sector steering system are pretty simple and straight-forward. But that doesn't mean they are easy to refurbish.  

The basic A-arm configuration.  Upper and lower control
arms connected by the steering knuckle, four pivot points
per arm, each requiring a bushing. 

Following disassembly Jeff Kramer and I determined that some of the the 16 copper-alloy sleeve bearings (sometimes called bushings) in the A-arms were worn and should probably be replaced. In the spirit of "In for a penny, in for a pound" we elected to replace them all as well as the four sleeve bearings for the kingpins.  

One of the original sleeve bearings, showing wear and 

corrosion.

New sleeve bearings are readily available on line, so parts were not a problem. This time the problem was ingenuity: getting the old sleeve bearings out, pressing the new ones in, reaming the new ones to fit the pins on the steering knuckles and A-arm pivot points, and align-reaming the new bushings for the kingpins. Modern suspension systems don't use sleeve bearings, so your average gearheads, like us, have never done this type of work. How hard can it be, we thought, and dived in, cheerfully oblivious to what we were getting ourselves into. 

The first thing we needed was a selection of "stepped" bushing drivers to press the old sleeves out, so once again we called on machinist Jeff Robison for his help making them to the right dimensions. This is where we got a surprise. One would expect the dimensions of the suspension members of an Alfa Romeo to be metric, but they were all Imperial. We had already noticed that the brake system and shock absorbers were made by Girling.  Now it seemed that the suspension system was also British made.

A selection of some of the tools we had to buy or fabricate to get the job done.  The Chadwick & Trefethen reamers are at the top.  Jeff Robison made the three drivers on the right, the brass "sleeve expander" on the left, and the aluminum collar in the center.

Pressing out the old bearings turned out to be the only easy part of the job. By "easy" I mean relative to putting a man on the moon.    

One of the 16 sleeve bearing joints needing replacement. 
Press out the old one, search the Web for replacements,
press in the new one, ream the new one to fit the specific
pin it will receive. Repeat 16 times--and don't screw up!

A stepped driver in position on an A-arm, 
ready for pressing. the first step fits inside 
the bearing.  The second step catches on the
lip of the bearing and presses it out. The 
third step limits the travel.

The original sleeve bearings seem to have been
technically superior to the new ones.  Note that they
are "split" instead of being a solid tube,  that the
split has a "dove-tail" tab to limit expansion, and that
they are bi-metallic: steel on the outside and copper
alloy on the inside.

All of the original sleeve bearings bore this logo: 
PV LTD. Anybody recognize the manufacturer? 
The LTD seems to suggest British origin.

Two sleeve bearings became loose during the
reaming process and had to be tightened up
using the "sleeve expander" manufactured by
Jeff Robison. Problem solved.

Hand-reaming the newly installed sleeve
bearings.  Each bearing took about 30 minutes
to ream to fit the specific pin it would  receive.
I hope I never have to do this again!

Reaming the sleeve bearings in one of the spindles with a self-aligning Chadwick & Trefethen reamer made specially for this purpose.  Don't leave home without it!

The tie rod ends held even more surprises.  Again there was no indication of who made them, but the dimensions of the threaded elements and nuts were all Imperial, so they probably originated in Great Britain. Some of the originals were re-usable but others were not and they are not rebuildable either, so new units were necessary.  Several on-line vendors offer tie rod ends, but none of them have the same dimensions as the originals.  

We ended up with a set of 6, 3 of which had right-hand metric threads on the tie-rod ends while the other 3 had left-hand Imperial threads on their tie rod ends.  Go figure.  So now we are going to have to make our own tie rods with metric threads on one end and Imperial threads on the other!   

The original tie rod ends, also manufactured to Imperial
dimensions.  They bore no logo or manufacturer's name, 
and could not be rebuilt.

After conferring with Dan Allen I now suspect the tie rod ends that were on the car when I bought it in 1969 may not have been original. He sent me the photo below of a tie rod end from a Matta, an Alfa Romeo-produced vehicle similar to the American Jeep that shared many parts with the 1900. With the right spanner you could remove the top to clean and recondition it. Dan thinks Alfa 1900s produced in the mid-1950s probably carried this type of tie-rod end. If anyone out there has definitive information about this subject, I'm all ears!

A tie-rod end from an Alfa Romeo Matta.
Dan Allen.