Trading Hands, Seeing Clearly, Internetting, and Hobb Knobbing (Post # 75)

Another 1900C SSZ Trades Hands

The day after I posted my "Year of Spending Extravagantly" musing the latest Sports Car Market Price Guide appeared in my mailbox.  Turning quickly to the Alfa Romeo section I was amazed to see that one of The Alfatross' brethren somewhere in the world has a new owner, and the old owner has $1,400,000! Which car it was and the circumstances surrounding the sale were not revealed, so we'll just have to wait and see.

Note the warning that "provenance is critical".  Not all 1900C SSZs are "really real".
Sports Car Market.

Seeing Clearly

Wipers.  We take them for granted. You hardly know they're there anymore. A modern car has "adaptive" wipers, meaning that the car senses when there is water on the windshield and starts to wipe, almost like blinking its eyes. The driver doesn't have to do anything. and of course you've also got an adjustable "interval" setting as well as low and high speed settings. The Alfatross' wipers are irrefutable evidence that civilization is progressing after all. They've always seemed to me to be an afterthought. In the first place they're only about a foot long.  

The motor, linkage, and drive shafts all look pretty feeble. And there's only one speed, so all you need is a simple on-off toggle switch. But the switch has four poles and the motor has three connections.  We had to fool around with it for a few hours to figure out how it worked.  The four poles and extra connection are necessary to "park" the blades when you turn it off.  Otherwise they could end up anywhere on the windshield. Very annoying.

Don't ask me how it works, but it does!

Then we noticed that some Alfa 1900s have "parallel" wiper blade action while others have "opposed" action.  An admittedly hasty survey of the known 1900C SSZ examples revealed that 10 have parallel wipers, 11 have opposed wipers, and 7 either didn't have wipers or the images don't show their position clearly.  Curious.

Wipers opposed.

Wipers parallel.  

The windshield wiper motor shows signs of wear and repair.  The motor purrs smoothly and parks the blades precisely, but the linkage appears to have been modified rather roughly to
fit the Zagato body.  Jeff made new bushings to take up the slack but final adjustments will
have to wait until we mate it to the body.

Miracle of the Internet

There are some parts that are so model-specific, so short-lived, and so rare that you never bother trying to find "new old stock" or even reproductions of them. One such item for The Alfatross is the rubber-coated steel plate that serves as the weather-seal for the hole in the floorboard beneath the clutch and brake pedals.  

The Alfatross' original badly-deteriorated pedal plate
(above) and the reproduction or NOS part offered by OKP.

The Alfatross' original unit had the rubber equivalent of leprosy and although the more substantial parts of it were recognizable, the critical parts where the rubber made the seal around the pedal "legs" were missing.  In desperation, I began trying to rehabilitate the original plate, but without knowing what was missing my efforts were futile. Then, quite unexpectedly, while in the process of looking for something else on the OKP Web site (https://www.okp.de/t3/index.php?id=30&L=1) I found it! The heavens opened up, a ray of sunlight struck my computer monitor and Handel's Hallelujah Chorus began to play.

I don't know if it is New Old Stock or a reproduction, but it is a perfect match to the original.

Hobb Knobbing

The Alfatross' dash is busier than most: 6 gauges, ignition switch, heater fan rheostat, light switch, manual throttle, and windshield washer pump on the dash proper and 6 toggle switches, ventilation control, and dynometer underneath.

The original knobs are on the left, the best reproductions are in the middle, and reproductions for Giuliettas are on the right.

Three of the control knobs have insignia on them, but the one for the lights switch split decades ago allowing its insignia to fall out and get lost. I was perfectly happy to use the two intact original knobs for the throttle and fan even though they were hazy and indistinct, but the cracked and incomplete light switch knob was a real eyesore.  In the process of looking for a replacement I discovered that there are at least two different reproduction knob sets available. One set is substantially the same, but with gold insignia over black backgrounds. I bought it thinking that it was as close as I was going to get. Subsequently I discovered that there is another. more authentic set which not only has the insignia set in a gold background, but also has the correct knob length.  

So now I have two dilemmas: Should I just replace the knob for the lights switch, and keep the functional but funky originals? And what do I do with the superfluous gold-on-black set?