Recently it seems like The Alfatross presents a new surprise at every turn. It's like fighting Zombies. There is an endless supply of them, all relentless in their determination to devour your budget and patience. You can't run away from them, you can't just ignore them, and they won't go away by themselves. All you can do is outsmart them.
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| Like Zombies, surprise restoration problems pop up when you least expect them--and are just as hard to lay to rest. |
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| The Alfatross' original cams were badly worn and had to be replaced. DeWayne and Roger suggested why not go for a custom design that would produce better performance? All we had to do was turn in the specs and wait . . . wait . . . wait . . . . |
The new cams looked great, but weren't exactly as specified after receiving all the milling, tempering, coating, massaging and aroma-therapy treatments. But that's why machine shops were invented so Roger Lorton made the necessary adjustments and now all is well.
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| . . . until the custom-designed Crower cams finally arrived. Now we could finish it . . . but wait! There's more! |
No sooner had the Cam Zombie been eradicated than the Gear Zombie reared its ugly head. Someone noticed a tiny crack in the distributor/tach drive gear. This is a small, delicate, unassuming item--but without it the car isn't going anywhere! In the spirit of keeping the car as original as possible, we first considered welding it up and re-machining it, but the cost would have been obscene. The only other alternative was to find an old one in good condition. This is where we discovered that 60 year old distributor/tach drive gears for Alfa 1900s are quite rare. And it isn't like there is only one type, so if you are lucky enough to find one you still have to figure out if it's the right type.
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The distributor and tach are driven by a housing mounted
on the back of the left side cam. It looked good to go
without a lot of work. But on closer inspection . . .
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DeWayne and Roger discovered a tiny
crack in the distributor drive gear.
It wasn't a bad crack or even a big
crack, but it wasn't supposed to be
there and those guys don't like
things that aren't supposed to be
there.
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After a lot of inquiries into both repairing the old one and finding a new one I finally asked Dan Allen if he could help. I say "finally" because I didn't want to approach him until we ran out of other options. He has already pulled The Alfatross' bacon out of the fire several times. You don't want to wear out your welcome with a guy like that. But I did in desperation and sure enough, he had one on the shelf and sent it to me--problem solved, just like that!
And that's when the Starter Zombie, stumbling and slobbering, lurched into the picture. I get a message from DeWayne saying that the starter I provided doesn't fit. To the best of my knowledge the starter is the same one that I took off the engine a couple of decades ago, so how could it not fit now? Well if it doesn't fit, it can't be the same one. How the hell did that happen?
While trying to figure that one out I remembered that there was a Bosch starter in a box in the trunk when I bought the car in 1969. I didn't know if it had ever been fitted to The Alfatross, but in any case it was broken so I just laid it aside. The fact that it was Bosch instead of Marelli or Scintilla made me skeptical, but when I looked at it again I noticed silver paint on the upper side. Silver paint? The Alfatross' engine bay was painted silver over black. Maybe it was a replacement fitted by a previous owner some time before 1969? I sent it to DeWayne and Roger, who re-welded the broken gooseneck between the starter and the solenoid and got it going again.
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| The mysterious Bosch starter found in the trunk. Note the silver paint on the upper surfaces (lower surfaces are black). Why the starter that was thought to be original no longer fits is still a mystery. |
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| The cracked "gooseneck" part of the starter housing, now repaired. |
So now we're hunkered down again, locked an loaded, ready to fend off the next Zombie surprise attack. It's just a matter of time . . . .
