. . . But Not for Long (Post # 96)

After a two-year sojourn to Tennessee the Alfatross returns to Santa Fe . . . but not for long. We have 12 days to get it ready to go to Paul Russell and Co. for the interior. Should be more than enough time, we thought. All we have to do is put the transmission and transmission covers in, run the wiring harness from the dash to the trunk, attach the suspension springs and members, insert the steering column and drag links, hook up the parking brake, and put the wheels on.  The front and rear suspension members have already been assembled and we have an hydraulic lift to safely raise and lower the chassis. How long can it possibly take?

The front and rear suspension assemblies were prepared weeks in advance, but fitting them to the chassis is not a "plug and play" no-brainer!

Preparing to install the transmission through the passenger
side door.

Putting the transmission in is the easiest job, so we tackle that first. It's heavy and has to go through the passenger's door. We can't put the trans in if the car is on the lift because the lift blocks the passenger's door, so we leave the car on the trolley from Tim's shop. We have an engine hoist, so no problem . . . except that the hoist is too tall so we can't actually get the trans in all the way. Then we discover that the opening in the firewall is too small for the bell housing to pass through into the engine bay. So, take it out, scratch heads, ponder, take the bell housing off to get the trans in and reattach the bell housing from inside the engine bay. An elegant solution, but it still took about three times longer than anticipated.

OK Dave, hold that transmission in place while I get my camera. Now where did I put that thing?

Once in place, the transmission and drive train take a big bite
out of the interior space.

Then we attack the rear axle. A motorcycle jack makes positioning it under the chassis easy, but when we lower the chassis we discover that the aluminum body with no interior or engine is so light we can't compress the springs far enough to attach the drop stop straps,  even after loading 300 pounds of lead in the interior! This is how a job that was anticipated to take a few hours stretches out to take 3 days. It might have taken longer if Andre von Reiter, my next door neighbor had not dropped by to check on The Alfatross.  He immediately saw what was needed and returned with a nifty spring compressor unlike anything I had ever seen before, but it was perfect for the job. 

Now the car is on the lift and the idea is to use the motorcycle jack in conjunction with the car lift to put the two together.

The four all-thread rods attached to the lower
A-arm and the lower spring plate.

Then on to the more complicated front suspension and steering full of more surprises. Again the car is too light to use a floor jack to compress the front springs but this time there is no way to put extra weight over the suspension in the engine bay. We were rather proud of ourselves when we solved this problem by using the lower spring plate itself to do the compressing against the upper spring cavity in the chassis.

We cut four 8 inch lengths of all-thread rod to connect the four holes in the lower A-arm with the four holes in the lower spring plate. With nuts and washers at each end we shortened each rod incrementally until the lower spring plate was in contact with the bottom of the lower A-arm, then began to replace each all-thread rod with the proper bolt to hold the plate in place.  That's when we remembered that there are fat aluminum spacers that are supposed to fit between the lower spring plate and the lower A-arm--and realized we were thinking only two moves ahead when we should have been thinking three.  So it all had to be done again. Maybe this is where "third time's the charm" comes from?

Now the all-thread rods  have compressed the spring and
been replaced by the proper bolts.  Note the thick aluminum
washers between the lower A-arm and the spring plate.

A couple of days later--too late to do any good--I remembered that the Alfa 1900 workshop manual had several pages of workshop illustrations of special tools needed to work on these cars.  Sure enough, at the back of the manual under the heading "Attrezzi di Dotazione e Speciali" was an illustration of a tool that works the same as the one we devised but with a single central tightening screw to ensure that the lower spring plate stays parallel to the bottom of the lower a-arm.

When all else fails . .  read the directions!

The refined version of the spring compressor for the front suspension is item #7, "tool for mounting the spring on the suspension arms"