Racing to the Concourse (Post # 101)

A phone call from a fellow Zagato bodied car owner last night was a reminder that many of you are wondering what happened to the Alfatross in December. Did it ever make it back home? Is it going to be ready for the January 24 show at the Scottsdale Concourse d'Elegance? Because Don has nearly moved into his workshop full time, he asked me to "fill in" and "fill you in." But who is "me" you might be asking. Let me introduce (or reintroduce) myself. I'm Toni Carrell, Don's wife and enthusiastic supporter of this reincarnation of the amazing Alfatross.
 

Trapped in Amarillo

To get right to it, coming back from Paul Russell’s trim shop in Essex, Massachusetts, the Alfatross was trapped in Amarillo until Monday, December 28. The excellent driving team of Michael and Chloe Compton  from Reliable Carriers rolled into Santa Fe around 9:30 am. The storm that stopped them wasn’t snowmageddon, but it shut down roads from Amarillo to Albuquerque and the delay put a real dent in the schedule. 

Chloe and Michael Compton are truly a Reliable Team!

It was with a huge sense of relief that we transferred the Alfatross into its personal trailer to bring her back to Don’s workshop. Did I mention that we live down a long dirt road? Did I mention that it was snow-packed and icy? Dave Carrell (my son) is a master trailer wrangler and even with the snow handicap he was able to maneuver the trailer right up to the workshop door. The Alfatross was home!

Tim Tackles the Trim and …

Tim Marinos flew in on January 1 to continue the job of installing the dash, glove box, polished aluminum trim, Plexiglas windows, wind deflectors, weather-stripping, door and window hardware, adjusting the doors and quarter windows. Don and Tim put in 10 hard long days and each day ended with a noticeable difference in the Alfatross and her presentation, which is up by at least 100!

The Car Table Team to the Rescue

Dave installing the headlights and fog lights.

The long list of things that were done since December 28, beyond what Tim did, includes getting the engine and all of its associated bits and pieces (can you tell I know nothing about car engines?) reinstalled. Pumps, generators, reservoirs of various descriptions, the radiator, brakes and brake lines, the exhaust system, heat shields, wiring, dashboard gauges, lights and switches, suspension system, rear springs, headlights, fog lights, the battery and its box, the Automobile Club of Torino and the Sanremo rally badges all are emerging from hibernation and returning to their proper places for the first time in decades.

Luckily we’ve had the help of several car table volunteers; Terry Morgan, Gerry Strickfaden, Jeff Kramer, Tarvo Sutt, Jeff Robison, and my son Dave have gone above and beyond. Without this amazing team and their combined knowledge, there’s no way we could get it finished.

The car table team plus Don on the floor! L-R Tarmo, Gerry, Jeff and Terry.

The Alfatross is Purring

Don is a hands on guy!

Don will undoubtedly do a number of blogs to fill in all of the details of the installation successes and challenges since the Alfatross came home. We are less than 48 hours from lift-off very early on Friday morning to make the nearly 500 mile trek to Phoenix and there’s still a lot to do. But for now, at least you know that the Alfatross is on track to make her debut at the Arizona Concours. We hope the she has a chance to meet Andrea Zagato, the grandson of her designer, Ugo. 

Suddenly, as I sit here writing, I can hear the engine being started and a huge sigh of relief. It’s the first time in more than 30 years that the engine is back in the Alftross and that sigh of relief came from the Alftross herself!

L-R: Jeff Kramer, Terry Morgan and Gerry Strickfaden.

Or maybe it was a purr? 

Stand by for more photos and more blogs.

Christmas Comes Early (Post # 100)

After an aerospace quality rebuild and numerous runs on the dyno, DeWayne pronounced the engine "good to go" last weekend. Dave and Jim Angel threw themselves into the breach to make the marathon round-trip drive from Santa Fe to Scottsdale (950 miles) in 18 hours to pick it up while I continued to putter at The Shed. I had an "Igor, you idiot!  You got the wrong brain!" moment of despair when I saw the bright red crate in the bed of Dave's truck was labeled "PORSCHE 4-CAM." 

E Pluribus Unum

"Out of Many, One" Just consider for a moment that we blithely use the word "engine" to describe something with hundreds or thousands of parts, all working harmoniously together to make a confined space self-propelled--an "automobile". Ever wonder how many parts are in an engine? Of course not! That's not a question that would occur to anyone in their right mind. Well I asked myself that very question (what does that tell you about me?) and realized I didn't know either, although I've had to account for and shepherd all of them through the restoration process ever since the engine came out of the car in about 1981. Trust me, it's more than you think, even for a relatively small, 4-cylinder, 2-liter motor like The Alfatross'--which just came back in one piece after a 3 1/2 year stint in Scottsdale, AZ at the Samuels Speed Technologies Engine Spa.  It left The Shed in boxes and bags of individual parts, but now it is whole again and enlivened.  Just listen . . .

The engine's "face".  DeWayne took great pains to use all the 
original parts and to maintain the engine's original outward 
appearance with the proper paint and finishes on the steel 
and aluminum fixtures, proper hoses and hose clamps, wiring, etc. 

Authenticity

Car collectors are very concerned about the connection a car has with its engine. They go to great lengths to ascertain whether a car still has its original engine or an identical--but not original--engine, or some other engine altogether. Sounds simple, but there are lot of potential complications. Cars with race history often go through more than one engine in their lifetime, but no one holds that against them.  I am mentioning all this now because I want to firmly establish that The Alfatross has its original engine.

The serial number of The Alfatross' engine matches the number Alfa Romeo's records show for chassis AR 1900C 02016. The "1308" refers to the type, a 1975 cc engine installed only in Super Sprint chassis.

   

The fine finishes on the original Solex carbs, fasteners, intake manifold and fuel pump.

The Exhaust side, headers removed for shipping.

The vertical oil filter canister is a hallmark characteristic of the 1308 SS engine.

The original Bosch starter, broken before I got the car in 1969, relegated ignominiously to a box in the trunk,  rescued, rebuilt, and now back where it belongs.

Slip-Slidin' Away

This is the 100th post to this blog since it began on January 1, 2013. With only another week left, 2015 is slip-slidin' away--in more ways than one!  I'm looking out the window as a two-day blizzard rolls across Santa Fe and eastern New Mexico.  The Alfatross was scheduled to arrive in Santa Fe at 8 AM this morning, but now--with the 350 mile stretch of Interstate highways between The Shed and where the Alfatross' body sits shivering in a Reliable Carriers transporter somewhere around Amarillo, waiting for a break in the weather--maybe tomorrow?    

Red, Blue and . . . Green! (Post # 99)

Red is for your coat so shiny.
Blue is where we put our heinies.
Green, well green's another story, 
Green's what it takes to restore your glory!

Alfatross Beset by Russllers!

Paul Russell & Co. rustlers, that is.  Derrick Dunbar, Foreman Coach Trimmer and Andy Hilton, Production Manager, specifically.  Now the Alfatross is finally headed back to Santa Fe where it will be reunited with its engine, wiring harness, lights, running gear, and all its other original elements. 

With only 34 days to go before "show time", it's going to be pedal to the metal to make the Arizona Coucours d'Elegance on January 24th, 2016.  

Not quite finished yet, but you get the idea . . .  Andy Hilton.

The front seats are light-weight, ventilated, and covered
with dark blue vinyl on the bolsters and a lighter shade of
more "grippy" blue suede vinyl on the seat back and
bottom.  Derrick Dunbar. 

The "back seat"--perhaps for children--is rudimentary with
respect to comfort, but looks pretty sharp!  Note that
although the different photos show the same material in the
same color, they all look different due to different lighting
and camera and computer settings.  Andy Hilton.

A shot of the carpeting going in.  The dashboard has not yet been installed.  Yellow tape covers painted surfaces vulnerable to damage during restoration.  Derrick Dunbar.  

Now the front seats are in and you can see the door panel installed on
the passenger's side.  Seat belts were not mandatory or normally
installed in the mid 1950s, but we chose to install them for safety sake
in case future owners occasionally choose to partake of 
"spirited driving".  Andy Hilton. 

Derrick has done a super job of restoring the original door panels and
trim.  When The Alfatross gets back to Santa Fe Tim Marinos will
install the the Plexiglas windows and wind deflector, window winders,
and door opener levers.  Derrick Dunbar. 

The Spartan back seat.  The inset three-button panel on the seat is
unique among The Alfatross' brethren.  Andy Hilton.

What Carchaeologists Could Learn from Henry Jones (Post # 98)

Archaeology
Dr. Henry Jones and his son Indiana--the two most famous "archaeologists" in the world--are racing across Europe to beat the Nazis to an artifact of unimaginable power: the Holy Grail. They stop at a crossroads. Indiana wants to press on to Jordan, but Henry insists that they turn back to Berlin to recover the notebook he compiled containing cryptic clues to the Grail's location, which has fallen into enemy hands. Exasperated, Indiana says "Well you wrote it down, can't you remember it?" With infinite restraint Henry responds, "I wrote it down so I wouldn't HAVE to remember it."

The point is don't trust your memory. Real archaeologists take it one step further: "If you didn't write it down, it didn't happen!"

Indiana to Henry Jones: "Well don't you remember?!"

Carchaeology

If there is anyone out there reading this blog who is also in the throes of a restoration project, this post is for you. In my experience with vendors, collectors, and even authorities on the subject of rare old cars like The Alfatross, there is not nearly enough note taking, record keeping, sketching, or photography going on. There are exceptions of course, but a lot of people in the business seem to prefer, or at least rely on "word-of-mouth conventional wisdom" rather than actual hard evidence. Sometimes there isn't any hard evidence-- because nobody ever wrote anything down and made it accessible to the rest of us! Meanwhile, unverifiable claims that go unchallenged and repeated often enough become "fact".

Mea Culpa

I, too, am guilty of inadequate recording and it has come back to haunt me more than once. When I took the engine out in 1981 I removed the carbs, generator, starter, and other external bits and pieces thinking that I would restore them over the next few weeks as time and resources permitted. I didn't take any photos or make sketches or notes. Surely I would remember exactly where they came from and how they went together. And I probably did--for the first several decades, but 30 years later I had a rude awakening.

I wrote it down so I wouldn't HAVE to remember!

In a recent post I mentioned that the starter I supplied to the engine builder did not fit, even though it is the "right" Magneti Marelli unit of Italian manufacture specified in the manual and the one that was on the car when I bought it in 1969. I had no explanation for these problems, and no records to consult.

Eventually, memory did come to the rescue when I remembered the broken starter I found in the trunk when I bought the car 46 years ago. It was a German Bosch unit, with a very heavy cast iron nose cone. From appearances and intuition it was not the "right" thing at all--except that it was the original starter, as verified by the brushed-on silver paint matching the silver used to paint over the original black of the engine bay!

It makes me wonder what judges at concours d'elegance rely on. Not only do they not have authoritative sources to consult for each and every different car they are supposed to judge, but they have only a few minutes to look over any particular entry. How do you decide what's "right" and what's "wrong"? That's a question I ask myself every day when working on The Alfatross.

The Digital Revolution to Our Rescue

I prefer to communicate with vendors and experts using e-mail, but I notice that many of them would rather talk on the phone. Problem is, once the call is over there isn't any record of what was discussed or decided. Nothing written down, no paper trail, no way to prove it ever happened.

After pestering contractors for photos and updates on the progress they are making with my project, sometimes I hear things like "I'm too busy working to write stuff down or take pictures! Things like that take a lot of time and interrupt the work. Anyway, I'm a mechanic (or body man or painter or . . . ), not a writer or photographer!"

Maybe that used to be true, but communication has never been easier, faster, cheaper--or more important--than it is today. Digital images are just as easy to compile and send as words are. E-mail messages with images and even links to Web sites and videos are instantaneous and free. What more could you ask for? 

The restorer who takes the time to acquire those skills and add them to his repertoire will be better able to help his clients understand the skills and procedures it takes to do the job and why the process takes so long. And the best part is it automatically creates a record of the decision-making and restoration processes, which may not seem important at the moment, but will be absolutely critical at some point in the future.

Follow the Numbers (Post #97)

The Stone Age

If The Alfatross had a memory, what would it remember? Would it remember its first owner who bought it off the Rotondi Milano showroom floor exactly 60 years ago on November 29th, 1955? Would it remember being a flashy new red sports car and all the attention that comes with that? 

Now a Citroen garage, this is the Rotondi address in Milano
where The Alfatross met its first owner on November 29th,
 1955--exactly 60 years ago as I write this.  

Or the second owner, who seems to have been an American serviceman? Maybe it's memory would be like mine: selective. Maybe it would prefer to forget the voyage across the Atlantic, the surprise and humiliation of being abandoned on the dock in New York when the owner did not show up to claim it. Then the years of benign neglect and abuse passing through the hands of four more owners until it ended up with me in 1969. Then even more neglect coupled with a lot of travel until 2013. But cars can't talk, so we'll never know.

Or maybe they do, if you listen closely, and when they do, they say volumes. 
I know a little about those early years only because The Alfatross still proudly bore its long out-of-date Italian license plates when it came to me in 1969.

The front plate before restoration.  Note the heavy dents distorting the letters embossed into the thin aluminum plate.

Of course I wondered where it came from and where it had been during the 14 preceeding years, but there wasn't much to go on. Alfa Romeos were rare in the US, and Zagato bodies--well, they may as well have been UFOs! It took me a long time to realize that the Italian plates were more than just exotic curiosities. In actuality, they were the only link to the car's early history. 

The larger, heavier, steel rear plate  after stripping but before restoration.

The Enlightenment

In 2004 I wrote to the Automobile Club d'Italia requesting an ownership trace using the numbers and letters on the plates. In due course I received a letter with a photocopy of a document recording the sale of The Alfatross by its first owner, Alessandro Costantini Brancadoro, to its second owner, Carl Joseph Michels in 1957, and issuing the new plates.

The official Automobile Club d'Italia registration created when The Alfatross was sold to its second owner, who lists his residence as Jamaica, NY. He shipped it to the US, but something happened and he did not show up to claim it when it arrived.

The Dark Ages

I'm still working on sorting out what happened after that, but all I have are the reminiscences of The Alfatross' fifth owner, Pat Braden.  According to Pat, Will Henderson was the lucky guy who drove off the dock in The Alfatross that day, not Carl Michels. We traced Will to Flint, Michigan, but the trail went cold.  The same thing happened with the next owner, Paul Turner, whose name shows up on some of the tools in the tool kit.  He was a Chicagoan at the very time when the Alfa Romeo Owners' Club was formed there, but even with the Internet's powerful locator tools . . . "so many Paul Turners, so little time . . ."     

The Renaissance

Fast forward to 2015. I stop to get gas.  A pickup pulls up behind me with a nicely-restored Model A Ford on a flatbed trailer.  I look it over and notice that the period license plates look like new.  So I approach the driver and ask him who restored them?  Enthusiastically, he tells me that he's a member of a Model A club in Texas and all the members get their plates done by one or the other of two guys who live in the area, and he whips out a notebook and gives me the contact information for both. As he drove off, I realized I never even caught his name.

And that's how I ended up calling Mr. Sonny Lewis. Restoring old plates is such an unusual craft I couldn't help but ask how he learned it. "In Huntsville!" he cheerfully replied (Huntsville is an infamous Texas State Prison).  Then, after a pregnant pause, "Just kidding!"

I learned a lot about what it takes to restore a license plate in the next few minutes and sent him mine the next day. He goes down in my book as one of the best, most competent contractors The Alfatross has worked with.

The front aluminum plate after restoration by Sonny Lewis.

The rear steel plate after restoration by Sonny Lewis. The hole in the center allows access to the push-button rear trunk lock release.

. . . 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"

The Alfatross Comes Home to Roost . . . (Post # 95)

After a sojourn of almost 24 months The Alfatross is finally back home again. Dave Carrell loaned me his Dodge Ram 2500 diesel pickup for the 2,500-mile round trip from Santa Fe to Vintage Autocraft in Lebanon, TN. I drove the trip out solo, then Dave flew in to co-drive the rig back to Santa Fe. The trip was largely uneventful, except for a big, violent wind and rain storm spanning most of Oklahoma.

It's finally finished! For the long trip back to Santa Fe in its Trailer, we took the wheels off
the Alfatross' dolly and bolted it to the floor.

I got the feeling that Tim would rather have had more time to work on fitting the windows and doors, but now that we are committed to showing The Alfatross at the Arizona Concours d'Elegance in Scottsdale in January, we are running short on time.  It is necessary to get the car to Paul Russell & Co. as soon as we can in order to get the interior installed--a process that will take several weeks.  But first we have to get it to Santa Fe to install the suspension, wheels, steering, etc., so it can be shipped via a commercial vehicle transporter. The plan is to get the car back to Santa Fe early in December, which will give us about 50 days to finish it.

The car and the craftsman, Tim Marinos, at the Vintage Autocraft shop in Lebanon, TN.

Robert and David packing the delicate, irreplaceable trim.

Loading up for the 1,260-mile return trip to Santa Fe.  I was amazed that the price for diesel fuel was at the bottom of its range across all 5 states we crossed.  The Ram's 30+ gallon fuel tank gave it a range of almost 500 miles without a load.  The trailer cut that down by half! 

Back home without a scratch after a 5-day, 2,500-mile whirlwind trip!

On to the next phase: add the suspension, wiring harness, steering, transmission, parking brake, etc. We're about to find out that's a lot easier said than done!