Surveillance Functions Part Two (Post # 121)

Condition of the instruments in 1970.

Joey Lobo, owner of Mo-Ma Manufacturing.  This guy
really knows his business!  

Continued from Part One

After the Veglia tach cable broke I took it down to Albuquerque to Mo-Ma Manufacturing (http://www.momamanufacturing.com/) to see if the cable could be repaired or replaced. Joey Lobo, the owner, swiftly repaired it while I waited and as he handed it back asked "Why do think it broke? You know these cables are pretty tough!" I just assumed it wore out, but he suggested that I try turning the shaft on the back of the tach that the cable attaches to. If it won't turn, maybe the gauge locked up, causing the cable to part. Sure enough, that turned out to be the problem, necessitating another visit to Mo-Ma to have the tach's internals repaired. 

The unrestored speedometer and tach: rusty chrome, cloudy faces, peeling painted surfaces!

The speedometer after restoration by North Hollywood
Speedometer in 2002. The restorer took liberties with The
Alfatross' instruments--inside and out-- that cost a lot of 
time and money to correct.  Thankfully, guys like Joey 
Lobo know how to make it right!

The speedometer/odometer after re-restoration at Mo-Ma 
Manufacturing. Note the 5 white dots inside the number 
ring.

Joey fixed the tach in short order and when I went to pick it up he asked who restored The Alfatross' gauges back in 2002. It was North Hollywood Speedometer--I still have the invoice. Then he asked if authenticity--correctness--was important to me, because he could not help but notice that the tach's dial face did not look as it would have originally. Using an unrestored set of gauges from another 1900C SSZ at this shop, David Smith's car, he showed me how the original speedometer and tach gauge faces were made up in layers: a one-piece concave bakelite plate painted "Light Driftwood" (a brownish gold) with a step in the center to create a 3D effect. 

For the speedometer, the center is labeled "Km/h". while the black outer ring has "Veglia Alfa Romeo" printed directly to piece. This layer is overlaid by a clear plastic concave lens with the 0-220 white numbers and lines printed on its back side (I still remember seeing the speedometer for the first time 47 years ago, assuming it was in MPH, and thinking "Man, this thing is fast!"). The last layer is the glass lens that covers everything.
Joey pointed out a neat detail on the original speedometer face: five white dots on the gold center circle opposite 60, 90, 120, 160 and 180 KPH. Did they actually mean something or were they just decoration? Joey let me ponder that for a few moments then pointed out that the dots corresponded closely to five velocities in MPH: 35, 55, 75, 100 and 120!

So now The Alfatross' gauges are back and properly restored.  This experience has taught me several important lessons: (1) Don't just assume that someone offering a service like instrument restoration knows what they're doing when it comes to your particular devices. It is well worth spending whatever time and money are required to vet potential choices before consigning your original parts to a vendor. (2) Make a thorough record of the original condition of the parts you consign to a restorer before you send them off--and thoroughly check them for appearance and  function when they come back!

Some examples of the instruments Joey Lobo at Mo-Ma Manufacturing has restored. Many Pebble Beach winners sport instruments restored by Mo-Ma.  All it takes is knowledge of what they looked like originally . . . and a warehouse full of unobtainable parts.  Oh yeah, and then there's the  30+ years of experience.  And the eye of an eagle. And the patience of a saint. And the hand of a neurosurgeon.  And . . . .

Gratuitous beauty shot of the properly restored tachometer.  Joey was not happy with the
quality of the chrome on the surrounding bezels. If he were doing the whole job he would have sent them to the chrome shop he always uses.  Problem is, that would have delayed the restoration by another month, so I decided that was a level of perfection we could sacrifice in order to get The Alfatross back on the road sooner!

Surveillance Functions Part One (Post # 120)

The 6 Veglia gauges as they looked in 1969 when I bought
The Alfatross.

"Surveillance", along with battery charging, signalling, engine starting, service, and lighting, is one of the 6 basic functions of The Alfatross' electrical system. It is a very simple system comprising the gauges and their sending units as well as a few warning lights. Far from being mere decorations, they keep watch over the condition of the engine, battery, and fuel supply. 

If The Alfatross were going to be just a trailer queen shuttling between Concours d'Elegance it wouldn't matter if the gauges didn't actually provide any useful information. All they would have to do is look good. But that was never part of the restoration plan. Every part of The Alfatross has to work.

When I sent The Alfatross' 6 Veglia gauges to North Hollywood Speedometer for restoration in 2003 I really had no idea what to expect. They had them a while, charged me $1,356.28, and sent them back. I thought they looked great and was pleased! They didn't actually get installed and tested until winter 2015, at which point I discovered to my surprise that the oil and water temperature gauges didn't work. Then the mechanical tach cable broke. 

This made me realize there is a lot more to "restoring" gauges than just making the bezels and faces look good. I began to get suspicious. How can gauge restorers make sure the gauges work with the senders in your engine unless you send them the senders, too? No one ever mentioned that although it should have been apparent to me from the beginning. 

The water temperature gauge on Dan
Allen's workbench.  The sender is
immersed in a pan of water heated to 170
degrees.  The gauge is calibrated in Celsius.
Dan Allen.

The large tachometer and speedometer are centrally located above the wheel and surrounded by the smaller oil pressure, oil temperature, water temperature, and fuel level gauges. The mechanical oil pressure gauge worked fine, as did the fuel gauge after fiddling with the sender, but the two temperature gauges were completely dead--no needle movement at all. Apparently, to the guys at North Hollywood the word  "restoration" does not include making sure it works. So what was wrong?  Was it the gauges themselves or the senders or the wiring that connects them?  How do you trouble shoot them?  I knew needle movement on the gauge is based on changing resistance in the circuit between the sender and the gauge and that it can be adjusted, but even if the needle moves, how do you know the reading is accurate?  

I went on line to find out more about gauge problems and how to cure them. Not surprisingly there is a ton of information available on the subject in general, but not so much relating directly to Veglia gauges manufactured in 1954. The article below was helpful, but describes the calibration procedure for instruments having electromagnets that can be adjusted without opening their cases. To access the adjustment screws in The Alfatross' temperature gauges you have to open their cases--something I didn't want to do.  

This article in particular was helpful and deals specifically with gauges on a 1960 Giulietta.
Giuliettaletta Spring 2001.

The next challenge?

After flailing around for several days I contacted Dan Allen to get his advice and ended up sending him the water temperature gauge for an autopsy. Turns out the gauge could be repaired and, once mated to a compatible sender he had in his stash, could be adjusted to read accurately all the way to boiling. I re-installed the water temperature  just in time for the Santa Fe Concorso and it worked perfectly, but the oil temperature gauge was still moribund--and I was about to discover a much bigger problem affecting ALL The Alfatross' instruments, one that would that would teach me the difference between a generalist instrument restorer and a truly expert one--and set me back another month! To be continued in "Surveillance Functions Part Two" . . . . 

"Creative Space" (Post # 119)

The Shed

A quarter inch to the foot scale model of The Shed I built
to better visualize the design in three dimensions.

I've seen a lot of articles in car magazines showcasing enthusiast's garages. Some of them are spotless and not garages for work at all. More like museum exhibits with expensive artwork on the walls, patterned spotless floors, and cars posed dramatically under studio lights as if on display at the Louvre. My garage is for work, not display. My wife started calling it The Shed after seeing the movie "The World's Fastest Indian" (https://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Fastest-Indian-Anthony-Hopkins/dp/B000F8DBDK). 

The wet work area with storage underneath the sink, lab
oven on the left and mini refrigerator and coffee machine
on the right.

The main thing it has going for it is that it was purpose-built for working on cars, The Alfatross in particular. I started with a budget and a patch of land. I knew I needed a big open room with a 12 ft ceiling, lots of storage space, and a second smaller room for "clean" work. I contracted with a designer and went around and around with him for months. He wanted it to be an architectural statement. I just wanted it to be functional and finally drew up my own plans, made a model to make sure it would work, and started building. It isn't perfect, but after working in it for several years now I realize I got at lot of things right. It isn't a showplace. What I want to talk about now is the space itself and what I have learned about what makes a good work environment.

Keep it clean.  Automotive restoration is by nature dusty, greasy, oily and smokey, but you and your work will suffer if you don't keep it clean! The Shed's epoxy floor probably gets the most comments from visitors. But it is practical, too.  It costs a lot to do it right, but it's worth the extra effort. A lot of shops featured in magazines don't seem to have a water source or a big, deep sink. I have a 6 ft long indestructible plastic combination deep sink, drain rack, wet storage and draining tub and stainless steel stand that I picked up years ago from a photography shop put out of business by digital imaging. I added a proper restaurant kitchen dish-washing spray head on a long flex hose. The shed is on well water, which is really hard (lots of dissolved minerals), so an item on my list of improvements is a water softener. I use distilled bottled water for tasks where purity matters.

Get comfortable. It's hard to do good work when you're uncomfortable. Maintaining a comfortable temperature, humidity, and air circulation combination is probably the most important task. Here in Santa Fe humidity is very low so even when the air temperature is in the 90s it isn't uncomfortable. It's the winters we have to worry about! I use a pair of radiant tube heaters that, in conjunction with a large bank of windows on the building's south side and some very good insulation, keep the interior so cozy I am comfortable in shirt sleeves even in the dead of winter. 

I generally prefer to stand while working, so most of my tables and benches are tall, but I also have low tables where I can sit to work when necessary. It's hard to concentrate when you are hungry, thirsty or sleepy, so I have a microwave oven, toaster oven, coffee machine, and a mini-refrigerator stocked with drinks and leftovers.

The bank of windows on the south side of The Shed is 16 ft
wide and 6 ft high. The steel shelving under the windows
gives me extra storage space and the wooden counter top
provides well-lit work space at a comfortable stand-up
height.

Let in the light. If you are past the half-century mark like me, you really notice the quality and quantity of light in your work space. If you can't see it, you can't fix it. Natural light is great. The 16 ft long, 6 ft tall  bank of windows on the south side lets in lots of light and heat in winter. The bottoms can be opened for cross-ventilation. I learned pretty fast that I needed insulated blinds that can be lowered to block out unwanted heat in the summer and reduce heat loss in winter. The windows needed to be on the south side to take advantage of the powerful insolation effect in winter here in New Mexico at 7,000 ft. But that put the overhead door and the 20 by 20 ft apron on the north side--meaning a lot of snow shoveling in winter! 

In addition to the windows, florescent lights and large skylights keep the work space bright. The long black tube mounted near the ceiling is one of two radiant heaters mounted on opposite sides of the room with their reflectors turned 45 degrees from parallel with the floor.

The two largest work tables are on casters. The one in the
foreground used to be the trolley for The Alfatross' body
and chassis after the suspension and running gear were
removed. 

The high ceiling let me put the bottoms of the windows at about 4 ft where the wood-topped steel shelving below them makes a well-lit 16 ft-long, 18 in-deep work bench. 


The Shed has three 4 ft by 4 ft skylights in the main work area and another one in the clean room. In addition to the windows and skylights I have 10 multi-tube florescent fixtures suspended from the ceiling at various heights. Some are higher to bathe large areas whereas others are lower to intensify light over work tables. At this point I haven't paid much attention to color temperature or fixture quality, but just making sure there is sufficient volume of light. 

I spend a lot of time at this table, built on top of a cheap
motorcycle lift. It can be adjusted to heights ranging from
21 to 38 in. The table and pedestal can be removed when 
the lift is needed

Keep your space reconfigurable.  I learned from experience in archaeological conservation labs that you should put as many things as you can on wheels to make it easier to reconfigure the space to match the nature of the work to be done. That's one reason why I went with a MaxJax two-post lift. If it is in the way I just unbolt the posts and move it. Yes, the MaxJax lifts only to 4 ft, but I don't see that as a problem. All you need is a chair on casters, lights, and a tool carrier on wheels and you can do everything as well as you could if the car were raised to 7 ft and you were standing underneath. Wheel jacks are another way to move cars around in confined spaces. 

This tool caddie was made from a wheel dolly and scrap.
It is low enough to fit under a MaxJax lift and carries a
full complement of sockets, screwdrivers, spanners,
pliers, and other tools.

Outdoor work space. I always like working outdoors, weather permitting, and there are a lot of jobs that you really can't do indoors, like soda-blasting an entire car! The concrete apron outside the overhead door became much more useful and comfortable after I covered it with a 16 by 16 ft canopy. Sunlight kills paint, upholstery, rubber, vinyl and just about everything else including your skin. Up here in the mountains where there isn't much atmosphere to protect us, dermatology is a growth industry! 

But the most important thing to remember about  space is that there is never enough of it! That's why The Shed is in the process of having a "blessed event": The Shedlet!

Distractions (Post # 118)

Hummer alert! Get out the feeder and charge it up!

You have to start by positioning the feeder in the
hummer's flight path well inside the building and close 
to the ceiling. Eventually they find it and land for a 
drink.

Every summer the hummingbirds migrate through the mountains of New Mexico on their way to Central America, as they have done for millennia. Like most people, I admire their amazing navigational and aerobatic abilities . . . and ask myself if they are so smart and capable, why do they want to fly into my garage, and why can't they find their way out through the same gigantic overhead door that they flew in through? My overhead door is open a lot during the months when the hummers are here, so I get a lot of unwanted visitors.

They tend to fly around close to the ceiling 12 ft off the floor, making them virtually uncatchable. I spent many frustrating hours chasing them around with a butterfly net, trying to catch and release them safely outside. Then one day I noticed that they all tend to roost on a red electrical cord reel attached to the ceiling. I knew that they are supposed to be attracted to certain colors and that is why hummingbird feeders are usually red, so I nicked a red feeder from my wife's collection along with the formula for making fake "nectar". 

Then you have to start moving it toward the overhead
door in stages until you can hang it on the door itself.
They will go directly to it, drink, and fly out!

The next time a hummer flew in, instead of chasing it around I filled the feeder and confidently hung it in the middle of the overhead door opening. Didn't work. The hummer circled the ceiling for an hour, oblivious to the feeder in the middle of the biggest opening in the building . . . until I moved the feeder inside and near the ceiling. Within minutes the hummer found it and lit. This was all it took to make the connection in the hummer's tiny brain so when I moved the feeder to the overhead door he followed, lit again, drank, and flew out! I've used this trick dozens of time since then and it always works. 

The Alfatross Has an Excellent Adventure (Post # 117)

There I was . . . alone and abandoned on a windswept hillside with night coming on fast.  Where did my staff go? They drove me here and then walked off without a word of explanation or any indication of when (or if!) they were coming back. It was getting cold and the wind was picking up. Would it rain? What will become of me if there is a hail storm tonight? Something was dreadfully wrong. I could sense it in the anxiety and excitement in all the strange cars around me. Before darkness fell I counted at least 50 them, also abandoned, but some at least had been bedded down with soft fleecy blankets and even rain protection. 

But there I was--with nothing! Forlorn and longing for my nice, warm, dry Shed I slept fitfully.

That clear sky means it's going to be close to freezing tonight!  Richard Coberly.

Not long after dawn people started coming back in ones and twos, along with more cars. Eventually even my staff arrived (the lazy bums) and started wiping off the morning dew still glistening on my skin.

From their conversations I gathered that the cars around me were all members of my family, and that we were assembled here to somehow be compared to each other.  What a ridiculous idea! 

An elderly but aristocratic long, swoopy open car pulled up in line on my left. I had difficulty believing he was a relative and could not help but notice that his steering wheel was on the wrong side. I wanted to let him know, but he did not speak English! He acted like he knew what was going to happen next, like he had been here before, and impatient to get on with it--or maybe he was just bored? 

The men in funny hats came and looked the Old Man over for a long time.  Richard Coberly.

Not long after, authoritative men in odd hats appeared and began to swarm all over him. He tried to ignore them, but I could tell he was indignant.  Then they descended on me. What did they want? What were they looking for? What was I supposed to do? Minutes later they were gone. As I watched they pounced on car after car up the line.

Then they came and poked and prodded me!  Richard Coberly.

Things were more relaxed after that. The sun came out and the day was beautiful. More people appeared, staring, pointing, pontificating, snapping pictures, and talking, talking, talking. I dozed off . . . .

What?  Me? on TV? When?  Richard Coberly.

When I woke up again there was a new drama. Suddenly I was being videoed. There was a man with a really strange mustache and another man with a really big camera interviewing one of my staff who was trying to explain what he knew about me. He did OK, I guess, but how do you crowd our nearly half a century together into 5 minutes?

What does white mean? Second Place was taken by the sexy little minx to my right. She may be more voluptuous--but I have more insurance! Richard Coberly 

Then I noticed that someone had come up and put a white ribbon on my wiper while I was sleeping. People said it meant something, that the Old Man on my left was the best among all the cars in the line, that the little minx on my right was the second best, and that I was the third best. 

But they failed to mention why.

After we got home, my staff said I "did well".  That the Old Man was Alfa nobility and the little red minx was a "one-of-one" prototype, a progenitor of a successful branch of the family. So that isn't the kind of competition you can beat if all you have is a pretty face.  

I don't care.  I'm just glad to be back home safe and sound. Adventure is not all it's cranked up to be.










   

Santa Fe Concorso Friday Night Gathering (Post # 116)

The Alfatross made it to the Santa Fe Concorso's Friday Night Gathering without incident after all. Once again, just as at the Arizona Concours d'Elegance, she effortlessly did everything we asked of her. None of the  fears voiced in the previous post materialized.

The Alfatross was placed inside the hanger under the wings of a 1950s classic Cessna 180.  They quickly became good friends basking in all the attention.  Richard Coberly.

The Alfatross looks out upon her enthusiastic public reception. Richard Coberly.

Opening the hood to reveal the engine really drew in the crowd. Richard Coberly.

Proud parents.  Richard Coberly.

As I write this she is on the Concorso show field, waiting for the morrow when we return to prepare her for viewing and judging. It's going to be cold and possibly wet tonight. If cars have feelings she's probably miserable and lonely, even with all those unfamiliar cars around her. I offered to sit up with her all night.

But they wouldn't let me.

What's it all about, Alfa? The Santa Fe Concorso (Post # 115)

As part of the lead-up to the Santa Fe Concorso, the Santa Fe New Mexican published this article by Anne Constable about the event including a brief reference to the Alfatross and its story. To view the entire article click on the link below. 

What's it all about, Alfa? The Santa Fe Concorso: Don Keith calls his blog about restoring his 1955 Alfa Romeo “The Alfatross” for many reasons. When he bought the “used-up old sports car” from his cousin in 1969, it was “virtually worthless.” For 47 years he dragged it around the country with him, mostly lacking the money, time, and place to restore it to its original condition. After moving to Santa Fe in 2010, Keith, an archaeologist, built a 1,700-square-foot garage and, in 2013, he began working in earnest on the restoration.