'60 Interim Sprint restoration

[AlfistiSA]

Seeing as I've spent the past 5 years renovating my house, building a decent garage & workshop & commenting in other people's threads on the BB, it's appropriate that I start my first restoration thread with one of my Dad's cars - he always encouraged me to participate in his hobby & in return I converted him to Alfa's.

This is his Sprint, born on 11 January 1960 in rich racing Rosso 501..... another resale red Alfa.. sigh The previous owner, Christie Schutte from Pretoria painted the Sprint bright yellow, unfortunately the body shop used a thin skim of body filler / bondo / bog over the whole body & didn’t get the mix quite right. When we got it, there were a few bubbles in the paint & pricking these released liquid resin from the body filler mixture. As the filler layer could be peeled off in sheets, we elected to strip the car & have the shell sand blasted – the blaster is a Vintage Car Club member & really knows his stuff, so no warped panels.

Additionally the car had suffered at the hands of a few previous owners, one of whom had made room for twin carbs by the simple process of splitting the RHS inner wing with a cold chisel, bashing it in to gain clearance & then fibre glassing over the damage. The same artist also glass fibered over a few rust holes in the boot floor which were caused by generations of leaky batteries. For some reason the bonnet catch turret on the scuttle had been cut away & a patch pop riveted in its place, the same artist was no doubt responsible for hacking the dashboard to fit a radio.

Dad & I remade a patch to repair the inner wing, Dad has repaired the damage caused by the fitment of the radio and also remade the turret to take the bonnet catch. After a 300kms (200mi) move down the Eastern Seaboard of South Africa, in January 2007, to be closer to me & my wife Lucie, the Sprint was stuck into my garage while the house was being sorted out.

The time had come to get stuck back into cars again & we realised that the sills would need replacement, as they were partially rusted out on the bottom, additionally small portions of the inner sill had also been perforated, so after some deliberation I decided to build a rotisserie. I’ve wanted one for ages, but the traditional “pipe through the middle” design with the triangle stands at each end would impact on my workshop space - Michael Wolter, AKA Micwo on the BB’s brilliant design solved both problems. See Michaels website here - (Bilder)

Ours is 50x50x4mm and I had a local engineering works bend the hoops & weld them together, the rollers are urethane boat trailer rollers available from any commercial marine outfit & the angle iron was in my store. Total cost about $470 or 300 Euro & it’s a universal design, so will fit all our cars. The best part is that when stored, the two hoops together are only 100mm wide.

That’s me with the first hoop, it’s 2.2 metres in diameter

Ciao
Greig

[AlfistiSA]

I cleaned & painted the hoops in a weld-through primer, it was quite easy getting the car onto the first hoop, we measured the front bar, placed the rollers onto the floor & then positioned the bar & hoop where we wanted it, welded the brackets on the inside of the hoop & once fitted, I simply picked up the front & Dad removed the blocks of wood we had used as spacers above the jack stands.

The body shell is actually very light, the hoops each added 40kg's to the weight, which, seeing as I was pivoting the shell on the rear jack stands didn't make the front too difficult. The rear was more challenging as I was now using the front hoop as the pivot point & those extra 40kg's of rear hoop made quite some difference. Good thing we had used extra wooden blocks as spacers on top of the jack stands & when I lifted the shell up, they simply fell out & I could lower the rear hoop onto its cradle.

It's not perfectly centred in the hoops & does requires two of us to roll it right over - but then it's not meant to be spinning like a roulette wheel. Once settled with a small brace it’s perfectly stable.

Ciao
Greig

[AlfistiSA]

A few more shots of how I attached the cross braces.

That’s Dad with the car – a happy owner now that we’re working on cars again !!

We opened up the sills & it looks good, there are a few areas where I’ll need to let in some new metal, but on the whole, this is an excellent shell & retains the original floors with no rust holes.

The slice-and-dice has begun… here you can see that Bertone used a satin black undercoat type paint on the inner sills, I’ll post a few more pictures later.

Ciao
Greig

[Peter]

great pictures! looks like an ambitious project, keep us posted!

[alfazagato]

Now I know what you have been doing. For my Lightweight I made a trolley but positioned it so that I could get the back-axle in place whilst it was on the trolley and clear of the ground....are you planning to have a two stage removal...axle stands again and then onto wheels?

[AlfistiSA]

Hello Stuart

Yes, once the body is painted, we're simply going to place it back onto 4 jack stands & then refit the suspension.

It was a conscious choice to position the cross bars where we did, as it's very seldom that any real work needs to be done in these areas, so we could gain maximum advantage in positioning the bars.

Of course when my Confortevole eventually makes it's way onto this frame, it's going to need some additional cross bracing as there's not much, if anything, tying the A pillars to the sills.........actually there's not much in the way of sills either, or floors - once media blasted it'll probably be lighter than a lightweight

Ciao
Greig

[Subtle]

Must follow this one.

[AR58SprintV]

I'm pulling for you also; Go Greig!
Sometimes I forget how fortunate I am to do this for a living, and with a well-equipped shop.
Laurence

[Gordon Raymond]

What a great job Greg!

[micwo]

Hello Greig,


it makes me happy you with your further work back pain to have saved

I hope you show still more pictures of yours sprint project here.

micwo

[AlfistiSA]

Thanks Michael, your excellent rotisserie design is making a lot of difference in restoring this car properly.

This car was originally Rosso 501, for the "Anorak Originali" in our midst, the heater & vent control bracket under the glove box was painted gloss black, (no undercoat) & fitted after the shell was sprayed - here you can see the 2 colours.

Some more pictures of the car, the interior floors are excellent with absolutely no rust holes at all - a few drain holes and we welded up a few holes from where self tapping screws had been used to fit the carpeting down.

The boot floor has 2 area's of rust, a PO covered them with glass fibre matting, the RHS has the usual rust caused by leaking battery acid, so I'll need to replace this complete corner, while the LHS needs a small patch.

The flange at the boot floor needs work where the battery acid has caused mayhem. It consists of a fold from the upper portion of the body, the edge of the boot floor, the fold from the lower valance plus the visible flange which was added on top & all spot welded together, then lead wiped on top, leaving the exposed spot welded flanges below, which received questionable paint protection from new..... This design is a rust trap & will get careful attention as well as POR 15 treatment & an air-drying brushable seam sealer when I'm done.

Ciao
Greig