'63 Giulia Spider Normale Restoration (Euro)

[jburning17]

Quote:

Originally Posted by italcarguy Gordon, What's with that 510 in the background?

[Gordon Raymond]

Boy oh boy! It NEVER ends. The 510 BRE Datsun (Not whatever they call them now), was one of those that attempted and sometimes did beat the GTA's. I was getting ready to cut it up into small, easily disposed of pieces, each piece wrapped in a nice 2 ply white wad of toilet paper. If you look really closely, in the TP box is Patrick's pressure plate that I believe he stole from me!
{Actually, the 510 is awaiting a well deserved restoration. A worthy competitor, this example was mostly still there after all these years, and will be returned to it's period correct winning condition. The "2 Ply White" is a sturdy box I stuck a nice old GTA pressure plate in to keep it safe, along with other non replaceable junk, that won't be junk for long!}
Now, earlier this afternoon, friend Keith Goring, dropped this off for me. Eat your hearts out fellow Giulia / Giulietta restorers! The thought is, if I have one, just maybe I will never need one!

[A V]

Patrick

Thanks for the reply.

Regards

Antonio

[A V]

Fernando

Thanks for the information. Can you send me your contact ( e-mail, phone) on a p.m.

Could be useful to get in touch.

Best regards

Antonio

[pathung]

Believe it or not, I AM still working on this car, just very slowly.

The engine should be ready to install after about two more weekends' work, so I'm getting the car to the state whereby once the engine is dropped in and all systems connected, we'd be able to test-drive the car around the block. This means that the door handles need to be in place, gas tank should not leak and actually feeds gas forwards, brakes work, etc.

Last but not least, the driver's seat needs to have been installed. The seats are ready, but I'm just now installing the seat tracks, onto the seat-pans and the chassis. I couldn't find good photos of which track goes where, so I'd like to borrow your eyeballs to confirm that I'm screwing them in correctly... the following photos show the driver's seat, with its seat-cushion folded over the seat-back. I believe that the track with the actuating rod should be inboard (next to the transmission tunnel), while the longer track is next to the door. What I'm not sure about is whether the small tabs to the side of this longer track faces outboard (door) or inboard (trans. tunnel)? What are these tabs for, in any case? Any comment is welcomed.

[Gordon Raymond]

Hi Patrick,
The tabs face towards the doors. They have a bolt hole in the middle and a small "U" shaped bracket with another hole in the bottom of the "U" that fits over the tab. With this bolted to the tab, the seat cannot slide forward off the tracks.
The seat is installed, and slid back, the "U" installed, and the seat now cannot be slid far enough forward to come off the tracks. Neat huh? Need photo's?
I'm pleased we both are SNO directors. Bet it keeps you busy!

[Subtle]

Looks too nice to be used.

[Peter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Subtle Looks too nice to be used.

[pathung]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Subtle Looks too nice to be used.

[Gordon Raymond]

Well, look at it this way. You need 4. so you pay $2.27 each, (not bad) and sell the rest on E-bay! Make a profit, to pay for shipping! I have 3, but the heads are messed up. Tell you what, send me the 46 remainders and I'll send you $10! Humm?

[Alfajay]

I like Gordon's logic, and the approach of using parts from McMaster-Carr is the right way to go. You might also try "Mr Metric" (who used to have an outlet in San Jose).

The hack mechanic approach is to just buy some flathead 5/16" X 18 Philips headed screws at your local hardware store, and chase the threads with an 8mm X 1 die. No the resulting threads won't be pretty, but yes they will hold (but don't ask me how I know). I wouldn't use this approach for big end bolts, but for a low stress application like seats, it will work OK.

[pathung]

Thanks, guys. I'll be buying from McMaster Carr. - all 50 of them; it never hurts to have spares!

[pathung]

With some more work yesterday, we more or less completed the engine.

We started first with the water pump - the top part of the front-cover was a bit corroded, so it had to be repaired by Glenn before hand. The pump itself was also in bad shape, so we substituted the old unit with a very nice used one, acquired in Italy by a friend who incorrectly thought that it'd fit his Giulietta. With some gaskets, and the front cover was on.

We next proceeded to install the head (you'll see Glenn using brute force to tighten down those nuts - he's a bit of a brute sometimes). The head gasket was more intricate than I'd thought, and a good thing, too! The head went on without trouble. With Piston #1 at its top-most position in the cylinder (and the flywheel's marking (PMS) pointing up), we noted that cam timing was off. We had to move the chain by two sprocket teeth, and some smaller adjustments thereafter to line up the marking exactly. With that, the cam cover was ready to go on.

Two interesting things that we noted was one: for the 1600cc, we were expecting coolant to have separate routes in and out of the block - we looked and discovered that coolant actually does not enter the block from the "side-pipe" (what's the correct term for this?), but travels through the pipe to the head, then some of it seeps down from the head to the block while the majority of it recirculates back to the radiator. In other words, coolant sort of gets dumped into the block and sits there, since there's no separate "outlet" in the block for it to make its own way back to the radiator. Apparently Alfa didn't think cooling the block was overly important? Examining a stock 2.0L block and a 2.0L Twin Spark block, we noted four holes directly sourcing coolant from the pipe aforementioned, but again, there were no separate exits back to the radiator.

A second issue is: how is cam-lift measured? We looked at the lobes and nothing would seem to measure close to 10 mm.

In any case, enjoy the pics. Next time, we should be attaching accessories to the engine, then finally towing the car up to Berkeley to have the engine installed.

[pathung]

More photos below: