1957 750B Sprint Full Restoration

[alfa soon]

This car doesn't look as bad as I would expect from a long stay in an English hedge. I guess it must be true the 750/101 cars are more resistant to rust than later cars.

Great project, I look forward to seeing it come together!

[pathung]

Good luck, and forge ahead!!

[Oelholm]

This is a crazy project - love it

[AlfistiSA]

Hi John

I've just picked up a '58 Sprint Veloce Confortavole, mostly complete, but needing a full restoration, including un-doing a very bodged previous rebuild.
The floor boards & chassis rails are very bad, so will have to be cut out & replaced. When I jacked up the front, the doors became difficult to open & close.........

Firstly I must mention that the blasting company I use is, owned by a Vintage car enthusiast & the guy doing the blasting has been there for 25 years, so is well versed with the intricacies of car sheet metal & ferrous oxide. Plus he uses a fine grit sand.

I'm going to have the '58 shell completely sandblasted, inside & out, and will have my one '57 Sprint Normale blasted at the same time - I need to do floors on both cars, so will use the one as a template for the other.

Bottom line is that the 750 cars were hand built out of *thick* steel & unless your blaster is a real cowboy, they come out really well - your car has some deep-seated rust issues and mechanical stripping will sadly not eradicate the rust out of the pits in the metal.

If the blaster is good, he will work over the car doing little bits at a time & move regularly, often returning to a panel 5 or 10 times to prevent a heat build up = warping.

In your shoes I'd investigate some local blasting companies, get some references and check out their work. If you have to transport the shell some distance, make up a steel frame with wheels & use a trailer. To prevent rust starting as soon as the blasting gun is switched off, I recomend using a product called "Deoxydene" or "Deoxit" - basically a colourless liquid you wipe on the panels to prevent rust forming for 5 to 10 days - in my case I use a 5 litre garden sprayer & drench the shell inside & out - the excess flows out of the holes where the floor boards *used* to be.

Media blasting opinions are like ar$e-h0les - everybody has one - if the blaster is good, then you end up with a clean shell - if you go cheap & use a dodgy blaster = warped panels. I don't believe that you can manually remove rust by grinding & over many years of playing with Vintage & Classic cars, we've successfully blasted quite a few bodies.

Saying that, I haven't done a 105 Series car yet - there I would be wary as the sheet metal is rather thinner than the early cars & in the case of the flush nose cars, even thinner again.

Your car, your call - shout if you need more info

Ciao
Greig
Some 750's
Some 101's
Some 105's
Some others

P.S - DON'T DIP IT - the acid eats the aluminium stiffeners which the Factory inserted into the front chassis rails - these are what your upper & lower front suspension A Arms bolt up to.

[Alex]

I've heard of a couple of mobile dry ice blasting companies now in the UK, which is a far gentler treatment than traditional grit media blasting. Also consider buying several gallons of that Deoxy gel made by Bilt Hamber - it's performed amazingly well in comparison tests.

You certainly made the most of the dry spell, it's been raining heavily here all day!

Alex.

[johnnym]

Having scraped away at the paint, it seems to be in the following layers (outer first)

Red
Grey
Orange
Lt Grey
Dark Grey/ blue
Cream
Med grey

This seems like too many layers to be original. I attach a photo of the paint rubbed down to the 'dark grey/blue' layer. Could this be the original?


p.s. the plan is still to have it blasted- I have a local blaster that has a good track record.

[Carlos Vasconce]

I've following your endeavours...what a great project!
Have you got the chassi nr? From the photos it seems you've got the body nr...
"Centro Documentazione Alfa Romeo" would be able to inform you which one would be the original colour... just a suggestion!

Carlos

[johnnym]

Carlos,

See earlier threads ref the chassis number. The Archivio Storico could only give me the construction and sale dates, not the colour.

John

[alfa soon]

Grey Primer between colors and under the first? What color was under the steering box when you pulled it off?

[johnnym]

Quote:

Originally Posted by alfa soon Grey Primer between colors and under the first? What color was under the steering box when you pulled it off?

[GTD]

John
Regarding your Sprint's original colour, I hesitate to use the word "virgin", as in finding some bit of hardware that hides some original virgin paint.
Were I to venture a guess it would be that Bertone used a grey primer on the day your Sprint was originally painted, covered by a finish coat of Avorio/Ivory.

[alfa soon]

If I were you, I would use the doubt as to original color as an excuse to paint it whatever color I wanted, sticking to the original palette offered by Alfa of course.

If I ever paint my Sprint I am going to go for Anthracite gray, there are just too many red ones out there...

[dretceterini]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GTD John Regarding your Sprint's original colour, I hesitate to use the word "virgin", as in finding some bit of hardware that hides some original virgin paint. Were I to venture a guess it would be that Bertone used a grey primer on the day your Sprint was originally painted, covered by a finish coat of Avorio/Ivory.

[davestebs]

Somewhere I saw a list of colors for early Sprints. One of the colors was "beige bananna" I have never seen a photo of a Sprint in this color much less a real car. Bang made a 1/43 model in the color.


I have some color photocopies of a pair of ivory Sprints that were featured in an Italian magazine article in 2004. "Automobilismo D'Epoca" In some photos they look close to white, but not a bright white. They are probably ivory. In a couple of photos though, they look very beige - probably because of the lighting.

I think your Sprint would look great in either beige or ivory. The period colors give the Sprints a special look.

[johnnym]

I am torn between red and metallic silver (grigion chiaro?) Red is a bit of a cliche, but it looks great, and I have seen the OK Parts lightweight 750 in met silver which also looked very stylish.

Mind you, final paint colour is not exactly high on my list of priorities at the moment!