It’s been a while since my last post. My workaday work picked up somewhat and time for the Sprint became harder to come by. It doesn’t help at all that it’s now getting dark around 5.

In any case, I’ll start with the good news: the Sprint is now parked in my driveway, i.e., at home and not in a warehouse in San Leandro. I wish I could say I drove it home myself but the truth is that I had to use my AAA card again. (I have two of my four yearly-allotted tows left. I don’t remember the last year I didn’t need and use all four tows. Bring a Trailer? Nah.)

I spent all day yesterday doing things both important and unimportant to the car. First off, I gave it a much overdue bath. Then I installed the passenger seat:

After the bath and the seat install, I took the Sprint out for a couple of neighborhood jaunts. The first revealed a very poorly attached + battery connector, as I went over a speed bump and the engine quit. Oops.

I also got a chance to pay more attention to the various ride noises and where they were coming from. The most obvious and easily rectified one was at the sway bars. The link arm bushings were gone — not ratty or frayed or compromised, but absolutely gone — on both sides. A trip to Autozone and some custom trimming of the rubber solved that problem, with notable improvement.

The other noise that was more bothersome was coming from the driveline. A not-terrible knocky sound was accompanied by a really annoying jingle of loose hardware. Once I was under the car today I found the problem: one of the bolts holding the big center bearing assembly in place is very loose. I say *is* very loose because apparently whatever threads in the metal it bolts to that used to exist are no longer there. More annoying still is that I wasn’t able to remove the bolt. It’s being held captive, and I have no idea how or why. Probably brute force and some careful metal repair will be the ultimate solution; I don’t look forward to any of it.

The second test-drive was both more and less successful. More, because I drove on the freeway for 30 seconds (one exit, in my neighborhood), and because the brakes are performing at about 60% capacity. That’s an improvement over last week’s 20%. (See videos below.)

A disaster of sorts struck when I was about 5 blocks from home. I smelled burning oil for maybe a minute, and then when I came to a stoplight I noticed a lovely plume of smoke coming from underneath the car. Uh oh. As quickly as I could I pulled into an apartment complex parking lot and stopped the car.  There was a lovely trail of oil behind me, showing my itinerary for countless blocks.

I imagined terrible things like a main seal that had given way, but in actual fact the  rubber line from the oil pressure sender to the pickup tube on the firewall had sprung a leak, conveniently (or predictably) adjacent to the exhaust manifold. Regardless, oil was spewing unchecked, at 70 psi. Nice.

(Unfortunately, when I’m in a foul mood I don’t much feel like taking pictures, so I have none of this episode, as photo-worthy as it was — sorry.)

The result was a study in How Things Go Full Circle. I walked home and grabbed a bunch of hopefully useful things and half-jogged back to the car, intending to just plug the line at the source and not worry about the gauge for a while. I did eventually plugg the line by cutting it just below the leak, inserting a long bolt and cinching it down with a hose clamp. Lapsed time: one hour, 15 minutes. Seriously. The connections for this line are tucked into dark corners of an already very cramped engine compartment. I was–again–in the position of seeing when not doing, and vice versa. It sucked big time.

Today, I had hoped to undo yesterday’s work and devise a better plug for the system until a replacement line could be obtained and installed. Instead, when I tried to remove the bolt I’d used to plug the line yesterday, the hose broke off from the metal line at the engine block. This seemed like a major setback, but in the end (I’m skipping over about 4 hours of major frustration here), it yielded the best possible solution: I managed to get all the rubber off the junction line at the block, revealing about 3/8″ of exposed nipple (hmm) — not a lot but enough to attach a length of fuel line with a hose clamp and trust that it would hold.

Once I’d gotten that far, I saw no reason not to attach the other end to the gauge pick-up line, and just like that I got my oil pressure system working again. Whew.

Other mundane attempts this weekend include trying to make the radio work (failed, sadly), changing the oil (failed, the drain bolt is stuck on–why are Alfa plug bolts always such obscure shapes/sizes??), and general clean-up (succeeded, though the undercarriage needs the kind of bath you’d need if you didn’t take a bath for 20 years).

Some photo and video fun:

And here are some videos of the first drive taken after 20+ years of hibernation. Rated PG13 for people with an aversion to seeing raw gasoline spewing onto various electrical components. Direction and narration by Matt.

As I write this, the rain is falling steadily and much, much more is predicted for this week. If I’m lucky and get a few hours of dry weather, I’ll get the oil changed and start to tackle some of the remaining issues:

• alternator conversion
• lighting
• brake system
• limit straps front and rear
• cosmetics

Until then, enjoy some Dylan

Posted Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 9:08 pm. Filed under 1962 101 Sprint, Alfa Romeo. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or Trackback from your own site.