I could have titled this post about the ’62 (or whatever) Sprint with some allusion to the devil-in-the-details or Kafka-esque navigation of impossible escape, but I’m trying to stay optimistically realistic, and not fall victim to the paralysis that sets in when you’re really, truly overwhelmed. The fact is, progress has been made: some thanks to the not-so-mighty dollar, some to elbow grease. The car is close enough to being drivable that I’m starting to browse catalogs for suitably attractive passengers.

(I’m kidding, of course. Sort of.)

Anyway, here’s a little run-down of the dollars being spent:

• Bay City Alternators (International at 89th Ave in Oakland, 510-633-1512), fixing the generator which wasn’t generating, and painting it shiny black, to boot. $60.
• Jesus Angulo (same location and number as above — god bless International Blvd), fixing and reupholstering the front seats. $300 the pair.
• Berkeley Radiator Works (San Pablo at Pardee in Berkeley, 510-845-3151), boiling out the gas tank and addressing any rust. $300 estimate, hopefully less….
• Brake Materials & Parts (Fort Wayne,  Indiana, 260-426-3331), relining all six front shoes at $24 per shoe. I curse the Trinacria, not the price per shoe. These are good, Ferodo linings so the dollars are buying something of proven quality.

As for the elbow grease, I’ve more or less fixed the passenger side window, which had fallen off its tracks and no longer went up or down, and got the headlights and turn signals to work. More importantly, I got the worst of the wheel cylinders apart and honed, ready for a rebuild kit from Jon Norman / Alfa Parts in Berkeley.

Nothing relevant here at all, just a mediocre photo of one of the pretty sunsets we've been getting here in the Bay Area, along with my Giulia Super.

In other news, the TI is actually about to get painted. I saw the color today and was pretty happy with it. More on that next time, hopefully with pictures of the final product.

Forward and payaaka, manhangle and den go saaka.

That’s how the song goes, or so says the internet. I decided today that the brakes on my Sprint are decidedly more Sicilian than Jamaican (duh). You can probably guess at a few reasons: They’re Italian, stubborn, stocky, and live in the dark nether reaches below the more frequently admired parts of the car. But I never would have made this comparison (ever) if I hadn’t seen the three-shoe brake system on the Sprint. This exotic mess of tubes, cylinders and shoes is supported by a curious, triangular piece of iron that serves as fulcrum for each of the three shoes. Here’s what the brake set-up looks like on a good, clean car:

A shop-neighbor's car with its wheels off shows off the unique mechanism behind the stopping power of the 1600 Sprint.

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Sometimes you just get lucky. A car that sits untouched for 20+ years is basically a jumbo-sized can of mystery. The burden of proof lies squarely on its shoulders, since pretty much everything on it is suspect and presumed bad. Often these suspicions are confirmed with a glance (gaping hole in floor), poke or prod (foot goes through floor), or attempt to operate something (brake pedal goes to floor). Yesterday I went down to Matt’s shop space where the Sprint currently resides, hoping to learn something about the condition of the motor, which I had believed to be stuck. This belief was partly based on the seller’s own description, but also on my very limited attempts to move it by tugging on the fan blades.

Matt met me at about 5 and we proceeded to remove the hood, radiator, fan, air box, spark plugs and cam cover. The only surprise here was when coolant started pouring out from the lower radiator hose. The seller said he had drained the coolant prior to storing the car, but either it wasn’t fully drained or the years had worked their magic on his memory. I was impressed by the condition of everything I saw though – rubber still pliable, nothing corroded or broken. Had the water leaked out, I might have been looking at a big swath of rusted-out valence and radiator support, as the TI had.

Once this was done, Matt armed himself with a fat socket and breaker bar and one second later informed me that the motor turned. I wasn’t opening bottles of bubbly, but definitely felt the cautious optimism taking over where suspicious doubt had been before.

The business, almost in business. Note saggy timing chain. We tensioned it right after I snapped this photo.

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Whatever perceived vacuum existed in my palette of Alfa colors has been filled two-fold in the past couple of weeks. I’ve waited to post on this in order to be sure that both and not just one of the deals would go through, and over the weekend the final movements of this rather loud symphony were played by a small fleet of tow trucks and assistants.

Prior to now–and with a Duetto being a possibly valid exception–I’ve never owned an Alfa coupe. For most alfisti, the gateway drug to the world of Alfas is either the GT/V or Spider. As I said, I’ve had a Spider, but for a long time now I’ve been sitting upright and opening and closing four doors on my Alfas. And while I’ve had opportunities to get into a GT, I’ve never pulled the trigger (or else the car in question was bid out of my reach by guys with deeper pockets). But I now find myself with not one but two coupes, and a very real surplus of cars in my possession. The icing on this cake is that both cars still sport their black plates. (Well, each car only has one of its original plates, but still….)

Coupe #1 is a 1966 GT, previously owned by partner-in-Alfa-crimes Luigi. He’d been sitting on it for a few years, debating whether to fix up and drive, fix up and sell, leave alone and sell, etc., etc., and had gotten as far as bringing it down to his shop space in West Oakland and stripping off some of the paint in order to make a solid case for it on eBay.

Here's the '66 Alfa GT, next to Luigi's awesome column-shift TI. Paint is obviously bad but the body is pretty straight.

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