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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And hopefully soon to be outgoing.

As today was largely a taken up by Alfa coupe madness, I did not, as I had intended to do, spend the day prepping the Volvo for sale. I did give it a pretty serious bath (discovery: Fast Orange is an ‘unorthodox but effective’ way to get rid of greasy fingerprints) and started messing with the twin SUs that do all the carburatin’ duty on this car. It runs ok but the idle and acceleration are bad, so I think the carbs are at least out of sync, and likely need individual tuning as well.

But first some back story. This car needed a number of very real fixes. (Warning: I took pictures of none of them, so this will not be a very interesting read.) To wit:

• Problem: brake calipers stuck beyond hope.
  Solution: replace calipers with new.
  Outcome: fine, except booster is shot so is being bypassed.
• Problem: trunk opener doesn’t work.
  Solution: use clothes hanger wire to fabricate new connecting rod for latch mechanism.
  Outcome: trunk opens. Yay.
• Problem: rear main seal failing miserably.
  Solution: drop the transmission (extremely not-fun), remove flywheel and assorted gizmoids, R&R rear main seal with a new one that uses a rubber compound instead of horse fur or whatever it was inside the original.
  Outcome: permanent damage to whatever I was wearing throughout this job; lots of bleeding and swearing; leak fixed.
• Problem: hood brackets broken, hood off.
  Solution: replace with good used units, reattach hood.
  Outcome: fully hooded.

Cool, lots of progress, right? Once I got the hood back on, I gave the old Amazon a bath. Here she is pre-wash:

The hood fit remarkably well considering a) I was eyeballing all measurements, b) the brackets were from another car, and c) I was using my head (ironic, I know) to hold it in place as I frantically tried to secure the thing onto the brackets. Side note: there is no shortage of unfortunate dents on this car.

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