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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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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In a rare moment of clarity and intelligence, I realized the Bondo work I was doing on the TI could, and more than likely would, be better done (or worse yet, undone and redone) by someone who gets paid to do this kind of work. Also, I’d lost touch with friends and family because they don’t much like spending their leisure time in my driveway. Go figure.

So last weekend I did the last bit of body work (banged on a few dents, sanded some bondo, etc.), and then ‘installed’ a spare Giulia Super seat I had in my basement to go drive around some of the shops down on International Blvd, aka East 14th. I love this street. For car guys, it’s where to go if you need something done (usually) reasonably well and at a fraction of the price you’d pay in the less, how do we say it, international neighborhoods. And if you’re not a car guy, you might enjoy one of the couple hundred or so taquerias.

I drove to a few different shops, but of course ended up back where I started, at Pete’s Body Shop and Frame (510-534-5402). Hand painted sign, 2-bay garage, no frills. I won’t say exactly how much it’s costing, but he beat the competition even on International by more than half.

Here she sits, wearing white paint for the last time ever.

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This may be a first: I spent a weekend working on the TI and didn’t discover anything that needed yet more work. And I got a fair amount done, too. Most of what remains will cost more in money than time, which is of course both good and bad. Anyway, the summary of accomplishments reads as follows:

1. reinstalled heater
2. reassembled and reinstalled dash and gauge cluster
3. reattached trunk lid
4. applied Bondo all over the place
5. swapped out speedo cable

Here's the dash and not really visible heater, reinstalled. In addition to making the car *look* more carlike, having functioning gauges also makes it nearly driveable. Just add seat.

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