Classic Alfa Forums

Thank you to everyone for the positive comments and encouragement regarding my project over the last few days.

I know there are many experienced and skilled enthusiasts on the forum who know a lot more about restoration techniques than I do. This is only my second project in 25 years, the last proper restoration I did was back in 1992/3 of a Bertone 2000 GTV which was sold in 1998 when I moved to London. I am a bit rusty (if you will pardon the pun) in terms of my knowledge of current techniques and suppliers - as well as the model specific problems and fixes that apply when restoring the 900 series Alfa Romeos.

In answer to the various questions and points made recently I would comment as follows:

To Kegsti66 - in answer to your "Columbo" question, the same fabricator rebuilt the red series 1 Ti shell during March/April last year and that partly explains his skill at repairing Alfasud body shells. The series 1 Ti is a project I have been involved with on and off since 2011 when I found the car - it has been a slow burner and is a shared effort with another party who owns the car and who unfortunately has not been keen to feature it on any of the forums. I will try again to persuade him to let me showcase the restoration on CAF, as it is going to be amazing when completed and will feature a huge number of NOS parts that were collected over a ten year period for just such a project.

To dralf1965 - regarding the link with Mario Deliotti - yes I have the silver plastic dealer name plates on the sills when you open the doors, my car has four - one for each door.

There is some interesting background info about Mario Deliotti here: http://forums.autosport.com/topic/16334 ... -deliotti/

To Alfa_Japan - regarding the wing rail corner brackets - yes we did think about the effect of deleting the cut-out in terms of additional rigidity in the upper A pillar area and decided that it was unlikely to cause a problem as the original brackets are already quite robust (if you see them in their original rust free state). The brackets have a flange pressed into them around the aperture to make them stronger and are quite domed in shape. Once you add the triangular brace underneath they are already quite strong. The new brackets will be a bit more rigid, but as the car is only used on relatively smooth surfaced roads and not for things like track days or rallying there should not be abnormal or undue stresses that might cause something as severe as chassis rail or inner wing cracking.

To Gary Orchard - the polyurethane foam in the Alfasud saloons and Sprints is a strange story. If you go back to the first press pack issued in June 1972 there is a diagram covering noise suppression measures that shows where the foam is located. As you say it is in the front and rear chassis rails, the double section of the inner bulkhead, the box section bit of the wing rails and up into the front screen pillars. The 1976 Sprint press pack included a similar diagram to the saloons showing the location of the foam. Later on in the Suds production life (when the series 2 cars were launched with the Alfasud Super in 1977) Alfa Romeo were battling the Suds rust problems and claimed to have made a whole host of improvements to this effect. One of them was the polyurethane foam, which was now said to be part of the new anti-corrosion protection measures! If nothing else Alfa Romeo were at least capable of creative marketing during the 1970's.

On my car we will only remove the foam from the wing rails as it does not seem to be causing a problem anywhere else. The main reason we took it out of the wing rails was because we needed to remake the outer panels as part of fixing the A pillars and corner brackets, which had all been messed up by poor quality previous repairs. This provided a good opportunity to get rid of the foam and avoid the toxic fumes it gives off when you carry out any welding work in close proximity to it.

To Junior regarding the repairs being largely hidden - yes they are but I am pleased that this car is getting restored properly and in-depth because it has been in our family for nearly 40 years now and is an old friend. With that in mind I am not unhappy to spend a bit more on getting everything right, even in places where you will never see it and as you say knowing that it will be durable and not require further structural repair work in the future will provide peace of mind - because as we all know these cars are not very durable in the body shell department at the best of times.

Restoration update:

I have received a good number of new pictures from the fabricator who has now completed the wing rails, A pillars and corner brackets as well as fitting new sills both sides and repairing rear jacking points and rear wheel arch/sill joints. I will post a selection of these this coming week when I have time.

Alfasam, keep the posts & pictures coming, very nice to see. BTW did you by any chance take dimensions of the reconstructed triangular section? I know some people who would be interested to know the dimensions. Now you have made a closed section by deleting the centre big hole, have you put a drainage hole in the bottom triangular section to enable drainage if required?

Thank you Alfa_Japan.

Quite a lot more has been done.

Starting with a couple of small repairs to the O/S front inner wing and front cross member flange:

Another small repair to the bonnet slam panel end very nicely done. It is interesting for me to see how the fabricator goes through the process of accurately cutting back the area to be repaired, making the repair piece, welding it into place, finishing it off to make a near invisible repair.

Once work on the front end was complete the fabricator moved on to sort out the rear jacking points and inner sills:

The outer sills have been replaced both sides because they had been repaired poorly at the front and rear ends in the past.
The inner sills were sound and only the small problems around the rear jacking points and lower rear inner arches had to be repaired before the new sills could be fitted.
Here are some more pictures of work progressing:

With the inner sill and lower inner rear arch repaired the new N/S sill panel was prepared for fitting. It needed a small modification as there is no rear arch flange return on the panel as supplied by Alfa Romeo. The fabricator has made up and added this feature to enable a perfect repair of the rear wheel arch.

More pictures of the new N/S sill:

Fitting the outer lower rear wheel arch repair piece to complete the N/S sill:

Here is the repair panel the fabricator has made and fitted to finish the N/S sill repairs: There is a small notch at the base of the rear outer wheel arch panel where it joins the top of the outer sill panel. The notch lines up with the door shut line panel gap and helps join the two panels in terms of their relative positioning to each other.

Here are a couple of pictures of factory original cars showing this important little detail: The finished repair on the Super and another factory original series 1 4 door showing that the fabricator has got it just right:

Work to the O/S inner sill and lower inner rear wheel arch underway:

More work to the O/S inner sill:

More work on the O/S sill and outer lower rear wheel arch repair piece:

Two more pictures of work progressing on the O/S: And the finished result - perfect! The fabricator has made significant progress in restoring the Super body shell to as good as new condition. There are only half a dozen smaller scale repairs left to do now - in the N/S inner rear wheel arch around the fuel filler aperture and on the inner rear valance panel where it was poorly repaired after a minor accident in the early 1980's.

Here is an interesting set of comparison pictures: one is of an Alfa Romeo NOS Sud front wing rail (box section) outer panel sent to me by a friend in Italy who sold one a few years back. The other is of the same part the fabricator made up by hand to repair this area on the Super. The fabricator has achieved a high degree of accuracy in making up these panels. My friend in Italy tells me these fabrication skills are hard to find nowadays even in Italy and thinks I have been very lucky to find someone in the UK with the skills to restore my car to such a high degree of originality. I agree.

Here are the pictures of the panels:

NOS original The repair panels being hand made by the fabricator - including extra flanges on one edge for additional strength and easier fitting:

Fantastic fabrication and attention to detail !!!!!!!

Will be great to see the car all done

You have been very lucky with how solid the shell is by the looks of all the pictures - I thought my TIx was a good shell but yours looks better and is older

Keep up the good work

Holy crap Nice craftsmanship and the rate at which these restoration activities are taking place are making me dizzy. Will you finish next month?

Verrrrry nice work.

The little things are so time consuming, hours can fly by on a tedious corner, and your fabricator is a talented guy for sure.

This is going to be a fantastic car

The fabricator has returned after 10 days holiday and work has continued apace this week.

The O/S rear arch had been accident damaged in the past and poorly repaired with lead filling. This has been cut away and a repair section made up to fit the damaged area at the back of the arch.

The damaged area: Cutting out the damaged section: Test fitting the repair section: The repair section welded into place and protected with primer, the double curvature of the arch has been accurately replicated: The repaired wheel arch rim, another nicely executed repair

Love this build, actually doing my S3 the same but not quite as much rust (posts to come), keep up the good work and photos.

The body shell repair stage of the Super project has really pushed on during March. So much so, that the volume of work completed by the fabricator has outpaced my ability to find time to get back on the forum to report on progress over the last two weeks.

The Easter Holiday has provided me with a window of opportunity to catch up on the new repairs that have been completed - so here we go:

First up is some more pictures of the reinstatement of the lower rear wings where they join the sills. Of all the repairs completed so far this section has surprisingly been the most difficult to get right.

After making a repair section that he was not happy with the fabricator decided not to fit it and to have a second attempt at getting it exactly right. The challenge was to recreate the small cut outs or notches between the wing lower edge and the top edge of the sill panel and to have the wing rim stepped out about 2 mm proud of the top of the sill panel. This is how the Alfasud factory jigs seem to have set up the relative panel fit, not the precise flush fit that would look best, but all the cars we have examined have this little miss-fit between the panels, it is quite characteristic of the series 1 - 2 berlina's where this section is fully visible, so rather than correct it we have faithfully reproduced it!

The results of the fabricators intensive efforts to get this detail exactly right were illustrated in my last couple of posts at the beginning of March. Since then the fabricator has sent me some more pictures of the door jamb area which better highlight the difficulty he experienced in re creating the complex multi curvature panel contours in this area sufficiently accurately to make it look factory original.
Whilst on the subject of the replacement of the damaged original sills here are some more close up pictures showing the high standard of work the fabricator has consistently produced.

With the sill areas completed on both sides of the car the fabricator continued working towards the rear resolving a legacy of poor quality historic repairs and hidden rust damage. Superficially, the rear inner wheel arches looked quite good, but a rust hole in the offside rear shock tower was a clue that not all was well in this section of the shell. The fabricator drilled out the spot welds to reveal inter-panel corrosion damage that needed quite extensive repairs. Next stage was cleaning the area up and cutting out the section of the inner arch that was sufficiently rust damaged that the entire section behind the shock tower needed replacing with new metal.

Here is the rust hole in the shock tower: The fabricators work flow in investigating and repairing this section is shown in the next set of pictures:

After cleaning both sides of the rear inner arch and preparing it for the repair sections to be welded in the fabricator sorted out the rust hole in the lower rim of the shock tower. He also cleaned up the main strut tower panel which is a separate part and painted everything with weld-thru primer:

The rear inner arch, horizontal flange and shock tower pieces are welded back together, all welds are ground flush and a protective coat of primer is sprayed over the work area:
Looks factory fresh now:

With the offside rear inner arch and shock tower sorted out a similar process of investigation and repair was applied to the near side which was not as badly corroded between the panels but still required some repairs to the seam between the inner arch and boot floor panels:

Whilst repairing the near side inner arch the area around the fuel filler neck aperture required rust damage to be sorted out. This is a difficult area to access as there is not much room for tools or welding equipment. It helped a lot in accessing this repair that the shock tower was removed first:
The finished repair to the fuel filler surround with the rest of the inner arch primer painted and ready for the reinstatement of the shock tower and flange piece: The finished near side rear inner arch and shock tower repairs:

The boot aperture frame required repairs to both corners due to a combination of poor past repairs and unresolved inter-panel corrosion:

The fabricator cut out the damaged sections and welded in repair pieces to correctly reinstate the triangulated panel joints:

Whilst the body shell has been on the rotisserie the fabricator has been able to easily repair some minor rust damage to the underfloor area just behind the near side front inner wheel arch:

With some smaller repair areas completed the fabricator moved on to another difficult problem. The near side rear wing was replaced due to accident damage in the 1980's and the job was not well done. Very ugly welding was visible and the flange between the rear wing and rear valence was a nasty mess with terrible welding and corrosion visible. Radical repairs were going to be required if we were to sort out these problems.

Here are the problem areas we needed to deal with and the methodology the fabricator used to access them:

The various pieces are removed from the rear wing, inner wing and valence: