The life and times of three 33s and a 155.
I'm becoming increasingly annoyed with the rear speakers. The cones have been torn since before I bought the car. Bass is not warm and filling, but rather an irritated buzzing. Even some cheap replacements would suffice in the interim. I might have to go and see what The Warehouse have that would fit the holes in the parcel shelf.
Otherwise, no further news - she's just a few more kilometres older.
Cleaned the windows and blacked the tyres - thats it for this weekend. Still need to get a quote for those rear bushes!!
Nothing of note so far this week, besides a few short running-around type trips. No quotes on parts obtained as yet, but funding pending, I will tackle the suspension bushes on Saturday. We'll see.
Yesterday (Saturday) I took the Alfa in to Drury Tyres to get the wheels aligned. They sorted out the toe-in problem and as I was driving away, I discovered it was now pulling to the right. So I took it back and the nice chappy was very obliging, and offered to double-check it. The front end came up fine, but after further inspection, we discovered that the rear suspension bushes were seriously worn, allowing for some serious rear end movement. As serious as this sounds, it just means that you'll come out of a right-hand corner to find the steering pulls right, and then through a left-hand corner, to find it pulling to the left. This can be resolved without too much drama - I'll just need to price up some new suspension bushes and spend some Saturday-hours.
In the process of getting the wheels aligned, I discovered the the inside of the left rear tire is wearing - indicating perhaps a bent rear axle. I may just replace the suspension bushes for now, and see if that isn't the cause of the problem, before I panic too much.
I was chatting to Eion Burns at church this morning. He mentioned that there's a shop on Wood St in Papakura that specialises in tuning Italian cars - apparently its not uncommon for him to have a Ferrari in for a tweak. I should investigate. Eion also recommended European Autospares (I think thats the name) on Ryan Place in Manukau City (just up the road). Eion knows Richard Glasson - one of the co-owners. By-the-way, Eion is into Mercedes Benz's. He has great collection of models, and some good tales as well.
Gave the Alfa a vacumn-clean and a wash. It really does make all the difference.
It got regular use over the weekend, and I'm becoming more familiar with it - discovering that it can corner with much more stability than the Skyline can. When I don't slow down coming up to a corner, passengers prepare themselves to be scared, but are pleasantly surprised when the scariness never comes - the Alfa just blasts round corners without the hanging-on-to-the-handles and sliding-around-on-the-seat that yo'd get in a lot of other vehicles. It will be great when the suspension is fully sorted, and the engine is running smoother.
Well, she's nice and clean and ready to face the rest of the week - as will I be in about eight hours. Goodnight all.
Took the Alfa for a decent drive tonight - a bit of town and country - and drove nearly 200kms over a period of four hours. Got some open road country, some motorway, some stop-start Queen St boy-racer-style action, some suburbs - pretty much the whole broad spectrum of NZ road types.
Was very impressed with the road holding, and to use a cliche - it really does corner like it is on rails. Rides a tad too high - the boxer engine sits quite low and is conducive to a low center-of-gravity, but the back needs to come down a couple of inches, perhaps. The wheel alignment is out - pulling slightly to the left ordinarily, but tramlining on dodgy road surfaces. Might take it down to Drury Tires to get that sorted in the morning. I have to say they have been a bit hit-and-miss with their alignment jobs - the last alignment they performed on the Skyline was excellent - the car still handles like a dream (compared to pre-alignment) nearly a year later. But I have had the odd shonky job on the old Datsun in the past.
The brakes are on the ill side of satisfactory, and a car that popped out of nowhere nearly 'joined forces' with the Alfa. Apparently the brake master cylinder has been replaced recently, so I should really check everything else out too. The fact that the handbrake pulls up to the ceiling indicates that the rear brake pads are most probably in need of renewal. The fluid lines may need bleeding also.
The engine is in perhaps the poorest state (may be on a par with the paint/body work) - a 1.7 litre with twin Dellorto 40s should almost be competitive with a 4AGE Corolla (twin-cam 1600 fuel injected) - but despite glimpses of torque, it really does not leave the scene in a fashion other than can be described as ordinary. The valve-train clatter and over-fuelling carbs can hopefully be sorted with a good tune, so we'll see how it performs once that is done.
As long as the rust is kept away, the bodywork will go unattended to for now, apart from a wash and polish etc. The interior needs a few things sorting - the glove-box is pulling away from the dash, so I may need to fabricate some means of reinforcing to go behind the glove-box mounting points - the whole car needs a really good vacumn out. The rear central-locking is not working - I should be able to whip the door linings off and diagnose that problem with realtive ease. I can hear the actuators working, but they're just not operating the lock mechanisms - perhaps a missing linkage, or stripped gear teeth or the like. I would like to replace the lost section of skirt under the right rear passengers door, also.
Otherwise, thats about it for this evening. I will make a 'parts wanted' list under the links section, so if you have any Alfa 33 bits lying around, please keep me in mind. Hope you all have a great weekend!
>Sorry - I've spent so much time on the format of the blog, I have not gotten around to updating the content. But it does look pretty cool now, doesn't it?
For those of you who have called for photos, I leave for work when its dark, and its dark when I get home, and since you can't see a black car when the morning/night is also black, you'll just have to wait until Saturday, or some other period of time with an acceptable level of blacklessness.
Work on the car:
- on Tuesday night, I pulled the air-cleaner box off, to discover that of the six nuts/screws that are supposed to be holding it on, only four of them were present. And the four that were present were so loose they were about one turn from falling right off. Removal of the air-cleaner box also revealed the fact that one of the carbs was missing the gasket between the carb and the cast section of pipe that runs from the carb to the air cleaner box. Thanks Sanitarium for your cereal boxes - using the gasket from the other carb as a template, I was able to fabricate a new one using the back of a Weet-Bix carton. New gasket in place, air-cleaner box done up tight, and one of the many rattles from the engine bay has been put to rest. I also made a fairly half-hearted attempt to cut back some of the didgy paintwork, but gave up when i realised it would take months to do by hand. I need a buffer disk for my angle-grinder in order to complete the task with some degree of efficiency.
- yesterday (Wednesday) I found - on the internet - a full exploded diagram and technical description of the Dellorto DRLA carbs that my Alfa wears. When I got home, I intended to pull them off, pull then apart, and then reassemble them, but decided it wouldn't be such a good idea, as I need to use the car on Saturday. But at least i have the resources now.
So instead, I tried to resolved the fact that, despite the owners manual stating that the handbrake should work after the handle has been pulled up three clicks, it actually comes up about 6 or 7 clicks. I was asuuming that the drum brakes on the rear would have some means of adjustment, to compensate for pad wear, but it appears they haven't. And whats more, the drum is an integral part of the hub, and cannot be removed without getting all greasy, and playing around with wheel bearings and stuff. So that was the end of Wednesday night's work.
So, as you can see, most of the work has been familiarisation, more than anything else. I hope to get the alignment sorted on Saturday, and I may talk to my mechanic and see if he is keen to tune the carbs, and sort out the valve-train clatter.
Adios, and good evening.
The next chapter in the life of NT9986 has begun.
On Saturday 3rd May, in response to an advertisement published in the Trade and Exchange, I headed out to Henderson to inspect a black 1987 Alfa Romeo 33 1.7 QV, with a view to acquiring such a vehicle to serve as a hobby/2nd car.
The car proved to be untidy but generally sound, being in a warrantable condition, but with plenty of scope for improvement.
After a vehicle inspection performed on Monday morning determined that the car was in no worse condition than I had anticipated, I then offered to purchase the car.
For $1400 dollars, I obtained the car as above, with 6 months registration paid, and a Pioneer CD head unit.
Details of the vehicle:
And the rest is history...
