2000 GT Veloce Repairs.

[Balfa]

Thought I might as well begin a thread in which I can post some repair photos for those interested. I know I get a kick at looking at other people's work, restoring their old alfa's.

Another aim for this thread is for me to ask questions of those who have gone through the process before. So I welcome all comments/suggestions/feedback. Please just keep in mind that I'm doing the best I can and I know I'm not doing everything 'right' - otherwise I wouldn't bother being on the forums asking for advice

[Balfa]

A little bit about myself and car:

• I've had this car for a long time now and you will see evidence of an earlier attempt to restore the car.
• This earlier attempt was when I was a poor uni student and I learnt a lot from this i.e. don't try and restore your alfa unless you have the time and money
• Having said that much of the body work performed by a panel beater in Perth was done terribly. To this day it still makes me angry thinking about it.
• Much of the progress on the car this time round has happened in the last 6 months. Last Christmas I took a month off to work pretty much every day on the car
• I do most of the manual labor on the car (sanding/stripping etc) while relatives do the skilled work
• At the moment I only have time to work on the car one day a week, requiring me to drive to Sydney from Canberra.

So while I don't have a lot of skill or knowledge of alfa's and cars in general, what I do have is a passion for 105's and a lot of motivation to see my car back on the road in the near future

Attached picture - The engine was reconditioned not so long ago by Cilliberti's in Perth. It was quite expensive and Cilliberti's have a good reputation. My aim for the engine is only to make a few modifications.

[Balfa]

Some of old photos back when I was stripping the car.

[Balfa]

Some of these photos are a bit out of order sorry, but you will get the gist.

A picture of the passenger door - doesn't look too bad from here, but I just stripped some paint off this weekend from one of my doors so I know the amount of bog and rust that is hidden. Will post some pictures later.

[Balfa]

Starting to get tired of resizing the photos, so might make it the last post for the night.
Picture 1 - The wiring on the car was terrible. Apparently typical of many european cars of that era?
Picture 2 and 3 - These photos get my blood pumping. Photos of parts from alfaholics:

• Lightweight flywheel
• 12mm C&B cams
• Door handles
• Weber 45 DCOEs

Originally my engine had the dellorto DHLA 40's. These were in reconditioned recently and are in perfect working order if anyone is interested?

As I can afford them, I've been ordering bits and pieces from Alfaholics etc for months now. So I have a heap of parts stashed away for when I start putting my car together. I will post some pictures of them in the coming weeks, to provide an idea of what the car will look complete and to be honest I might as well get some joy taking pictures of them as consolation for the hours of hard work gone into paying for them

[Balfa]

I've dropped the size of the images to squeeze more on.

I think these pictures are showing some of the rusted areas. The 105's always seem to rust in common areas i.e. the lower hemisphere of the car where water catches and where there is limited drainage.

I've also read somewhere that the 105's were made out of cheap Russian steel that doesn't help with the rust?

[Balfa]

I had a question about my paint stripping options. The way I see it I have a few options:
1. Old school hard work sanding and paint stripper where appropriate?
2. Something along the lines of sandblasting which is expensive from what I've heard?
3. Even more expensive alternatives e.g. pellet blasting, acid baths etc.

Does anyone have any suggestions? While I'm want to 'do the job properly', if I can do the job by putting in some extra manual effort and save some money as well then I'm not adverse to alternatives.

I've also seen some sandblasting kits available on-line that you can plug into decent air compressors. Has anyone had any experience with these?

Back to the photos.
I've got a lot of rust around the boot floor, the u-shaped lip that holds the boot lid rubber, door sills, wheel arches (where the metal panels meet), etc.

The door sills we will be looking at fabricating replacements for this weekend, likewise with the arches. The boot floor worries me and I'm not sure if we are going to cut the entire floor out yet or just repair the rusted areas.

[Balfa]

The only photos of interest here are the new nuts/bolts/screws/springs I picked up recently. Basically I got a sample of every nut/bolt/screw that I could find, guestimated the quantities I need and sent it to Lee Bros. Engineering. So the first photo you can see new stainless steel replacements waiting to be used.

The engine bay was fairly clear of rust. Just a few minor patches we will have to weld new metal into. I've also removed the battery tray and have a battery relocation kit and an Odyssey dry cell battery.

[Balfa]

Fitting the wolf steel floor pans. My old floors were very rusted to the point where I'm counting my blessings I didn't fall through the floor while driving my car.

In terms of the floor, we've tacked in the floors to shape and fit the panels. Some of the rusty colour you see on the metal was this rust protector I got from Bunnings. Since then I've been using wurth rust converter which is the black paint like stuff you can see around the edges.

Since then we've welded the floors underneath and cleaned up some of the weld. We figure that once we seal the floor pans, storm guard the bottom of the car and add sound proofing that should be the floors done.

[Balfa]

More pictures of the floors.

The last picture is of my pedals that I've cleaned up while the floors were being welded. Which reminds me I need to add new pedal rubbers to the list of things I need to order.

[Balfa]

Last lot of photos for today, as I don't want to spam you all.

Just some pictures of my drivers door before I did a spot check of the amount of rust. I've got some other photos of my original seats, pace motors extractors that i want to get rid of, my fibreglass boot lid etc that I will post later in the week.

While I remember, some of the previous photos show evidence of dodgy rust repairs around the door sills, quarter panels etc. This was the dodgy repair job I was referring to in my original post that we are now having to fix.

[Balfa]

Question - Does anyone have any recommendations for heat/sound proofing? I'm taking a look at a few different brands on-line and they all look much the sameness.

Thanks in advance.

[105Veloce]

Whenever this topic is mentioned Dynamat is always recommended for one reason or another. If you get on the 'mighty car mods' forum there's a few good threads on it. Hope this helps.

[Balfa]

Much appreciated Luke. I will take a look at Dynamat.

[Balfa]

A few more pictures, showing my journey to get my bloody beloved 105 back on the road.

Thanks to Lukes suggestion I had a look into the dyna products and will probably go with Dynapad for my firewall and dynaliner for my floor and roof.

Pictures are of the driver's door where I stripped a patch to look at the condition of the door. I had to strip off almost an inch of bog that was covering some dodgy rust repairs.

I've gone through that many steel brush wheels like you wouldn't believe it. The picture shows a small sample. Unfortunately I can't find any cheap places on-line that sell them (once you factor in shipping that is).