Madame Sud

[Evan Bottcher]

Thought I'd take a minute to introduce our little red Alfasud nicknamed 'Madame' many years ago.  Madame was Fiona's car when I met her nearly ten years ago and had done some track time with the club in the past.  When Fiona and I started going out she took me to Phillip Island to observe her drive the Sud - sadly Madame suffered a nasty case of stuck accelerator linkage and dropped a valve leading to an early death for that motor.  I was hooked however! (on both car and lady)  A fresh engine was built for us and remains in the car until this day.  We did a handful of sprints up until late 1999 when we decided to get married and go overseas and put Madame in storage until we returned (only planned to be 12-18mths).

Here's a couple of pics from Madame pre-2000.

[Evan Bottcher]

So four years later we returned to Australia married with children (well.. child).  Remember that Madame was our daily driver back in the ol' days - we decided that something a bit more modern would be needed to transport our precious cargo.  A scooby-doo was purchased, subsequently written off, and now we have the 156 sedan as safe modern transport.  Madame Sud was restored from her resting place on the farm and brought back to Melbourne to be a dedicated track car - no longer required to perform daily transport duties.

Time was not kind to the old girl - both sills were rotten and there was some ugly cancer in the base of windscreen pillars and around one rear window. I got some great help from Sam Mazzeo at Sam's Panels (Clayton 9540 0515) to replace the sills and fix the other bits as well.  Fi and I changed the timing belts and clutch slave and got her running and tidy, and with help from Bruno Collautti at Maranello Motors (Brunswick 9386 9650) I had the Madame back on the road and ready to do some sprints.

[Evan Bottcher]

So Madame is back into action on the track - and loving it.  Fiona and I have double-entered the car at a handful of events in the last year and had a ball.  Neither of us are terribly competitive but we're having good fun and really enjoying the AROCA comradeship at the track.  I think we both particularly enjoy the trip to Winton, kindly Jack's grandparents are happy to take him while we are away so it's a nice break.  It's nice to catch up with AROCA people on the Saturday night in Benalla as well.

[Evan Bottcher]

Recent developments for Madame include the front suspension from a late model Alfa 33.  This provides ventilated outboard discs which help fix the cooling problems I was having with the Sud's inboard discs.  Bruno at Maranello Motors has helped me with this work - we also fitted some stiffer springs front and rear and koni yellow shocks in the front, although discussion is continuing about getting some much stiffer springs again.  I'm continuing to tidy up the exterior of the car, and I've started stripping the interior in order to fit a 6-point cage in the next couple of months.  Slowly but steadily I want to develop this car and learn how to drive it.  Motorsport is not cheap, but this little Sud has to be the best fun per $$$ that you can get!!!

Specs (June 2006):

1977 Alfasud Ti (originally 1.2 engine)

- 1500cc engine high compression
- cams from 105hp boxer
- heads ported and matched
- 40mm Weber IDF carbs
- crossover extractors
- 33 16V front ventilated discs/calipers
- urethane bushes front/rear
- front/rear springs wound to specification

I'm also involved in the Trofeo Alfasud competition started by Ed Hellsten and Teruo Delacroix to fire up the Sud, Sprint, and 33 owners in the club.  Check out http://www.trofeoalfasud.com and think about building a Sud/33 weapon for next year!

cheers,
Evan.

[shane wescott]

Looks great. What sort of urethane bushes do you have in the front?

[Evan Bottcher]

Black ones! :-)

I actually don't know where they were sourced from as they are older than my involvement with the car.  They are only on the rear of the trailing links where they attach to the mounting points under the firewall.  The bushes on the front arms are all standard.  I assumed the urethane bushings were SuperPro or similar.

I wonder if there are urethane bushes that ARE suitable for the front arms.  They'd have to have the right amount of give in a twisting force, but still real tight in the other directions.  The UK and NZ guys who race boxer cars might know - I'll ask on the forums.   Alternatively I guess we could look at rose joints, but then I figure we'd make up the whole arms...