And what a lovely wedding it was!

We had a great time at the wedding and I am sure Donna did too!
Some pictures from there!


































Wish you the best guys and have fun in Cuba!

Top Gear Alfa Romeo 1000£ Challenge!!!

Donna in a wedding!

My good friend Steinar came by earlier today to pick up Donna. He had asked for her a long time ago but I couldn't commit in giving the car unless it would be cleared by the inspection as I was afraid that with all those cracks in the paint it would have been a failure. Since I managed to fix everything in time, I gave him a call and let him know that he could pick her up during the weekend. So he came by today and after a short introduction on what to do and what not...remember she is an old lady - 35 years old already-
Now I am sure that my old lady will steal a bit of the couple's glory!
Nevertheless I want to wish the couple the best for the future!!

Car has passed inspection!!

Ok...I know.. Haven't posted for a while. Thing is that I have been busy with some repairs. Some surface rust had forced the paint to crack in various spots. So what I did was to strip down that paint and clean the surface rust and then hammerite it (same procedure as described in the bonnet rust fix). It looks quite ok at the moment. Also with the help of my friend Al we managed to underseal the car with this product:


















Actually the undeseal looks good and hopefully will protect for a while the 95% looking good floor of the car. Some spots will soon need cutting and welding but I will worry about this a bit later.
Also I installed new brake pads all around and it was amazing how balanced the car is breaking now.
I will be posting an update on things that need to be done since it is a good way for me to keep a list in the blog rather than a piece of paper that will get lost somewhere....

Bonnet update...

Bonnet is now fixed. It is far from a professional work, but good enough from 2m distance...
Just realised that I hadn't taken pictures of the front...but it was equally bad as the pics that you see (back side of the bonnet)...so here are the before pics...

That was before I started sanding and trying to unveil the rust..just the obvious stuff...



This picture is after everything was sanded down and rust stop was applied (the milky looking liquid that has turned metal and rust into a black coloured thing)


Finally after everything was filled, primed and painted...
Front:















Back:

Bonnet rust removal in progress

It's been a while since last update. I am currently working on removing rust from the bonnet. Pics will follow in the next couple of days....

'73 Spider or '72 spider?

I think it would be nice to share with you a piece of historical data received from the Alfa Romeo archives!

"Dear Sir,

with reference to your request we are informing you as follows.

According to our documentation files, the chassis number AR ******* originally corresponds to an Alfa Romeo Spider 1600 (115.07), manufactured on the 30^th November 1972 and sold on the 1^st December 1972 to Alfa Romeo Germany, Frankfurt.

The body colour is red (AR 510), with black tex interiors.

Yours, Sincerely,

Marco Fazio

Automobilismo Storico Alfa Romeo

Viale Alfa Romeo – I 20020 Arese (Mi)

Tel. +39 02 444 29 115

Fax +39 02 444 28 152

Mob. +39 334 629 53 81

"

I had read before that my chassis number was corresponding to a '72 car but the license shows it as a '73 since it was 1st registration date in June 1973. Now it has been confirmed.

Interesting, huh??

Hardtop?

Yes please!!!!
And what luck is this! Found a hardtop sold on ebay couple of days ago. We thought that it would be nice to get it for the rainy days of Finland, placed a bid.....302€ and it is mine! We are discussing on the shipping options now. Hopefully I will have it soon at home!
here are some pics of it.

License plates picked up!

And we are finally done with all paperwork needed!

Getting ready for storing the car for the winter...

Import Tax paid...

...and today I am going to pick up my license plates!

The weather is already turning bad so within the next few weeks, Donna will be stored again for the winter! The fun will start again in May 2008, but surely I will keep posting all the work that will be performed during the winter.

The plan is to get the car for bodywork and new paint (always the red Alfa colour!), fix the seats if possible and fix as much as possible in the engine too!

That's all for now!