La Tempesta

It’s been a couple of days since I did anything useful on the car, but today Øystein and me installed a parts washer we bought from Gasolin. It’s a fairly small washer that takes about 6-8 liters of fluid, but we figured it was big enough. Bigger parts tend to be cleaned with a wire brush and angle grinder anyway, and this washer is better for the stuff that’s too small for that or just greasy and grimy.

The washer is a Clarke CW2D.

We put together a makeshift table from planks and beams left over from the tool rack that was in the garage when we moved in. There’s more than enough stuff standing on the floor already, and the walls haven’t been put to mush use. This way, we don’t have to sit on the floor when we clean parts either. The ventilation in the concrete garage isn’t too good, so we may have to move the washer if the stuff gets too smelly. We filled it up with some kerosene/paraffin I had at home and tested the washer on an old, greasy bearing I had. The cleaner worked as advertised

So we aren’t fullblown amateurs anymore since we have a parts washer! Woohoo!

Apart from a thermos earmarked for garage coffee, there was no car-related christmas gifts for me this year, but La Tempesta got a gift to keep away the frost in the garage. As I write this, the outisde temperature is -13°C (9°F), and it’s not much warmer in the concrete garage. Luckily though, it’s quite dry. To help keep the temperature above freezing, I bought a 2000W oil oven at the local electrics store. In addition to this, we have three 2000W fan heaters in there, but now we can arrive to a pleasant +5°C temperature instead of 0°C

On a side note: the planned purchase of Classic Alfa’s handling kit must wait a bit, since the 166 V6 cambelt managed to skip a couple of teeth and bend a few valves That’ll unfortunately set me back a large five-figure amount, but it’s of no consequence. The 166 isn’t quite ready to be relegated to the scrap heap just yet. It’s the only means of transportation left here since the 164 had to be put to sleep after rusting to pieces.

On yet another side note: I haven’t been working on the car since late October due to an extreme amount of tasks at my dayjob. It’ll probably be February before  I have any sort of time to go back there and finish up the rear suspension.

And then La Tempesta was safely stored away in its fourth storage facility/workshop in three years. The surroundings are a litte spartan at the moment, but we have big plans involving white paint and some common garage tools and gadgets. Since there’s no heating in the garage, I brought along a 2 kW fan heater. In 20 minutes it manages to create a quite nice ambient temperature, but it’s still only October outside. We’ll se how comfortable it is in February when the outside temperature is well below zero.

My time in the garage in Konows gate is over. The rent contract was unilaterally cancelled by the landlord in July, and by 1. October we had to be elsewhere. Last weekend I got the Montreal rolling again and placed it under covers outside my house, and this weekend I collected all my tools and sundries, cleaned my spot and left. The coming Wednesday we’re moving to new facilities a lot closer to where I live. It’s a bit cheaper too, and with more room. The “we” are four cars: a Lancia Delta Integrale HF Evo I (8V) in need of some care (visible in the picture below), a 1969 Alfa Romeo GTV which needs a lot of attention, a VW Transporter T1 (1965-ish) and me. The VW is uncertain, but in case he bails out, we’re going to be kept company by a Triumph TR6.