Friday (August 6) I went to see Frode (calling Frode “the body man” conjures up images of a dubious, oiled-up male model with no shirt on, so I won’t do that anymore) and inspect the remains of the rockers and B-pillars. The rust had taken a pretty good hold on everything from the sills down between the wheels. The rear jack points were well on their way to simply disintegrate, but despite their sorry state they held the car up on jack stands for almost a year without buckling.

The rocker panels were in an equally shitty state, and the splendid idea of jamming the cavities with foam haven’t exactly held back the onslaught of the dreaded tin worms. The long and short of it is that everything in the vicinity of the rocker panels must be cut out and replaced with fresh steel. The rust creep had luckily stopped just before making a really serious situation (for my wallet too), and Frode was amazed at the much higher build quality and more solid construction of the Montreal when compared to the GTs and GTVs.

In any case, we went to Autogen to pick up the freshly made inner rocker panels in 2 mm steel. They were made exactly to specs, although they were 160 cms long so Frode could have a bit of extra steel to work on. Any repros will also be made in this length since it’s impossible to know in advance how much you’ll have to cut into the A- and B-pillars. If anyone need drawings of the inner rocker panel (TAV. 113), let me know (and I’ll try to wrestle it from Frode).

The mystery surrounding La Tempesta’s colour also seems to have been solved, plus there have evidently been a third colour on it at one point. At the bottom, the original AR521 Rosso is visible. On top of that there is a layer of what looks like (metallic) Dark Candy Apple Red, and on top of that again is a layer of something that is almost exactly like the original paint, only with yellow primer. The latter explains the orange sheen on a picture taken with flash, like this one.

I also took a look at Frode’s own long term project: a Giulia Sprint GT which is going to be an Alfa street racer in his own personal interpretation. There I was, trying desperately to keep my mouth as tightly shut as possible (northeners like me fail that, every time). My knowledge of early 105 series chassis is close to nil, plus I’m not sure I can throw a guy like that any ideas. Still good to see that there’s excess energy and creativity.

Note: there are 12 pictures below here. Be sure to scroll down to see all of them.

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I collected the rocker panels from Schenker’s warehouse July 14 and brought them to Frode so he could take a look. The panels was – according to Frode’s more expert eyes – of good quality and had survived the transport from Schweinfurt, Germany without any damage. To our general amusement we found an untouched but very dry hotdog inside one of the paperbags used to stuff the shipment. I wonder if someone at Häckner had to skip lunch that day

Frode took the cutter to the car the following day and sent me a rather disturbing picture of rockers full of foam! I went to see for myself and it was evident that the previous repairs were of a very poor quality. I have no idea when it was done, but the respray was obviously done at the same time. The front jack mounts are also done for, plus the lower parts of the B-pillars and the quarter panels in front of the doors were in bad condition. All in all it was about as bad as I expected.

The most difficult part of the job will be to replace the rails the rocker panels attaches to (TAV. 113, number 1). They carry signs of previous repairs too, but the repairs haven’t held up very good. The rails have been fabricated by a local machine shop at the time of writing. The real work can start once they arrive, whereupon Frode will start replacing rotten metal working outwards from the inner rails.

From this point on, I have absolutely no idea about the timespan. It could very well take all winter since my pockets aren’t bottomless and the whole job is a bit more extensive than I thought. Next parts purchase will be quarter panels and front jack points. Oh, and a hotdog

Contrary to what you might believe, I ordered the six parts (TAV. 118, parts 9, 10 and 11) from Häckner despite their higher price. My garage neighbour weren’t too pleased with some parts he bought for his Series 1 1750 GTV from them, and I’ve received the wrong part from Bertelsbeck before. I’ve had nothing but good experiences with Häckner.

Hannelore and Dirk Nehme bought their rockers from a place called Rist + Schäfer in the 90′s, but I failed to find them in any of the German yellow pages.

In addition to the rocker panels order I paid some money up front to the body man. So, over the course of half an hour, I dispensed of over half my bodywork budget and the car have yet to be touched with anything resembling an angle grinder The body man is currently on a three week vacation and is back around July 12th. With a little bit of luck It’ll be ready some time in August.

UPDATE June 25: Häckner actually billed me €899 including shipping for the rocker panels. Considering the shipping cost is a whopping €80 from Germany, they took a fair bit off compared to the advertised price. Cheaper when exporting perhaps? In any case, I’ll have to pay customs fees and VAT when the parts arrive … which will make them way more than the original €975 anyway.

UPDATE July 2: the customs and VAT bill arrived yesterday: €382. That means the total sum for the six rocker panels is a slightly off-putting  €1281. The VAT is of course happening because Norway isn’t an EU member, but to make amends there are apparently no customs fee for car parts like these. The rocker panels have yet to arrive physically.

Here’s a picture of the panels I bought:

Friday May 7 I took the car to a wheel/steering adjustment after the front anti roll bar was mounted. That went well, although the workshop (Larsens Bilservice in nearby Sandvika) complained that the camber wasn’t adjustable and that it was slightly positive because of the lowering kit. The camber is off by just a few minutes, but still slightly outside the specs. I’ll try to post the current values when I can get to the car again. The printout is in the glove compartment …

May 9 it was time to wake up early and drive La Tempesta to the annual spring meet (NSKs Vårmønstring). It got a set of new Lodge 2HL spark plugs the night before, and it looked like it needed them badly. In the weeks before the very large meet (in Norwegian terms), four Montreals had agreed to park together and add some exclusivity to the Alfa stand, but in the end Lars Ellensen’s Montreal parked somewhere else by coincidence. On the way in I had to stop and take a snapshot of the car with two SMs. There are reportedly 35 of these magnificent grand tourers in Norway, compared to the seven Montreals.

When it was time to leave it was impossible to start the Monty. No matter how much I cranked, it just wouldn’t ignite. We even doused the intakes with naphta to get it to fire, but without luck. Finally two guys gave me a push and the V8 fired right up! Apparently the grease in the ignition advance weights had clogged, and the sudden jolt in the engine made it snap back to idle setting. That’s what I think anyway.

A couple of weeks ago I drove the car to Oslo and left it with Frode Myhr at Myhr Industrial. Renowned 105-series body restorer that he is, he’s going to cut open the sills and the bottom of the B-pillars and inspect it. So far nothing have happened, but all this is supposed to end with La Tempesta being rust free in the sills and the b-pillar drain.

Contrary to what I thought, the drop links aren’t an interference fit to the ARB like the original. They fit snugly on the end stubs, but inside the stubs there are threads for a short M8 x 1.25 screw to lock the droplinks and the bar together. In order to save the very fine M8 x 1.0 threads on the bolt protruding from the spring pan (the spring pan drop link bolts), I took the bolts off the pan and mounted the whole ARB assembly on the floor. I then lifted the assembled droplink/ARB upwards onto the spring pan. Sounds easy in writing, doesn’t it?

The ARB does not appear to be hollow and weighs a lot! I didn’t put it on a scale but my guess is around 10 kgs. This made for a very interesting solitary couple of hours under the jacked-up car, front suspension hanging in the air and everything. The bar is meant to transfer a lot of force between the inside and outside of the car in turns, but this also means the bar is almost impossible to twist or bend even slightly. In the end, I devised a clever (ha ha) method: pressing an oblong wooden block against the bar with my forehead while entering the screws with one hand, pressing the bar against the attachments points with the other. Ah … the stuff we do to be able to drive pointlessly around

For the record: bushings in the drop links are regular rubber ones.

When everything was in place and lined up horisontally, I dropped the car back on its wheels and tightened up the screws and nuts. There are no torque figures for anything on the ARB in the shop manual, so I had to do it by feel. I can’t give any recommendations either since my torque wrench works only one way (it’s the click type) and I’m not really sure they were tightened right.

The clearance between the front of the ARB and the oil sump is limited to a couple of millimetres. I hope my engine mounts are good. The even thicker (30 mm) Alfaholics ARB has a much larger clearance according to Del on the Alfa Montreal mailing list. This is apparently because the Alfaholics bar has different bends and takes advantage of the relatively spacious cavity between the bodywork and the engine bay in front of the sump. In other words: fitting a 30 mm Alfaholics ARB should not be a problem.

Later on the test trip, the oil pressure gauge was actually moving between idle pressure and driving pressure, something it have never done before. The car currently rests in the garage so it can dispense of the oil drops hanging from behind the front spoiler. As I said it’s a mess changing the oil. No wonder there is no rust around the right front side of the car!

Note: the drain plug on the oil tank takes a 14 mm Allen key on my car. This is apparently unusual, but the plug may be changed during the last 40 years.

Then I mounted the brake calipers, bled the brakes and dropped the car on to the waiting concrete floor. La Tempesta is finally back on four wheels after hanging mid air on jack stands for almost 18 months! After struggling with the torque wrench under the now ultra-low car to tighten up the various bolts locking the bushing cores, it was time to do an inspection and take a test drive.

RIght then I spotted another small mistake in the “stupid cock-up” class: the 10 mm nylon spacer in the passenger side spring pan isn’t supposed to be there at all, especially since there is no spacer on the driver’s side!  I should have taken the hint when I took out the spring pans which had a 7.5 mm alu spacer in each. The car had a very pronounced list to the left, and it would obviously become worse once my nearly 100 kgs was in the driver’s seat. Tweaking the steering and wheel geometry with a stance like that is useless, so the spacers had to come off. This is doubly irritating since I already had the spring pan down once to put in a forgotten rubber boot in the bottom.

Then it was time for YET another setback: the front anti roll bar bushings were of the 24 mm type. In other words useless on the 5 mm thicker handling kit bar. Sigh. The microscopic package with 29mm PU bushings is on its way from Classic Alfa as I write this.

Nevertheless, La Tempesta is totally transformed as far as looks are concerned. The top of the rear wheels now disappears nicely into the wheel arches, and the front wheels follows the wheel arch perfectly. The handling kit is reportedly not an exact copy of the old Harvey-Bailey Engineering kit, but is modified somewhat by Classic Alfa. They also claim the car is an additional 15 mm lower than the HBE kit achieved, but the extra millimeters are for looks only.

A real driving report must wait until the steering and wheel geometry is in order, and the front anti roll bar in in place.

The old inner bearings were FAG 30206 and the new ones supplied from Classic Alfa are ASK 30206 A. Outer ones were ASK 32303. All of them were marked “H.Q.”, but I’m unsure what that means.

Driving the races out of the hub turned out to be difficult. The steel was so hard I managed to ruin a nail punch on it, but I brought out a chisel instead and was soon rewarded with a metal-ish clank as the race and the hub separated. After that I managed to have another Homer Simpson moment: I used the old race to drive in the new one, but I completely forgot that both of them of course are an interference fit! The old race stuck in the same collar as the new one, and then it was time to slap some forehead again

Eventually the four races was replaced, and then I drove in the sealing rings at the back of the hub. The workshop manual calls for 65g of grease spread out inside the hubs, and anal as I am I had borrowed a letter weight from the kitchen to find out exactly how much grease that is. I was surprised to say the least. The grease is regular all-purpose Shell Retinax AM since I don’t believe in decal tuning wheel bearings. Castrol is probably making a bearing grease with the letters G, T, X and Z in the name, a checkered flag somewhere on the tube as well as being strangely coloured and costing four times a much. I don’t see the point, but then again it’s probably not made for an almost 40 year old GT.

Once the first hub was ready, I took the DBA brake disks from the shelf, drove in the old, cleaned-up wheel studs and attached the hub to it. The disks are plain, ventilated disks with no drilling and no grooves. Whether grooves and/or holes are of any use with the original brake calipers is probably debatable, but I opted for plain disks when I ordered them back in 2006.

Before I left I played around with the steering arms a bit to try and work out a method to both get the steering wheel centered and the wheels pointing directly forward. The rough eyeball adjustment will be covered in a separate post.

In the race to disassemble everything and get ready for the cold season, I forgot to install new bushings in the upper, rear suspension arm and the lower A-arms. I got access to a 30-ton press for a couple of hours and got it done a week ago, but I had to spend the preceding week waiting for it. All in all it was a pretty unproductive easter holiday as far as the front suspension was concerned, but I got a lot of other things done in the garage. The hub/brake disc assemblies I bought from Thorodd several years ago are now split in separate parts (bolts, hubs and discs), oiled up and sealed in bags. The brake discs are almost unused and might come in very handy one day. Spare left and right wheel bolts are a pretty handy thing to have too.

The first Homer Simpson moment is described above; gathering up all the parts to start assembling, only to find they aren’t complete! Yeah, don’t mention it. The second was forgetting the rubber seat on the bottom of the right front spring. I discovered the missing rubber seat only after everything was torqued up and I was ready to start on the hubs and splash shields. Now I’ll have to carefully lower the spring pans again (after slapping my forehead for a while, naturally), install the rubber and hoist them back up. A time-consuming and somewhat dangerous job

It also turns out I bought two spring pan spacers when I only needed one. Contrary to the GT and GTV, the Montreal should only have a spacer in the passenger side spring pan (on LHD cars, anyway). The driver’s side only need the usual rubber seat and the spring washer unless it has air conditioning installed. Mine doesn’t, so now I have an extra 10mm nylon spring pan spacer lying around.

The torque table in the shop manual doesn’t list the nuts on each end of the “dogbone” (TAV. 75), the ones keeping the lower A-arms attached to the chassis. According to the collective knowledge of the Montreal Yahoo group, they should be tightened to 49 Nm / 5 kgm dry after the car is on wheels (i.e. when the suspension is neutral and carrying the car’s full weight).

Next on the todo-list is mounting the hubs including bearings and races, splash shields and brake calipers. I will also attempt to work out how to roughly adjust the steering before the real adjustment by a professional. The theory doesn’t sound too hard, but it still needs to be done