Exposed by a heat gun and putty knife: some of the expected bad bits....

 

proper wheel fitted..

 

That does not look too bad, my GTV ia a lot more crispy...
Love the orange, go back to that if you are going to restore

 

..Love the orange, go back to that if you are going to restore

Yes, I must say, the orange is beginning to grow on me. I may go with a black interior though, instead of the cream.

I'm also considering going with an Alfaholics fast road suspension set-up and then fibreglass doors, bonnet, spare wheel well and boot lid (they need welding/replacing anyway) as well as lightweight windows and wheels. If the budget allows of course.

 

Congratulations doc on this rare acquisition! Finding a Giulia Sprint or 105 GTV (or any 105 for that matter) for reasonable money that is worthy of restoration is becoming increasingly difficult. Fear not the little bit of rust you have found - albeit, only so far. It all very repairable. Take your time to strip it carefully and have the body repaired properly - and in original colour - especially for a proper matching numbers car. Harry at Panelcor in Ottery is very good - as is his pricing. Investing in a good body repair job will be worth every cent. It is also the hardest thing to get right or fix later. The rest of the car is fairly idiot-proof and almost every part is available new (OE suppliers) or new manufactured parts and depends only on your patience for saving and/or the depth of your pockets. It also has the virtue of being the one Alfa model that is still 'accessible' and surprisingly, appreciates in value with the money spent of the right stuff (rare music to an Alfisti ears). I saw a series I 1750 in original condition recently that was complete but would require as much exterior and interior work that changed hands for R180k and a race GTV with a wave in every panel that sold for R250k! Both were local sales to local buyers. Mad money! Have fun:thumbu p::thumbu p:

 

Thank you juniorgtar. On the one hand I would like to think about going as original as possible, but I'm leaning more towards improving the car somewhat because I want to drive it as often as possible. It looks like one can find really excellent quality fibreglass body parts. I'm sure someone like Harry can do a really excellent job so that one will never be able to see what is steel and what is fibreglass on the car. I'll keep the original parts of course if someone ever wanted to revert back to a stock car.

 

Nice find, docafrica. I'd love to know where you found your new rims. They look great.

 

..I'd love to know where you found your new rims..

Unfortunately they are the original steel wheels from my other car (made wider by the previous owner). Wish I did have another set. I just needed to see how they looked on a gtv with the higher rear arches. They've been media blasted and then painted in opulescent silver.

 

I share Alfaklassik's skepticism about the benefit of fibreglass parts. Unless you are wanting a race car or GTAm replica there is little advantage in having say, f/glass wings because the steel ones are also part of the GT's structural integrity. Also not much is gained by f/glass bonnet and bootlids apart from the anti- tin worm effect but these will definitely detract from the vehicles value. Lastly, the GT's are light cars to begin with at -+900kgs so the small advantage of using f/glass is really only race car applicable. However, I do believe that the fast road suspension kits (Alfaholics & Classic Alfa) do materially improve the cars for two reasons: 1. These cars suspension components, springs and bushes, tend to be as old as the vehicle's age (40 plus) years, and replacing these with new standard ones (again from Alfaholics & Classic Alfa) to achieve an 'as new' suspension is only marginally cheaper than the fast road kits (which includes the front ARB and proper shocks) 2. The fast road kit does improves the cars handling in ways one can feel which enhances the joy of driving them.

 

I share Alfaklassik's skepticism about the benefit of fibreglass parts.... The fast road kit does improves the cars handling in ways one can feel which enhances the joy of driving them.

It turns out that the fibreglass panels are actually quite expensive. I'm not sure how much weight one needs to save anyway before really feeling a difference. For road use only I suppose you are probably right: I may just go with new steel door skins, new sills and repairs on bonnet and boot in the end. I'd be better off spending my money on a suspension kit.
Does anyone have experience of how the kit from Alfaholics compare with the one from Classic Alfa?

 

I cannot offer a comparison because I have only used the Classic Alfa kit with Koni adjustable shocks. Handling was a massively improved compared to the tired old parts. But note that I changed everything - every bush - front and rear and, all front ball joints, and the rear light weight trailing arms. So it's probably not accurate to attribute the improvement only to the fast road kit. I did note that the (spring length dictated) ride height of the fast road kit was very low with a bias towards a lower rear end. So the car was very low which looks good but proved impractical given the low sump. So I ended up using Ali front spring pan shims and a single thick Ali upper shim at the rear to raise the ride height and give the car a flatter rather than rear biased stance. This worked for me. It's not too stiff and really works on track with very little roll. I deleted the rear ARB as is common practice and the OE one is the thickness of a hairpin anyway.

 

....I have only used the Classic Alfa kit with Koni adjustable shocks. Handling was a massively improved compared to the tired old parts. But note that I changed everything - every bush - ....the car was very low which looks good but proved impractical given the low sump...

Thank you very much juniorgtar.
I'm wondering if the Classic Alfa kit is perhaps closer to the kit C from Alfaholics. Perhaps kit B from Alfaholics won't be too low.
Did you use many polyurethane bushes rather than the original rose type?
Also, do you have adjustable top suspension arms?

 

I believe both companies offer an uprated bush kit that provides poly bushes only where they deem it a valid upgrade and normal rubber ones for the rest.

It's also worth contacting which ever supplier you choose to ask their opinion on what you're planning to buy. Often they don't recommend certain of their suspension components in isolation (for eg the GTA quick steering arms aren't recommended unless you have rose jointed certain bits). But if you're just going for a kit B/C and some bushes you're safe of course.

I'm at a very similar point with my 2000 GTV. Have it up and running and have been driving it for a few weeks now. Had it not been for the recent UK bank holiday I would have got my bits (uprated rubber kit and a few other odds and ends) while I was over there.

 

I believe both companies offer an uprated bush kit that provides poly bushes only where they deem it a valid upgrade and normal rubber ones for the rest.

It's also worth contacting which ever supplier you choose to ask their opinion on what you're planning to buy...

Thank you DriveRSA. Good to know that I can rely on their expertise. I'll most likely go with the equivalent of the kit B with whatever else they recommend that compliments it. I'd love to be able to take her to the track on the odd occassion, so to be able to do some fairly basic adjustments easily, would be great.

 

Regarding your post in the For sale/Wanted area, I believe there are many steel Ford rims that fit the 105s with approx the correct offset. Fiesta/Focus springs to mind if I recall correctly. They look about right too.

An interesting option is also a steel look-a-like 15" rim from a Citroen C5, which is in fact an alloy weighing in at 4.5kg/rim. Very hard to come by though.

 

Thanks, drive RSA. I've actually posted something about the lightweight C5 rims a year or two ago. They have a good offset but are a bit narrow for my liking. All other rims will require centre bore enlargement, which I'm a bit hesitant to do. (Edit: I see I posted it in 2012 when the price was R900 per corner [emoji21].)

Peugeot and Citroen are good options due to their offsets which are normally in the 20s. The Citroen Berlingo has 15 inch steelies which look okay while the Peugeot Partners has 16 inch 4x108 which are relatively wide and have a good offset. But again, the centre bore needs to be enlarged. And then there's the weight of a large steel rim .

 

No. The price put me off a bit since the wheel was a bit narrow. I got 15 inch GTA replicas instead. Which I sold to someone on here. I have a bit of seller's' regret now after struggling to find rims but they went to a good home. Difficult to find 4x108 rims that look suitably classy but aggressive too. The GTA wheel is perfect.

Check out the Peugeot Partner wheel. Aesthetically it's not bad, at least on the vans I've seen. But the weight!

 

Oh. The 105 centre bore is 70.1mm. Bigger than everything else.

 

Peugeot Partner 15 inch. Not bad, hey?

 

Yeah those are nice, would suit a 105 coupe!

 

Yeah. I'm getting them. I actually forgot that I found an engineer who does centre bore enlargement for cheap.

 

Thanks for the info re the centre bore.

Where are you getting a set of those from?

Yeah I recall you saying R900 for the C5 wheels. I thought that was very reasonable albeit 5 years back. How wide are they? I've taken the view that I'm going to stick (within reason) with the tread width I'm running at the moment on my 14" vega's. The engine isn't worked at all so significantly more contact patch is just going to make it less fun at this stage.

 

There's a specific part number for the lightweight C5 wheels. Give me some time to find it.

Edit: 5401.L7 or 5401.Q8. According to some sites, the early C5 rim was recalled due to it cracking. I assume that would be the L7 code (relative to later Q8).

 

Hehe. I'd love to hear the updated price. Apparently they were really cheap before people discovered their weights.

 

No luck so far in getting hold of Citroen C5 wheels without a Citroen VIN number...

 

They asked me for a VIN last time too. I told them what it was for and the guy looked it up. I think I had another part number ready at the time. I'll try tomorrow.

 

Almost ready for removal of engine, gearbox and prop shaft. Then off to media blaster...

 

...

 

Ready for next phase...

 

Nice progress there! Looking good.

Did anyone get any feedback on the Citroen wheels?

 

Thank you.

Citroen has not been helpful at all in my case. Luckily I found a set of original 105 2000 gtv wheels. Contemplating getting them widened to 14 x 6.5

 

Engine and gearbox removed

A little more progress made... Delivered to the media blaster after removal of the engine and gearbox.

 

Cleaned up... apart from the damage on the nose it looks like it had a knock on the right rear fender at some point. Overall not bad for a 47 year old Alfa though.

 

Very happy with the job on the widened steelies

 

Getting ready to weld

It's been a long time since my last post. Happy to report some good progress. Also very impressed with the level of skill and attention to detail.

 

....