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Hi all,

Last time I was here was 13 years ago, when I had a 156 V6 Q-System. Unfortunately, the car met its end in a battery fire and I moved on to other European marques.

Last year, I saw a red 159 on the road and it was still such a stunning car that the image stuck with me. I started my hunt for a 159 Sportwagon but those are extremely rare here (only one unit in the country). End of last year, a lovely low-mileage unit came up on sale in the right colors (red with tan) and, after more than a decade, I'm back in an Alfa!

My car is a 2011 159 2.2 JTS Selespeed. It was sold as a 'Sport Pack' here and came with a lot of stuff from the TI parts bin - TI brakes and suspension, TI black alu interior trim, TI red gauges, and power seats. Car had 68k kms and had been lovingly cared for by the previous owners. The front and boot badges weren't even faded yet!

I'm starting this thread to document the restoration process of the 159. It will be my spare car and I intend to restore it back to a like-new condition. And at the same time, modernize it a little so it doesn't feel as dated compared to modern cars.

Here's a pic of the 159 parked next to my buddy's 156.

 

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Headlight cleaning and refurbishment.

The left headlight came with a nasty stone chip so I decided to clean and refurbish them. I sent out the lights to a professional shop to clean the reflectors, polish the lenses, and apply protection film. But they wouldn't touch the chrome bit for fear of damaging them so I had to tackle those myself.

Meguiars Cleaner Wax makes easy work of tough water marks on the chrome, and Molotow Liquid Chrome pen is perfect for touching up the stone chips.

(Sorry I can't seem to arrange the images in the sequence that I want)

 

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Would love to see more pics of the car, it looks great. Nice work with the lights too!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Car's in paint right now. Even though the paint was in relatively good condition for its age, it did have some scratches, chips and dings. So I decided to just respray the whole car to avoid any color matching issues. Pics of the process will follow soon.

 

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Car is fresh out of the spray booth. Even before polish the quality of the work is apparent.

Just a teaser. I really like the Rosso red with tan leather.

 

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Is that a black roof combo...

Yes I decided to go gloss black on the roof because it lowers the roofline of the car and makes it look a bit sportier.

 

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Repainted calipers in body color, and wheels in Alfa Romeo Quadrifoglio Black Metallic.

 

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Looks stunning OP! Have you seen the LED running light project? Any thoughts?

You're referring to the halos on the six headlight rings? I've seen it but undecided on it. I may just do a halo on the foglights and keep the headlights without halo.

 

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I went LED's on my Spider for the six headlights and put halos in the fogs. Pic attached but hard to see the halo's in daylight
View attachment 966806

Yeah that's kinda the direction I'm thinking right now also. LEDs have come a long way - they're much brighter, much cheaper, and I don't need to modify the headlights unlike with HIDs.

What brand LEDs did you use? Any feedback/watch outs?

 

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Fair point about beam pattern. I don't have to go thru a MOT here, but I also don't want to be that a-hole on the roads blinding people. I've seen enough LED replacement bulb reviews to believe that things have improved a lot and beam pattern is largely due to misaligned bulbs (installer didn't bother to adjust them to the 9-3 position).

They're cheap enough that I don't mind experimenting. Will check beam pattern when it's done, and if it doesn't work I'll just go back to halogens.

 

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Getting its first polish. Wheels came out darker than I expected, gonna need to see it in bright sunlight.

 

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The paint looks fab. I can’t help but think a set of TI wheels or QV style wheels in gunmetal grey would bring it more up to date

I've always loved Alfas with 5-hole rims, so not really a fan of the TI multispoke look. Would love QV wheels tho. Maybe something to plan towards.

 

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That is nice! Are those 19s or 20s?

 

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No no, this is all good discussion. I'm learning new things. Keep it coming!

 

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Car is undergoing interior restoration and cleaning now. Getting rid of the sticky melted soft-touch coating on the trim pieces, fixing up the sagging roof liner and putting in some sound insulation on the doors.

In the meantime, I've been surfing for Alfa bits n bobs. I'm just a sucker for pretty things.

 

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Sorry for the lack of updates. Car went straight from paint to interior refurbishment, and then straight to the tint shop where it's at now. Tons of pics are coming, I promise.

At the interior place I decided to put in some sound dampening to make the 159's interior a bit quieter. I had read a lot of reviews and videos on butyl sound dampening mats and most of them said the improvement was slight. Some videos even used dB meters to compare before and after with only a small decrease in interior sound. And that was with the entire interior completely covered with the mat.

I didn't want to spend that much on this as I wasn't doing it for hifi audio quality so I decided to go with a cheaper foam material. The shop told me they had been having good results with it for many years and it was 2-3x cheaper than dynamat, so I thought why not. I installed it on all 4 doors - two layers, one on the outer door skin, and one on the inside - and on the firewall.

Surprisingly the effects were noticeable. Not a huge amount of noise reduction but you can definitely hear the difference, exterior sounds are a bit more muted. The main purpose for me was reducing noises from the engine bay and there was significant improvement there. For the price I paid I'm pretty happy.

 

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The leather of the car was in decent shape when I got it, except for the door cards which had all come loose. But the soft-touch plastic was all melted and scratched. Naturally I had to get that sorted.

Below are before pics.

 

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These are the after pics.

 

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At the same time, I added some extra bits to spice up the interior...

 

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Installed some cheap China H7 LED bulbs into the headlights. Cost me £7 per pair. I'm surprised how well they worked out. Very bright and clean cutoff lines. The trick to get clean cutoff is to make sure the bulbs are aligned so that the LED chips shine at the 3-9 o'clock position.

Hopefully they last. I've had them in for a month now but only just had the chance to take some pics of them in the dark.

 

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Will the heat from the lights not melt the plastic tie wraps?

Good question. I shall have to wait and see. I remember with my old 156 the bulb spring clips get misplaced all the time and the mech used zip ties as well. Hopefully they are OK here also.