Pocher gluebomb '31 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Monza: Dec. 17, Saved the head !

[cobraman]

Good luck with this project Bill. I know you can finish it !!!  : )

[Ace-Garageguy]

 

Bill, you mentioned a deuce in the op...just gonna leave us hanging on that...??

Still deciding on a width-of-frame channel job, in which case she'll get a 6-carb manifold, or a non-channeled car with a heavily zeed frame and a 4-71 blower (I want the induction system to fit under the hood, for a semi-practical "driver" look). Either way, the windshield will be chopped and raked, so outward visibility is already compromised.

This is also probably going to be the dry run for my 1:1 rod. I've had a pair of American Stamping rails for several years, and lately a bunch of smallblock Chebby old-school goodies have been falling out of the sky. I recently also just found a rough fiberglass '32 roadster body for under 3 grand. The universe seems to be pushing me towards a 'glass '32 with a little Chebby in it...but I refuse to build a belly-button car.

Anyway, soon as I decide and mock her up, I'll post some shots.  

[Ace-Garageguy]

Good luck with this project Bill. I know you can finish it !!!  : )

Thanks Ray. I'm going to get the wheels done first, then fix whatever has the body sprung, and also fix the bent parts in the suspension. At least then she can sit on her feet and look like something. I'll see how much time that will leave for paint before November. 

[Ace-Garageguy]

So...while waiting for the wheel jig and a few other parts to come in the mail, I decided to start on reworking the engine.

Got the distributor and coil off OK, but unfortunately the cam covers got glued on with a fair amount of what seems to be tube glue. 

I've got to get them off in order to put a polished finish on them, and an as-cast finish on the head itself. It looks like the photo-etched saw blades I bought are going to do the trick, but it's really slow going so as not to damage the flanges more than I can easily repair.

Also unfortunately, every one of the distributor cap terminal bosses is cracked where the brass bushings were pushed in, and the cap is also glued to the base...which is also cracked.

I think getting the head apart, repaired, and finished will be about the most challenging part of this, and I've already got more time in working on the cam covers than I initially thought it would take to redo the whole engine.

Oh well. She sure is a beauty, in spite of the difficulties. 

Thanks again to Harry for providing the link to English instructions that will download properly too. 

 

Edited June 21, 2016 by Ace-Garageguy

[Ace-Garageguy]

Well, the wheel jig arrived. I'm glad I bought it because it's really a time-saver compared to what I would have had to go through designing and making one on the lathe with no dimensions to work from other than some buggered wheels.

With the jig came a bag of other parts that look like what was left after the model was thrown against the wall. Seriously. The plastic wheel parts that came (and that I don't need) are covered in tube glue, obviously applied with no regard for the instructions. It kinda boggles my mind that somebody could idiot-trash one of these things, as they're so expensive.

I'm seeing complete sealed kits of this car on offer for anywhere between $470 to over $1000 now, so I guess I ought to be very happy with what will probably be a total investment of around $300 by the time she's done.

[Harry P.]

I'm seeing complete sealed kits of this car on offer for anywhere between $470 to over $1000 now, so I guess I ought to be very happy with what will probably be a total investment of around $300 by the time she's done.

I got mine for $550. Not sealed, but completely intact and unstarted, all parts trees still in the bags, all small metal parts bags still stapled to the box flaps. It's like someone opened the box, saw what was inside, and decided it was way over their head, and sold it. To my benefit...

[Ace-Garageguy]

So far, other than ordering a few parts and reading thru the instructions, the only thing I've done is starting to remove the heavily glued cam covers from the head. As mentioned above, I want to do the covers in polished aluminum, and finish the head itself to represent as-cast alloy, with a grainy finish. No way to do it with everything assembled, so...

Happily for this project, I bought a set of .007" thick photo-etched saws a while back. It's slow going but it looks like it will work and leave me enough meat on the flanges to repair fairly easily.

 

[Ace-Garageguy]

After several hours of gently and patiently sawing away at the heavily glued joint between the first cam-cover and the head, I got it free with relatively little damage. The other one is going to take a LOT more work. Not just heavily glued, but glued on backwards.

The first one really wasn't too bad, all things considered. The tool I used is a photoetched saw from Model Car Garage. It's only .007" thick and really is magic...if you go very slowly. The second cam cover took at least twice as long to get free, but again, came off finally with relatively little damage.

The flanges on both cam covers and the head are going to need some repairs, but that's OK.

I didn't want to get too deep into this thing until I'd made certain I wasn't going to have to buy another head. Now I'm a happy guy. 

 

 

[Cato]

Nice save on somebody elses lousy work Bill.

[Ace-Garageguy]

Nice save on somebody elses lousy work Bill.

Thanks Cato. Overall the workmanship on the model as-previously-built wasn't too terribly bad, but the heavily-glued cam covers really dampened my enthusiasm for restoring her. Now that the engine is essentially workable, she's getting at least a few minutes out of every bench session.

What strikes ms as most odd is that the covers are designed to be removable to show off the cam-lobe and drive gear detail (the real engine has knurled knobs that fairly duplicate the kit-parts appearance, by the way), the builder DID do the step of installing the metal bushings in the covers for the hold-down fasteners, but then decided to simply glue them on...defeating the whole purpose.

Though the damaged parts are available separately occasionally, I really wanted to save what was there...but in the process of getting them off, I did bugger several of the cam lobes.

Adding some .010" styrene stock to the damaged flanges and then "machining" the areas flat again will fix it, and gaskets made from card-stock should look about right.

Whether I opt to make new cam lobes is still a question.

[Twokidsnosleep]

Looks like you are doing an engine machining!!!!

Grind out those cylinders while you are at it

Much of the engine won't be THAT visible so the buggered parts may actually be hidden in the rest of the engine....or just keep the cowling closed 

Edited December 22, 2016 by Twokidsnosleep

[Cato]

Thanks Cato.

Whether I opt to make new cam lobes is still a question.

Bill, you have a PM.