rostri

[JHertzman@xxxxxxx]

In AD 7-065 Dana Loomis furthered the rostri/etc thread, but started with
"John Hertzman has chased down the errors - -" I don't mean to chase errors, I
do mean to feed grist to the mills from which the juices of collective
insights may congeal. I think Dana knows that, and I hope others do.

I did indeed know that he was referring to the cross-section of the bumpers,
not their material thickness, and said so, quoting his saying "had plain
bumpers with a thick cross-section." I assumed Ben Dixon meant the same. The
later bumpers are visually lighter, certainly. My taking the micrometer and
magnet to both was to satisfy my curiosity; the stepnose/early 1750 bumper is
formally closer to the ones on my Giulietta, which had been both thick and
chromed, and the bumper on my stepnose is dull enough that I had wondered if
it might be a light alloy. My first new Alfa, concurrent with the Giulietta,
had been the Super, and the difference in those bumpers at that time, side-by-
side, had been striking.

I did mention that the alloys used in the early and late bumpers were
different, the early one being nonmagnetic, and the late one magnetic. I had
assumed that Dana knew that the late bumpers are stainless steel, not chromed
(which I had not been certain about with the stepnose). It was Dana who had
written "Rust, rust and rust" in response to Greg Morgan's question about the
GT Veloce, "What are the major problems with these cars to look out for?" and
I took it for granted that if the GT coupe bumpers were rustable we both would
have known it.

I hadn't noticed the "rostri" term before, neither "rostri cromati" nor
"rostri gommati", but d'A.-T. does indeed refer to 'rostri in gomma' for the
all-rubber overriders on the Giulia Nuova and to 'rostri gommati' for the
rubber-faced overriders on the second-series 1750 coupe, but more generally
refers to rostri ai paraurti. Rostri (rostrum, platform, beak) seems a less
direct term than the 'guarda' which Alfa uses in the couple of parts-books I
checked. The 'beak' meaning of rostri seems related to the German 'horn' for
the same part, stossfangerhorn. The Alfa parts books use 'protezione' for the
rubber faces on the guards, reasonable enough.

Neither Dana nor Mark Battley nor I could give a reason for the different
parking-light locations on US- and World-market coupes, (and Berlinas,
Alfettas, GTV-6s) though Dana was close (but apparently wrong) in writing "It
would not have been dictated by US regulations at the time." Topo tells me
that the reason was "compliance with our FMVSS108. Parking light below bumper
as 108 says no closer than 4 inches optical center to rim." That may not
explain the logic behind 108, but it at least gives us someone to blame.

John

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End of alfa-digest V7 #66
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