Re: Giulia coupes, GTAs, GTVs & The Best Bits

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@domain.elided>]

Ah, Joe Garcia gets to the *real* heart of the matter when he says:

> I'd like to know which car would make the best platform
> to have all of the "best bits".

Short answer: Don Baker's car.  If you were there at the ARA tech
session last Saturday, you know what I mean... if not, keep reading.

Long answer: It depends on what you consider best, what you want to use
the car for, and what you're willing to do or have done.  I'm working on
exactly such a car, answering exclusively to myself about what I want. 
I'll try to make it clear when I'm giving technical considerations and
when I'm being hopelessly, unabashedly subjective.

Technical considerations, then: regardless of what a number of
well-intentioned 1750 partisans have said, the 2-liter (in 1974 trim or
earlier) gives the most useable over-the-road performance, particularly
if you are using it as the base for a performance-oriented engine.  The
added torque from relatively low in the rev band makes even the stock
2-liter (at least in '74 form) the best choice for an everyday driver. 
And if you tweak it (you did say you wanted the "best bits," right?),
Don's 2L revs like my 1300, but with about twice the output.  With the
nitrided crank, largest displacement, stock 10.0:1 pistons and liners
available from the '91 and up Spiders, and other features, the 2-liter
is the best base for building a high-performance Alfa engine.  (And
subjectively: anyone who comes away from an Alfa 2-liter thinking it's
rough... has driven a car with a bad engine. :-)

Other technical considerations: starting in '74, the GTV and Spider came
with a limited-slip differential.  If by "best" you include doing what
these cars are meant to do, then you want the LSD (no, not THAT kind,
Dr. Leary!)  Early cars have a 4.56:1 rear axle ratio, later ones have a
4.1:1.  The numerically higher gears give better acceleration but demand
higher revs at highway speed; the numerically lower gears give up a
little acceleration but reward with lower revs in operation.  Your
choice -- you want to go fast quickly or quietly? :-)

Speaking of gears, save a thousand dollars or so to have your
transmission's gears lightened.  There may or may not be a performance
advantage to reducing the rotating mass, but there's a *definite*
advantage in how fast such gearboxes shift; it's got to be worth half a
second in the quarter mile, certainly over the usual Alfa
shift-wait-graunch anyway shift approach.

Now, what to put these parts into?  As long as we're bandying about
weight figures, the early GT 1300 Junior seems to be the lightest of the
steel-bodied GTs, at 2049 lb (which I think is 940 kg, and I hope I've
remembered those weights correctly).  I think the contemporary
step-front 1600 is only a minuscule amount heavier, and I'm not sure how
much of that is trim and how much is the engine -- and here I'm assuming
that the 1600 with its longer stroke also has a taller deck height, and
that may or may not be the case.  But the cars from the Sixties have
floor-mounted pedals; I agree with Les Singh, who likes them, but many
don't, and they do complicate the upgrade to 2 liters as the standard
2-liter uses a hydraulic clutch versus the Sixties-era cars'
bellcrank-operated mechanical clutch.  The answer there seems to vary;
when I first started researching the job of putting a late engine in an
early car, I got almost as many different answers as I got responses. 
The one I like best: use the 1300's flywheel and ring gear (with some
machining to fit it to the 2-liter crank), use the 2-liter's
bellhousing, and have fun.  

Induction: my personal opinion of the Spica is very high right now.  I
love its responsiveness, its absolute absence of flat spots, its
relatively easy cold-starting, and its out and out performance.  Yeah,
the Webers on my '67 GT Junior are cool -- in fact, at one point I said
that I specifically bought that car because it *didn't* have Spica on
it.  I recant, and the hot-rod motor I'm planning for it will have Spica
(with a stop at Wes Ingram's to get the fuel cam set for the other
internal mods I make to the engine).  All Alfa race cars since March
1968 used Spica, so it even has historical provenance.

Brakes: I don't plan to put power brakes in my '67.  I like the pedal
feel of the unassisted brakes, but then my family tends to have thighs
like mature oaks so I don't generally need any sissy power-assist, at
least not on cars like the Alfa which have superb brakes in the first
place.  Still, the later cars have dual-circuit brakes, which gives a
margin of safety compared to the single-circuit system on the
Sixties-era cars.  I'll keep the single-circuit, floor-mounted brakes,
but I may well make some changes to the calipers and rotors, going to
larger/later units for increased braking capacity (to go along with my
increased engine capacity).

Interiors: purely personal taste.  I like the Junior's seats, but that's
probably because I've got one.  They have a more "Sixties sports car"
look to them, rounded barrel-section backs and simple, longitudinal
stitching across most of the seating surface.  However, the so-called
"flying buttress" seats used in the '69 1750 (and no other year, I
think?) are *very* cool, and are certainly the most unusual seats in any
Alfa.  My '67 has the flimsy fiberboard dash, which is somewhat hokey,
but it has *gorgeous* Jaeger gauges... and since it's not a U.S. car
originally, the gauges are printed in Italian (ACQUA, OLIO, BENZINA).  I
happen to be VERY sensitive to gauges; one of the things I liked best
about my '74 Spider was the Jaegers in the instrument binnacle, and one
of the things I like least about it are the later-model gauges in the
dash console (which came from a later car, along with the leather seats,
courtesy the previous owner); I guess it's worth it to have a crack-free
dash, but one day I'd like to put back the correct gauges.  I'm fussy
about typeface, that's part of it.

Wheels: mostly subjective.  I like the look of the turbina wheels on a
GT, they're original for the early Seventies (the illustration in my '74
Spider's owner's manual shows them) and, at 5.5" wide, lend themselves
to 185-60 or 185-70 tires, which are a good size in a modern
high-performance compound for a 2000-lb car.  However, my turbinas will
go on the Spider; my Junior has some "period aftermarket" 6-spoke star
wheels by Stil-Auto, which are very attractive and historically
interesting.  (I've toyed with the idea of putting those wheels on the
Spider, as they're date-coded from the early Seventies, and I've never
seen a Spider with six-spoke stars on it.)  Going for wheels that are
too wide (more than about 6.5") on a GT will conflict with the rear
wheel arches, and besides, they *feel* so good on moderate-sized tires.

Styling: *completely* subjective.  I happen to have been dropped on my
head while looking at a GTA, I guess, so the step-front nose with its
big dinner-plate headlights just tears at my heart.  I won't go so far
as to put in fake GTA doorhandles, though...  I'm not interested in a
fake, just in having the car I see in my dreams.  Which is really what
it's all about: just pick one you like.  Any GT(A,V,Jr) is on my short
list of best-looking cars ever built by anyone, anywhere, any year.  I
can think of maybe three, maybe four cars that I think are better
looking than a 105/115 coupe, and they're pretty much all $100k and up
(since you ask... '63 250 Lusso, 275 GTB/4, TZ, and Aston-Martin DB4
coupe -- which isn't as out of place as it may look, given that its body
was designed and constructed by Touring :-).

Easiest?  If all I wanted was the performance, I'd start with a '74 as
it's got the good header, the LSD, hanging pedals, etc.  But if I wanted
to do things the easy way, I'd buy a Mustang or a Camaro.  That's not
meant to be a criticism of the '74; I *like* them well enough... but I
like my friend Sharon's kids too.  I feel completely different about my
*own* kids.  My step-front 105 GT is like that.

In short... you can't really go wrong with any of these cars, especially
if you're willing to mix and match (and if your state's smog laws permit
it, of course).  

Whew -- let's see if this breaks the 10k character limit!

- --Scott Fisher

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