Alfetta GT street car update

["Zacharey Cox (Siemens Business Services Inc)" <v-ntxzco@domain.elided>]

Hey folks, need to update you on my Alfetta GT street car project.
Saturday afternoon I pushed the Alfetta into the garage alongside the
track Alfetta.  Cool, two Alfetta GTs & a Ducati in one garage ;-)  I
opened up the windows to let the interior dry out a bit as the windows
were covered in heavy condensation.  To let you all know, I bought this
car for $50 w/o an engine, it has just about everything else though.
Hatch is totally rusted out & same deal with the windshield.  First
thing I needed to do was replace the bellhousing motor mount as the
original was shot.  I called Ferrari of Seattle at 3:30pm & found they
had a few in stock.  They were closing at 4pm so I had to move fast,
Redmond to Seattle in pouring down rain makes it slow going with all the
bad drivers out there.  I showed up at FoS just as they had locked the
doors & turned off the lights.  They saw me pull up & came to the door,
I asked if I could please buy just this one part.  Well, the boys came
through for me in style & I was outta there in minutes.  They had plenty
of motivation to move quickly as they were in a rush to get to their
Christmas party, that was very nice of them to stay late for me.  So I
head back to my house & I am in the garage wondering just where am I
going to get a press to put the motor mount in.  I remember somebody on
the digest mentioning freezing the part in the freezer overnight to
shrink it.  Tossed it in the freezer for the next day amongst packages
of way too old veggies & fish sticks.  Then back out to the garage to
remove the old motor mount.  Easy I thought:  I heated the outside of
the bell housing around the motor mount with a torch for about 5-10
minutes.  After that I took a large flatblade screwdriver & two good
whacks & it popped out.

The next day I tried to contact a friend who used to repair British
Seagull outboard motors & I knew they would have a press.  Couldn't make
contact but left a message hoping I would hear back soon.  I ran out of
patience & improvised.  I removed the motor mount from freezer & pushed
it into the bellhousing about half an inch.  Then it wouldn't move.  I
tried a mallet, nope.  Then the light bulb went on, I stuck it in a
vise.  It didn't move very much though.  I put some Marvel Mystery oil
in there & then after a few attempts at putting some serious pressure on
it the dang thing finally just went in almost all the way.  There was
about 2mm remaining where the vise would not push the motor mount
through.  Duh!  I'll just use the old one!  Perfect, even better than
originally.

Then I get a call from my friend Andy who came over to help drop the
motor in.  I told him about pressing the motor mount in.  He goes on
saying he has something that would've made that so easy.  Oh well, next
time.  We put the bellhousing on the motor & connected it to the engine
hoist & pretty much just dropped her in there.  At one point we noticed
it would be a pita with the radiator there so we pulled that out & the
motor went right in.  Had a bit of trouble getting the right & left
motor mounts to line up perfectly but we eventually got it.  Then we
installed a few things & called it a night.  Hopefully I can make some
major process on it this week & weekend.  Still need to install the
driveshaft with new donuts & center support, hand brake, shift linkage,
& buy a new exhaust from the down pipe all the way back.  It will also
need new tires.  I'm at $500 total for the car right now & the remaining
parts will most likely push my estimated cost over the $1,000 mark I was
hoping to stay under.  Not a big deal really, I'm sure it will be close.
So that is it for now.  I'm going to try to do something every night
after work this week & get most of the rest of it done this weekend.

Later,
Zach
Redmond, WA

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