Wayne Abbott's Alfetta windscreen (was: Christopher Bole s' Alfetta parts)

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

Wayne Abbott asks:

"the question I have is about glass.  I've been told that a gasketed
windshield from a later Alfetta or GTV6 will not fit into the glue in
windshield models.  Anyone know for sure?  I would sure hate to finish this
Alfetta project and have a cracked windshield bring it all to an end."

As often, the answer (or an answer) is in the parts book. While the Alfetta
berlinas changed the shape of the cowl (and thus the height of the windshield)
concurrently with the change from glue-in to gasket-in, the entire windshield
surround assembly of the coupes, which includes the flanges that the glue-in
glues to and that the gasket encloses, is the same with both windshields.
There are different headliner details, a molded foam front section on the
earlier cars, but should be no problem having a new headliner duplicating the
one used with the gasket windshield.

On a different but related question, in two previous discussions of
removing/refitting gasketed GTV6/Alfetta windshields I had mentioned retaining
clips which were pop-riveted to the side posts, pinching a rib along the edge
of the gasket, which complicate removing the windshield with gasket intact;
but R.M.Bies said, both times, that he had removed a GTV6 windshield using the
standard popsickle-stick method. After looking at another, my opinion is that
he could not have done so unless the clips had sometime previously been
removed and not replaced, because there is no way one could get a
popsickle-stick near the edge of the gasket, and no way the rib could be
pulled from under the clip with the gasket intact. The late gaskets seem to be
of a much stiffer compound than the soft rubber gaskets of earlier cars, and
the adoption of glued screens on the earlier Alfettas and Alfasuds was stated
to be for improved torsional rigidity of the hull. I have never seen anything
printed about the clips, but it is possible that the clip-retained hard-rubber
gaskets maintain some of the torsional-rigidity enhancement function of the
glued-in screens. Ergo one might consider whether to keep the clips in the new
installation of a later gasketed screen in a previously glued-windshield hull,
rather than discarding them as an unconcerned shop might do. Owner's choice, I
don't know how much difference it would make, but Alfa may have known what it
was doing in using them.

John H.
--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided