1972 Alfa Romeo GT Track Day Build!

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Originally Posted by Dr G

Love these cars. As a lad I lived in the South of France from 1970-1973 and remember seeing these cars ripping around, along with Alpine-Renault's and the like.

Cool story. Don't see hardly any of these ripping around these days. I don't think I've ever seen one on the road besides mine, and I've been living in Italy for almost 8 months.

Frankly, not much vintage iron still on the road here.

Ciao,

Scott

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Doors are off. Was able to do this myself since they're pretty light. Doors themselves are in very nice condition; no rust or repairs evident.



All the suspension is off but the majority of it needs to be cleaned and inspected.

Took off the panels at the rear of the front wheel wells. One is in need of repair. Can't believe how much dirt was behind them. Found an old rusty wrench back there, too. Given the amount of crud back there, surprised that this area did not rot significantly. Having said that, there is some rust on the driver's side at the front of the rocker that will need some attention.


Trunk lid is off. It's pretty rough.

Spare tire well has some rot that will need to be fixed.



Area under the windshield wiper transmission will need some work. Not going to be easy forming new metal to replace what's rotted.





Tried to do a bit of paint removal by scraping with a razor blade. It was easy enough to get the paint off but not the tan primer. Under the primer is a coat of bondo - pretty thick in places.



Interior is all out, of course. Front floor pans will need some patching.



Engine compartment needs a good cleaning before I start with the paint removal.

[aidanfancystang]

last summer i was in the province of calbria and found a guys stash beside a market, he had quite a collection going but they were all rusting away, even in
Italian i heard i will get to them some day.

[WSSix]

Nice progress!

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Paint removal will be with razor blade and heat gun. Should only take a few hours to get rid of 90% of the paint. Rest will have to be done by hand, with stripper, or media blasting.



Just heat up a small area with the heat gun and it scrapes right off in big strips.



I have some Picklex on order to treat the bare metal for now. Need to source some epoxy primer locally.

Got the tar scraped off the floorboards. Several hours worth of work with the heat gun and a scraper. Using dry ice to freeze it would have been easier, but by the time I figured out how to say "dry ice" in Italian and figure out where to buy it locally, I would have been done.

About halfway done in this picture. I need to get after the caulking/seam sealer with a wire brush on an angle grinder. I also need to finish getting the tar residue off the floors - I'll use diesel or some sort of solvent to get down to bare metal.


Floors look pretty good under the tar, but I did uncover a few areas that may need some attention. Wouldn't have found these if I hadn't removed the tar.



Just for sh*ts and giggles, I weighed most of the tar that I removed. Came to 20 lbs. Not earth shattering, but a step in the right direction.



Need to get the undercoating scraped off the bottom, too. Plan at this point is to patch the floors instead of replace them entirely but will make final decision after I get it all undercoating off.

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More progress. Got about 1/3 of the car stripped down to the metal.



This is the worst spot on the passenger side rocker! Hooray! Driver’s side is the same. Rockers are notorious for rusting out on these cars and it did have some bubbling in the paint here.



Not such good news on the quarters. Both have been replaced and they were brazed in.. Passenger side has some accident damage, too -- bondo was 1/4 and thicker in places. Will need some hammer and dolly work. What would y’all do about the shoddy looking brazing? Cut the quarters off and re-attach? I’m assuming the bronze melts at a lower temperature than steel, but can I melt it out like lead without warping the panels?







I'll end up using all sorts of paint removal methods by the time I'm done -- paint stripper spray/liquid (found some at the local box store; works ok), sandpaper on DA grinder, media blasting, etc. However, I'll strip the majority of the paint with heat gun and razor blade. Very easy to clean up.

Thanks

Scott