Pouln

Well, I think you are way to modest. To me you are one of master coach builders on this forum.

Mr C, this is loooking really wonderful. I noticed on the first picture of the last post a somewhat wobbly underside of the door. Might be the light or is it because the innards of the door are missing?

Thanks Chas, that's true, it will indeed be quite dark inside. I'm going to try your suggestions on some scrap leather, but I'm not sure I will execute on the real seats.

Thanks CC, hmm yes, I'll think about weathering. It can still be done easily, however I'm not confident in my weathering skills yet. If I don't do it, then it is an old car with newly upholstered interior. And high time it was to re-upholster the interior. Next step is to cut the leather to get it ready for the piping. After cutting you need to smear glue on the surfaces where the leather touched the seat, because you will pull the glue away when you remove the excess leather. The piping needs to be smeared with glue too. After it has dried you can glue the piping easily to the seat, remove the excess glue from the piping and continue the process with the leather that goes around the base. Since the top of the backrest will be visible through the rear window, I had to put leather there too. I added piping to the backside of the backrest too. All this leads to the following: The tube next to the seats is the contact glue I used. It is Bison Kit, transparent contact glue.

So, how did I do the seats? First of all I cut small strips of the thinnest foam I could find and glued that on the seat. I strictly only use contact glue because when using this there is no risk in bleeding through the leather. This is the rubbery type glue that you put on both parts, let it dry and then press the parts together. It is ideal for the leather work and also for the carpeting. If some glue gets on the leather, no problem, you can roll it off with your fingers. It will not leave a trace. If something goes wrong, you just take the part off, put new glue on and try again. So I smeared the glue on the seat surface and the underside of the leather. I then stretched the leather and folded it such that I was able to bring together just a small area in the middle of the seat. This series of pictures are actually of two different seats. Easiest is to smear the glue on the underside of the leather just on the middle part of the leather. You then don't run the risk that the sides get stuck before you want it. Then I smeared the glue to the first wing In the picture below you see the polished bone that I use to press the leather in the grooves of the molded seat. Make sure you stretch the leather before you press it down. When doing this you will get the smooth surface that you see on the pictures. I stretched the leather to the max to pull it around the corner of the seat. No creases around the corner because of this.

Thanks Harvey, actually I'm just catching up with the current status of the build. Therefore it looks like I'm going through this build with lightning speed. In reality all this happened from the beginning of summer till now.

Thanks, Keith

Thanks Roy, I agree with your remark on the wheatering of the radiator support. I have smoothed it out a bit, so you don't see the individual pencil lines. I didn't take a picture, so I can't show the final result.

On to the seats. This is the result of my work on the seats Later on I will show in more detail how I did this. I'm quite happy with results, this being the first set of seats I ever upholstered.

A few shots of engine and firewall

Here is a picture of the radiator. It did leak in the past, which it shows. I used coloured charcoal pencils for this. Afterwards I have blended the calcium deposit on the crossmember a bit to make it more natural.

Hi Wayne, yes, I am indeed already a bit further. I will post like this until I reach the current status. From then on I will most probably move in to "dead-slow" gear (hopefully forward). The firewall is indeed too far back. I brought it forward as far as possible, but still it is not correct. I'm still debating (with myself) pro's and con's to move it further forward.

Talking about seats. Left and right seat are molded together. One part for the backrest and one for the seat itself. I seperated them as I wanted to have two separate seats. Seats will be done in leather. But that's for later I hope I do not overfeed you with pictures. If I do, let me know. Anyway, again, if you have questions or comments, post them here.

In the picture above You could have seen that the gap between floor board en crossmembers was closed. But that is a much wider gap to close on the other side of the crossmember. The kit does not include a floor board section for that location. I scratched it from brass sheet. Moving the floorboard forward brought some more consequences: 1. the location of the seats changes in relation to the floorboard 2. the same goes for the oil cooler at the under side. I will deal with that later on.

Next up is the floor board. As delivered in the kit, it is easy to make it look like a metal frame with rubber matts on the floor. It would then look like this: Welll, this is a luxury car, so rubber on the floor is a nogo. Woolen carpeting is needed. I'm quite leased with the result so I decided that extra leather piped overrugs were needed. As I moved the firewall forward (about 1 cm), I created some challenges for later. One being the gap between the crossmember and the rear of he floor board, but also the way he floorboard fits into the "wings" that are attached outside the chassis rails. These wings are unique to the Coupes, as their bodies are wider than those of the spider, the Monza and he Muletto. The gap between crossmember and rear floorboard will be dealt with later, but there is also a gap between gearbox and the tunnel in the floor board. I filled that with a rolled piece of brass sheet. Below you also see that I changed the gear lever knob to match the hand brake handle and that I filled the gap between gearbox and tunnel. In order to completer the carpeting I needed to take a pattern And then on with overrugs This is how it looks with the body trial fitted

LOL, no those aren't guitar strings but spun tin wire. But later on you'll see that I have stolen some from him. I've seen that he has more than enough, so he won't mind.. Thanks for the compliment

Next up is the firewall. I trial fitted it to decide where it should be located. For paint I tried something new Then I decided that the firewall needed a lot of additional work. In the pictures on the DVD I found some examples that I thought would be nice to scratch, so, here it goes: The ribs on the firewall are wrong, they should be inward instead of outward, so I shaved them off and made new ones. In hindsight I should have used a smaller mill, but this is what how it turned out. I also filled the holes for the wires in the firewall as they were not located correctly. I drilled new holes but in hindsight (again) the top rows of holes are too high. All these errors are put in my box of experiences, so that next time I can do better. Next time? Yes next time. I have 2.5 Pocher Alfa wrecks in my stash. At least one of the will be a highly detailed rolling chassis at a certain point in time. The wiring is again spun tin wire, this time in yellow and in green. As I said the holes for the top rows are a bit too high on the FW. I scratched new fuse boxes.

As the handle of the handbreak lever split in one of the previous attempts to build the engine (didn't have the Paul Koo DVD at the time), I scratched a new one. This Alfa being a luxury car, I decided that it should be done in white instead of the normal black. Was an easy job. I furthermore painted a bit more bolts and other protrusions on the gearbox in brass. I was wondering how the carburator was operated from the accelerator pedal. Came up with the following solution (executed using solder wire, some spun tin wire.

Ok next is the rear axle. Primed it and decided it should be black, but not too shiny. I also painted every bolt on the axle. Didn't have too much to clean up on these parts. By the way, I had troubles with the Vallejo primer. It was nearly impossible to sand it. It acted more like a rubber layer that was being rolled up than a primer that was sanded. I have bought a bottle of Stynylrez primer. Funny stuf but works really well. It is very thick and I therefore use it with a .4 needle, but the result is great and it does allow proper sanding. I also did the front axle. Sorry, I have no pictured but the end result. I painted all the connecting rods in black. I will paint all the plated stuff either in a suitable colour or in clear. Don't want to find those parts discoloured or worse in a few years time.

Is looking really good, Wayne. I also saw different material and colours on the engine. I understand that the race blocks were built with different material compared to the touring versions. Anyway, I'm not looking for a 100% copy of the truth. Mine maybe a bit to shiny and yes I do need to wheather the block more (thanks for the hint, Chas). Roy, thank for your comments. I agree that the colour does look quite strong in the picture, but I think it has to do with the flash. I will inspect this part again and tone it down a bit, if needed.

Thanks, KPnuts

Thanks Chas, for your kind words. The source of the wires? I visit Sweden a few times per year as my son lives there. Both in Malmö and in Stockholm there are hobby shops called Slöjd Detaljer. These carry what would be translated into spun tinwire. It is very thin tin wire that is wound around a pliable kernal. They have it in several colours and two thicknesses. http://www.slojd-detaljer.se/kategorier/skapande-pyssel/smyckestillverkning/tenntradsbroderi/spunnen-tenntrad-pid2747 The site is in swedish, but there is a button at the bottom to switch to english. Come to think of it, I also bought very thin leather cord (0,5 and 1 mm) there. you will see it later in this build. Hope this helps.

Some more pictures of scratched parts. Here is an overview of the engine sofar: I've added a bit of colour to the exhaust manifolds as I thought they were a bit too bland. I also connected the tacho cable to the left valve cover. Next up was the petrol (gas) tank. I made new side covers to hide the seam from the eye. The latter part will be totally invisable but I still thought that it needed something extra. Hence the nails. Well, that's it for the day. I hope you like it. If you have questions, comments or critique, just let me know.

thanks guys. Have been working on the exhaust manifolds. I started with the metal ones I bought. They were way too shiny. I added real copper seals at the cooler side of the manifolds and bolted them together with the exhaust pipe headers (hope I have the terminology right). Next I started on oil lines. This is an interpretation and thus may or may not exist on real cars. I used solder wire to form them, scratched some clamps to hold them.

I scratched a new distributor bottom on the lathe and updated the distributor cap (apologies for the quality of the pictures) As you can see above I allowed some engine grime to collect at the bottom near the sparkplugs. I also made sure that we would not have oilspills later on. Few steps further: Next picture shows the copper seaal between the compressor house and its base. I created that by using a copper wire, drilling 2 holes at the back of the compressor housing, bending the end of the wire and put it in one hole, pulling the wire around the housing and inserting it in the other hole after which I fixed it with a bit of Cyano. After that I flattened the outside surface of the wire a bit. I've used some different metallic paints on the components, painted the bolts at the bottom in brass (totally unnatural of course, but did it to get some colour). Boltheads on the compressor were painted black. Th pipe from the waterpump upwards has a weird stance so I changed that (gave me troubles with the inlet manifold later on). I also painted some levers, needles and other stuff on the carburator in brass. Ok, that's it for today. Any questions or comments, let me know.