ALFA ROMEO it

Restoring It Right:
and fixing a unique
driver proved challenging
but nofdaunting for this
2600 enthusiast
Story and photos by Paul Smith,
Wisconsin AROC
•
Finding
A2GOO
erlenee
Overextending myself seems to be
a recurrent theme in my life .
. Mter Mary Lynn and I had submitted
the offer to purchase a house in
1983, my mother cried after seeing our
find. The plaster ceilings were collapsing,
the kitchen was a reject from the set of
Father Knows Best, and the foundation of
the garage was a textbook example of the
damage caused by hydrostatic pressure.
Finding difficult projects comes far too
easily for me; that is why a 2600 Berlina is
currently undergoing a complete
restoration in our garage.
Wisconsin, Home of Weird AHas
Because the family is growing, I
decided that I wanted an Alfa sedan as my
main set of wheels. Wisconsin AROC is
the home for a number of unique Alfa
sedans. Carol Neumann's 2000 Berlina
looks like it was just driven off the
assembly line in Milano; Matt Tallmage
has a rust-free Alfetta; Bill Schwartz is
restoring a Giulia TI. The Milano and 164
models are also well represented in the
club. My choice was an older car, so that I
could work on the mechanicals without
running afoul of the newly tightened
regulations on emissions control testing in
this area.
After running ads in Alta Owner and
Hemmings Motor News for Giulia Supers
14 ALFA OWNER
and 2600 Berlinas, I decided upon the
2600 because I had never owned an inline
six-cylinder Alfa and I wanted a large
highway cruiser to take me to work.
My largest obstacle was the dearth of
Berlinas. I wrote to Stu Schaller, the
American contact for the 2600/2000 Club
in England and told him my intentions,
but he told me less than 20 known
examples were left in the world! The
following week, Stu telephoned with the
remarkable news that there was a car in
Long Beach, Calif., and he was going to
inspect it.
Stu reported back that the bodywork
and paint on the car were outstanding; the
flip side was that the interior and chrome
were bad and that the head was off of the
engine. Fear not, I thought
to myself. Alfa mechanicals
are robust and this was the
fulfillment· of the joke Alfa
want ad for a car with an
excellent body needing
mechanical work. IThe two
conditions rarely occur
simultaneously. 1
After protracted negotiations
with the bodyshop
that owned the car, Passport
Transport brought it to
Wisconsin on the last day
of June.
Unique Talents Required
Finding a mechanic to work on the
components I couldn't handle required a
uniquely talented individual. The car had
not been registered since 1977 and had all
types of problems lurking in the engine. I
asked my good friend George Meikrantz
for advice and he graciously offered to
come to my rescue. If I had been
composing a job description for the person
to get the Berlina running again, there
could be no better choice than someone
possessing his skills and knowledge.
The first important steps in the
restoration began minutes after the
Berlina was delivered. The local spirits
shop did not stock Italian beer, so we
toasted the event with a concoction from
France. We then put penetrating oil onto
the exposed pistons to determine which
cylinders were seized. When the oil was
still pooled in numbers two and five
several weeks later, it became evident that
the engine had not been run for some
time. Because the engine block was
hopefully not going to be removed from
the car, the next step was to pull out each
of the cast iron cylinder liners, with one
needing the incentive of a hydraulic floor
jack applying pressure from below to
loosen the grip of several decades of
tenacious corrosion.
The local machine shops and the
Berlina became well acquainted in the
ensuing weeks. The engine cylinder liners
had to be machined to remove the ridge
that formed toward the top of the liner
from the metal being moved by the
pistons' upward and downward motion.
Several of the pistons needed to be
knurled, so that they fit the liners better.
The head visited several machine shops
before one was willing to mill it and do
the valve job.
Why was I going to all of the trouble to
have this machining done? The simple
explanation is that, although all of the
work on this car was going to be correct
and proper, parts are somewhat expensive
for the 2600 series and a Berlina, if sold,
was probably not going to recover the
amount spent on it. While the car was
being restored as a hobby and I was not
concerned over making a profit on an
eventual sale, I did have to acknowledge
spending limits: constraints
like having to pay the
mortgage and other
frivolous bills.
I did have to
acl{no\vledge
spending lilUitS:
constraints lil{c
having to pay
the lllortgage
and othcr
frivolous hills.
Obligatory Parts Search
I had thought that the
2600 parts would be
available from one source,
but'it turned out that I
ended up buying from a
variety of places including
Black Bart, Alfa Ricambi,
ALGAR, International
Auto Parts, Al Cortez and