Alfashark

I'll just jump in here for him - Currently needs some rust dealt to and brakes to be made operational. He's a competent welder/fabricator, so dealing to that shouldn't be an issue. I've suggested that if he tackles the rust in the rockers/sills, he document the process with photos for every little step - Correct?

@AllTorque @cletus Can someone please move this to the wof/cert/reg thread? The man has a 1955 yank tank that was imported roughly 20 years ago and has sat in barns and sheds for most of that time. It's never been inspected and assigned a VIN in that time, but appears to have a mountain of paperwork including the bill of sale from the States, right down to the ID of the container it was freighted here in. Is it a case of packing it up onto a trailer and wheeling it into VINZ in Hamilton and starting the process?

Small world eh? It was a mutual friend of ours that had the red one on OZ rims that I mentioned a page or two back, and likely what gave Paul the itch that his GTIR scratched.

Paul Barnett? He's got a black one that seems to spend 99% of it's life waiting for parts for whatever's broken this time.

Bit of diesel to get the GTIR going in a heli and you were golden. GTX/GTR usually ended in tears, diesel or not.

Relevant if it's a newer car (I struck this issue for the first time on a 2010 model): Sometimes you may need to tell the car via OBD2 device that it's a new battery, so it doesn't try and pump a squillion ergs into the new battery...

Haha! There's an offshoot of the DUBNZVW/VASK group exclusively for VR6 models, known as Wookies in the wild...

VR6+T is a very common mod, and there's shitloads of material online about it, plus a wad of aftermarket bits. The engine itself has been around forever in various configurations - 2.8 12V, 2.8/3.2/3.6 24V. Yes, they're heavy but as mentioned, they've got a lot of meat in the block. 15° angle between bore center-lines, so they run a conventional inline-6 crank and firing order... Add to that the asymmetric port length between cylinders (inlets are on one side of the head, exhausts on the other) and they sound absolutely awesome. 1000hp+ is achievable - Just spend 30 seconds on YouTube looking for VR6 Turbo Mk1 and Mk2 Golf conversions...

Mate had a red one on white OZ rims, about 20 years ago. Had all the go-fast bits, to the point where it was nicknamed "The Paralyser" because at least as a passenger, you couldn't do anything but sit in the passenger's seat with a grin that a belt sander couldn't take off when he'd launch the fuckin thing. Fucked a gearbox trying to do helis like the cool kids in their Evos... I can recall things getting decidedly breezy over 180-ish as the outside air would start to find its way through the door handle cutouts in the door-cards too.

The other thing about the chromate finish is there is/was NO standard shade of green. It varied batch to batch, day to day, hour to hour and I've seen it everywhere from almost duck-egg blue, to an almost brown/black with plenty of tans, khakis and greens in between.

I guess the question is, how badly will they corrode/oxidize if left unpassivated in your particular application? A friend gave his Alfa magnesium bell-housing and transaxle nose a tickle up and then gave them a quick squirt of clear. Last time I saw them they were still bright and shiny.

Yep. I know a lot of folks airbrush using gloss paints and seal everything in with a coat of matte clear too. There's also a huge range of decal softening solutions available too that let them really conform to panel lines or details without tenting or tearing.

Others that I know seem to be a 50/50 split between paint/clear/decal/clear and paint/decal/clear. Your mileage may vary, but 20 years from now you may find the decals lifting/flaking if they don't have that thin waft of clear over the top.

Love your work! Also, outstanding use of Banana for scale...

Come on now, start with a full size one and whittle it down...

If you feel like going back to pleb-spec with a brush, a lot of Japanese armour was painted with brooms... That way you be historically accurate and it hides a lot of sins.

The usual italian crunch on upshift to 2nd? I got very good at splitting scavenged 33 boxes to find good synchro rings, or just taking the one from 5th and slipping it into 2nd.

Stab in the dark, but a povo-spec 147/156 box won't fit?

Ahh true, I'm not well versed in transverse setup Italian cars. I thought there would be a bit more plug and play Latin Lego going on.

What flavour box is it? Would a clutch from something like a Punto turbo work? I imagine that'd be a bit higher rated than one from an NA combo.

Without trawling through banana boxes of car magazines/stick mags from the early 2000s for one of the multitude of articles decrying it, here's a snip from Wiki:

Yes - Perhaps not from the same generation as the Vectra C, but yeah there was a big song and dance about Alfa using a GM core from their modular family and adding their own heads to give it a proper Alfa sound and feel. Seemed to do the trick, it's no Busso, but they make all the right noises and certainly feel right.

If you were feeling brave, I'm sure you could find a stacked Alfa 147/156 GTA and use that - GM 3.2 core with their own heads etc. Should be a lot more room for belt & tensioner changes too.

Found in Saab 9-3 and Vectra C down this end of the globe

It's the shit for painting canopy framing on aircraft models - Let's you run a super fine line that's dead straight and then Boom! Peel it off and you'll be the envy of all the kitset Barry world.