My Sud Super restoration project

[Alfasam]

After 20 years in storage I finally found time last year to make a start on the restoration of my 1978 1,286 cc Alfasud Super. The car has just 29K miles on the clock, a mint interior and near perfect external trim - making it a suitable candidate for a concourse standard restoration.

It is now a very rare car, as I believe it is probably the only right hand drive 4 door Sud left in the UK that was supplied in the bright yellow known as Giallo Pozzuoli code: AR127.

This car has been owned in our family since it was purchased new by my late Grandfather on August 1st 1978 from Mario Deliotti, a well-known Alfa Romeo dealership for many years at 295 Stratford Road in Birmingham.

I was given the car by my late Grandmother in 1989 after my Grandfather passed away because she was well aware of my enthusiasm for all things Alfa Romeo. Being a car mad but rather impecunious student I carried out a quick low-cost refurbishment to the parts of the body shell where after 9 years use rust was beginning to show. I had the A pillars and rear sills patched up by a local body shop and had the lower half of the car below the window line re sprayed, doing the final preparation and masking up myself.

Outwardly it looked very good and was shown at NAD several times in the early 90’s. However, I always knew the bodywork repairs were temporary and that it really needed the body shell repairing properly, particularly the A pillars and rear sills, after which a full re spray would be carried out so that the various panels were properly colour matched.

As it was before work started in 2015:

I started work in June last year by dismantling the car - starting with lights, bumpers external trim before moving on to remove the interior.

The next part of the restoration was planned to take place at a friends accident repair work shop in North London. Once there the glass and mechanical parts would be removed from the shell so everything, the shell included could be repaired and refurbished as necessary to rebuild the car to a high standard of finish and originality. The suspension parts, front sub frame, fuel tank etc. would be sent away for media blasting and powder coating. All fixings would be sent away for cleaning and re plating. Inevitably, many new parts would be required to re commission the car mechanically after such a long period unused.

[Alfamet]

Love it!

[Alfasam]

With the car safely delivered to the workshop the next stage of the restoration process could get underway:

Job number one was to remove all the old paint and surface filler from the areas of the car that were repainted in the early 90’s in the first refurbishment. Once this was done the various panels, doors, boot lid and front wings which are all rust free could be prepared and etch primed for repainting at a later date.

The rest of the shell would be stripped of paint and surface filler below the window line and checked for corrosion, accident damage and other defects. Once these were identified and photographed the top side shell would be given a light coat of etch primer to prevent surface corrosion forming as this project was to be an infill job for the workshop and as a result was expected to take 6-9 months.

The underside of the shell was covered in a thick coat of black Dinitrol rust proofing. As there was surface rust under the factory applied PVC stone chip coat and I was planning to completely repaint the shell underneath in body colour the old coatings would need to be removed to bare metal. I decided not to dip the shell having heard various reports of problems with the longer-term leaching out of fluid residues and the problems presented by the alloy block inserts in the 900 series chassis legs which can be dissolved in the dipping process.

In order to gain easy access to the underfloor I purchased a low-cost ready-made rotisserie from Mark 2 Mania a Ford Escort restoration specialist. All that was required to fit the mounting brackets to the Alfasud was a simple modification to the Escort bumper pick up points.
Once we had the shell up on the rotisserie frame it could easily be rotated around to access the underfloor and locked in place with a large bolt that slots through matching holes in two discs: one fixed to the mounting bracket and the other to the end of the supporting frame. The frame was reasonably sturdy and we never worried that it was overloaded by the approx. 275 kg weight of the bare Sud shell.

The underside was cleaned with hot air guns (like a giant size hairdryer) and lots of scraping with a variety of decorators tools in order to get all the nooks and crannies clean, back to bare metal or sound factory primer wherever it remained in place. Generally, the floors and chassis rails were very good and not many new problems were found. However, the bad bits - A pillars and rear sills were in need of professional attention.

[junior]

Good effort at getting the underside that clean. Looks very good to me.

Must be very pleasing to have the family connection. Hope all keeps going well.

[alfasuddriver]

The underside looks very well preserved, great project. What's next for the underside of the car now it's all cleaned up?

[Veesix75]

Looks like it was very solid to start with, the colour suits it well.

As you say, very rare car. Well done.

[KevJTD]

nice to see another sud getting a full resto, and even better to see a 4 door one at that, long overlooked by the fashionable Ti models, great stuff and a long family history make for a brilliant story.
another one to keep an eye on

[alfachris]

Very clean under the old sealer. Keep up the good work

[Kegsti66]

This is going to be a fantastic car when you have finished it.
Like Kev said, great that it is a four door, and along with Gary's Tix coming along nicely I predict in the next few years Alfasuds will take the concourse wins at NAD.
Looking forward to following your thread.

[Johnboy]

Very solid Sud . Looking forward to following the resto

[Alfasixnut]

"The frame was reasonably sturdy and we never worried that it was overloaded by the approx. 2750 kg weight of the bare Sud shell."
Great to see another quality restoration thread started - and with the complete family history.
I'm sure the rotisserie will not be overloaded as the bare Sud shell is probably a lot closer to 275Kg??

[Alfasam]

Well spotted. You should become my Editor Alfasixnut! Should have read 275 kg as you say

[Alfasam]

The work to get the underside clean was completed in August 2015.

Unfortunately, my friend's business which had been trading since 1982 had been served notice by the landlord as the lease was up for renewal and the landlord wanted to redevelop the site for housing. I had known about this for approx. one year and it was always unlikely that my friend's workshop would be able to complete my project all the way through to the repainting stage. With the business closing at the end of August 2015 the primer coated shell was duly transported to a container storage facility until work could start again.

Knowing that work was going to grind to a halt before too long I got busy searching for a top quality welder/fabricator. These skills were going to be needed to deal with the problems with the A pillars and sills plus approx. ten other small areas of corrosion and poor accident damage repairs that we had found whilst stripping back the shell.

After much searching I was lucky to find a suitable workshop through researching old restoration threads on a well known Ford forum. Having visited them in October and inspected their work first hand I was confident they could do the job properly and booked my car in with them, but had to wait until late January this year for my slot to become available in their work program.

The shell was duly delivered to the workshop in the second week of the New Year 2016 and work immediately got underway.

First job was to attend to the problems in the A pillars and the large brackets under the screen surround corners that on a factory original car form a short open box section with the wing rails at either side of the battery tray. In order to do this it was decided to remove, clean out and remake the outer panels of the wing rail box sections (this area is foam filled), then remake the A pillar outer panels from the edge of the door aperture forward before making and installing new corner brackets.

Looking at the pictures you can see how an outwardly good looking Sud can actually harbour a fair bit of hidden corrosion and that to repair the bodywork of these cars properly you have to be willing to dig deep to get rid of the corrosion in box sections and between multi layered panel joints.

Cleaning up the N/S A pillar and outer wing rail panel area ready for repairs:

[Alfasam]

Reconstructing the N/S A pillar:

The fabricator made a repair panel that is an exact copy of the factory panel pressing in this area. He joined it on the vertical corner with the door shut so as to make an invisible repair. I am amazed at the skills of the fabricator. He really is an artist when it comes to working with sheet metal

Here are some pictures of work progressing:

[Veesix75]

That hand made piece is incredible, top work.

[Alfasam]

Reconstructing the outer wing rail panel:

The fabricators attention to detail in following all the correct contours and weld tabs on the panel edges is first class

After which the fabricator remade and fitted a new corner bracket before putting the repaired screen surround corner back in place. The corner bracket has been reconstructed to look like the factory original but without the cut out/hole in the centre of the bracket that was often partially foam filled when the cars were new, leaving a helpful aperture into which mud and road salt could be deposited - ready to rust out the top of the A pillars and the screen surround. This is a complex area to repair properly because it involves multi-contoured panels built up in layers, all spot welded together. The section of the screen surround that was removed to gain access to the top of the A pillar was repaired and welded back to complete the work on this area.

The fabricator spent about a week and a half reconstructing the N/S A pillar, wing rail and bracket sections.

[Alfasam]

Cleaning up the O/S A pillar and outer wing rail panel ready for repair panels to be fitted:

Just look at the foam in the box section - what a terrible idea that was So pleased it is being removed as the fabricator works his magic

Compared with what I have seen other forum members having to deal with this restoration is relatively easy as only the outer panels are damaged and we still have enough of the original panel contours and factory assembly arrangements in place to be able to copy them with a good degree of accuracy.

[Alfasixnut]

Well spotted. You should become my Editor Alfasixnut! Should have read 275 kg as you say

Thanks for the offer! I've obviously got too much time as a "keyboard warrior".
Anyway your fabricator/restorer is doing a fantastic job and the posted pictures will be a great help to others doing similar jobs. You must be very pleased with the progress

[Alfasam]

Progress is very good at the moment, I think the shell will be finished in another 2-3 weeks if current speed is maintained. By Alfasud standards this was an excellent shell and worth spending money on. Hopefully, when its all done it will be as good as new again.

As the fabricator has removed the old layers of bodged repairs it has been very interesting to see the detail of exactly how these cars were constructed in the body shell department. So much is hidden in box sections and multiple layers of spot welded panels that I can imagine that it would be very difficult to know how to reconstruct things if it was all rusted away, especially as almost no new old stock panels are available to repair the structural areas of these cars now

[Alfasam]

Reconstructing the O/S A pillar and outer wing rail panel:

We managed to find the correct Alfa Romeo M6 captive nuts for the A pillars and wing rails. They are quite unusual as they have small stainless steel wings on the sides. I found the company who make them in Italy, but you have to buy a minimum of 1,000 at a time at a cost of approx. £130. Not really economically viable for such a small item. With further searching I found a supplier in the UK that offers them in small quantities, they are called AE Car: Link: https://www.aecar.co.uk/collections/fix ... 6105465985

[Alfasam]

Fitting the wing rail outer panel and the corner bracket:

Work has speeded up now and the O/S took just a week to complete Very pleased with the fabricator I have elevated him to genius status now that I have seen quite a lot of his work and some very complex and unobtainable panels and repair sections recreated in wonderful detail

Here is some more of the fabricators work:

[Alfasam]

Here are some pictures of what a factory original car should look like in the A pillar, outer wing rail panel and corner bracket areas. You can see how accurately the fabricator is following the factory panel profiles and construction methods on my Super resto, albeit I think he is improving upon them as there are a lot more welds in place on the Super now and everything is painted before the next part is added.

The factory original box sections have no paint in them and are literally pre programmed to rust out in anything but the driest climate. The car in the pictures, a 76 series 1 Ti, was imported from hot dry South Australia in 2011 and had some localised rust issues, but luckily not in the A pillar area. Once the dirt and surface rust in the pictures was cleaned off only the screen surround corner needed repairs. This well preserved car has provided a very good reference point for the fabricator to work from.

[Alfa_Japan]

Smart looking colour!! Nice to see that not only TI vehicles are being cherished. The speed of your panel beater is tremendous, looks amazing. The cage nuts in stainless steel are readily available on E-Bay Germany as well in all kinds of sizes. I think one of the members here posted a link in a different thread half a year ago, he used them for the front bumper attachment, those are M8.

The A-Pillar reconstruction is fabulous, very nice!! Please note that you are changing (increasing) the stiffness by closing the square/rectangular hole which is originally within this box section below the windshield frame. Of course no estimation can be made about what the impact will be, but it may lead to cracks in some sections if it was designed to the limit in the seventies which is not very likely. I can image that you're closing this box section because the original design with the big hole in the centre is a water/sludge retainer.

Interesting project, keep up the excellent work and the speed!

[KevJTD]

really neat work being done there, and a clue as to how long these jobs take to make such an accurate reconstruction
very nice indeed

[Kegsti66]

First class job being done there.
Your fabricator is a true craftsman.
So has he got the '76 ti there as well as your car?
Credit to you all for making this a truly Super, Super.

[junior]

Amazing standard of work shame so much will be hidden, but will give you great confidence for the future that it is not rotting away out of sight.

Thanks for the photo's.

[Spacenut]

Utterly speechless with admiration. A full rotisserie rebuild with amazing fabrication skills, this is going to be superb!

Actually, for someone who claims to be speechless I have written quite a lot. But this rebuild is worth a few accolades, well done

Lauren

[dralf1965]

Great job there.
Nice to see another sud with the same rear window dealer sticker as my 1976 Ti. Mario Deliotti.
Does yours have the thick silver stickers on sill tops inside the front doors?

[Gary Orchard]

This looks like it will be a fantastic car when all finished - you are lucky if all the original interior is all in mint condition as well.

Lovely to see that proper craftsmanship still exists with your fabricator - I would love to know how some of those shapes are made from a flat bit of metal !

With that expanding foam stuff I think you may find that the main front chassis rail box sections, the rear chassis box sections and maybe the bulkhead under the battery tray down to the mountings for the front suspension wishbones (where the steering rack fixes to) may be full of it as well.

Good luck with the project and look forward to seeing it all done

[Jules]

Looks great nice to see its being done properly.
I know what your going through just coming to the end of my project!Good luck.