Are 33s allowed.....?

Parisien

Moderator
Messages
34,927
Oh the joy of restoration !!!!
Fully sympathise with you Dicky....I've had a s2 RS turbo in welders for 10months and still not happy with the work done on it ! if I had the time I would do all the work myself. Some people don't get the restoration thing.
There is no excuse for bad workmanship when it comes to spraying....The spray shop I use gives me a call all the way through the job, asking if I would like to come down and check the work carried out. This gives me piece of mind, plus it gives you faith in another mans work.. Good luck in pursuing them for compensation, keep up the good work :happy:

10mths........is it being done when they aren't busy or an open ended scenario?

Will be starting my own project next month( see link below and weep.....;)...)......a few months stripping down and preparation then welding etc.....will be taking 100s of photos!


p
 

stradaman

New Member
Messages
376
In those pics, looks like they have painted Schultz underseal, or something similar, then painted over. The amount they used, would indicate, poor metal underneath!!
Similar thing, happened to a friend of mine. He wanted to fit a full bodykit to his car. He asked for a full bare metal respray, in Lamborghini yellow, which had a gold flip in it.
Not only, did they not bare metal it, they did not cure the paint in the oven. Never looked right from beginning. Paint alone, was near £3k!! I told him, he was being ripped off. 3 months after, paint started peeling, revealing original colour!
Cue court case!!
As for brake upgrade, can you use Alfa 164 brakes?

Andy.
 

conaero

Forum Owner
Messages
34,688
Can you give me do e advice about which model to go for?

I fancy the Perm 4 bit is it any good?

What should I be paying for a tatty but solid example?
 

dickyb

Member
Messages
433
Could start a whole new thread on electroplating but in a nutshell its a fairly complex process that takes a while to master but once you've got the hang of it you can get really good results. I got my kit here for about £60:

http://www.gaterosplating.co.uk/Zinc-Plating-kit.php

the great thing about this company is that they provide really quick and useful advice if you're having any problems and can generally get everything sorted for you.

You need a bit of time and a lot of patience to crack it but its well worth it if you're doing a detailed restoration.

Yes you can use 164 twin spark discs on a 33, they're a straight fit as are the ones from a 145/155 but you need to make caliper brackets to space out the standard ones or to fit different ones. You can fit 145/155 calipers but I think while you're messing about with making brackets you may as well get some nice calipers, I'm looking into Tarox 6 pots at the mo, hoping to pick some up on ebay as they come up from time to time. Unfortunately no one does an off the shelf kit for the 33, I spoke to Tarox and they admitted that it was probably about the only car they didn't make a big brake kit for!

Conaero: the Permanent 4 is awesome, a little slower than the 16v 2wd as its a bit heavier but handling is fantastic. Unfortunately there are a lot of parts that are NLA for the 33 and particularly the P4, the most inconvenient of which is the prop shaft couplings which tend to wear quite quickly.
In my opinion probably the best bet is a non-cat 16v as they're nice and quick but not as complex as the P4. Unfortunately finding a good 33 of any type is not easy these days as there aren't many left and there are a lot of rough ones out there. As with any Italian car of a certain age they can rust pretty badly and the youngest ones are now 18 years old.

You could get a P4 with an MOT for about £600-700 but it would be pretty tatty, really good ones go for about £2.5k so not that much more. I think there are only around 35 P4 s left in the UK so finding one won't be too easy.
You could get a pretty nice late 2wd 16v for £1000-1200 and a minter for about £4k but you won't find many of those. (oh dear that puts everything into perspective for me, the SPL process alone was over £3k! doh!)

May not be many more pics for a while as I'm waiting for the bodyshop to finish their work, once that's done I can post pics of the rebuild, I dismantled the car over 3 years ago, hope I can remember how to put it back together! Here's the wiring loom!:
wires2.jpg
 

dickyb

Member
Messages
433
Hee hee thanks Parisien, I didn't take as many pics as I should have done as I thought I'd start putting things back together after only a few months but here we are over 3 years later....I've got a pretty good memory and can remember how most of it goes together, besides all the best mechanics and car restorers have loads of pieces left over after doing a job :)


that's been for sale for a while so they might take a cheeky offer. 1.5 is a bit slow but still quite a characterful engine. You can pick up a 16v unit for about £350 which would pep things up a bit. I think the most important thing is that the body is sound as that's the expensive bit, anything mechanical can be sorted fairly cheaply. If you look hard enough you can sometimes find Recaro interiors for about £200 which would improve things a bit. Being an early car means that uprated shocks/springs etc are fairly easy to find (if that's your thing), strangely there wasn't much of that sort of thing available for the later cars (post 93), I guess its because they didn't make many of them
 
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conaero

Forum Owner
Messages
34,688
What I think I will do is finish the Opel GT off then make a track weapon out of a 33P4.

There are a host of engines available from the Alfa stable, my preferred being the Arese 3.2V6.

Is it possible to mate this to the P4 system or is it better to go the blower route to the boxer lump?
 

dickyb

Member
Messages
433
I guess anything is possible but fitting a V6 won't be easy. Bear in mind that the boxer engine is longitudinally mounted with a transaxle and that the 3.2V6 is transverse with the gearbox on one end so it would be a lot of work to fit one in a 33. Also bear in mind that the boxer engine is fairly compact and is mounted very low down, anything taller would give you clearance issues with the bonnet. Both supercharging and turbocharging the boxer engine are possible but would need serious work, low compression pistons and ecu mods for a start.

Supercharged car

http://www.blsautomotive.co.uk/photo_gallery/alfasud_33_race/pages/Alfa 33 Race 3_jpg.htm

http://www.blsautomotive.co.uk/photo_gallery/alfasud_33_race/pages/Alfa 33 Race 4_jpg.htm

Turbo:

33turbo-engine.jpg

The standard 16v motor can be tuned quite effectively with a capacity increase (1800cc can be done quite cheaply, anything bigger needs a new crank for a longer stroke which starts to get very expensive). Have a look at some prices of tuning parts here:

http://www.ahmotorsports.co.uk/index2.htm

Ouch! That's why some have gone down the Subaru route, buy a dead Impreza for a grand and fit engine and drivetrain into a P4, it can be done fairly cheaply if you can do it yourself but mods need to be made for bellhousing and the wheelbase of the car is increased slightly due to prop shaft etc being a little longer. It works well but bumpers need to be adjusted as wheels sit further forward at the front and further back at the rear.

Big problem with having 170bhp plus is that the gearboxes tend to self destruct as they weren't bulit to handle that sort of power, it can all be uprated of course but at a cost.
 

mjheathcote

Centenary Club
Messages
9,046
I can remember having to change the propshaft coupling on my P4, i sold it soon afterwords for the deposit on our first house.
It would have been 15 years ago now, you would have to be very lucky to find one without major rust issues. My door bottoms where shot. Rear panel. Even the bulkhead was rusty. All at 6 years old!
I can appreciate the sentimental issue, i bare shelled my first car, my Stag, still have it 26 years later.
Cheers.
 

Scarlan

New Member
Messages
179
Funny how everyone on here seems to have the same taste in cars.
I used to have a 33 Permanent 4 that was my pride and joy, complete with "ALFA33" number plates.
At one stage I had an Alfa 33 Ti (86 model), the 91 Permanent 4, a 1999 156 Twin Spark and the Lancia Montecarlo.
For some reason a lot of people thought that was too many cars.
I have since parted company with all three Alfas referred to above, but I still wish I had kept the Permanent 4 (I suppose the 159 Q4 I have now is the logical progression).
So few P4's were sold in Australia so it made them very collectable.
The only bad point I recall was if you let the boot drop too quickly it would over travel and crack the rear light assembly!
I am sure mine came with factory fitted AC and of course it was RHD, but I don't recall it being very effective in our Summer.
As for going down the road of a full bare metal restoration; that is a very special disease indeed:
 

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dickyb

Member
Messages
433
Lovely Montecarlo!

Anorak on.....

Quite right, Autralian cars were fitted with a/c but this was done on import at the dealer. I guess your control panel looked like this:

rfac.jpg

If you pull the knob off you can see its actually just a modified standard heater control panel.

rfac2.jpg

I actually managed to get a copy of the installation manual supplied to the dealers for retrofitting a/c.

The factory fit system's control panel looks like this and has a little snowflake light that comes on when the a/c is on:

ffac.jpg

It was never fitted to RHD cars as it requires a different engine loom that controls the idle when the compressor is switched on. It couldn't be fitted to RHD cars (everything is the other was around). I had to find one of these LHD engine looms and make an a/c engine loom using a combination of LHD & RHD looms.

The factory system also differs in that it has a frost sensor, electronic thermostat and a different evaporator incorporating electric motors rather than control cables. It also has a different set up for the expansion valve and coolant cut off systems and slightly different condensers. The horns were relocated on the factory fitted cars too, a normal car has them in the wheelarch on the left, a factory a/c equipped car has them relocated onto the front crossrail.

Evaporator unit is different:

Dealer retro fit system:

rfevap.jpg



Factory system:

dfevap.jpg



Here is the wiring loom just for the a/c!

box of wires2.jpg

I'll put my anorak away again now!
 
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conaero

Forum Owner
Messages
34,688
Right, P4 it has to be then and I accept your proposal to add force induction rather than swap the lump out.

Dicky can you pop your anorak back on and list the model history and revision for us for the P4 and which one is best. ACwould be nice but not escensial.
 

mjheathcote

Centenary Club
Messages
9,046
I think there was only one model regarding the P4, and that was the P4!
Back on the a/c, it certainly sounds like mine was a dealer retro fit. Okay it was very simple with the fridge stat, and if I recall correctly just a button on the dash to switch it on or off, but when I got it recommisioned it worked very very well...maybe because I set it on the stat so it was nearly freezing up with ice crystals virtually coming out!!
Honestly unless you find one restored, or lived a life in a garage never used in winter, it will be rotten.
The more this thread grows the more I remember mine, it was really turning brown at only 6 years old, I just can't imagine what another 15 years would have done to it.
It was a fantastic drive though, the number plate was H815BFM, can alway remember for BFM stood for Bloody Fast Motor!
Cheers
 

dickyb

Member
Messages
433
ok anorak back on....

the P4 was introduced in around 1990 in the UK, earliest ones were on an H plate, the model didn't get any updates for the UK market and was discontinued here in late 1992 so the last UK cars would be on a K plate.

The model continued in Europe until the end of 33 production in 1994, cars after late 1992 were badged as Q4 and had the same updates as the later 2wd versions sold in the UK eg catalytic convertors, and later style 16v wheels. Most European versions also had abs which was not available in the UK (the abs componentry was fitted where the battery would go on a RHD car and Alfa Romeo didn't bother to engineer it for RHD markets. Interiors were slightly different to UK P4s, Recaro seats were an option and were the same half leather/alcantara versions that the last UK 16v cars were fitted with. Standard seats were similar to those fitted to the European Imola model (half leather/alcantara but not Recaros). Most European versions did not have a sunroof as fitted to UK cars and many did not have headlamp washers or front fog lights.

Also available in Europe were permanent 4 wheel drive versions of the lesser models e.g. 1.3/1.4/17IE including sportwagons.

The last versions of the 33 had much better rust protection that the earlier ones, they were fully galvanised but that doesn't mean they're immune to rust, just less rusty than earlier cars.

A/C on UK cars is very rare, I would imagine only around 15-20 cars were fitted with it, I've only ever come across about 4 of them.

I would say if you really wanted a 4wd car you'd be better off with a Q4 from Europe, they'll be higher spec, later version so less likely to rust and probably easier to find, assuming you don't mind LHD. Although advertised as a P4 this one is actually a Q4

http://www.autoscout24.it/Details.aspx?id=214441105

As for finding one in the UK, it won't be easy, unfortunately 33s reached banger money a while ago so lots have been scrapped or abused, values are creeping up again now and there are a few out there that have had money spent on them. There was a track prepped P4 on ebay a while back but I think it sold a while ago.

The supercharger option is do able but there's nothing available off the shelf so you'd have to develop it all yourself. With bigger pistons, cams , adjustable pulleys, a decent exhaust and a custom ECU you can get around 200bhp. I guess that lot would be around £2.5k. If you want to go to 2 litres you're looking at about £5k plus and potential for about 250bhp.

Unfortunately H815BFM is no more, last taxed in 1999 :(

Anorak off, I'm a bit of a saddo aren't I?
 

mjheathcote

Centenary Club
Messages
9,046
I have a vague memory of Autodelta developing a supercharger kit for the boxer?
Maybe never happened.
 

Woody

Member
Messages
2,802
Was the 33 front or rear drive (not perm 4 obviously)

I am thinking about buying a 33 or a Sud as a play thing/track project.

Has anyone managed to shoehorn in the V6?

Maybe a 75 as its RWD might be a better way to go, anyone know how they handle?
Matt,

Onew of the first track days I ever went on, the guy running it had an Alfa 75, V6 as his track car. He too me out in it.....it was stripped, lowered, roll cage...thats about it, IIRC. He ran rings around most other cars on the track! From then on, I've always fancied one....but never had the space to persue it.

I think it would be great fun.