Page Sixty-Nine - Alphie's Night Out: A Tale of Two Tickets

 

Here's a fun little story.

Sometime in the 1970’s, Alphie drove two people to see a movie at the Von Lee theater in downtown Bloomington Indiana, and you’re wondering how I know.

During Alphie’s tear-down (six years ago!), I found two halves of two cinema tickets, one in the console and the other inside the seat upholstery, and because I never throw anything away, I kept them.  Yesterday, I found them again and got curious...

Laying the right half of ticket number 00427 over the left half of ticket number 00428 (hence I brilliantly deduced that Alphie had two people on board), gave me the name of the theater chain, “Kerasotes Theatres” (French spelling no less), which I sent out into the internet ether.  Wikipedia tells me that Kerasotes had “957 screens in 95 locations in California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, and Wisconsin at one point.” 

Two tickets overlaid to make one, impressive detective work, no?

Under the chain’s name, it says “Von Lee #2, Bloomington In.”  Back to the interweb, three of the 957 screens were at the Von Lee where Alphie ferried his crew to a movie on screen #2 sometime in the 70’s.  OK, the “sometime in the 70’s” is a guess based on the $1.50 admission, which also fits the time when Alphie still prowled the streets. (And Kerasotes didn't own the Von Lee until 1976.) Someone laid out $3 for the entertainment that night, afternoon?

Alphie had a 1979 Illinois license plate somewhere in the boot or a box, but since Illinois didn’t attach any meaning (still doesn’t I think) to the letters and numbers on their plates other than to identify the vehicle and its owner, I can’t tell where in Illinois he was registered.  Illinois shares a border with Indiana, so it’s plausible that Alphie crossed state lines to take in a flick.  Anyhoo...

Back to the web for some information on the Von Lee theater:

Von Lee Cinema
517 E. Kirkwood Avenue,
Bloomington, IN 47401

The Von Lee in the 70's, judging by the cars

Here's what the web had to say:  “Built in 1928 as the Ritz Theatre by local investors, it was renamed Von Lee Theatre and reopened in 1948 by the Vonderschmitt Theatres chain.

A spacious single-screen cinema now converted into three smaller auditoriums, the theater rests on the border between historic downtown Bloomington and the Indiana University campus.

Purchased in 1976 by Kerasotes Theaters, operations were suspended on May 28, 2000 as the company built two multiplexes in the city, making the historic cinema expendable to their operations.

Now owned by the City of Bloomington, the Von Lee Cinema has been the center of various community efforts to reopen or otherwise "Save The Von Lee", and it has also since been designated a historic site.

However, it has remained dark and the auditorium has been demolished. Offices have been built on the site, while the front section of the theatre serves as a restaurant.”

Per Wikipedia, “After Kerasotes the theater, it faced the wrecking ball. There was a quick response from City Council member Chris Sturbaum to save the history of the Von Lee building.  He lobbied the community to save it and developed a plan to do so.  For many weeks after the first notification of demolition, Sturbaum set up a display about the history of the Von Lee and its significance to Bloomington. He even began to show movies in front of the closed building. Eventually the plan worked and the Von Lee was kept intact.”

The Von Lee preserved with the new offices

All this from two old ticket stubs someone tossed in the console 40ish years ago, you just never know.  That's why I never throw anything away!

Page Sixty-Eight - Some Consolation

 

How to restore Alphie’s “reasonably original” console.

I have three consoles – one from the black Alpine, one from the Organ Donor and one from Bob (the guy who gave me Bob’s Butt, remember?)

1. Find the lock that fits the rest of the car; remember, one key fits the ignition and doors while the other fits the boot and console.

2. Picked the console with the best (meaning least rusty) sheet metal, took it to bare metal and primed it.

3. Carefully peeled the original vinyl from the sheet metal so I could make a pattern later.

4. Cut a piece of tool box drawer liner for the non-skid, rattle-smoothing bottom liner, no glue, just laid it in.

Tool box drawer liner works great! 

5. Laid out the old vinyl on the back of the new vinyl and drew a pattern.  Foreseeing me screwing up, I cut the vinyl leaving a generous margin for error – important step!

Old vinyl as a patttern for the new vinyl

New vinyl ready to glue

6. Did many, many test fits – another important step! 

7. Got out the stinky contact cement, loads of clamps, binder clips, paint stirrers and popsicle sticks (lolly sticks for the Brits) and set to gluing the vinyl to the metal.  See the pics.

Wrapped, glued and clipped to dry.
(The popsicle (lolly) sticks keep the clips from denting the vinyl.)

8. The console lid gets a specially sewn cover from the gang at Sunbeam Specialties, but I stuffed some extra polyester batting between the foam and the cover because the foam didn’t fill the space as well as I wanted.  LOTS-O-TEST FITS and glued it to the cover plate.

I forgot to take pics during the process, but here's the finished lid.

I bought some stainless #6 oval Phillips head screws, as short as I could find, and some #6 finish washers for the underside of the cover.  No Rust! and they look spanking!

The lid on the cleaned and painted console sheet metal

9. There’s a little square (trapezoid if I’m being precise) of cardboard, which vinyl wraps around to create the top piece at the back of the console, behind the console lid.  Mine was buckled, so I cut a piece of sheet metal to replace it, glued it up and placed weights on it to smooth out the vinyl.

Old, warped cardboard on the right, new sheet metal on the left.

Vinyl wrapped and ready to glue down.
The dots are where the hinge will mount.

Glued up!

Underside of the lid with new stainless fasteners.
(I'll clean up the tag ends of the vinyl, don't worry.)

    10. Glue and clamp the little trapezoid to the console metal and attach the lid with new #10 stainless screws.

11. Cut out the hole for the lock and mount it in place.  Fiddle with the lock until it locks and unlocks easily.

And the lock works!
(I see the little bulge in the vinyl, but it's too late to fix it. 
Don't look that closely!)

ALPHIE LIVES & BREATHES - after forty-five years (maybe more)!

Clint (previous owner) tells me that he thinks Alphie last ran around 1979 or 80, and I brought him home six years ago…

That’s a long sleep! 

(Apparently I need a computer science degree to get a video embedded in Blogger - go to the More Stuff column on the right for the Alphie Lives! video.  BTW, The whirring sound you hear before I crank Alphie are fans blowing the exhaust out of the garage.)

The video isn’t the FIRST start because, of course, I had some problems. 

1. I burned Pertronix Ignitor when I hooked it up to a 1.4-ohm coil, it requires a 3-ohm coil. More on this below.

2. I had the plug wires in the wrong order – duh! 

3. The timing was WAY off, and I couldn’t get it to idle slow enough to set it.

4. The idle was high because I had the “secondary throttle barrel” (as the service manual calls it) of the carb open, so as soon as the engine hit, it raced.  Fixed that.

5. The timing isn’t as easy as it should be.  Alpiners know there is a timing adjuster thumb screw on the vacuum advance, BUT the distributor has to be turned to a ballpark timing because the screw adjuster can only adjust so much.  Getting the little clamp that holds the distributor to the block is a bit, shall-we-say, fiddly, but I persevered and got it. 

6. BEFORE I tried to fire up Alphie for the first time, I discovered that I had the wrong fittings on the fuel line out of the tanks and into the fuel pump.  Care to guess how I determined they were too small?  I only poured about a quart of gas on the floor. 

I discovered I needed a better engine ground when I burned my hand on the clutch hydraulic line.  Fixed that. 

I also found some oil and exhaust leaks during all this.

I should readjust the valve too.

So, he's not quite ready for the road just yet.

Back to the fried Ignitor: I was pretty sure I had cooked the Ignitor because I had spark, and Alphie was chugging fitfully along with his wrong firing order and WAY too advanced timing, but when I tried to fire him up again, I had no spark.  I spent two days (maybe more) checking everything with the multimeter then double checking, then triple checking but couldn’t find anything wrong.  The coil was obviously not tripping, but I couldn’t figure out why.  I suspected the Ignitor, so I ran the Ignitor unit test on the Pertronix website, but the results were confusing. 

I spent about 2.5 hours on the phone with the Pertronix guys before we got the test done correctly and determined that I had blown the first Ignitor.  (Turned out I had the multimeter leads wrong for the positive ground test.)  

The voltage is supposed to drop from 12-volts (battery voltage) to zero (or at least below 3-volts) when the magnet is turned past the Ignitor unit.  Mine went from 12 to 4-volts, bad Ignitor unit.  The Pertronix tech guys were great, by the way. 

I bought a new Ignitor and 3-ohm Flame Thrower coil and Bob’s your uncle, plenty of spark!

I shot the video AFTER all that!  You can tell that Alphie still needs some fine tuning; he’s kind of chugging a bit during the video.  I can hear an exhaust leak, and I can see some oil drops on the floor, so there’s more work to do before Alphie can leave the garage.

Shiny Knockoff Spinners!

I LOVE 'EM!

The pic at the top of the post shows an old spinner next to the rechromed one so you can see just how much better they are!

A huge shout out to Joe DelVecchio at Red’s Parts Attic & Chrome Plating for re-chroming Alphie’s spinners.  They look AWESOME!

Red’s Parts Attic & Chrome Plating, 23220 Laura Lane, New Caney, TX 77357.  (713) 299-1555 or joe@redspartattic.com

Page Sixty-Six - Back to It

 

I left off with the seat bottoms, now for the backs.

Maybe you have noticed – I have – that many Alpine seats often look deflated.  The foam decays, yeah, but the cardboard Rootes used as structure absorbs water and collapses over time, especially the cardboard behind the foam in the seat backs, if it's there at all.

(Pic above - the lumpiness is slowly working its way out as the vinyl slowly stretches and constracts.  I set them in the sun to loosen the vinyl.  I'm working on the metal pieces that cover the hinges.  One was missing and one was pretty rusted - I'm fabbing those two pieces.)

I bought some matte board (the stuff used to frame pictures) and fitted it to the frame.  When I took Alphie’s seat backs apart, they didn’t have cardboard behind the foam, so I cut some matte board to fit it.

But, as I was researching seats on the forum, someone mentioned that they had used Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) plastic, and it occurred to me that ABS plastic will not absorb water and will retain its shape indefinitely, so I ordered some.

ABS sheet, cardboard pattern and my jigsaw with a metal cutting blade.
Cut at a slow speed because fast will melt the ABS.

I got two 24” X 48” sheets, big enough for two outer and two inner panels - I used the cardboard pieces as patterns.  ABS isn’t as easy to work with as cardboard, but the results are strikingly better.  I bent the outer pieces with a heat gun on low heat.  The stuff melts if you get it too hot so go slow.

ABS outer panel before bending

Outer ABS panel after bending.
There were wrinkles to work out, note the top edge of the frame.

With the ABS in place, I found I didn’t need glue when I fitted the foam.

I strayed from Mr. Parlanti’s instructions in that he glued the center section of the seat cover to the foam.  I found that glue wouldn’t pull the vinyl tight enough, and Alphie’s seat covers are later model ones with the “hinged” centers section, where Mr. Parlanti’s were one-piece covers.

I inserted metal rods into the finish seams on the front side pieces (see the pic) so that I could pull the sides tight with safety wire looped around the frame, again, see the pics.

Metal rods inserted in the finish seams

Inner panel attached to the frame with slots for the safety wire.
Safety wire looped around the frame to pull the seat cover sides tight

Safety wire pulled tight and trimmed

Bend the wire so that it won't poke through the vinyl.
The covers are significantly tighter than if I had glued them.

The rest of the installation followed Mr. Parlanti’s instruction except that I added extra polyester batting over the outside of the frame and under the top portion of the center section to add fill and smooth over the frame pieces.  (Don’t use cotton batting, by the way.  It will collapse over time and absorb water.)

Issues of Note:

The sprocket for the back recline-adjuster is made of some seriously hard steel.  Long story coming.

The sprocket on the recliner gizmo is made of VERY HARD steel.
Note that I got new bolts because 3 inch long 1/4 inch screws are hard to find.

The flat head screws that attach the sprocket to the seat frame use Wentworth threads, infuriatingly hard to find.  (OK, I had the old ones, but they were very rusty, they are flat-headed, and they just suck.) Maybe some specialty fastener companies have Wentworth threaded hardware on the web somewhere, but they are WAY more expensive than it’s worth. 

FYI - pushing the adjuster lever down until it meets
the metal frame locks the seat back in place - unlike modern cars.

SO, I decided to rethread them with a 5/16” tap – broke two taps before it dawned on me that the steel is amazingly hard.  SO, I tried drilling them out, destroyed a 5/16” bit and only drilled one hole – gave up and bought some ¼” socket button head machine screws because they don’t stick out much and just bolted it together.  Not stock but sorted!

Socket button head screw in place
Pro-Tip: Take the pics before assembling the seats.

Seat Springs

(The ones that push the seat forward when you pull the handle.)  I had noticed that many Alpine seats have bent springs, and that the springs tend to drag across the vinyl as they flex.

Perhaps Alphie's seats had been reuphostered or "fixed" at some point because the springs were attached directly to the bottom seat frame.  The spring in Mr. Parlanti's instructions were attached to a tab of sheet metal attached to the frame, which located them away from the frame so that they neither bend nor rub against the vinyl.  I fabbed up a set for Alphie's seats.  You'll see in the pic below that my first attempt didn't clear the frame far enough so I made some longer ones.

Spring mounts - the first and second attempts.
Note that the springs doesn't contact the frame or vinyl, smashing!

Since the springs were bent and rusty, I found some new ones.  They were a bit shorter and have less pull tension, but they work well and two small "S" hooks fixed the length problem.

The old, bent and rusty springs

Console

I upholstered console top.  I will add pics or maybe a new page about restoring the console, but here's some pics until then.

Underside of the console lid

I lined the inside with some
rubber liner for tool box drawers 

The console box is painted and ready. 
I'll glue the vinyl to it and finish the edges soon

Page Sixty-Five - Some Ketchup (Catsup?)

 

I’ve been working on several things lately, but I haven’t finished anything, so this is to catch you up.

Prop Shaft Shop – aka Drive Shaft

I finally dragged my “self” to the off-road shop in town to get Alphie’s prop shaft rebalanced.  (It’s about a 40-minute one-way drive, “wah,” I know, but I put it off forever).  I figured it would shake like a withdrawing addict since the original balance weights had mostly rusted off. 

It’s installed, done, box checked.

Cleaned and spiffy unbalanced prop shaft
(This is an over-drive shaft; it's shorter)

The balanced shaft - the arrows point to the nifty new weights

Hard Top Shop

Alabama summers are too hot and humid to paint in a garage, so I set myself to other tasks.  I bought all the accoutrements for the hard top, the weather seals, window glass, head liner, the whole kit.

The weather seals, although a bit fiddly, went on relatively easily.  The new side glass gave me some resistance, but the frames cleaned up and along with the weatherstripping, they’re fitted.

New top-to-body and window weatherstripping,
new Lexan glass and cleaned latch, spanking!

New windscreen weatherstrip and some sound insulation

Head liner:  I glued in some sound matting to the underside of the top but decided to wait until I have the interior completed before installing the head liner.  Any hint of dirt will smudge it, and I want more of the dirt making processes finished before taking on the head liner.

The hard top is patiently waiting on its stand for the moment.

The Bonehead Upholstery Shop

I bought a complete interior from Sunbeam Specialties, and it is FANTASTIC!  It’s a light blue, “Clipper Blue” to be exact, with dark blue piping.  It looks awesome against Alphie’s dark blue paint!

Black carpeting, Alpine script floor mats

The seats are the first on the list.  I’m including instructions on restoring Alpine seats in the “More Stuff” column on the right of the blog.  If you want the original write up, it’s on the Tigers East/Alpines East (TEAE) site at teae.org.  The article is called “N-38 How to Restore Your Seats” by Joe Parlanti and was posted March 27, 2009.

I have edited and reformatted it to shorten it and make it a bit easier to follow, so my apologies to Mr. Parlanti.

I’ll let Mr. Parlanti’s instructions do the heavy lifting, and I’ll explain how and why I diverged from the instructions in a few places.

Bottom frame cleaned, painted with replacement bungees ready to install

Back frame cleaned, painted with foam installed
(I forgot to take a pic before gluing on the foam.)

Canvas riveted on. I fabbed two of the metal stays
because they rusted to dust.

Mr. Parlanti talks of gluing vs sewing the top canvas corner.
I sewed them because I don't think a glued connection will last.

Speaking of sewing, I sewed the center section of the upholstery
to the foam/canvas. Much tighter, and I didn't trust gluing it.

Mr. Parlanti's seat kits didn't include this flap (arrows).
They pull the canvas and rubber straps a bit tighter.
(Place them under the metal rail so that you can glue down
the vinyl and attach the spring bracket.)

I wanted to tighten my rubber straps, so I bent them a bit to shorten them.

Glued and clamped!

Finished! I used some #6 stainless screws because they are very secure and  I didn't have enough of the little clips you see in the pic.
Many had rusted to dust, go figure.

Damned brilliant, I must say!
Sewing the center section pulled it in place much better than gluing it would

I'm working on the seat backs and will add some more pics when I'm finished.  I'm waiting on some ABS plastic sheets for the back of the seat backs, for one thing.

I got the later model seat kits with a center flap
with a sleeve for the second foam piece.
Mr. Parlanti's use a single foam piece.

Do you like the dark blue piping?