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| At peace in shady slumber |
Alphie meets
Dr. Frankenstein:
The Alpine Project takes a new
tack.
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| Defiling a grave |
In my original Alpine plan (that had yet to meet reality), I,
like a knight-errant sworn to his chivalric code, would gallantly perform shade-tree
miracles to bring Alphie back to the glamour and romance circa 1965, wearing
all her original sheet metal and accoutrements.
A glorious, noble and difficult task worthy of a dedicated champion, a
True Restoration! Yeah, so much for
that.
From our first meeting, I could tell that Alphie had had
some unskillful “work” done to her front end, but I had no idea how deep the wounds
went until I carved inches and pounds of Bondo from her snoz. Ignominy, anxiety, hand wringing and head
scratching befell as the burden of my moral pledge began to weigh on me.
In February while we closing the Alphie deal, Clint
offhandedly mentioned, “I have another Alpine at my sister’s house in Kentucky,”
offering it as a freebie in the deal. I
didn’t seriously consider dragging home two rusty cadavers, but each chunk of
Bondo chiseled from her flanks added another month or year to the build, not to
mention mucho buckage to the budget. So…
I emailed Clint saying, “about that Alpine in Kentucky,”
more because of the rumpled snoz than her dangling rust. He sent me some pictures, and I immediately
kicked chivalry to curb, abandoned my moral quest and launched Operation Alpine Rescue to wrest the
Organ Donor (the nickname she earned the day of her resurrection) from her
premature grave. All because the metalwork
required to fix Alphie’s mashed nose rattled my mighty resolve. Weakness and shame! Moral conviction cowers to convenience and
laziness as soon as reality landed its first blow!
Alphie must suffer the same fate as Frankenstein’s monster,
an amalgamated abomination, at least in the eyes of the purists!
Operation Alpine Rescue
becomes Operation Grave Robbery
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| Rudely yanked from her hole |
She looked peaceful, quietly disintegrating in the shade of
her tree. But callously we invaded her repose. We sawed down her protective saplings. We drug farming equipment from her path. We dug and tugged. We huffed and puffed and finally, with the
aid of a substantial 4X4 pickup, yanked the Donor out of her hole like a bad
tooth. It was a rude reintroduction to
the world, and I felt a little embarrassed as if we had heedlessly thrown open
the door of an occupied outhouse.
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| Disinterred! |
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| The Donor even with new shoes resists getting on the trailer |
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| All that rust is the frame of the car - the blue is the seat dangling where there is nothing. |
Once under the car, any thought of restoring the Donor evaporated
like hope on a golf course. I could see
the broken main X shaped cross member hanging in rusty splendor from the crumbling
remains of the floorboards. In the old
car hobby, that’s terminal, a fatality, a dead stop, the incontrovertible harbinger
of death, even beyond the reaches of rat-rod zombiedom. I solemnly pronounced her death and
rejiggered my plans, again.
Or the (Latest) Modern
Prometheus:
Alphie is a 1965 Alpine Series IV-A while the Organ Donor is a
1964 Alpine Series IV – essentially, the same model. Both have 1592 cc four poppers and four speed
trannies. Alphie left the plant wearing a
fully synchronized gearbox while the Donor’ sported a non-synchronized gear
grinder. Everything else, model wise, is
the same. In the dark of night using
lightning and galvanization, Alphie will rise again as a cobbled together 1964
Alpine Series IV A. She will be year older
but will keep the benefits of her youth.
I will resurrect her as a Midnight Blue beauty of a 1964
Sunbeam Alpine Series IV with all the goodies of a 1965 series IV-A – The Best of
Both!
Mixing DNA and a New Direction
The Drivetrain:
From the two car-casses J,
I will
v - Excise the Donor’s entire front clip including
the bonnet and inner wing wells
v - Harvest the Donor’s engine block so the block
number will match the body tag
v - Amputate the Donor’s non-synchromesh tranny
v - Transplant Alphie’s fully synchromesh tranny and
v - Graft on the Donor’s overdrive unit and driveshaft
- yeah, the Donor has overdrive, how cool is that!
v - Oh almost forgot, Swap the body tags– boom,
number matching car!
The Color Palette: Alphie is a stealth black car – Embassy black
paint, black seats, black rubber floor mats, black dash, black door panels, black
tires, just black, black, black-on-black!
The Organ Donor is Midnight Blue with an Azure (sky) Blue
seats and door panels with dark blue piping on the seats. It has tattered scraps of red carpeting in it
now, but the Azure Blue original will go back in it. Me like those colors much gooder!
Shoes: The Donor has 13-inch wire wheels, the shoes
all Sunbeam Alpines trotted out of the factory wearing. Someone upped Alphie’s shoes to size 14-inch,
probably stolen from some other unsuspecting LBC (Little British Car, remember?) an MG, Triumph, Austin,
Rover - who knows…
Other Stuff: Whatever components are in better condition
from either cadaver will one day return to the road!
Postmortem
The Organ Donor sits glumly under a tree in my front
yard. I have cleaned the leaf litter,
twigs, rotted carpet and vinyl as well as pulled the seats out and removed a
lot of old “stuff” from the trunk and interior.
Alas, the Donor must die so that Alphie may live.
Oh, and I collected many chiggers along the way! Yay!
Next post: The Dissection
Show more pics!
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| The Grave Robbers and the Corpse |
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| On the way to Frankenstein's Lab |
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| Winched off the trailer back in Huntsville |
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| A new spot under a new tree |
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| Art picture: Chic Patina! |
