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well, I got my Super running well enough to make the trip to Detroit for the Alfa club’s national convention. Excellent! I wish that it were a simple tale—signed up, drove the car with friends, did all the convention stuff, had fun, drove the car home. Fond memories over frosties and pizza. Somehow, that never seems to happen to me.

As some of you may remember from an earlier chapter in this never-ending saga (see "The Great Alfa Raising", Velocissima, February 2004), I had purchased a stripped, roller ’67 Super with the intention of reworking it into a Spica 2.0L some-street/mostly-track car—the poster child for the Scuderia Nonoriginale. In the last episode, our heroes (and there were many) got the exhaust built, hanging pedal box located, fuel system in, and engine started. After that monumental effort, the car basically sat untouched. Items like wiring, brake plumbing, brakes, glass, door latches, and most everything else remained in boxes in the garage.

I made a fainthearted run at getting ready for last summer, and made some slight progress, but not even close to getting the car on the road. As the summer wound down, Brian Shorey generously volunteered his help and "motivated" me to commit to getting the car ready for Detroit this summer. We pushed the Super onto Brian’s lift, and sent out the press release announcing our goal: This Super would not leave until it could drive out of the garage and back onto the trailer under its own power—starting, running, steering, and stopping.

After a number of weekends of hard work (and a lot of cheap Mexican food), it actually happened. In all honesty, most of it was pretty ugly. Our mantra was: Get it running/working; you can go back later and make it right/pretty. For instance, the wiring was completely cobbled up. With the battery in the back seat, hooked up with jumper cables through the windshield hole, the engine would run but wouldn’t charge the battery, nor would anything else electrical work—hell, there wasn’t anything else electrical in the car! On October 22, 2006, the car drove out of the garage (very loudly) and up onto Brian’s trailer. I am sure you saw it on the news. As they say in Washington, DC (and just like they say it), "Mission Accomplished!" I must say, that cold Saturday was one of the best Saturdays I have ever had! What a rush!

Over the winter, the car sat in my cold garage, waiting……

This spring, I got some time in on the Spica and got that pretty well straightened out. The glass got installed, as well as latches in the rear doors. Some slight progress. A big hang-up for me was the wiring—I was installing a new, modern fuse box inside the passenger compartment, so that needed wiring, and of course the switches and dash had to be all put in place and wired. I figured that, once I got all that done (and the windshield in), I could easily handle the rest of the jobs.

All of a sudden, the convention date was almost here, and there was still a ton of stuff to finish. It felt like everything needed to be done—and, in reality, that was not far off the mark. Even though this would never be a finished car with an interior and so forth, it would need to be registered and inspected, so that mandated a certain level of finish. Hell, the front seats were not even bolted down!

Brian again volunteered, and he helped me finish the wiring—we got it laid out and working, anyway. Later on, I made it into real cabling and installed it into the car. Poor Dave Pratt made the mistake of coming over one Saturday afternoon to pick something up from Brian. Six hours later, he managed to escape (reassured in his strategy to always buy his Alfas finished). Later, Brian and I nailed the front and rear windshields. From there, I pressed on with the many jobs at hand, spending many nights waaaaaay into the wee hours.

Of course, none of this was easy (why would it be?). There were many, many unknowns and surprises along the way. Lots of things that were left for "later" all of a sudden jumped out and bit me; most of them had to be completely redone. Without a whole car to work from, many of them left me scratching my head, wondering, "How is this supposed to go?" Then much scrambling, telephoning, looking for instruction or parts. You’d be surprised how few people really know the down-and-dirty, nitty-gritty details about Supers. The whole project began to take on the feel of a test. It started to feel like the US Marines—improvise, adapt, overcome! Mostly, what happened is that "the bar" kept getting set lower!

Finally, and suddenly, it was the Saturday evening before the convention—two days until scheduled departure. Earlier in the week before, I had made plans to meet with Nick Fonte and Eliot Shanabrook for some chassis setup time. I had registered the car on Thursday so I could drive it over, but as the week progressed and the work did not, the date got pushed back to Sunday. I was working hard on the car at just below full panic mode, when all of a sudden the lights went out! Some fool had crashed into a light pole and had knocked the power out until 1 am. ARRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!! I could not believe it! My shaking hand was now reaching for the panic button…

I did manage to get enough work done to drive it safely with working headlights (held in place only by the grounding screws), directionals, horn, brake lights, a rear view mirror, and seat belts—but with only a race exhaust and almost every other system totally untried, never mind proven. I did make it to Sudbury without event, but even the open-pipe Harley guys were giving me dirty looks. Holy smokes—this exhaust was loud! Of course, sitting in an empty metal shell made it sound worse, but I was actually embarrassed. I knew it would never pass the Waterford Hills noise limit of 80 db (add one more job to the list).

Nick, Eliot, and I worked hard and we got the chassis dialed in. I was exhausted, but pretty excited at the same time. I felt like the car was really coming to together. Hah—what a crock!

The late-night ride back really had me worried about the noise, but then I realized that, at 1:30 am, most people are asleep and, even if they woke up, I’d be long gone by the time they figured out why. Feeling a lot better, I drove it like I meant it and had a ball! The thing that amazed me most about that night was that I never got stopped by the police. Must have been the clever race car disguise that fooled ‘em.

On Monday morning, I was over at Meineke to get a muffler grafted onto the tail pipe, which worked well. But now, time was really running out. I had harbored fantasies of getting the car ready enough to be inspected, but it was becoming clear that that was not going to happen.

The original plan was to caravan (strictly speaking, I don’t know if two cars constitute a caravan) with Kevin Redden across MA, NY, Canada, and into Michigan—the shortest (make that the shortest distance) way. The estimated time of departure was 10 am Tuesday morning—22 hours away. Not looking too good, Bunkie.

Executive decision time: Not going to get inspected. New game plan: Drive out of the state within the window of the registration grace period. Get a trailer ride back to Massachusetts. Now all I had to do was to get the car "finished"!

Wiper linkage, wipers, passenger side harness, front door latches and glass, install battery (in rear seat footwell) and cabling, finish under-dash cabling, install dash, install under-hood and floor thermal insulation, fill in holes in rear cabin bulkhead to separate trunk, etc., etc. 10 am Tuesday came and went. I told Kevin to go on without me and that I would catch up to him at the motel in NY that night. 4 pm came and went, and I decided to delay my departure until the morning. I called Dave Pratt: "Dave, I am on my way—last chance to come aboard for a Motown Alfa experience!"

Dave declined my generous offer, probably because I made the mistake of telling him that the passenger side rear wheel arch was rubbing heavily on the tire and I had just pulled a plum-sized ball of semi-molten rubber off the wheel arch. With the car now all loaded down, the wheel arch made solid contact with the tire sidewall. Oops! Called Eliot, told him my tale of woe, and he loaned me a set of wheels/tires that fit with plenty of room. I got them installed, and went to bed feeling better about my fate (for some reason).

On Wednesday morning, bright and early, it was blast-off! Motown, here we come!

Of course, I really should not have. Common sense and, now, hindsight make that clear. Never mind the fact that I never did get the Super finished enough to get it inspected—no emergency brake, no wipers, no glass in the front doors, no side mirrors, no bumpers. The main fact that would give any sensible person reason to pause was that the car has an engine and transmission that I’d bought for $400 back in 2000 from an old dude (no, I mean a really old dude) whose car rusted away before he got to put the "rebuilt" drivetrain back in it. My intent was to use it only as a template for laying out plumbing and new wiring harnesses, etc. However, as time passed and the new engine was not even close to being built (and the freshly rebuilt, lightened gearbox waiting for it in its cardboard box), the $400 drivetrain became the drivetrain. The shakedown run to Sudbury and back had gone okay, so I figured I was good to go! Turns out that I was half right: The engine ran like a top; the transmission, not so much.

I blame the bad decision on the thrash of trying to complete the job—with the last week running to 2:30 every night (or so it seemed), my judgment was impaired. So there I was, on a beautiful, soon-to-become-scorching Wednesday morning, on the road a solid 24 hours behind schedule, sitting way down in a hole in the race seat with one small pillow under my butt as a cushion, ear plugs in, hot as hell. Off I went, grinning away as I rolled down the Mass Pike, blissfully unaware of the trials ahead. Jeez, I was even wearing a white shirt……

Then, reality started to creep in. At around 9 am, after a gas stop on the Pike, I noticed a huge plume of smoke behind me. After a quick look under the hood, I decided that it was the dipstick breather spewing oil onto the headers. I made a Rube Goldberg fix and rechecked: Still pissing oil! I next noticed that the oil filter (which came on the engine—another thing that I never got around to changing) had a hole in it, and oil was being pumped out of it under great pressure. In the two giant plastic totes filled with parts and tools that I had aboard, I did have a filter, but no filter wrench and, of course, I couldn’t budge the old one by hand. I had to use the old screwdriver-through-the-filter trick—about a hundred times—to get it to turn. With the filter changed and a black, oily mess on the side of the road for the Pike clean-up guys, I was now really sweaty and grubby but happy, on my way a further two hours behind.

On the NY State Thruway, I drove for hours in mid-90’s heat, making pretty good time. At 4000-4500 rpm, it is loud inside the Super, and surprisingly little wind comes in from the open windows, so it is really hot too! A little-discussed side-effect of "Designed by the Wind", I guess.

At an indicated 385 miles, I pulled off onto one of the roadside stops to get something to drink, fuel, etc. (due to the heat, no need to pee). As I rolled into my parking space, I pulled out my ear plugs and heard a horrible rattling-chain type of noise. Oh, no! The one chain I know about (the cam timing chain) was dead quiet. I looked under the car and found gobs of gear oil running down the back of the differential! Oh, crap! After much telephoning, I finally decided that it had to be the transmission. I don’t know why, but it looked like the box got real hot and puked out all the oil. I had probably driven the last 200 miles with an empty transmission. I pulled all the shift boots off and poured a liter and half down the shifter tower.

Continue? Go home? I decided that I was closer to Detroit than home (turned out that was wrong too), and decided to press on, stopping every 150-250 miles to pour oil into the gearbox. My biggest fear was that the damned thing would wait until I was in the boonies of Canada and then explode. If it blew, I’d be living in the car until Brian came to pick us up on Sunday.

I discovered that the noise was markedly less if I kept the engine below 3200 rpm (with ear plugs in, I could barely hear it), but it got really loud by 3500 rpm. So I was driving really slowly in steaming hot weather, sweat running down me, with an anxiety knot the size of a grapefruit in my stomach.

At about 2:30 pm, it was 95 degrees ambient, and way hotter in my sweatbox. Plus, I’d become reacquainted with the concept of "truck driver sunburn"—nice. I happened to look up as an SUV passed me, and noticed that the passenger was wearing a sweater as she poured cream into her coffee, no doubt in tomb-like silence, enjoying her favorite music and carrying on genteel conversation. And me, I’m feeling like a member of the frickin’ Donner party just trying to survive my trip. There is no crying in Alfas—but there can be rage, and that SUV came really close to having a Giulia Super rammed through the passenger door (or, more correctly, rocker panel).

Another little treat: I discovered in the heavy traffic leading up to the border crossing into Canada that, when it is stinking hot, the transmission really does not like to shift. Nice. My strategy of adding oil came to a halt around 8:30 when it got dark. I suppose I could have tried to add oil by the cabin dome light—if I had a cabin dome light! So that meant I would have to run for 300-400 miles further—with a dodgy transmission that might or might not have any oil in it. I continued on through the night, holding my breath all through Canada. Once back in the States, I let my discipline break down a little and ran it up over 4K, but quickly rolled it back down—it was still a long walk to Pontiac.

I walked into the convention hotel lobby at 1:33 am, so tired that I wasn’t even relieved to have made it. One nice thing about making border crossings at 12:30 am is that there are no lines—it’s a breeze! Even so, 18 frickin’ hours to make it to Detroit seemed like a hundred! I found out later that the folks at the convention had a betting pool on my making it. For the next two days, all I heard from everyone I met was, "Oh, you’re Andy Kress!" Great—just the kind of attention you want.

The car was totally gross. I had gear oil in the front seat footwells because, once the box got hot, it would gurk oil back out the gear shift tower, over the transmission tunnel, and onto the floors. The whole back of the car was so oily that I couldn’t even stand to touch it. In all honesty, you could no longer describe the car as white. In celebration of my "achievement", Brian’s daughters, Cara and Alicia, festooned the car with balloons and made me the gift of OSHA-approved ear muffs for the ride back!

In the end, I did have fun at the convention, and participated in all of the events. I beat the crap out of Andrew Garcia’s (Garcia Alfa Racing) 164S in the time trial (of course, he buried me in the results), and drove one of my Performatek-sponsored rental Spiders in the autocross, which was a complete ball. I even got to drive a Super in the autocross fun runs—Robert Willis was nice enough to loan me his—and I must say it is a beauty (although I never did get used to the floor-mounted pedals). I did the rally with Andy Garcia, but we were (actually, everyone was) beaten by the team of Robert Willis, Kevin Redden, and Keith Kelly—must have been the Super power. David E. Davis was a hoot at the banquet, and his explanation of how he got into concours judging (and continues to do so today) is the best reason I ever heard for doing anything. The AONE members whom I saw there were the Shorey family and Kevin Redden (of course), Bob and Suzy Ladd, and ex-AONE member Peter Webb with his Mutant Milano.

For the ride back, we loaded my car into Brian’s trailer in Detroit and I drove Brian’s all-conquering ’72 Berlina back. Brian totally dominated Class H in both the time trial and autocross with it. I felt privileged to drive a car with such a winning history. We actually left on time at 11:30 am Sunday (a real change for me on this trip—well, most trips, really). Kevin led the way in his Verde with his GPS, and all was going according to plan until we hit the frickin’ US border in Buffalo. Actually, we hit a slowdown due to construction in the Toronto area, but then it opened up and I thought we were good. Breezing along, "1.6 Km to US Border"—great! Up over the hill, under the sign … and everything came to a screeching halt. It took us more than three hours to go the last mile over the river and through the customs gate. Kevin and I got separated from Brian, and by midnight we’d had enough. We pulled into the Scottish Inns Motel in Utica, where they do not permit short stays after 8:30 pm. We even had to sign for the TV clicker—which didn’t work! I didn’t get home until about 2 pm on Monday. Sheesh. I must say that Brian’s Berlina handled the trip beautifully. It obviously does not have the creature comforts of a modern car (it’s a helluva lot more comfortable than mine!), but dynamically it really does not give away anything to modern cars. Plus, we got great gas mileage.

Next year, the convention is in Chicago. Anyone want to ride out with me?

P.S. I will say this: The Super drew a lot of attention on the trip. Lots of smiles, waves, and thumbs-up along the way. The US border guard at the Niagara Falls crossing said, "You’re driving to Detroit in that?". Wise words. The best one was in Canada as I traversed the 403 QEW. A white-haired, bearded, jolly, fat Kris Kringle-looking hoser passed me on his enormous Honda Gold Wing, eh. As he went by, his head was about two feet above mine. The entire back of the bike was covered with a pyramid of saddle bags, panniers, and lights, almost obscuring him entirely. He even had a little broomey thing hanging behind, obscuring the rear wheel, like a mud flap. As he passed by, he smiled and gave me the high sign into his handlebar rear view mirror. Cracked me up!