[Sutripta]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

But I could not figure out what kind of material the handle was. I checked it is not magnetic, it must be some sort of die cast, that is polished to a very high standard.

Likely to be Antimony. Or Mazak + plating. Both low melting point.

Buy used and destroy to confirm!

Regards
Sutripta

[Jeroen]

Another very windy and rainy horrible day here in the Netherlands. It has been wheather like this for weeks, and the forecast is it will be weather like this for the next fortnight as well.

But I am busy in my garage! Today, Saturday first thing Johan came around and delivered the wheels for the Spider! New Michelin Tires fitted too, all balanced!

I think they look gorgeous:



Balancing lead on the inside. No hideous bits of leads showing on the outside. No paint on the centre hub!



I had also give Johan the spare wheel and asked him to put the best old tire on it.



Earlier this morning I had gotten the new and cleaned and polished parts ready for installation:



First thing was to mount the brand new centre plates with the Alfa logo onto the rims. Took a bit of scraping of the paint as they would not fit. I put some vaseline underneath it to stop any corrosion.



When fitting light alloy rims to steel hubs it is good practice to put some grease all over the hub. Alloy (aluminium) and steel will start to corrode. The grease will ensure that you can get the rim easily of the hub!A bit of grease on the bolts helps too. Just do not get grease onto the mating surface of the lug nuts and the rims. The torquing value are typically provided for dry clean surfaces, unless specifically mentioned that you need to apply oil or grease!



Put all four wheels back on, tightened them loose with my pneumatic torque wrench. Used a jack on both sides of the car to lift so I could pull the axle stands from underneath the Spider.





Finally, with the wheels on the ground, I used my proper torque wrench to tighten the lug nuts properly. In this case 110 Nm. Four nuts, so you tighten by starting on one nut, than 180o below, next 90o up, 180o across. Only push the torque wrench so you hear feel one click, then move to the next nut. Keeping going around in the same pattern until none of the nuts move any more, with one click.



Looks smashing:



Just about as I was finished with the wheels of the Spider, Dirk rocked up with the new striping for the Jaguar.

He got going straight away:









It was immediately clear that the new striping did not match the old striping. We discussed and since Dirk had enough material and time, we decided to replace all old striping. The likelyhood of finding an exact colour match were remote at best and we both quite liked how the new striping looked!

So Dirk took to taking all the old striping off.



Dirk used a hot air gun, a special little plastic scraper and lots of elbow grease. The old striping did come off, but it was also clear that it had sort of “eaten into the paint”. Luckily the new striping would cover all of that!



Once all the old striping was removed, Dirk buffed the whole area with a very special cleaner/degreaser. It removes everything from the surface, dirt, grime but also wax. Also, it is a sort of helps putting the new stripping in place. It ensures the new striping does not adhere to the paint straight away. So you can move it around easily, push bubbles out, get it perfectly aligned.

Once properly in position, Dirk uses the heat gun and an Infra Red thermometer. He heats the striping to exactly 80oC, pushes down on the striping and that is how it finally bonds with the paint on the car!



Once the left side was done, I turned the car around for better access to the right side:



I am very pleased with the end result. I am pleased we decided to replace all the striping. This looks so much more fresh!





In all, it took Dirk almost four hours to complete this job. I certainly could not have done it. It looks easy enough, but it takes a lot of experience and a very steady hand to get these very delicate stripes exactly in the right position.

Whilst Dirk was working on the striping, I had another look at the right front speaker of the Spider. Remember, it is not working. I need to get it out, but it is blocked, partly by the AC condensor and AC fan. I spend some time with flashlights, mirrors and scope poking around to figure out how te get it removed. I am not much the wiser yet. Other than I have noticed that the mounts for the AC fan look as if they have been glued/cemented. So when I start taking it apart, it is very likely to brake again. We will cross that bridge when we get to it.

Next thing: Monday and Tuesday, Matthieu will be polishing the Spider!

Jeroen

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

In all, it took Dirk almost four hours to complete this job. I certainly could not have done it. It looks easy enough, but it takes a lot of experience and a very steady hand to get these very delicate stripes exactly in the right position.

It hurts to even think about it. Amazing skill!

[Jeroen]

If anything, the weather today is even worse than yesterday. Now it is a proper storm out there, again I might add, jus like last weekend. So another indoor day it looks like.

We had another flea / brocante market near our home. I enjoy spending an hour or so looking at all this stuff. I am usually on the lookout for tools, signs for my garage, measuring instruments for my little museum collection, model cars, that sort of thing. Normally I would ride my bicycle to it, less than 3 kilometers from our home, but today I took the car. Way too much wind and rain!

I found myself another interesting measuring instrument. This is a clamp on volt and current tester.



The sign I bought for Dirk. I have an identical one in my garage and he liked it a lot. So I promised to get him one, if I came across one. Which was today.

This instrument has an interesting scale. You set the scale with the little thumb wheel and they rotate. Volt scales in red, Amp scale in black





It came with all the probe, including this special ohm probe




Whilst I was rummaging around the flu market my friend Berndt called. I agreed to go and see him on the way home. Just to catch up and spend some time with him. As you might recall Berndt owns and operates the Minidome. A miniature car collection museum,

https://www.minidome.nl/home%202.html

More than 7000 miniature car models. Berndt knows each and everyone and has a story about each model and how he acquired it. We usually end up sitting in his museum talking about cars!





Berndt, very kindly, also gave me another little Matchbox model:



He knew this model had some special meaning to me. When I was a little boy (primary school) for my birthdays, my dad would take me and 1-2 of my friends out for a special day. One year he took us to a car museum, where we spend the whole day. At the end of the day, he took us through the museum shop and all three of us were allowed to choose a little Matchbox. I remember we all three chose the very same, this very little Jaguar. I am not sure, but it was probably my 10th birthday. Somewhere in my parents old photo albums, there should be a photograph of me playing with it!

i spend a couple of hours with Berndt, drinking coffee, talking cars and all sorts of other stuff. Very pleasant way to pass a very windy and wet, horrible Sunday afternoon

Jeroen

[KkVaidya]

Wonderful Jeroen. You live in a beautiful clean country with beautiful cars that remain clean. You come to India and you have to clean them everyday - you know that.
Your mancave is a typical dream garage. I would like to build it and work peacefully in it.. some day.

Best regards

[Thad E Ginathom]

I bet that analogue clamp meter would have been a very expensive tool when new!

Originally Posted by KkVaidya

Wonderful Jeroen. You live in a beautiful clean country with beautiful cars that remain clean. You come to India and you have to clean them everyday - you know that.

It's not that simple. My car in Chennai gets more dust on it in an hour, than my car in London would have done in a week. However, in Chennai, a Jopasu duster mostly reveals a fairly clean surface, whereas in London, there was always grease with the dirt, and a proper wash was the only way to remove it.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

It's not that simple. My car in Chennai gets more dust on it in an hour, than my car in London would have done in a week. However, in Chennai, a Jopasu duster mostly reveals a fairly clean surface, whereas in London, there was always grease with the dirt, and a proper wash was the only way to remove it.

True, it really depends on the location. Just plain old dust tends to be easy to remove. But when you live in or near industrial areas, you might have all sorts of stuff in the air.

For instance, here in the Netherlands, people living close to the Steel factories always have problems with their cars. Our steel factories are just behind the seat dunes. So you have a combination of salty air, with dust containing coal dust.Not a happy combination, very corrosive!

Occasionally we get Sahara sand blown across Europe. It tends to travel high up in the air and comes down with showers. Difficult to clean of your car too!

Keeping your car in a garage, any car, any garage, does make a huge difference too of course!

I am lucky air quality wise. We live in a rural part of the Netherlands, so usually we are pretty good. And we don’t get too much nastiness coming down on our cars. Except when parking under trees. I don’t understand it. We have some big trees in our garden. No bird droppings underneath. In order to get my cars out of our garage, I need to move our daily cars, which all live outside permanently, under the trees, to make room. Within minutes these cars will have bird poo on them? Somehow birds prefer to poop on shiny car paint it seems.

Jeroen

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Somehow birds prefer to poop on shiny car paint it seems.

And even weirder... Car manufacturers don't even consider this when formulating their paints!

[Jeroen]

The fault is entirely mine, I reckon: I have chosen the wrong color paint:

Red and blue attract more bird poo!

https://www.autoblog.com/2012/06/21/...3UnKpdZmvP10e0

[Jeroen]

Day one of Spider Polishing:

Over the weekend I had been talking to Matthieu, the owner of Autopoesten Carclean. https://www.auto-poetsen.com


We had agreed he would arrive at 07.30am. Which meant I had to get to get the Spider ready, park it outside the garage and have the garden hose ready.

So I was up very early this morning, moving three cars out of the way, before I can take the Spider out. Next I found our garden hose and connected it to our outside tap. In the Netherlands just about every house will have an outside tap. For watering your garden, plants, or, case in point, wash your car.

Dutch outside taps will be turned off end of the autumn and the pipes will be drained. This because we do get frost here. Not as much as we used to when I grew up, but temperatures can dip well, well below zero degree Celsius here. And you do not want your pipes bursting. Hence, you close the outside tap and drain the pipe. Very simple, any Dutch houser does it. So did I. Unfortunately, the tap was frozen solid. Not due to frost, but some other reasons. Took me twenty minutes to open up the tap, at which time Mattieu had arrived his cool looking van:



And it is absolutely packed solid with cleaning and polishing stuff!



Frist thing he did was put some special soft top cleaner on the Spider soft top.



No guessing as to his favourite cleaning materials.



Next the Spider got hosed down and washed with water and soap. Matthieu uses just washing up liquid, no car shampoo. For the simple reason all grease, wax and much needs to come off the paint!





After he washed the car and dried it with a towel, I parked the Spider back into its usual spot, so Matthieu could work inside the garage. It is still nasty weather. We were lucky as the rain held off, whilst the Spider was outside the garage. But it is still pouring and a lot of wind too.

With the Spider back in its spot, I also moved the Jaguar back in and Matthieu started offloading his van into my garage.









Next job was to clay the whole Spider. Matthieu has a special clay-glove! I had never seen or heard of a clay glove. I used clay bars.



Next came taping of the various plastic and rubber bits, sealing the engine compartment (against dust).



Then some small paint repair. I still had a little bit of spot repair paint in the correct color. I had brought it inside our home the night before, to make sure it had the right temperature. It is around 10oC in my garage and a few degrees lower during the night.

This is how a pro paints: magnifier and lots of light!





Next the real polishing starts:







Look at the difference between the left (polished) and right (unpolished) side of the boot!



Matthieu used three different machines, a whole range of different pads and all sorts of liquids and pastes.

And this is just the rough pre-polish to get rid of the relatively large scratches and swirls.



Tomorrow more polishing and waxing. To be continued. I am hugely impressed with Matthieu and workmanship. It is a bit difficult to see in these images, but the Spider looks so much better already. And he is not even half way done!!

By 1700 Matthieu called it a day. He spend 30 minutes, cleaning his tools, putting them away methodically, all ready for tomorrow! I like that, real pro!

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Day two Spider Polishing

Matthieu was back at 07.30 on Tuesday morning.

Still more polishing to be done. Matthieu used three different polishing machine.



One of the important aspect is to check the thickness of the paint! The thinner, the less polishing can be done. Matthieu also takes a lot of video’s and photographs of his work. To be used as a reference.



More polishing to be done







The polishing takes place in multiple phases, using different machines, with different actions (circular, eccentric), different size of pads, different kind of pads and different fluids and polishing paste



The polishing is what takes most of the time. Out of the two days probably about 2/3 of the time is polishing. Once that is done, putting the wax on is fairly straight forward and quick

Matthieu uses an applicator pad to put a very thin layer of wax on the paint



Next, a lot of buffing to get a very deep shine!





For every job, for every different kind of material different kind of polish





Every part of the car has been polished and gets waxed. All chrome, and stainless steel bits get treated as well.



Finally, Matthieu also vacuum the interior. He had this really cool attachment. Air gets blown through a very narrow little straw in the middle of the nozzle attachment. The straw is flexible and moves about. The air will open up the carpet and allows all the dirt and muck to be sucked out by the hoover. Pretty neat. I might try and make one of these myself!





Works amazingly well



Every nook and granny gets hoovered!

[Jeroen]

End of Day 2 Spider Polishing: The result

I am extremely pleased with the result. Matthieu has done himself proud and outperform my expectations. It is a bit difficult to show in these photographs, but the paint on my Spider was getting on quite a bit, real tired. Swirls, scratches.

Matthieu has managed to get rid of nearly all, except the deepest, scratches. Also, the paint looks a lot more deeper red now. My wife when she first saw it could not believe her eyes!

So here is me showing of the end result.

















Matthieu also left me with one little pot of SwissWax. These pots are little, very expensive (+/- Euro 100), but should last a very long time.



Finally, I also got presented with a very nice certificate showing exactly what kind of treatment the Spider had received:



Again, I am very satisfied and happy with the end result. My Spider looks so much better. This paint was 23 years old. And now it looks better than new! Amazing.

Friday spanner mate Peter is coming to appraise all three cars for insurance purpose. They are all ready and shiny!

I have also made an appointment for next week to take my Souriau multitester to the company I found that knows how to fix and service these testers.

Jeroen

[Thad E Ginathom]

What fantastic work! Very nice job

[Jeroen]

Peter came round this morning for the valuation/appraisal of all three cars.

I am happy to report that all have gone up in value, the Spider and the Jaguar the most. The W123 the least.

Peter will put all the details of each car in an individual valuation report. He sends those reports to me and the insurance company. All three cars have a so called, fully comprehensive Classic Car insurance, against appraised value.

These reports describe in quite some detail the status and condition of the car. Regular maintenance is not mentioned, but anything beyond is. For instance the fact that I replaced the Supercharger cooling liquid pump with an upgraded one. The fact that the engine bays were cleaned with dry ices, that the Spider got the full Swissvax clean/polish/wax treatment. State of the tires, (i.e. thread depth, in my case all car have just gotten brand new tires).

I am not quite sure how things work in India. But here in Europe car insurance and pay out is against day value. Which is more or less a function of mileage and depreciation. For instance, the “day value” of the Jaguar is less than a few thousand Euro. The appraised value is ten times as much.

So we have these special classic car insurance that are based on appraised value. If the car get stolen or is totalled I would get the appraised value, not the day value.

The appraised needs to be done by a certified and recognised classic car appraiser. There are about 20-25 of them here in the Netherlands and Peter is one of them.

These classic car insurance also have a few other “classic car” specifics. In case of damage, I can choose the repair / paint shop myself. Or I can choose to have the cos of the repair paid in cash, including VAT.

It also provides repatriation of the car in case of break down, from anywhere in Europe.

The report is valid for three years and then the car needs to be re-appraised. Or on some cars if the market value changes a lot it might be beneficial to adjust accordingly. Peter does a lot of Porsches, and some of them get adjusted every 6 months!

An appraised done at your private home, typically will cost around Euro 100. Many clubs offer appraisal days, where you get a better rate. Peter does so every year for the Alfa Romeo Spider Register. Actually, we have a day like that planned in a few weeks.

The actual premium of these classic car insurance are very cheap, compared to normal fully comprehensive car insurance. It usually works out around 1% of the appraisal value on an annual basis.

The reason classic car insurance premiums are so low is due to a couple of factors. Classic cars do little mileage. Average, well recorded here in the Netherlands is only 1800 km/year. Classic cars tend to be driven during weekends, not weekday rush hours and driven carefully. So a lot less damage than on regular cars.

We did discover one little issue with the W123. We wanted it to move it a bit, as Peter also takes photographs of each car for the report. Looks like at least one, maybe more brakes are a bit stuck! Sunday is March 1st and I can take these cars out on the road again. So lets see what happens if I drive it and do some actually braking. Hopefully that will solve it, if not some fiddling to be done!

Jeroen

[NOTORIOUS]

@jeroen

Nice Job Mate , How Much He Charged To detail The Car ?