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Newbie with a '68 SV.

ALC 68A

ALC 68A

Donation Time
Wayne - most Alpine restorations begin with replacing the door sills, as these give the strength to the shell. If the sills are weak, the body will sag in the middle and the door gaps will be wrong. In severe cases, the top rear door gap will close up altogether.

The sills are a three layer box section design - the visible inner and outer panels and an internal centre diaphragm which is the strengthening member so that the welded seams top and bottom are three thicknesses of steel. The diaphragm always rots out along the bottom seam because water gets into the sills from inside the front wheel arches. The sills pass behind the front and rear wing panels, and tie together the ends of the X shaped cruciform strengthening member below the floor pans and also the bases of the A posts. However, as your floor pans are so heavily corroded, it is likely that the cruciform is also affected, together with the forward ends of the rear leaf spring mountings. I would check these carefully.

To repair your Alpine properly, I think you have a major restoration project that will take up a lot of your future Saturdays! It will require a complete strip down, the shell bracing, serious welding time and many panels replacing. Good luck!
 
W

Wayne67vert

Donation Time
Thanks for this recommendation. I suspect the passenger side has this problem. The door gap on the passenger side has closed and the door has a sag on the back .
I anticipate putting the car on a rotisserie, enabling me to access all areas that need repair. I am actually looking forward to cutting this car up and putting it back together. I really like the building and reconstruction process I see alot of Evapo-Rust in my future.
I will start by cross bracing the door openings and criss-cross the interior with square tubing.
 
ALC 68A

ALC 68A

Donation Time
Wayne - yes - it will be a massive job, but that is the only way this Alpine will will ever get back on the road. Before bracing the body, I would suggest gently jacking the shell until the doors sit squarely in their openings, to remove the sag in the middle. However, before doing that, I would check the doors haven't dropped due to worn hinge pins, as that would give you a false result.

It's a strange - superficially, the outer panels on the car don't look too bad in your first picture on the trailer, but the rust to the floors is some of the worst I've seen. It looks as if the car was left outside, hood down, in all weathers for a long time with water lying in all the nooks and crannies.

To replace the sills, you need to cut away the lower 12"-18" of the front and rear wings either side of the door openings to expose the full length and let in patch panels to fill the gaps when the sills are welded in place. In the UK, parts suppliers produce repair panels for this job and the three part sills, plus floor pans, cruciform repair, boot floor, front panels etc, to repair most of the known rust spots on an Alpine. I don't know what the panel situation is like in the USA and availability may be a factor for your project. Sunbeam Specialties in California is known to me, but I don't know if they have the full panel set that we do over here. Because of the many dry state cars available in the USA, it seems to me that badly rusted or worn out Alpines are broken for parts, rather than given the total restoration that your car needs. Therefore, unlike the UK where the damp climate and salty winter roads breeds rust, there may not be the demand to provide the full set of repair panels. However, I'm sure that there will be people on SAOCA who will be able to advise you on this and about their own restoration experiences. I might suggest moving your post to the Stock Alpine part of this forum, which gets more traffic than this Factory Original one.

Finally, I note your car was originally colour code 122, Signal Red, a rarer late production colour, rather than the white it now is. It is a purer shade of red, compared with the Carnival Red of earlier series, which has an orangey tinge. If you want to return to the original colour, there is someone on this forum who can provide accurately matched paint chips. It would have had full black interior trim, including the dashboard top and knee roll, which someone has recovered in white.
 
W

Wayne67vert

Donation Time
ALC 68A, thanks for more info on repairing my Alpine.
I had planned to jack the side up before welding in supports but didn't think the door hinge pins might be the problem. I will check them.
My body exterior is in quite good condition in most part. I do have another complete body shell coming that will supply parts as needed.
I have stripped the interior and found the original color of red paint. There was no remnants of any black interior pieces. I suspect the black was too hot for our Florida climate and the previous owner changed to off white.
I'm leaving tomorrow to retrieve the body shell I am buying.
 
ALC 68A

ALC 68A

Donation Time
How did your trip go? Apart from the fin shape, you need to be aware that other Alpine body panels are not all interchangeable, because of changes introduced during production. Early cars have rounded corners on the boot lid, bonnet and door bottoms. On later cars these became squared off and there are other alterations as well, although not all at the same time and there is a useful guide to the differences and when they were introduced, in the Tech Data section of this forum. Earlier cars also had the panel joints around the bonnet aperture and front wings lead loaded to make them invisible, but this was omitted on late cars like yours.
 
W

Wayne67vert

Donation Time
Our trip went well, 2337 miles in 4 days. Here are photos of the body. Are there any hidden vin numbers? The complete chassis has been cut out. This body has square corners.
I also found and bought a rotisserie on the trip.
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65beam

65beam

Donation Time
No hidden VIN numbers after mid series 2 production. Don't remember the cut off point but since this is a series 5 you won't find a VIN stamped on the fire wall.
 
65beam

65beam

Donation Time
There are lead filled seams on a series 5. Start where the front fenders meet the hinge panel and the section that the grill eyebrow fastens. You'll find lead in the area where the fenders meet the bulkhead in front of the windshield ( the open seam area running front to rear) and probably in the area where the rear hood buffers set. You'll find lead around the trunk hinges. This is where the rear fenders and the piece between the rear fenders connect. Our blue series 5 originally had lead over the rear rocker seams at the bottom rear of the door. Remove the paint down to bare metal in the areas where the body parts connect and you'll find lead over spot welds.
 
ALC 68A

ALC 68A

Donation Time
It does seem to be a Series V shell, but an earlier production than yours, with more lead in it. If you compare this shell with your original car, you will see that yours has more visible seams, e.g. where the ends of the outer sill (rocker) panel meets the front and rear wings (fenders) and the ends of the rear valance. The top of the rear valance was levelled off with lead below the rear lights on my Series IV, and the V shell probably has it there too. As Series V production neared the end, more seems were left open, presumably to cut costs.

It must have been a big job for someone to cut away the entire inner structure of the car. Why do that?
 
ALC 68A

ALC 68A

Donation Time
I had never heard of the 24 Hours of Lemons. From their website, it looks like a fun series and not taken too seriously by the competitors. A huge range of cars has taken part including a Rolls Royce, although some potentially nice savable cars have been ruined by being converted as track racers, including your Alpine. At least its remains will go for a good clause.
 
DanR

DanR

Diamond Level Sponsor
I have a complete alpine understructure that a Gent removed the outer shell for transplant on a fabricated frame he is installing an LS Engine (Chevy).

All of the underpans and frame are in excellent condition (no rust)....

PIC's available.... send E-mail.
 
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