In September of 2015, this car was found in a storage unit in Katy, Texas. The engine had failed, and the owner had put the car in the storage unit with the intention of taking it out the next week and starting work on it. Twenty-five years later, it was bought by its present owner and pulled out of storage!

Before beginning the restoration on this car, it had to be completely disassembled. Every nut and bolt were removed from this chassis. All of the suspension components were removed, the brake calipers, rotors control arm, tie rods, springs, and the rear trailing arms. All of these components were sent out to be checked, and all of the steel parts were power coated, and all of the aluminum parts were replaced. The shocks were replaced with new Konis. All of the bolts on the under carriage and suspension were replaced with new ones.

The car had rust on the doors and lower fenders, and it looked like the car had damaged to the right front fender. The body repair was painstakingly done. All rust holes were cut out and new metal welded in. This work was done on the rear left fender, the windshield lip, the cavity under the windshield, the bottoms of both doors, the trunk, and the C-Pillars behind the rear windows where the Alfa symbols are mounted. The driver’s door had a new skin was put on it. There were some rust holes in the floorboard. These were cut out and replaced and the body put on a rotisserie. The inside of the body has body seam putty and then painted. The bottom had the paint removed, rust removed, painted, and then sprayed with undercoating. The entire chassis was then painted Giallo Modena, Ferrari’s famous “Fly Yellow”!

The engine was totally disassembled. New pistons, liners, main bearings, rod bearings, and rings were replaced with new ones. The head was checked for flatness, and it was flat. The valves and valve guides were replaced. The seats were ground, and the clearances were set with the correct shims. The original camshafts were replaced with a set of 105.48 cams. These cams give reasonable performance without being radical. The crankshaft was checked and was true to 0.001 thousand. The bearing surfaces on the crankshaft were checked for scoring and for wear. There was none as is expected as this crankshaft is nitrated. The rods were checked for wear on both the big and small end and there were none.

A new clutch was installed, and the transmission was opened with the intention of rebuilding it. This was not necessary as all synchronizing rings were perfect. Seals were replaced and the transmission shifts very smoothly. Universal joints were replaced. New seals were put in the rear end, but it was otherwise left untouched.

The brakes were removed from the car and rebuilt with new rubber rings and boots as well as new pads and metal pieces. A new emergency brake cable was installed. A new air conditioning system was installed. The original AC unit that came with GTVs was not very good, so a Vintage Air system was installed. The inside unit sits very nicely under the dash but as with all GTVs, if AC is installed the old console unit will not fit in with the car. Modifying the old console is not good anyway as it has slides in it to control the air coming into the car. Vintage Air has no provisions for this, so a new console was built. It contains all of the functions that the old console had with the addition of several phone charging modules. The air conditioning hoses from the evaporation unit to the compressor normally runs across the fire wall inside the engine compartment. This is unattractive so the hoses were run across the front of the car and under the right fender. A special connector is on the firewall (above the passenger’s feet) that feeds the hoses to the evaporator unit. The original cooling system (radiator, shroud, motor driven fan) were retained and cooled the engine well until the outside temperature got above 100 degrees. An electric fan was installed in front of the radiator.