Mortimer II
My first Alfa was a 1969 Berlina. That car got turned me into an enthusiast, and many years after it’s demise I found myself looking for another, for sentimental reasons.
Sometime during 1998 or 1999, I stumbled across Mortimer II, a somewhat race prepped 19?? Berlina (it was advertised as either a ’69 or a ’71, but was really a ’73). The body was relatively rust free and straight, and there were quite a bit of go fast pieces on the car, including Ferrari F40 seats, heavily modified brakes, and a full Sperry stage 5 motor.
I gathered up some information and prepared to make a bid. My plans were to pull all the go fast parts and put them on the Spider, then turn the rest of it back into a street Berlina.
He who hesitates loses, however, and by the time I made my
bid the car was sold to another buyer. I
contacted the buyer and offered to buy either (1) the body or (2) the go fast
parts, in the event that he was looking for one or the other (who in their
right mind would be interested in racing a Berlina?). However this gent was interested in racing
Mortimer as is, and ended up shipping the car from NJ to a shop not far from my
home for some work in advance of his driving it back to
And so I thought I had seen the last of Mortimer..
In August of 2001, however, the buyer contacted me and offered the car up. I can’t go into detail over his reasons, suffice to say not much progress had been made on the car and he was interested in moving on to other things.
I went down to pick up Mortimer, and as soon as I laid eyes on the beast all thoughts of returning him to stock went right out the window. This car was perfect as is – what else could be more fun to play with on a race track?
As I write this (Nov 2001) Mortimer is in the barn, on the lift, waiting to be brought back to life over this winter. I intend to have some fun and sort him out next summer, then probably tear down the motor and ??? next winter and really go to town. We’ll chronicle our adventures here on this page.
In the mean time, if you’re interested in seeing how Mortimer came to be, here’s a pointer to a page that was set up by the gents who originally put him together:
Mortimer-II 1971 Alfa Romeo Berlina
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April 2002 – Mortimer Lives!
After a winter of dealing with (a) trying to figure out what I was dealing with, (b) what was wrong with it, and (c) how to put it all back together and get it running, Mortimer made his return to the track at the AROCt annual Lime Rock event in April, 2002.
I ended up giving the car a pretty comprehensive going over. At first glance, it needed a steering box replaced, brake master cylinders replaced (they had previously been removed in anticipation of the steering box job), and a Spica injection pump. There was a new steering box in the trunk, but I had a problem..
You see, there are two styles of steering boxes – ones with one-piece shafts, and ones with u-joints in the shafts. Earlier cars had the one piece, later cars had the u-jointed style. To r&r the one piece style box, you must remove the headers. Mortimer has these super racing headers, that unfortunately won’t come out without first removing the engine.
So, with the guy who built the car telling me the engine needed rebuilding anyhow, I figured if I took the engine out to facilitate the steering box replacement, then I may as well rebuild it. May as well do the tranny while we’re in there. Heck, paint the engine compartment, why not restore the entire car!
I was desperately trying to prevent the steering box replacement from turning into a grounds up restoration.
I finally figured that if I could locate a u-jointed style steering box and shaft, I could cut out the shaft that was in there, then install the new box and shaft without restoring the entire car. I found what I was looking for, then began to start cutting..
Woe and behold, the box that was in the car turned out to be the u-jointed style box! And, to make matters better, the new box in the trunk was the same! A few hours later, and Mortimer had steering once again!
The brake masters bolted right up, then it was on to the injection pump. Turns out the the folks that had built the car found fuel in the oil, and told me that the engine would need to be rebuilt. However, in my experience, that’s usually a sign of a worn injection pump, and since the injection pump on Mortimer was missing, I figured I’d try installing a good one, then cross my fingers.
I found the best pump in my loft, and did a quick ‘Joe Benson’ modification for Spica pumps on high output motors, which pretty much consisted of opening the pump and adjusting the altitude compensation to fool the pump into thinking it was operating at higher altitudes. I randomly selected a thermostatic actuator, and tested it by holding it in front of the kerosene heater for a few seconds. Extension? Yup! We’re good to go!
I bolted up the newly modified pump, installed the actuator, then set about changing all of the fluids and filters on the car. Can’t go starting things up on a car that’s been sitting for five years without fresh fluids.
Once I got the jumper cables connected to the right place under the hood, and figured out the weird combination of ignition switch and starter button, Mortimer fired up on the first (or second) try! Sounded great, and no sign of any more fuel in the sump. With it starting so easily, and running so well, I gathered that a proper adjustment of the Spica system would just be a waste of time. Maybe later, let’s see how (and if) it holds up first. I figured I’d drive it until it threw a rod, or maybe not..
If the car stopped running on it’s maiden voyage that was one thing, however I didn’t want it to stop stopping. I figured the brakes would need a good bleeding, there was a fair amount of surface rust on the rotors and the masters were freshly installed anyhow.
With only a week or so to go before the big return, I got to work on the brakes. Bleeder screws started snapping off as soon as I touched them. Oh oh, where to even find such items for those special Nascar brakes..
How about the internet? Some research, and two days later the new hardware arrived. The good news is that with those brakes, the bleeder nipples screw into little housings, so you can remove the housings and replace them and the nipples without having to rebuild the calipers. Now we’re getting close. I decided to replace all of the housings and nipples, even the ones that hadn’t snapped off.
Wouldn’t you know it, but the last housing I got to snapped in half.. This turned into a bear of a job, some broken taps, etc, but eventually all was made right. Got the brakes bled, only thing left was to mount up the ‘new’ tires and load old Mortimer up onto the trailer.
For the debut, I didn’t want to spend $600 on new tires that wouldn’t fit anything else, and then have Mortimer blow up half way through the first lap, so I found a set of used tires in the correct size. $60 something for mounting and balancing, and I was ready to go.
Trailering a car has it’s advantages. In a first for me, I drove through a blinding snowstorm on the Mass pike on the way to the track on Thursday night. The next day at the track was also unseasonably cold, it actually snowed and hailed during my first session! All of which didn’t help those massive brakes, between the surface rust and the cold weather, they never came up to temp, and were basically useless. So much for “throwing out the anchor” at the end of the straight..
On my second session I kept my foot on the brake pedal for the first lap, heating them up helped a lot – I could actually feel them working! I started to get comfortable with the car, and the lap times started to come down.
Third session was getting even better. After 3-4 laps I was really getting into a groove, my personal cobwebs were starting to clear, and Mortimer was starting to run real well. I finally passed some other cars, and was really starting to grin when just after the uphill (thank God not in the uphill) I lost all traction in the rear and went into a wild spin. Pressed the brake pedal and the clutch pedal like you’re supposed to, and kept it in a relatively straight line (while it was spinning), ending up just off the track. Saw massive smoke coming from under the hood, cursed myself for not having installed a fire extinguisher, urged the corner worker to run a little faster with his, but it turned out that the smoke was in fact steam – blown head gasket. Turns out the spin was caused by coolant from the blown head gasket getting under the rear wheels.
After a tow into the pits (why didn’t anybody get a picture of that?), Mortimer fired right up, but obviously wasn’t going to be driven very far.
If the weather was a little warmer, and there weren’t 3-4 total strangers making expresso in my trailer, I might have been tempted to replace the head gasket, but I figured I’d quite while I was ahead. Besides, my good friend Gene wasn’t quite so lucky when he spun in his Spider, and I figured I’d spend Saturday getting his car home then coming back for Mortimer.
So, on the great return, Mortimer showed great promise..
July
2002 – The End?
Well, things don’t always turn out the way you expect them
to. Without getting into all of the
details, it looks like the