So four years later we returned to Australia married with children (well.. child).  Remember that Madame was our daily driver back in the ol' days - we decided that something a bit more modern would be needed to transport our precious cargo.  A scooby-doo was purchased, subsequently written off, and now we have the 156 sedan as safe modern transport.  Madame Sud was restored from her resting place on the farm and brought back to Melbourne to be a dedicated track car - no longer required to perform daily transport duties.

Time was not kind to the old girl - both sills were rotten and there was some ugly cancer in the base of windscreen pillars and around one rear window. I got some great help from Sam Mazzeo at Sam's Panels (Clayton 9540 0515) to replace the sills and fix the other bits as well.  Fi and I changed the timing belts and clutch slave and got her running and tidy, and with help from Bruno Collautti at Maranello Motors (Brunswick 9386 9650) I had the Madame back on the road and ready to do some sprints.

Recent developments for Madame include the front suspension from a late model Alfa 33.  This provides ventilated outboard discs which help fix the cooling problems I was having with the Sud's inboard discs.  Bruno at Maranello Motors has helped me with this work - we also fitted some stiffer springs front and rear and koni yellow shocks in the front, although discussion is continuing about getting some much stiffer springs again.  I'm continuing to tidy up the exterior of the car, and I've started stripping the interior in order to fit a 6-point cage in the next couple of months.  Slowly but steadily I want to develop this car and learn how to drive it.  Motorsport is not cheap, but this little Sud has to be the best fun per $$$ that you can get!!!

Specs (June 2006):

1977 Alfasud Ti (originally 1.2 engine)

- 1500cc engine high compression
- cams from 105hp boxer
- heads ported and matched
- 40mm Weber IDF carbs
- crossover extractors
- 33 16V front ventilated discs/calipers
- urethane bushes front/rear
- front/rear springs wound to specification

I'm also involved in the Trofeo Alfasud competition started by Ed Hellsten and Teruo Delacroix to fire up the Sud, Sprint, and 33 owners in the club.  Check out http://www.trofeoalfasud.com and think about building a Sud/33 weapon for next year!

cheers,
Evan.

Black ones! :-)

I actually don't know where they were sourced from as they are older than my involvement with the car.  They are only on the rear of the trailing links where they attach to the mounting points under the firewall.  The bushes on the front arms are all standard.  I assumed the urethane bushings were SuperPro or similar.

I wonder if there are urethane bushes that ARE suitable for the front arms.  They'd have to have the right amount of give in a twisting force, but still real tight in the other directions.  The UK and NZ guys who race boxer cars might know - I'll ask on the forums.   Alternatively I guess we could look at rose joints, but then I figure we'd make up the whole arms...