OT: Alfa Romeos...

[mtnman533]

Top Gear say's you're not a true petrol head until you own one, something about "Alfa magic". After spending 4 days working on one, I really don't fancy owning one!



A fellow Academite (the one who owns an E30 M3 Evo II) has an Alfa problem, it's like an e28 problem, but with Italian engineering. Recently he acquired an Alfa 75 (not sure of the year), it's red, automatic, and apparently 1 of 5 left in the country (I wonder why... ). Anyway, he's been kind enough to let me do the work on it to get it ship shape, and I'm glad of the work, and the money for my time. It's been fun, but a bit of a headache at times...



Being Italian, Alfa decided to make the automatic cars have SLS, but not the manual cars... so, of course, it's broken and leaking, so my first job was replacing the shocks and springs, and running a loop hose between the reservoirs, keeping the system flowing and not "blowing up" as I was told it would... With that done, I moved on and changed the oil, replaced the filter, and did some general maintenance.



Moving on to after the MOT, I wasn't present for the first test. The MOT guy didn't notice that the wheel nuts were loose, wobbled the wheel, and said "wheel bearing needs doing" so, as I was told I replaced the bearing, then connected the dots about the bolts. Also on the "fix list" was the exhaust, so newish SCS rear section went on, it put up a hell of a fight, but I had hammers on my side and won in the end .

Fighting back, after about 10 minutes stopping blood, not serious, but it bled like crazy:


Followed closely by new center rubber mounts for the exhaust, it was hanging a few inches too low, and scraping over speed bumps. Then finally I moved to the one bit I didn't want to do... The power steering/SLS system leaks needed to be taken care of, and this is where it gets... fun.

I trace the main leak at the front, to the delivery line to the rear for the SLS (now not needed). The line is around 15ft long, it runs from the very front of the engine bay, all the way to just inside the rear bumper. Because it'd be a complete pig to remover and replace, I instantly think about throwing a bolt into the exit hole in the pump, and just removing all the SLS crap. However, Tristan has some Alfa "gurus" who say this can't be done, things blow up and it's not good... I fail to see the reasoning behind it, as it's perfectly logical to me (see question at end of thread).

Here's the pump, the SLS line is the furthest forward, and is not very big, to me perfect for pluggin:


The next option is to run a new hose right back to the reservoir, as there is already a return line for the completed system, this made sense. Also a no go, apparently the pump needs strain on it to opporate correctly... ok, that kinda makes sense, but what about a baffle in the new hose to recreate the resistence? They had no idea if it would work, and maybe if the leak (now fixed) returns, we'll give that a shot. My third thought was replace the pump with a manual cars pump (only two outlets, not 3, since no SLS in manual cars) but they're rare these days... seems like it's just hitting a brick wall everywhere I turn to try to do this properly.



Oh well, the leak is stopped, with copious amounts of quicksteel, I covered the leaking area and fixed it that way.

Rather long, possibly boring thread, but thought I'd share my alfa experience, and ask one little question: Why can't I throw a bolt in the 3rd outlet, thereby stopping the flow of fluid, and essentially creating a 2 outlet pump?

Oh, and they have torsion bar front suspension, and inboard rear brakes, how cool is that!

[mooseheadm5]

Tl;dr

Simply blocking the outlet will create tremendous pressure inside the pump. It will destroy the pump in shore order. You can loop the outlet to the reservoir or inlet, you can remove a valve inside the pump (if it is anything like a bmw tandem pump), you can replace it with a non sls pump, or you can loop it in the back. You can block off the accumulator outlets provided the sls valve at the rear of the car is disabled. I'd look into gutting that valve in the pump body or simply looping the outlet to the inlet or reservoir.

[mtnman533]

Sweet, thanks for that, I'll find some info on the pump and see what can be done.

[Karl Heinz]

Odd, I was justing thinking of the older GTV6 when I saw this post.

A former lead of mine when I worked at Sea Ray was into the Alfa 164. He had two at one point in time, rarely with both working at the same time. Nice car in many respects, but such a pain in the ass when things broke, which was constantly.

I have always had a soft spot for the GTV's, as I think they look pretty sweet. Maybe it's the four round headlights at the front or the kink at the rear of the greenhouse, who knows?

[WilNJ]

+1 for the love of Alfa's but their reputation and the fact that I'm not a big fan of 70's and 80's Italian interior styling has meant that I'm happy to love them from afar.

[Karl Grau]

My two favorite body styles are these:





The only Alfa I ever owned was this '93. Not particularly nimble or remarkable in any way but nonetheless very fun to drive on a nice day with the top down. I must have thought it was okay mechanically because we regularly drove it to Mexico on Saturday afternoons for Puerto Nuevo lobster.

[Coldswede]

Owning an Alfa is somewhat close to a religion! You keep the faith in good times and bad, for which you are rewarded on sparkling Spring day drives with a connection to the car that is almost mystical, and they sound great too!

Me? I want a 1300 step nose Junior.

[Lubehead]

The Duetto and GTV are representative of what Alfas are about. The thing you worked on is some abomination if I remember corecty, of a joint effort where Saab ( please correct me if I'm wrong) and perhaps another mfgr built a world patform which was shared by them.

I owned a 69 Duetto Spyder for 14 years and although I carried a tool box wherever I went, for the most part it was a ton of fun and very reliable. After seeing the Graduate just before I went in the service, I was determined to get one when I got out. Had it from '72 to '86 and loved every minute.

[Lubehead]

Looks like I confused the 75 you worked on with the 164.

" Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Fiat and Saab had worked together to develop a rolling platform they called Type Four. It became the much loved 164 for Alfa Romeo, the Thema for Lancia (which even received the rare and highly sought out Ferrari V8, called the 8.32), the Fiat Chroma and Saab’s 9000 series. The cars did very well and helped the struggling companies for a while." per a quick Google search.

[Mike W.]

We've all heard the Alfa stories, but my two closest experiences were more or less at the same time. A neighbor across the canyon from where I was living, had one. On most winter mornings, think rain, lots of it, not snow or anything, the only way they could get it started was to start it rolling down the canyon and eventually it would bump start. And that was on a FI car. At the same time the guy next to me had a boattail spider for a while. The suspension on that thing looked huge, like it belonged on a pickup truck. He cranked the Konis on it all the way hard and loved it for the couple of months he had it, said it had enough power and handled great. He didn't have it long enough to have much break on it before he flipped it for a few hundred profit, that's what he did.