My Alfa Life: Part 10

In the previous episode I'd described cleaning the motor that handled the clamshell for the power roof on the Spider. This worked fine for a while but I must have connected it not quite correctly as it started to bounce when trying to latch the clamshell.

Checking the movement when operating it manually it was hitting one of the bolts holding the mechanism in place and wasn't able to follow the full range of movement. Unfortunately I didn't notice this until I was in a car park by the coast and trying to raise the hood so we could go for a walk.

Whilst experimenting I left the engine running to make sure I had power, for both the motor and the hydraulics. I was interrupted by a shout that there was smoke coming from the front of the car. I switched the engine off and could hear hissing and saw smoke rising from one of the wheel arches. Seeing water running from under the car, I popped the bonnet and was treated to the Alfa doing an impression of a stove top kettle.

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Whistling Alfa Romeo

The engine had overheated running whilst stationary and boiled off a lot of the coolant. The header tank was almost empty and some of what was there was trying to escape causing the whistling.

This hadn't happened before so it was a whole new fault to try and sort out. Before taking a look, as I had no access to fresh coolant I called the recovery service I'm a member of and left the car to cool for a while.

I remembered after I'd had the engine and radiator replaced (see Part 6) there being mention of having issues getting the fan to work. I hadn't remembered hearing the fan come on so this seemed like a likely cause of the problem. I looked under the bonnet and saw the offending wiring.

The offending cable

The offending cable

A common fault is a resistor that controls the fan becoming damaged. This is typically bypassed altogether which is what the yellow wire above appears to be doing. Unfortunately it had worked loose and therefore there was no way that the fan would come on.

When the recovery chap arrived he took a look and listened to my thoughts. Then topped up the coolant, replaced the wire with a spade fuse, and fastened everything in place with a cable tie. This seemed an altogether better solution than the one done by the garage.

New fan connection.

New fan connection.

We than ran the engine for a while watching the temperature rising until the fan kicked in and started to cool things. Safe in the knowledge that I wouldn't be needed to be recovered this time we dropped the roof back down and headed home.