My Alfa Life - Part 9: Broken again
The trials and tribulations of a serial #Alfa-Romeo owner #Spider #916
At the end of the previous episode my 2001 Alfa Romeo Spider was in a bit of a sorry state. On a run out with the local Alfabook members in the Yorkshire Dales I'd managed to blow out the wadding in the exhaust, resulting in a rather wheezy noise and a distinct lack of performance. The power hood, something that countless forum posts warn against getting, had also decided to stop working. Time to test my mechanical abilities again.
The first job was the clamshell as it stuck with the hood down. Given the weather forecast, and the lack of a usable garage, this was the priority. You are supposed, using a special tool, to be able to release the clamshell manually. This didn't seem to be working in my case and everything remained jammed. Looking at the mechanism the clamshell latches are spring-loaded and held shut by two cables. Releasing the cables took the pressure off the springs and released the clamshell. The roof could be opened and, with it up, the rear could be fastened down to hold everything in place. Not perfect but at least water tight allowing me to look at the motor.
Look no motor
There is a technique that involves tapping the mechanism with a rubber mallet. I tried this but it still wouldn't move so decided to remove it completely and service it. This was a little awkward but I managed to extract it and set about servicing the unit. (Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures at this point so you'll have to make do with my descriptive powers and your imagination).
The clamshell mechanism is a motor with a metal screw drive that meshes with a plastic gear that provides the rotation to pull the cables. Its a frequent issue that these either jam or the plastic teeth wear away. As the rotation is quite small it is possible to fix by simply moving gear around 180 degrees to use an unworn part of it.
Taking it apart there were a few bits in the teeth, but the gear itself looked undamaged. I took it completely apart. Removed the bits, degreased everything so that it was clean, then applied new grease and reassembled. I then reversed the process to put it back in the car.
With everything back in place I tried again. Nothing happened. I then noticed that I'd not connected the power. With all of the cables connected I used the override button and the clamshell motor did it's stuff. I tried a full operation of the hood but it still didn't seem right. It was a little awkward to fasten. There was something else at work here. Hopefully nothing to do with the hydraulics as that is a black art to me.
The offending cable
Fortunately before I ventured down that route I decided to check the rest of the system and found that the clamshell cable had come loose from its fitting on one side. This was causing it to move more than it should and not fasten down fully. I fixed this in place and everything worked properly.
The next thing to deal with was the exhaust. The problem was that most of the wadding from the collapsed silencer was still partly attached inside and blocking the airflow. Instead of having an unsilenced silencer I had a blocked one which was severely restricting airflow. I ordered a replacement exhaust, a nice stainless steel sports one, but that was going to take a little while to arrive, especially with the Easter break. In the meantime I wanted to be able to get the car functional, if only to be able to get it to the garage to fit the exhaust.
I tried manufacturing a hook from some wire to pull it out through the tailpipe but whatever I used it got a little then bent out of shape. The principle seemed good though, I just needed to find a suitable tool. Sitting by the fire in the evening I noticed that the cast iron poker had a hook on it for pulling logs about on the fire. I'd try that in the morning.
The poker worked. I managed to pull all of the fibreglass wadding, and the remnants of the insides of the silencer out and when the engine started it sounded so much better. That would do until the replacement arrived.
The replacement exhaust arrived and I'd arranged to get it fitted by a local garage. The exhaust got to me a day later than I was expecting so fitting it was on a reduced timescale as I had another Yorkshire Dales run the day after. The garage was unable to see how it would fit without cutting the existing exhaust so I decided to do the run using the old exhaust and hope that my work with the poker was sufficient.
It turns out that the exhaust is setup to fit either a CF1 or CF2 Twin Spark. My Spider is a CF3 so I now need another bit to be able to get it fitted. Oh well, it will get there in the end.
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Comments (4)
Sounds terrible, but I get the distinct hint that you don't really mind...
To be honest there are moments when it seems bad. Then again its all part and parcel of owning a 17 year old car. I expected a few mechanical issues when I bought the car last year. As long as its structurally sound then its fine.
And looks beautiful.
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