Regards from Hannover

[dany 0]

Hi guys,

I'm glad I discovered this forum (actually it was recomended to me by Alxege). My name si Daniel and I'm living in Hannover. I'm driving a Spider 3.0 12v which has a long story (went through a complete engine overhaul this winter, plus other electrical problems - if anyone's interested I'll tell you the details) and I'm still working to briging her to full speed.

Until then, here's a couple of pics.

[Paso 239]

Nice and very elegant in black! Welcome!

[Thanos 193]

Welcome Dany!

[Persimmon 42]

Hi Daniel

Welcome to the Forum

Please do post the story of the car.

Always good to know and often we learn things

Alan

[charlee 314]

Welcome!

[dany 0]

Thanks for the warm welcome. As for the story (don't know if here is the right place for it, but perhaps one of the admins/mods could move it) it started last summer when I wanted to do something crazy after finishing my PhD and since I've been driving Alfas for some time, I thought a Spider would do just fine.

Found the add on the internet, and bought it from a guy in Kiel. I only drove it about 50 km on the highway when it overheated and basicaly it had to be towed to Hannover. Afterwards we (me and some Alfa wizzes) found that the cyllinder seal was done. Therefore in the winter it went through an overhaul: complete seal set, piston rings, belts, oils... the works.

When we opened the engine we found the source of the problem: since the car was used previously only in the summer, the owners didn't care much about what they used as cooling fluid, and I think they filled normal tap water. In the engine, between the cylinders a lot of calcium deposits formed which made an insulating layer around, that led to a poor cooling and breaking the seal (see first pic.).

The motor block was completely disasembled, properly cleaned and put back together. Basically now it's like new. The gearbox got new oil, clutch was still ok. Afterwards we also fond that the water radiator was blocked, so => new radiator. The relay block controlling the two fans up front was also found faulty, so it was changed.

A bit tragi-comical was the part with the water pipe that runs between the cylinder blocks. While the engine was appart, I did a bit of cosmetic work on it (painted the valve/camshaft covers, the fuel and water pipes, air intake, etc). The pipes were sandblasted, epoxy primed and painted (see the other pics). However the sandblasting uncovered a small crack in the water pipe at the T-piece at the thermostat-end. Of course nobody did notice until the car was fully asembled, and with a bit of pressure it started leaking. To take it out, the rear cylinder bank has to be removed (yep, that means another seal and couple of days work). Since at that point I was not around, the guy that was in charge of the overhaul took the pipe out and hard-soldered himself. However with hard soldering is very tricky, as the surface has to be carfully prepared (no paint, no fat) otherwise the solder doesn't flow and stick properly. Ok he messed it up. It worked for a while but after couple of weeks it gave in again. So yeah, back to the beginning: cylinder head out, seal, soldering. This time I took the pipe to a soldering wizz in my institute workshop and it was done as it should.

Sometime in between I had a small acident with her: coming out of the highway, on a right-left turn I lost the back end, and smashed the rear left rim on the curb. The reason was shitty tires (for most of it) and a slightly negative slope of the street. As I mentioned earlier the previous onwer(s) were cheap: he wanted to have nice fat tires but didn't care about quality, so on the rear axis it came with some 245/40ZR17 no-name tires Maxxim or Maxxus, while on front it had Marangoni. Anyway both suck.

At the moment I borowed a set of Zender Milano rims and tires from my friend, until I find something fitting (am looking for a set of 17" Teledials actually).

I also did a bit of work on the interior, namely painting the central consoles (I could never understand why Alfa used that shity rubber paint on it) which took a good while. Mainly because removing the old paint was a major pain in the ..s.

Still to do: the a/c compressor is not working so I'll change it probably next week. A thorough brake check, I suspect the fluid is old because at high speeds it feels a bit soft (maybe together with some reinforced brake pipes). And a measurement of the axes.

Now a relatively new piece of info: Wednesday while on the highway I got the feeling that not all the horses were really in their place, so yesterday I met with the motor wizz (the Alfa Doctor) and we suspect that the toothed belt jumped couple of teeth. We meet tomorrow morning to look into it.

I hope I did not bore you too much with the story.