1983 Alfa Romeo GTV6: Finally Living the Dream (?)

Luckily I noticed and stopped before anything bad happened, but when I had my Milano the short fuel lines on the injectors randomly started leaking while I was driving it. They are a little annoying to change too. When you change the timing belt it might be worth it to change the cam pulley seals and adjust the exhaust valve clearance too. Value cover gaskets and spark plug seals are $100 but you need to pull the valve covers to check the cam timing marks anyway. Then you have to decide what to do about a tensioner too, the leaky and complicated original one, or the fragile and disposable updated spring kind from the 164.

Also, are you going to rebuild the rear calipers? They are likely to start leaking when you try to adjust the pad clearance if not.

I made a thing!

Door handles on the GTV6 just plain suck. They're made out of this horrible cast aluminum that seems to have the structural properties of unfired pottery. Viz:

Originally I was going to attach aluminum blanks to the handle stubs, but the first handle I drilled into cracked into three pieces. So much for that.

After much cursing I decided to just make new ones from scratch. Out of steel. It just so happens the handles are a hair over 1.5" wide, so some 1.5" x 0.5" channel stock would do the trick.

Cut me some blanks:

Shaved the corners and drilled pivot pin holes:

Made sure it fit:

Linished it back:

And a coat of primer.

Works pretty well, IMO. Not going to add the grooves, I'm not that AR.

Sweet! I may have to steal that one

Fabrication-noob question, if you wouldn't mind: if you DID add the grooves, how would you do it?

Stealthtercel wrote: Fabrication-noob question, if you wouldn't mind: if you DID add the grooves, how would you do it?

That's a good question. If the handles were in aluminum, I'd probably rig up some sort of parallel cutter out of a bunch of jigsaw blades.

Hungary Bill wrote: Sweet! I may have to steal that one

Door handles for Alfettas is one of those things I am surprised no one is making already -- or at least I have never found them. It would be super easy to have the design done up in CAD and milled on a CNC machine. They aren't that complex, really. They're notched out at the back to clear the stops in the handle base, and the original ones have a pair of tabs that grab a cast metal lever on the back side of the unit; this lever pushes the lock release. I'll either go with a couple of welded tabs (why I went steel) or a stainless-steel strap.

Nice solution! The 164 door handles and gas cap are made of the same pot metal, but there's no good solution to repairing replacing them besides buying used and being gentle.

Stealthtercel wrote: Fabrication-noob question, if you wouldn't mind: if you DID add the grooves, how would you do it?

Buy a sheet of decorative stainless or aluminum with the groves already in them and glue on. There will be something out there that is close.

Holy crap, it's been a long time since I updated this. After my last update, health and weather alternated to make the outside build a no-go, especially seeing as how I needed to do some open-engine surgery. However, in a huge stroke of luck I managed to score indoor shop facilities and lo and behold the build began anew!

Up the car went, and off came the valve covers...

Holy nuts, was it clean. Near spotless. Things were looking up!

Then I drained the sump and dropped the oil pan. Oh boy.

"Busso V6" plus "sitting for a long time" equals "All the coolant drained into the sump". Awesome. Time for the engine to come out.

At least getting rid of that waterlogged firewall insulation will be easy. That and I can properly clean the engine bay.

So much trouble for so tiny a thing.

A short time later, and we have this:

...two completely disassembled cylinder heads (the cams are just sitting in place) and...

...a bare block, ready for cleaning.

The teardown tally shows I need:

-New rod bearings (no surprise here) -New rings (varnish-seized in a couple of pistons, might as well do them all -New cylinder base gaskets (the whole reason for the teardown in the first place) -New plugs -A few new gaskets

And that's it for the engine. It's in very good shape -- VERY. Everything is within spec and clean as a whistle. The cylinders need a deglaze and the bearing journals are a little manky, but nothing a cylinder hone and some patient polishing respectively won't solve.

And we close out this long resumption post by giving thanks to the author of one of the finest works of literature ever written. Thanks, Mr. Kartalamakis...

Glad to see it's coming back together again. Er, uh, you know what I mean.

All the Alfa project threads on here mention that book every so often that I wonder if I should pick up a copy just to get even more bad ideas in my head.

ssswitch wrote: All the Alfa project threads on here mention that book every so often that I wonder if I should pick up a copy just to get even more bad ideas in my head.

It's a very, very good book. Transaxle Alfas only, but a ton of good info.

In reply to rallymodeller :

That door handle flap - Nice functional fix!