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How dare you ruin this car...!!!!!!!
Only joking of course! It is far better you get stuck in and give it a go rather than letting things get worse or go beyond repair...
The end result will be perfect but you have to hit a fair few bumps on the way!
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***GARAGE CURRENTLY EMPTY***
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It must be boring to follow a thread where the bloke starts with a nice car and thoroughly proceeds to make it worse than it was, I'm sincerely sorry about that. Far from it! Sorting out the grimey horrible jobs is way more important than making a car look pretty. If you get to the point that the car does look all pretty and shiney then that's lovely, but the stuff you're doing now will make sure the car lasts properly. |
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Clement
Europe
ambitious but rubbish
Posts: 2,095
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Jun 30, 2014 12:09:38 GMT
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Thanks for the support guys! I looked at the pics on thr front page and my, it was much prettier back then. Put that on top of rookie mistakes, because I've driven about 55,000km with the Cortina and the Giulia over the past 3 years but I still can't rebuild a carb or a dizzy without spending several weeks undoing my mistakes, and you get low mojo.
The likely cause of my ignition woes is that I could have put the HT lead for cyl 1 in the wrong place. The problems do sound like misplaced leads, but somehow yesterday I didn't remember to just put a long screwdriver in the plug hole of no1 cylinder and put it on TDC to see where the rotor arm ended up. Still, at least I know what to do Friday when I get back to the garage.
I keep looking for lowering springs and I'll go bother the people who were supposed to modify my PCD adaptors to get the beautiful BWA wheels on the car. Should get the mojo back.
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ulver
Part of things
Posts: 67 
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Jun 30, 2014 23:05:25 GMT
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Keep going mate, one of my favourite threads on here.
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'99 Alfa Romeo 156 2.5 V6  |
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Clement
Europe
ambitious but rubbish
Posts: 2,095
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That's way too nice  thanks mate, I'm afraid I'm not at all up to the standard of work displayed on the forum, but it does mean I get to learn a lot! Everything's alright with the Alfa now (I had wrongly remembered the location of no1 HT lead on the dizzy cap...), except one detail. When trying to start it I get one spark, a beautiful fat spark (I took the plugs out to see if there was something), and then nothing. I scoured the interwebs for an answer and none was found! The engine even started, but just for a turn. Any suggestions? I'll have a cursory look but it's tough when you have no given direction. |
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goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,889
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Thats certainly a weird problem! I'm sorry i can't offer much help, other than to say it's worth going right back to basics, to avoid getting yourself stuck with tunnel vision and missing something obvious. You've identified a spark issue, so break it right down; Is the gap in the points correct? Are they locked in place? Are they opening and closing appropriately if you hand crank the engine? Are you getting power to the coil? Is the wire from the points to the coil in good condition? Is the contact in the centre of the distributer cap making good contact with the rotor cap? etc. Keep the faith mate, the night is darkest before the dawn and all that  It's fixing all the issues that have been put off and covered up that gives this feeling of making the car worse, but it really p[ays off in the long run when you end up with a properly enjoyable car that just works every time you go to use it, because all the behind the scenes stuff has been dealt with properly. |
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Clement
Europe
ambitious but rubbish
Posts: 2,095
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F*** YEAH! This little malevolent b*gger was corroded, giving about twelve million ohms of resistance between the coil and the condenser:  I guess it was alright before I'd dismantled the dizzy, but the nut, the washer and the thread were rusted just enough not to make contact once back together. I actually took out the distributor to check whether the new points were clean, and since they were I got the multimeter out and started checking things. I was especially interested in the coil/condenser link because to me, having one spark proves that there's everything involved to produce a spark (hence point gap etc being correct), but the fact there was only one was pointing towards bad "filling" of the coil when on a normal duty. In this case it was charging the coil slowly with the ignition on, gave one good spark upon cranking and then didn't have enough time to recharge. The car runs beautifully now, better than it ever has, mainly because of the new HT leads I reckon. With the old ones I would get sparks in my fingers, no wonder cylinder no 2 didn't want to ignite properly. Anyways I'm a happy man tonight, because I might have found the bottom of the fuel/oil issue (although I'm not done with the carbs, will take them apart again and clean the sh*t out of them), and got the car to run better than it ever had during my ownership. I'm really excited to take it for a good 70-mile drive tomorrow morning!  |
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goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,889
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Woooo! awesome news mate. It's great when you get to the bottom of these problems and not only is the current problem fixed but it runs better than ever before |
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Clement
Europe
ambitious but rubbish
Posts: 2,095
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Hohoho "the current problem" that's a good one  This morning's drive went without a problem, I'm well chuffed! The oil pressure still tends to drop a bit when on the motorway, for example I was getting 35kg/cm² at 3000rpm on the A-road for several dozen of km, and only 28-30 at 4000rpm on the motorway (about 125kph) after a while. K reckon that's just some contamination from the previous oi (although I changed the oil, the filter and cleaned the sump. |
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Clement
Europe
ambitious but rubbish
Posts: 2,095
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Jul 13, 2014 17:30:17 GMT
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Today I changed the front discs, the bearings on the front RH corner and the bearings dust shield on the LH side. Nothing went to plan: nothing seized, nothing broken, everything went smoothly, and the result was good straightaway. I'm waiting for something to explode |
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Jul 13, 2014 20:04:30 GMT
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See, you say it went to plan but there's no pictures as proof so how can I believe you?  |
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Clement
Europe
ambitious but rubbish
Posts: 2,095
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Jul 13, 2014 21:51:41 GMT
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It didn't go to plan, I was expecting skinned knuckles and numerous swear words! Instead of which I had to take nice little pauses to make it last a little, these moments are too rare I tell you Pictures tomorrow morning, I like uploading shiny car stuff while having breakfast. |
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Jul 13, 2014 22:13:26 GMT
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Don't have to tell me, I insist on owning British cars.
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Clement
Europe
ambitious but rubbish
Posts: 2,095
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A few pictures then! The plugs:  It doesn't look too bad though a tad lean, I've given it a bit more fuel since. It's nice to see they're all pretty much the same colour! The bearing dust shield in the hub:  Old vs new:  Old bearings:  Extracting the races was easy, I expected a pig of a job but they drifted out nicely! While I was there I renewed the brake pads' pins, it looks that little bit cleaner:  Second step done:  The end result:  Of course, a leaflet in the discs' box mentioned which disc went onto which side, and I managed to get them the wrong way. It does look better though |
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Of course, a leaflet in the discs' box mentioned which disc went onto which side, and I managed to get them the wrong way. It does look better though But real men never read the instructions. Until it's too lateLooking forward to the renewed pics of this ambling around the French countryside. |
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Jul 14, 2014 11:02:03 GMT
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Instructions are there only to tell you how you got it wrong, not to tell you how to build it correctly, everyone knows that.
Does look nice with all fresh components, very satisfying.
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Jul 14, 2014 21:07:49 GMT
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That Brake / suspension pic looks great mate!!
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goldnrust
West Midlands
Minimalist
Posts: 1,889
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Jul 14, 2014 21:23:46 GMT
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Yup, you can't look at that pic and say you're making the car look worse! Looking really tidy under there now Do the brakes feel any better with new pads? on the Lancia I noticed quite a difference, god knows how old the pads that were on the car when I bought it were! |
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Clement
Europe
ambitious but rubbish
Posts: 2,095
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Jul 18, 2014 19:04:02 GMT
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Thanks a lot mate, I have to say it's sweet that things are going well these days. I'm in Mulhouse for the week-end, yes I'll be visiting the Cité de l'Automobile went to see a fellow 105 owner on the way, pics will be posted! |
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Clement
Europe
ambitious but rubbish
Posts: 2,095
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Dec 13, 2014 19:00:30 GMT
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And indeed I completely forgot. And now I forgot where they are. Oh well. Since the Maser doesn't want to play ball, the Giulia has been pushed back into daily service. I've done little things to it which help with the daily running, such as new dizzy cap and rotor arm (quite expensive at £42 but it was sorely needed), new wiper rubbers, front axle professionnally tracked, etc. I'm still having problems with fuel getting into the oil, and I'm still not really sure what is causing it. Changing the dizzy cap solved the cold running issue (ran on three for a minute or so, and just sounded unbalanced when idling), but the car still smells of fuel after a night in the garage. I think I must have screwed up the carb rebuild, or the rebuild kit was no good, but the result is that all my supposed carb problems were indeed ignition issues, and while trying to solve them I have created one. And done about six oil changes to avoid killing the engine. This week-end I wanted to change the bushes and shocks in the rear suspension, and while it should look like this (with a live axle in the middle)  It looks like this indeed:     which, while not incredibly bad, isn't the most pleasant sight. Oil leaks, surface rust, etc. I've encountered quite a stupid problem : having just refilled the tank, when I lift the car by the middle of the axle I'm only lifting the right-hand side of the car. I can't have a jack and a stand on the same jacking point at the same time, it's too small. Hence I haven't yet come up with a strategy to actually have the car up in the air safely. I'm also confused by how I should process to take the trailing arms off, as well as the T-bar on top of the axle. |
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thanks mate, I'm afraid I'm not at all up to the standard of work displayed on the forum, but it does mean I get to learn a lot!
It's fixing all the issues that have been put off and covered up that gives this feeling of making the car worse, but it really p[ays off in the long run when you end up with a properly enjoyable car that just works every time you go to use it, because all the behind the scenes stuff has been dealt with properly. 
