La Tempesta

I went to the post office today and picked up yet another parcel from Classic Alfa: new handbrake shoes, retaining pins and springs, plus a rather useful item I was told a couple of years ago, no Montreal owner should drive anywhere without: a Spica belt. This is the toothed belt that drives the mechanical injection pump via the intake camshaft on cylinder bank 2.

Pretty nice thing to have in the boot when the planned Montreal round trip to Arctic Circle Raceway is underway in late July The grand plan is to drive up to Mo i Rana for the annual Alfa Romeo Owner’s Club meet, and the Corsa Italiana races. We’ll see how the progress is on the car work. It’s around 1000 kms each way, so La Tempesta should ideally be more than well prepared …

UPDATE April 2009: the car will under no circumstances be ready for such a long trip in July. In other words: We’ll use the 166 or stay at home.

Time for a little update again.

I bought myself an ignition strobe lamp and proceeded to check the ignition on the Montreal a few days ago. Since the Spica parameters were more or less tuned in last autumn, idle rpm have been a little high and slow driving in low gears have been quite a stuttering experience. Following Bruce Taylor’s advice in the Ignition Distribution section on his website, as well as the shop manual’s procedure, the advance at idle was adjusted. To my horror, I couldn’t even see the AF mark on the flywheel when the engine idled, but after a few moments it appeared in the inspection hole. The latter is somewhat obstructed by the speedometer wire attached to the distributor, but the hole is viewable nevertheless.

In the end,  the advance was adjusted a few degrees. As a result, the idle was a little lower and a lot smoother. A lot of the backfiring went away too. Next job now is to take the distributor out and (finally!) clean up the mechanical advance weights in the base. When returning to idle, the rpm is erratic and takes a lot of time to settle down.

Also coming up: replacing the shock absorbers and a lot of bushings. Doing 150 km/h on a straight requires a little too much work to feel safe now, and the swimming around corners doesn’t do La Tempesta justice. I’m hoping to get some pictures taken while working on the suspension. The word is that the 105-series Alfa Romeos are easy to work on with regard to this.

Ever since the new fuel pumps were put in and all of the rubber hoses were changed, the fuel pressure warning light (”Alimentazione”) have been flickering.

After turning on the ignition, but before starting the engine, it is solid lit. When the engine idles, it flickers. It’s usually off when you cruise along without exploiting the engine, but once you step on the accelerator pedal, it lights up. When I turn on the headlights, the warning light stays on almost all the time.

Now, the warning light is supposed to come on when the fuel pressure falls below 0.5 kg/cm², and the nominal fuel pressure in the vicinity of the sensor should be 1.5 kg/cm². Something is (seriously) wrong with the fuel system, and I don’t really have any good ideas about what it might be. As mentioned, the fuel pumps and all the hoses and filters are brand new. The battery is a few months old, and the alternator amperage stays just above zero when driving.

Since it seems to get worse when the headlights come on, I thought it could be a voltage drop at the pump terminals. I made a separate ground line from the battery chassis ground connector to the pump ground terminals, but it didn’t change anything. The pumps are supplied 12.0 volts now (like they should), but the symptoms are exactly the same as before.

I think I’ll have to do a full ignition, throttle and Spica adjustment again to verify everything’s in working order. La Tempesta has an appointment with the vehicle authorities (Statens Vegvesen) on 31. May, and it’s a two hour drive to get there. I probably shouldn’t drive anywhere at all with low fuel pressure, even though it’s probably safe-ish to do so in the relatively low temperatures we have around that time.

Another thing I discovered today: the seats needs to be fixed sometime. The car is full of dry, yellow dust from the seat cushions, even though it was thoroughly vacuumed and cleaned a few hundred kms ago.

The weather was much nicer today, so I went to the garage and took the Montreal outside to start it up. After 15 minutes, the engine was at temperature, but still idling at 800-900 rpms! The exhaust smells much better, and the fuel isn’t dripping from the exhaust pipes anymore.

After some running, the engine isn’t on the verge of dying when you blip the throttle anymore. After a short test drive, the roughness around 2000 rpm is also gone. Now it’s just a question of how it behaves near the redline.

I still need to do some adjustments to the Spica setup, but it looks like another Montreal issue have been cleared