La Tempesta

Today I mounted the rear of the propshaft and tightened the nuts at 37 Nm. It’s a very tight fit for a 17 mm socket, but it went okay somehow. After that I took off the heat shields above the rear silencers (or are they resonators?) and cleaned them up. They had the usual zinc coating and body coating on the metal side, plus big areas of surface rust and the original black paint. After half an hour of angle grinder and wire brush treatment, they got a coat of black caliper paint. It was the only heat resistant paint I had handy, plus it’s gloss black. We’ll see how it looks after being heat cycled a few dozen times. The upper side of the shields have some sort of dusty, carboard-esque layer which maaaay be asbestos. I don’t know.

After that, I started on the front attachment points for the trailing arms. The body coating is more or less gone, and there’s some surface rust on the steel. I’m going to grind away the rust, paint it with Owatrol and apply a couple of layers of undercoating on them.

The front propshaft is now mounted back on the car. It was a fairly easy job because the centre support acted as my third arm, leaving the second arm free to hold the 17 mm spanner The chassis bolts securing the support got a serving of copper grease, new nuts and washers. According to the workshop manual, the guibo bolts should be oiled before inserting them through the bushings in the guibo, and I can certainly attest to the usefulness of that. It’s a really tight fit! I can only imagine what happens if the bolt sets against the bushing and suddenly decides to snap into place when you’re driving. Once everything was into place, the nuts and underside of the centre support got a fresh layer of spray undercoating. The latter is Biltema’s general purpose body coating (part number 36-2413) which I’ve used several places to repair damaged coating.

The bearing was actually the wrong type for the support, although the dimensions are an exact fit. The new one didn’t have seals on it, but I transfered the seals from the old one after packing it with regular, all purpose wheel bearing grease. I’ll just have to see if this is good enough or not.I used the same grease to pack the bearings in the dynamo.

Another thing done today was the handbrake cable. That was another rather easy job, but I suspect the adjustment won’t be so easy. The handbrake assembly on the rear wheels will be completely rebuilt once I have the rear wheel bearings removed.

I stopped by the parts store today but the bearing unfortunately hadn’t arrived yet. On the other hand, the handbrake cable and the differential sump gasket from AMS Montreal Service arrived in the mail. Not only was the parcel missent to Finland (as evident from a stamp on the parcel), but it was also adressed to my old address. Despite that, the delivery time was less than two weeks. I wonder how long it would have taken without the logistical eff-ups. Oh, well …

So I proceeded to mount the new guibo on the gearbox while I waited for completion of the propshaft. The manual states that the guibo should be mounted to the propshaft first and then the gearbox, but it’ll be a fidgety job in any case because of the safety brackets on the nuts. We’ll see. The old M10 x 1.25 nyloc nuts were thrown away and replaced with brand new ones, but I kept the blued bolts. The guibo was bought from Classic Alfa and is apparently a “new, old stock” (NOS) part. It carries the same name and number (“Brevettato 86645″) as the old one, but it has wat I think is a production year stamped on it. The nuts were tightened to 45 Nm.

After that I started to replace the handbrake cable. It’s a fairly easy job since everything except the exhaust has been removed from under the car. Note: the new handbrake cable does not come with the bracket attaching it to the handbrake lever under the car, so this had to be transfered from the old cable. The old cable didn’t look too good. The protection on it where it rests on the rear axle was frayed and torn, and the plastic hose around it had several holes. The cable is fastened to the bracket on top of the exhaust shield with a single machine screw. The screw must be loosened a few turns in order for the cable to slide out sideways. The delivery and return fuel lines are also held in place by the same bracket.

I also fitted the new diff sump gasket, and this time it fit perfectly. I’ll fill it up with Spirax A90 LS once it’s on the car in order to save some weight during installation.

Yesterday the centre propshaft bearing came off without any problems. A two pronged puller was all it took, but I had to destroy the bearing housing to get the puller to catch. The bearing has a 62 mm outer diameter, 30 mm inner diameter (bore) and is 16 mm thick. The bearing has normal steel balls, not pins. This matches the SKF 6206-2RS bearing which I ordered it at the local parts store for €15. It arrives tomorrow, and then it’s time to reassemble the propshaft.