Alfa status
Oct. 22nd, 2006 01:26![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillWhat I spent the afternoon on was reassembling the Alfa.
We tightened the alternator belt, reconnected the wires, eased the A/C belt on (that took work, as we couldn't loosen the flywheel adjustment), and then it was time to put on the radiator. The hoses slipped on easily, much better than the chore I had been dreading. Yay!
Then it was time to take off the radiatior again, so that I could get the fan on. Sigh.
Fan on, shroud on, radiator in, all attachments made and the whole mess bolted in. Okay. Reattach the battery so that we could turn over the engine with the starter. Check the clearances on the valves and find only one off (it was too big a clearance, which just means it'll be noisy until we get to it). Re-torque the head bolts. Put the valve case back on. Done and done.
Time to put water into the radiator... and discover that we forgot to put the plug back in, resulting in a flood. Plug it, then fill the radiator. The air filter was still off, but that's okay -- fire it up!
Lots of smoke from spilled oil on the manifold, and blue exhaust from the tailpipe. But it ran! Sort of. It was skipping a cylinder. My dad let it die, looked it over, re-started it, ran it up and down and then wedged the throttle open and started poking at the engine. Somewhere along the line it picked up the cylinder again and started sounding more normal. It even got to where it would idle, half the time. (Add the air filter and it wouldn't have a problem.) It sounded good, responded well, and stopped smoking, having (we assume) cleared a blockage in the fuel injection. We're in business.
I put the air filter back on while my dad went to coffee, and closed up shop. The next thing to do is take it off the jacks and give it a test run. (I assume he'll want to put the hood back on for that, of course.) The low fuel pressure light is coming on at high RPM, but some of that is normal; we'll want to check and see whether it's more of a problem than it should be. Oh, and we should probably reconnect the fuel level indicator at some point, on the off-chance that it actually works. I have hope that live gas around it may have removed a bit of the lacquered crud over the last few weeks.
Things to keep an eye on: the fuel injection, the clutch -- which we suspect is just a matter of a pedal-height adjustment -- and the alternator. It's too early to say whether the alternator works, but the damn thing is expensive, so we're crossing our fingers. It worked when it was parked last. Other than that, we have the back wheel bearings to deal with, likely flat spots in the tires, and a matter of whether we want to pull the seats so they can be treated with Armor-All to keep the vinyl from cracking. The list diminishes.
The test drive tomorrow should be fun.
We tightened the alternator belt, reconnected the wires, eased the A/C belt on (that took work, as we couldn't loosen the flywheel adjustment), and then it was time to put on the radiator. The hoses slipped on easily, much better than the chore I had been dreading. Yay!
Then it was time to take off the radiatior again, so that I could get the fan on. Sigh.
Fan on, shroud on, radiator in, all attachments made and the whole mess bolted in. Okay. Reattach the battery so that we could turn over the engine with the starter. Check the clearances on the valves and find only one off (it was too big a clearance, which just means it'll be noisy until we get to it). Re-torque the head bolts. Put the valve case back on. Done and done.
Time to put water into the radiator... and discover that we forgot to put the plug back in, resulting in a flood. Plug it, then fill the radiator. The air filter was still off, but that's okay -- fire it up!
Lots of smoke from spilled oil on the manifold, and blue exhaust from the tailpipe. But it ran! Sort of. It was skipping a cylinder. My dad let it die, looked it over, re-started it, ran it up and down and then wedged the throttle open and started poking at the engine. Somewhere along the line it picked up the cylinder again and started sounding more normal. It even got to where it would idle, half the time. (Add the air filter and it wouldn't have a problem.) It sounded good, responded well, and stopped smoking, having (we assume) cleared a blockage in the fuel injection. We're in business.
I put the air filter back on while my dad went to coffee, and closed up shop. The next thing to do is take it off the jacks and give it a test run. (I assume he'll want to put the hood back on for that, of course.) The low fuel pressure light is coming on at high RPM, but some of that is normal; we'll want to check and see whether it's more of a problem than it should be. Oh, and we should probably reconnect the fuel level indicator at some point, on the off-chance that it actually works. I have hope that live gas around it may have removed a bit of the lacquered crud over the last few weeks.
Things to keep an eye on: the fuel injection, the clutch -- which we suspect is just a matter of a pedal-height adjustment -- and the alternator. It's too early to say whether the alternator works, but the damn thing is expensive, so we're crossing our fingers. It worked when it was parked last. Other than that, we have the back wheel bearings to deal with, likely flat spots in the tires, and a matter of whether we want to pull the seats so they can be treated with Armor-All to keep the vinyl from cracking. The list diminishes.
The test drive tomorrow should be fun.
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Date: 2006-10-22 19:36 (UTC)