Graham

Milano Verde Transport to Colorado

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Yet again, I found my judgement clouded by the allure of an Alfa V6.  The proposal: move a buddy’s Milano from Detroit to Denver – twenty hours, if driven in a straight shot.

The outlook was optimistic for this particular car.  Milano Verdes, with their comfortable Recaro seats and long-legged 3.55 final drive, rival country music as companions across flyover states.  And, this was a particularly healthy example, coming from a collection of five V6 transaxle Alfas.  What’s the phrase?  “Wouldn’t hesitate to drive across the country”?

Leaving Detroit at 5PM via I-94 is a failure in planning, unless the plan is to shake down the mechanical systems of a nearly 30 year old Italian sedan.  Coolant temp?  Right on the mark, if the gauge is to be trusted.  Brakes?  If they aren’t sorted, you’ll find out quickly in rush hour.  Fluid leaks?  The rearview mirror is as useful for spotting leaks as it is for avoiding rear-end collisions.

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Replacing my Milano with a Milano

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Just east of Portland, above the Columbia River, lies Corbett, Oregon, a swath of utterly tranquil American landscape.  There, the Historic Columbia River Highway permits glimpses of the river valley, where conifers and diffuse light from low clouds conspire in a vivid scene with the rock cliffs and the water below.  Stray from the RV-friendly scenic highway, and your gaze shifts from the horizon to the pitch-black switchbacks lined with red pine needles.  The road surfaces are too unforgiving to enjoy a stiffly sprung sports car, and with the light bicycle traffic, the ragged edge of tire adhesion is off limits.  Enter the Italian sports sedan.

A month of standing sentinel over “Alfa Romeo Milano Verde” on a Craigslist, a year with a rewards credit card, and a two hour garage blaze culminated in an impromptu flight to Oregon to retrieve my latest object of obsession. The mere sound of the approaching Busso V6 as the seller pulled up to pick my girlfriend and me up from our AirBnB in Portland affirmed my decision to buy; the seller’s small-talk, abridged life story affirmed my latest life decisions.  Oregon is one of very few places where you might meet a man who decided to append his automotive engineering degree with grad studies in environmental science because he didn’t respect what engineering represented in the 70s – one of the few places where you might meet a man who quit his job 4 years out of school because he “needed a vacation”.  Instant affirmation.

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My Milano is Gone.

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All I had left to address was the 2nd gear synchro, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to fix that last trace of Alfa idiosyncrasy.  Nearly two years into the most involving, frustrating and absorbing auto ownership experience in my 25 years, I lost my Alfa, my garage, and with them, my GTI and two of my brother’s cars.

I will be perfectly clear.  Alfas are reliable; neglected cars are not.

I had purchased a neglected 1989 Alfa Romeo Milano Verde two summers prior to bridge the gap between the BMW e30 I owned at the time, and the Ferrari 308 that I knew I shouldn’t buy.  The practical exotic.  4 doors and a Busso V6 with an exhaust note that could embarrass any fuel-injected 80s Ferrari V8.  A useable trunk and a rear-mounted transaxle with inboard mounted brake rotors.  Room for human beings and a torsion bar front, DeDion rear suspension.  And, under 3k RPM, you’d be hard pressed to turn any heads in traffic.
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Franco-Italian Tennessee

DSC_0108With almost two years of Alfa ownership on the books, I’m wise enough to recommend picking up a spare engine with any Alfa acquisition.  That, and change the timing belt every three years, whether it needs it or not.  It probably needs it.

So, when Taylor brought his 164Q home, we reduced a perfectly good 24V V6 to its most vulnerable state: timing belt lying on the floor, water pump in a bucket, and cam gears free to rotate as they please.  After torquing each fastener to spec, indexing the cams with cam dies, and tensioning the timing and serpentine belts with the Alfa Romeo weighted arm tool, we counted exactly zero spare parts, but somehow ended up with an angle grinder, a heli-coil set, and a lot less weekend than we started out with.

Now, we trust our work, but given the fact that retrieving a spare 12V engine usually requires crossing state lines, you can count on crossing time zones to find the nearest 24V Alfa engine for sale.  Having a spare provides the peace of mind for timing belt changes in your parents’ garage on company holidays – and a spare engine is cheaper than just the labor on a timing belt job at an independent Alfa shop.

Last summer, we found a 24V Alfa V6 for sale in Lenoir City, TN, just southwest of Taylor in Knoxville.  Taylor went down to check out the engine, where he met Marty.
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Shuffle in the Lineup: 1991 Audi Turbo Quattro 20V Avant

Audi 200 Turbo Quattro 20V Taylor’s new project car is waiting for him in Michigan.  They say that the bottom ends on these Audi 5-cylinders are stout, but we’ll probably rebuild and fortify it before addressing the turbo.  I’m looking forward to some AWD launch squats.

Since Taylor has moved on to the Audi, I’ll be taking care of his old 164Q for now.  We got a fresh timing belt, water pump, and timing belt pulleys on it this spring, so it’s down to taking care of some cosmetic items for the fall.

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Embracing American Muscle, Mullet Edition: 68 El Camino SS 396 L78

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My introduction to the mythical El Camino was typical for the species.  I had driven my 84 GTI – complete with its perpetual, post-precipitation door chime – 100 miles to State College, PA with three goals:

  1. Visit my brother
  2. Stop the door chime
  3. Drive an El Camino

The owner of the El Camino, Mark, had recently driven his Malibu wagon with a 4-speed, side pipes, and racing seats, to Alabama, where he traded cars with his mom.  With his move from grad school to a full time job in D.C. approaching, Mark resorted to the flexibility of his mom’s offensively 80s El Camino to relocate his household belongings, and his Ducati.

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Getting by without owning a truck – a BlythBros. guide

For many DIYers, the pickup truck provides essential utility.  Find an RX-7 with a blown wankel on Craigslist?  You can either tow it home behind a truck, or if you’re in a salt state, simply punch your shoes through the floorboards and Flintstone it home.  Building a workbench for indiscriminate hammering of car parts in your garage?  Throw the lumber into the truck bed and haul it home.

But, for those who don’t frequently depend on that level of utility for their livelihood or hobby, is buying a dedicated work truck the best solution?  I’ll explain my hobby situation, and why I think I managed better without buying, say, a $5,000 work truck.

In the past year, I’ve been able to complete the following without buying a truck or borrowing one from a friend:

  • Drive 300 miles to buy a 12V Alfa V6 for my Milano
  • Tow my Alfa Milano 300 miles when I moved
  • Drive 75 miles to pick up a 12V Alfa V6 to rebuild for a friend
  • Tow a 68 El Camino SS 250 miles home after it died in Chicago
  • Drive 500 miles to bring home the entire drivetrain and subframe from an Alfa 164Q
  • Purchase lumber for two sets of 8’x8′ shelves, and a 16 wheel tire rack
  • Drive a refrigerator home
  • Pull my thrashed Alfa Milano off of the Tail of the Dragon

Alfa Milano Verde Shakedown Trip to the Dragon

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Last September, my 89 Alfa Milano substantiated a vile Italian automobile stereotype as I traveled to family back east for Labor Day weekend. Of course, there were warning signs; the failed clutch hydraulics hose the day I brought the car home, and the miserably inadequate cooling system that demanded maximum heater settings to control the coolant temp. I attempted to deceive myself with defensive internal retorts to my friends’ negative Alfa sentiments. “Guys, chill. It’s just an Italian e30 – Bosch fuel system. If anything, the German components will be first to go.” The denial even continued into the first manifestation of rod knock. “Hmm, the engine is starting to sound like a tractor. A Lamborghini tractor, heh heh.”

In actuality, it sounded like an Alfa-with-thrown-rod tractor. Less than a month into Alfa ownership, and I was about to atone for the sinful Alfa soundtrack – something like ripping canvas – with the task of replacing the 6-pot paperweight sitting between the torsion bars of my Milano.

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Alfa Romeo Milano Verde Part 3: Rebuild

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I get the idea that foreign or classic car owners on the coasts often have “a guy” to help them out of trouble when things start to fall apart.  For instance, my dad, when he was piecing together his 1973 3.0 CS, had most of the work done at shops within a 15 mile radius of our house in York, PA.  To have the carbs tuned, he sent the car down the road to the shop with plenty of Alfas out front.  For upholstery, he commissioned a shop downtown with a slew of Grand Wagoneers in the lot, and, at one point etched into my memory, a Watusi bull in various stages of meat grinding inside the shop.  To get the brakes ready for inspection, he dropped the car off behind a trailer park, close to the river.  He kept the car in shape without ever leaving York County.

Living in Columbus, IN, undertaking an Alfa V6 rebuild posed some geographical challenges.  The only European shop in the county was the local Import Auto shop, where I buy all of my VW and BMW parts.  So, for ignition and fuel system components, I had the convenience of stopping by after work to pick up parts.  I asked around for recommendations on local machine shops, and drove south to Jackson County, where I found a shop for head work, and a shop to take care of the bottom end. 

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Lift-throttle Redemption: Mini Cooper Coupe JCW and Ford Fiesta ST

Cab drivers are known for their tenacious ability to navigate their city’s streets.  Similarly, FWD turbo hatch drivers can recall every cloverleaf on/off-ramp and traffic circle in their state.  Brad and I exchanged hatches for a beer and ice cream run, where we were able to open up the boosted 1.6 liters.  No driving photos this round – just stills of some angry turbo shafts.

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Cosworth to Canada

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Hopefully it’s not too apparent that every trip featured  so far on BlythBros. has been conceived and attempted by engineers. And, hopefully, the traits commonly associated with engineers – being logical, rational, analytical, and concrete – haven’t surfaced too often in the pages of the blog. Really, it doesn’t take an engineering degree to be able to drain the pleasure from activities, road trips included. Our goal for this trip was simply to drive to Canada.

Realizing that my big trip for the year would have to wait until later in the summer, I mentioned the idea of doing a quick loop of Quebec to Taylor. I was enjoying a stint of voluntary funemployment, so the most important element of my daily routine was walking the Dachshunds with my mom. After days of discussion and planning, we decided that my mom would walk the Dachsunds by herself – 2 to the human, that is. I was good to go. As for Taylor? He codes tools for numerical analysis of various nuclear processes, or something like that. Sounds independent enough, as far as work goes, so I’m assuming that he set up a Bueller-style snoring figure in his grad school office to take Friday off. I didn’t ask. Either way, we were staring down the barrel of a hair-triggered 3-day weekend, and we were hungry for the Great White North.

Before I get any further, I owe the reader a quick background on the etymology of Canada. Back before the time of Mounties, Poutine, and even hockey, two great Canadian pioneers sought to name the vast tract of land that would later insulation to the United States as America’s hat. From a real hat, likely furry and extravagant, the pioneers blindly chose 3 letters. “C, eh? N, eh? D, eh?” Later Americanized, the land became known as “Canada”.

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Buying sight-unseen from New Mexico: 1991 BMW 318is

 

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Old cars: buy the best example that you can afford, right? Unless you’re actively seeking a project, that’s the convention. So, imagine a listing for the car you want, at the price you like, where the only needs listed are “a wash and wax”. I found that car last summer.

I’d been driving a 91 318is as a sort of winter and minor project car up until that point. I bought that thing for $1,500 and slowly worked through it to get it into shape. I swapped in a set of matching M3 seats, replaced the cracked dash, fixed the odometer, installed a headliner, and resealed all of the oil leaks – except for one. The rear main seal leaked oil onto the clutch periodically, and that caused some bothersome slipping. It may have been a worn clutch (I had a spare clutch and flywheel), but either way, I was going to have to pull the transmission, which takes a weekend of concerted effort. Factor in some heinous oil consumption through other avenues – valve stem seals, worn rings – and the car was starting to feel like a money sink. An Indiana and Chicago car for all of its life, rust and urban parking had taken their toll on the bodywork beyond the point where I was willing to hit the car with any sort of money hammer. I figured that it would be cheaper to just sell that car and find one with fewer and less severe needs.

A serious constraint on the purchasing timeline was my goal to take a 6,000 mile trip to Seattle and back with my girlfriend about a month later. I wanted a well-sorted 318is with A/C to take us across the country and back.  Even on my rougher 318is, I was seeing 32mpg highway on premium fuel – decent for a 1991 car with that much character.