By XR4Tim - Sat Mar 23, 2024 9:41 pm
- Sat Mar 23, 2024 9:41 pm
#261011
I left my desk job a few months ago and started fixing cars out of my garage. Since I don't have any social media accounts, I thought I'd start a thread here to chronicle some of the more interesting things I work on.
One of the first cars to come through was this 1994 Alfa Romeo 164 LS. My friend bought it sight-unseen with the seller noting that it doesn't rev above 2,000 RPM. He had the car shipped directly to my garage. When it arrived, it would barely run, much less get to 2,000 RPM.
I found a bunch of electrical connectors for things like the airflow meter, crank sensor, and fuel injectors were missing the metal clips that keep them engaged. There were no gaskets under the intake runners, the rubber boots connecting the intake runners to the plenum were all cracked and falling apart. The ground strap for the throttle body was not bolted to the throttle body, but was instead taped to another wire that was screwed into the plastic coolant reservoir at the other end.
I did a compression test to get an idea of the condition of the engine, and found that the front bank of cylinders was all at around 50 psi. The rear bank was all around 170 psi.
I pulled the timing covers and found the carcass of a snake wrapped around the rear intake cam gear, and the front exhaust cam gear was one tooth out of time. I'm guessing the snake got up in there and didn't survive the next engine startup. He almost took the valves out with him. Resetting the timing, I got good compression on all cylinders, so we got out of it with no valve damage. New timing belt, new clips on the electrical connectors, intake gaskets and runner boots, air filter, exhaust gaskets, oil pressure sensor, rear brakes, a battery, and a sunroof seal, and it ran like a champ. The car came with a binder full of receipts for maintenance, and the prior two owners had spent a combined $106k in maintenance and repairs on this car, including a $10k engine rebuild about 30k miles ago.
One of the first cars to come through was this 1994 Alfa Romeo 164 LS. My friend bought it sight-unseen with the seller noting that it doesn't rev above 2,000 RPM. He had the car shipped directly to my garage. When it arrived, it would barely run, much less get to 2,000 RPM.
I found a bunch of electrical connectors for things like the airflow meter, crank sensor, and fuel injectors were missing the metal clips that keep them engaged. There were no gaskets under the intake runners, the rubber boots connecting the intake runners to the plenum were all cracked and falling apart. The ground strap for the throttle body was not bolted to the throttle body, but was instead taped to another wire that was screwed into the plastic coolant reservoir at the other end.
I did a compression test to get an idea of the condition of the engine, and found that the front bank of cylinders was all at around 50 psi. The rear bank was all around 170 psi.
I pulled the timing covers and found the carcass of a snake wrapped around the rear intake cam gear, and the front exhaust cam gear was one tooth out of time. I'm guessing the snake got up in there and didn't survive the next engine startup. He almost took the valves out with him. Resetting the timing, I got good compression on all cylinders, so we got out of it with no valve damage. New timing belt, new clips on the electrical connectors, intake gaskets and runner boots, air filter, exhaust gaskets, oil pressure sensor, rear brakes, a battery, and a sunroof seal, and it ran like a champ. The car came with a binder full of receipts for maintenance, and the prior two owners had spent a combined $106k in maintenance and repairs on this car, including a $10k engine rebuild about 30k miles ago.
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