Alfa on the Road

Dec 7, 2006 update to the Alfa Romeo 2000 GTV project car

We had some success getting our Alfa to run. The 3-cylinder running appears to be just the Webers being completely out of whack, as well as the ignition timing being a little off. We need to brush up on our Weber-speak so we can start fiddling with these sidedrafts to get the car running right. The linkages are also pretty unspectacular, so we’ll have to get those sorted as well.

With a running engine, we could finally get the car to move under its own power. It appears to shift, brake and turn just fine. We took the opportunity to wash the car and clean the garage floor while it was outside.

After a brief talk with Ric Lovecchio of RML Automotive, we realized that we needed to synchronize our throttle plates better. This is done by removing a blanking screw from the top of each DCOE and seeing where the edge of the the throttle plate is hitting the progression holes. Once we saw that our front carburetor’s throats weren’t open as much as the rears, we could adjust the throttle linkage to get things even.

Next up, we need to clean off the crank pulley so we can see the timing marks better. We thought we did this during the engine build process, but we guess not. Then we can get the car properly timed. It’s a little (lot) too far advanced now.

Later, we drove the Alfa to our office, it was the first time we’ve driven the car more than a mile. While no major problems cropped up, the left rear caliper appears to be sticking a little bit. We’ll have to take it off and squeeze the piston back and forth to see if we can free it up.