What is the toughest repair job you have ever taken on? Turns out the Alfa would soon present me with a new challenge that would become a yardstick I would measure all other hard mechanical fixes by.
Friday January 15, 2021, Ontario CA 7:30 PM
On the way to the bank, I made the mistake of trying to overtake a slowpoke Prius and –
CRUNCH
Oil pressure 150 PSI
Oil pressure 100
Oil pressure 90
Oil pressure 80…
Oil pressure warning light
My landlady must think I’m out of my mind. This is the second time I’ve shown up on her doorstep with one of my cars on a tow truck. The last time this happened, I had to hobble my old Mercedes up the driveway with the differential sitting on a moving dolly. I’m not sure what’s worse, that, or having the tow truck driver help me push the Alfa into the backyard, with the oil pan in three pieces. At least this time we are doing this under the cover of darkness. The rent was due yesterday, and I still have to get to work on Monday. More importantly, I have a place to work, and miraculously I have a line on a new oil pan in Burbank.
Changing the Alfa’s oil pan was, at the time, the toughest job I had ever taken on. Every bolt that held the pan on had a non-captive nut, and was either around a corner, hidden behind accessories, wedged between the engine and the intermediate shaft flange, or just a bitch and a half to access.
By the time I finished the job, I spent four days waking at dawn, rolling around in the dirt under that car, gashing my fingers, swearing this job was beyond my skills and swearing some more until it was too dark to keep going. When I finished the job, there was no sweeter sound than hearing the big Busso squeal back to life (tensioning belts is a bitch on this car).
Enterprise Nissan Altima rental $225
Alfa Romeo 164 S oil pan $250
Fresh oil, oil filter, gasket material, sealant $150
The look on the O’Reilly hottie’s face when she saw the old oil pan in three pieces. Priceless.
Unlike most cars, this pan was not a two-piece aluminum and steel unit where you can replace the lower section in an accident. The Alfa’s oil pan is a one-piece finned aluminum unit that hangs all of four inches off the ground so it wouldn’t stand a chance against an LA rain gutter.
Fortunately, everything seemed to be running right, with no signs of oil starvation. I only missed two days of work and my childhood dream car was back to being brilliant. If I had accepted defeat then, I would’ve started looking into getting that new Honda. But I had slain this dragon and, for what it’s worth, I loved the fact that my Alfa was still faster than the brand new Altima I’d been driving for four days. I reasoned that every Alfa from Dustin Hoffman’s Duetto to the GTV6 has this problem of low-hanging oil pans and that this situation was due to operator error.
My 164’s supposedly uncharacteristic reliability combined with an addictive ability to blitz every canyon front-wheel drive be damned and the intoxicating Busso howl, combined with the Italian flair for style meant that I was recklessly willing to overlook the Alfa’s other problems. Even though it started right up every morning my Busso exhibited the notorious Alfa thirst for oil, lackluster air conditioning, and the occasional rough idle. Minor quibbles, really. So, every day I repeated this simple mantra: If I keep up on the maintenance. I’ll be fine.
Signal Hill, California 2:30 PM
Driving PCH back from Crystal Cove Cars and Coffee, I had just met another Italian enthusiast and was reflecting on having traded numbers with her when the V6 inexplicably cut out.
Thunk.
Ok. I tried the ignition.
Crank-Crank-Crank-Crank. Nothing.
Maybe it’s a loose wire, I thought. No big deal.
That’s when white, electrical smoke started curling into the cabin through the air vents. With what momentum I had left I coasted another 100 yards downhill and into a strip mall that was home to a veterinarian clinic and maneuvered my way past a long line of dogs and owners waiting to be seen. As I stopped, smoke was now billowing out from beneath the hood like a carnitas truck with a grease fire.
Ignition off, hood up, smoke is still roiling out from somewhere in the engine bay.
Shit.
I cut in front of the Vet line waiting and straight to the nurses.
Hey guys, I need a fire extinguisher right now!
A look of confusion washed over one nurse, who eventually nodded and said she’d be right back.
I waited what must have been three minutes only to look back on my 164 which now has orange flames licking up through the smokey engine bay.
I pivot back to the remaining receptionist and say, with my last ounce of courtesy:
If you don’t want to have a car burning down in your parking lot, I need an extinguisher right now!
Maybe it was the horror registering on my unmasked face and frantic eyes, but they got the message this time and a fire extinguisher materialized.
I ripped the pin out as I ran back to my burning car and started spraying. White powder erupted out of the hose and within seconds the fire stopped. I’d caught it just before the wiring could melt any of the fuel lines.
Taking a deep breath, I sat down to register what had just unfolded. And that’s when the strip mall owner’s wife backed her brand-new G-wagen right into the front of my smoldering car.
Let’s just say many cold beverages were consumed that night.
Did I mention that my stepdad Mike is a hero? When he heard about this double mishap he and my mom were on the road to L.A. from Sacramento (a seven-hour drive) the next morning. It looked like all I had to do was wait for the cavalry to arrive.
Unlike most attorneys, Mike never minces words.
Here, you’ll need this.
Mike handed me a brand-new fire extinguisher as walked over to assess the damage.
One look under the hood was all Mike needed to tell that the singed wiring and fire extinguisher dust were symptomatic of a much more critical issue.
Holy Shit, David! I’ve never seen electrical fire damage this bad.
My Alfa was seconds from having exploded, Michael Bay style.
A section of wiring harness about as thick as a garden hose runs along the driver’s side fender under the overflow tank. One minute that wire was fine, happily conveying electricity through the Bosch fuel injection system. The next – it was on fire.
That critical vein of wiring runs right next to high-pressure rubber fuel injection hoses that supply gasoline to the engine at 80 psi. Fixing this was obviously critical to getting back on the road. One problem, well actually two: I didn’t do wiring and 164 wiring harnesses are next-to-impossible to find. With my job (from which I was once again forced to take time off), I couldn’t afford to search for a month to source one. And as not-so-cheap but still cheerful as my Hyundai Kona rental was proving, I needed my own wheels back. I needed my Alfa back.
But it got worse.
On further examination, Mike’s surgical exploration was turning more and more into an autopsy. Pulling the torched harness from the engine bay he discovered that the fuel injection harness, which hangs over the rear exhaust manifold, fell off its mount and burned up which shorted out everything in its path. The original plan of taking the harness back to Sacramento and using it to build a new one evaporated with the old harness’s immolation. Mike tried everything, to no avail, even a new harness off of a 164 L which he found 300 miles North in Fairfield after three days of hunting.
He returned with the new-old harness only to find that the 164L’s wire routing was slightly different from the 164S. The two were completely incompatible.
After three roundtrips to L.A., days of Internet research, and one hail marry examination of the wiring on a friend’s 164 S, and the procure on an unreadable CD from the early 90s that supposedly contained the wiring diagrams from all 164s, we were out of options and time.
It would be one thing if this happened back home in Sacramento where Mike and I could take our time fixing it in the garage in spare time over what probably would’ve taken half a year. But this was reality, I had a job and no other means of transport.
With no more time or energy left to keep up the fight, Mike declared my Alfa dead on March 15, 2021 after 5 months of the most fun daily driving I have ever had. Buying the Alfa was never a good idea, but damn to see it all end like this – literally my dream up in smoke – hurt me more than I expected.
In the days after Mike left to return home and I started advertising the wreckage of my non-running 164S online to anyone who would take her for parts, I found myself wondering, is this how Romeo felt when Juliet died? It’s easy to hate a car when it gives you trouble and nothing in return, but the Alfa had romanced me every day; how it drove, how it sounded, how it greeted me every morning in the driveway. In all seriousness, it’s just a car, but that day, it felt like I’d lost a partner.
But did you collect a consolation prize from the strip mall owner’s wife?
I was going to, but once we realized the Alfa was beyond saving, it was pointless to pursue any further action with her.
The repair bill for the dent in that G-wagen must have been more than what I paid for my first 3 cars combined.
Bummer of a tale, David, but it sounds like it was fun while it lasted. Props to you for doing your own wrenching on a modern Alfa.
I am deeply sorry to read of your loss, David. It seems odd saying this, and this would be the second time I’ve expressed such condolences in the space of a single weekend, as I have a very dear, dear friend, who just lost her father. Yet I don’t think my sentiments, as expressed, are inappropriate. The sense of irrevocable loss here is real. You feel it, and through your writing, you made us feel it too. It is not a false analogy. Other car enthusiasts will understand….
And I certainly hope you don’t give up on old cars, Alfas or otherwise. I don’t know what your long-term plans are, or if you have a future strategy, but perhaps what might work is if you get your life arranged so that it can accommodate hobby cars, from a space, time, and financial perspective. That’s not going to stop your 164 from being a temperamental miscreant. Alfas are Alfas, and miracles don’t exist. But what it would mean is if your car decides again to magically self-immolate, it’s not the end of the world. You can tow it back to its designated space, and work on it at your leisure, as time, money, and dare I say your patience, will allow for!
Perhaps I’m getting ahead of the story. I’d like to believe Part 3 contains a happy ending. But even if there isn’t, you still got to live a unique experience, and that’s worth something. I would love to have had the chance to drive your car, to gaze everyday at Pininfarina’s handiwork, to play with the buttons on the Modernist dashboard. Aside from YouTube videos, I will never hear the sound of a Busso V-6 given the spurs. But you did. And that is something you will always have, regardless of where life takes you.
Hello Eric,
Thanks for your kind words, the Alfa was a fine car, and it’s off to a new life now (more on that later). For now I have rather miraculously been able to keep with enthusiast cars you’ll see more in the coming stories.
What a sad tale.
My younger son put a hole in the alloy sump of a 300SEL. He told me that there was something wrong with his car, that it wasn’t running right. And that it had a hole in the engine. Really? I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. A
When I went to look at it, I didn’t see anything wrong in the engine compartment. Then I looked underneath and saw a fist-sized hole in the sump. Oh my! There really is a hole in your engine! No wonder it isn’t running right! And he’d been driving it around town for a day or two.
A neighbor bought it from him for little more than scrap, put on a new sump from the junkyard, and advertised it on CL. A guy bought it and drove off. About 15 miles down the highway, the engine died its overdue death. Buyer beware!
I was alternating between sadness and laughter reading this. My Spider, which had been slightly lowered by a previous owner, had a magnetic attraction between the oil pan and the ground. Fortunately it had a skid plate (OEM? Aftermarket? I don’t remember). Urban obstacles could usually be avoided, but a favorite canyon road in the East San Jose foothills near my house had a few dips and humps that forced some interesting lines. I finally gave up on that car for several reasons, but the fact was that it wasn’t as much fun at speed on the local roads as my previous Civic or Mk 1 Fiesta. That was the sadness part
And the fuel line fire? Sorry, but that was the laughter. I had a similar situation with my Alfetta. In my case, a rigid high pressure fuel line cracked coming up the hill after start/finish at Sears Point in a SCCA Showroom Stock practice session. As the car slowed to a stop, I saw smoke. Fortunately I wasn’t outside a vet clinic; a quick-thinking corner worker, fire extinguisher in hand, motioned for me to pop the hood and kill the engine, and sprayed the engine down. Fire damage was limited to the distributor cap and a few plug wires, readily available at a nearby parts store. Since it was Saturday practice and not the Sunday race, a local Alfa dealer (this was 1978) was happy to sell me a new fuel line, and I was back on track the next day. https://i2.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/alfetta.jpeg?ssl=1
Oh, dear. Your wiring burnup reminds me of the one I described just the other day on my Spirit R/T, though mine wasn’t as catastrophic. And the whole story puts me in mind of this episode of “Mission Hill”, one of the last (maybe the last?) cartoon series to use traditional hand-painted cel animation (NB this cartoon is for grownups, not little kids):
The Pinifarina is strong in that last shot – the 164 looks almost indistinguishable from a Peugeot 605 from that angle.
Also, as a one-time 2000s GTV owner, commiserations on the loss of your Alfa. I only had the 4-cylinder engine, but it was still a gem.
Oh, gee. The wife didn’t seem to peruse her G 550’s parking sensors and rear-view camera to gingerly navigate her barge through the car park…
I can relate to your Alfa experience. My family had 1971 1750A Berlina for fifteen years until the idiot stopped its tracks cold in the middle of the intersection. Bam! Prior to that accident, we spent a lot of times chasing the gremlins and exorcising them. They seemed to be “standard feature” of Italian cars (perhaps in a conspiracy to keep the unemployment amongst Italians as low as possible as to avoid the uprising—a somewhat frequent occurence in mid-20th century Italy).
About the engine fire, I had the similar experience after trying to replace the fuel filter in the carburettor housing in my 1982 Buick Skylard (yes, misspelling is intentional). At the intersection, I started to smell the burning rubber and see the white plume of smoke through the ventilation. The warning lights came on. I shut off the engine and popped the bonnet open. All of the sudden, a knight in the shining armour gallantly came to stop and popped out with the fire extinquisher. Whoosh! Done! He gave me his business card and left me with his fire extinquisher and a smoldering mess. After the fire brigade arrived and made sure my car was properly drenched, I queried about the fire extinquisher. They directed me to the specialist to have it refilled, recharged, retested, and recertified. I returned the fire extinquisher to the owner along with $20 gift certificate. It took me four months to figure out the emission control spaghetti dish because Haynes and other repair manuals didn’t show any diagrams.
Our 1977 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL had a small fire extinquisher anchored to the front of driver’s seat. We considere once in a while about removing it, but we left it as “insurance” given the fincky nature of European fuse boxes (they had exposed metal stripes).
“I burned my wiring harness on the header pipe
The smoke signals my Alfa’s end is near
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends –
Recall accelerating in third gear!”
With some apologies to Edna St. Vincent Millay
I feel for you. Nearly lost my 71 Chevelle SS to a defective carb leaking fuel on to the intake manifold. My luck held out for 20 years till my 2005 Chrysler Town & Country Tourning self emoliated while parking for a job interview. Like you, I loved the thing even after many, many senseless repairs. Don’t be discouraged and insure your next adventure with JC Taylor,Haggerty, or Condon Skelly.
Having owned a couple of Alfas and suffered various individualistic pains during the experience, I understand your loss. Over the decades I have, gradually, backed away from vehicles that leave one stranded on a consistent basis. This is likely the primary reason I remain married. As my wife said once as I feverishly tinkered on the roadside “nothing is cool if it is broken down.”
Why not turn a lemon into lemonade by spending thousands of dollars (and hours building it) on importing a British Hawk Lancia Stratos kit and saving the drivetrain.