Old Alfetta Group A GTV6 article

[Victor Lee]

Just received another good AROCA SA magazine tonight and saw a reprint of an article from Autospeed.com (May 2000) that featured Hugh Harrison's Alfetta Group A. 

Bit of self-interest here (......read the entire article on the link below and you'll see why!), but the AROCA SA editor only printed half the article!    Where's the good bits,  ?

http://www.autospeed.com/cms/A_0529/article.html

[John Hanslow]

Interesting article Victor. 

I see you name is also mentioned there !!!

Cheers.

[Paul Gulliver]

What ever happened to that car Victor???

[Victor Lee]

That silver GTV6 was a really great road and track car!  It wasn't a concours car, but could hold it's own in Wash n Shine!   I won many Club competition trophies in that car!  I owned that car in the early 90's and had all the usual mods current at that time.  However, I wouldn't miss the fortnightly polishing of the Simmons rims though!

It had no rust and was a very straight car when I sold it in 92/93 (?).  This was my Alfa-less period ...had the opportunity and went to the dark-side in a Porsche 944S2.

Next time we saw the car was 7 or so years later:  The engine was seized, the paint was all faded, missing both wing mirrors, the leather steering wheel was being held together with gaffa tape, a stick was holding up the driver's window (we know this b/c the door trim was gone), seats all ripped, open the bonnet and through the rust you could see through the wheel arches straight to the ground, rear hatch all rusty, every Simmons rim had multiple dents.       But the owner did chrome the plennum chamber!   

Hugh bought it as a wreck and it was last seen as a Scott F project (all stripped out) before it went to the tip as scrap.

I believe Marcus Gordon acquired and repaired the Simmons rims which are now on his 90 towcar.

[Brad M]

RIP GTV6 such a shame.

[JOHN G]

Engine modifications include shaved heads for increased compression, the ports are machined for extra flow, there's custom extractors and engine chip changes. All up, it's resulted in an increase to a HSV-beating 134 rear wheel kilowatts! Delivering the power to the ground is a higher ratio diff centre complete with LSD. The result of these mildish mods was a two-year class dominance in the MSA championship."

134 rear wheel kw is impressive for such little mods what did the journo leave out?
Victor can you please explain how you took the GTV6 from 118 kW at the flywheel to an impressive 134 kW atw.
From shaving the heads (which all Alfa mechanics have told me not to do to increase compression as shaving heads kills standard cast pistons). Matched ports, custom extractors, chip change (not possible in L jet so you must have ran after market ecu )?
My questions are was this a 2.5 or a 3.0 12v ?
Which aftermarket ecu did you run?
What compression ratio did you end up with and what fuel did you run?
Thank You
John

[Victor Lee]

Hi John, 

You're stretching my memory now!  But, you're right, it sounds a bit high!   I think someone (ie the bloke who wrote it) may have got their kilo-wobbles and horsies round the wrong way?  I didn't see this article until months after it was published.

A standard 2.5 V6 12v puts out around 117kw = 160 BHP, correct?  (according to various motor reports of the time)

I also can't recall putting a different diff ratio into that car nor chip change (pretty hard in the standard ECU!).

Hope that answers your queries!

Victor