90 repair/ tidy up.

[Typhoon90]

I bought a 90 a couple of weeks ago. The price was just too right, I had to do it!
Anyway, I knew I was in for some work, that it had some rust. But there was more than some rust. I knew about the base of the rear windscreen and the dogleg on the driver's side, but not about the boot floor/beaver panel seam, right quarter panel to boot floor seam and rear boot gutters above the tail lights! Still, for the price I paid and the price of my labour (free), I can put it behind me.
The thing about rust is, once you have the grinder in your hand, cutting out bad metal, it really doesn't take much more work to cut all the bad stuff out everywhere. Fortunately, all the rust in this car is confined to behind the rear doors, the rest is perfect, even underneath.
I also have to give the engine a thorough tune up (apparently, the car had a "new timing belt...in 1998!). Car idles poorly but has strong midrange, I am sure the usual L jet massaging will get it back to how it should be, engine runs quite well otherwise. The front suspension has also been lowered, and too far. It has about an inch of travel, so that has to be fixed.
The car also needs a new master cylinder (it's leaking externally,and they're cheap enough), new front shocks and chase up a couple of small electrical faults. Oh, and I have to modify the pedals, they're waaaaay too far from the firewall as they are, a bit of carefully applied heat will fix that though. For those that haven't driven an RHD 90, the pedals sit too close to you, your ankle is put into a very steep, uncomfortable angle.
So, here are some before, horrible rust photos:




And the progress so far:





Regards, Andrew.

[dehne]

hi there let me know if you need any parts or info as i have heaps

[Typhoon90]

Thanks for the offer. I'll yell out if I find anything missing. One nice thing about the car is it was 100% complete, even has the briefcase.
Can I use GTV6 engine parts (timing belts, filters, plugs etc) on this engine? None of the parts suppliers list the 90 in their catalogues.

Regards, Andrew.

[dehne]

yes you can its also the same as the 2.5ltr 75 v6

[Typhoon90]

 Got sick of cutting, grinding and welding today, so I got the engine running well instead. Messed around checking vacuum lines, manifold boots etc, looking for the cause of the surging idle and misfire.
Replaced the stupid Bosch Super 4 plugs (they always idle poorly) and got some improvement, I went with Bosch Platinum plugs, purely because I get them for a great price (six for $33) and I hate changing spark plugs.
Noticed the idle bypass plug in the air flow meter had been removed, so on a whim, stuck an allen key in there and gave it a few turns....instant smooth idle! Some people shouldn't be allowed to work on cars.....why they'd screwed the bypass screw all the way out (lean) till it ran rough, I'll never know. I still have to sort out the cold start injector, whether it's injector, thermo time switch I don't know as yet. I like Bosch L jet, it's super easy to work on, helps that I remember lots of this stuff from my old XJ.
Rust repairs are coming along well, I've finished welding up all the boot area and just have the dog leg to repair now. So I'll do some grinding during the week and start putting filler in. Hoping to spray some primer on the repairs in a week or two, then let the primer sit for another week or so. I'm pretty happy with progress so far.

Regards, Andrew.

[dehne]

have you pulled the cold start injecter out to see if it works, ive disconected mine (unplugged it) and dont have a prob at all

[Typhoon90]

have you pulled the cold start injecter out to see if it works, ive disconected mine (unplugged it) and dont have a prob at all

That's on the list for next weekend. Here in Canberra, I need the cold start injector, the car is hard to get to catch on first start of a morning down here (-2 to _6c)! I also found my Jag needed the cold start injector too, when I lived near Newcastle. I spose it depends where you live.
I expect the injector is completely blocked, I bought a Supra once that was all kinds of hard to start when it got cold in winter. Car had lived somewhere warm all it's life, so the injector rarely, if ever, got used. So it became an "end artery" if you will and filled up with junk.

Regards, Andrew.

[Mat Francis]

To save a 90 from that state takes considerable dedication! Keep up the great work

[Typhoon90]

Thanks. I wonder if it is worthwhile sometimes, but I know I have something unique and I enjoy the work.
Some photos I took this evening. I need to zap up a few small holes here and there and give it a finish grind before I start in with filler, but it's looking good. Shaping the corner radiused gutter pieces was fun but it's turned out well.



I found a fantastic abrasive wheel for removing paint and old windscreen adhesive, it also works really well on surface rust and loose paint. Scotchbrite clean & strip wheels:


Regards, Andrew.

[Typhoon90]

I've been pretty busy bashing, cutting and welding metal, throwing bog and sanding. Have tried to devote 15 hours a week to the car, which is working.
I have the repairs in filler, roof and quarter panels sanded back ready for primer. The plan is to paint roof and quarter panels plus beaver panel and inside boot. I am letting the filler sit for a couple of weeks to out gas then will prime.



I have traced all the rust in the rear of my car to a torn filler neck boot. Moisture got in, carpets got wet, humidity in boot went up, condensation set in and the rust is history!  
This weekend I sorted out the slow wipers by disassembling the wiper motor gearbox, cleaning out the old solid grease and reassembling with a nice teflon grease. I also lubed all the wiper linkage points, got about another 10 wipes a minute out if the system!
Fortunately there is no rust below the windscreen, although I am glad I took the cowl grille off, there was mud under there, waiting to rust through the paint eventually.
Whilst the car has been sitting, it's developed a new trick, it's started to smoke when idling hot. It's oil smoke, I hope it's just a sticking ring or similar.   I don't think it's too bad, it wasn't doing it before it was laid up and it's only been idle for six weeks so far. Probably just needs a good blast round the block.
So my next trick will be to pull the seats out and restitch them. I have no chance of finding replacement material, so they will just be restitched and put back together for now, they're faded but it will buy me time to find material that's close enough to use as a replacement. I also have to work on the motors for the seats too, hopefully it's just old grease and bad earths. I'm also going to mod the driver's seat a little to get it a bit further towards the rear of the car and an inch lower. Should be easily done I think!

Regards, Andrew.

[dehne]

the motors in the seats will be fine, it has something to do with the wiring in there. if you want to lower the drivers seat just take the height adjuster out and you will sit lower you must be tall to need that as im 6"1 and its fine for me, also to move seat back further check the bolts at the back of the seat as there minght be a lug under the head if its there you can take it out and it will give you an inch and a half more, with redoing the seats since ur in syd why not look at putting black leather into it the front seats out of a 156 fit straight in and you need to adjust the back a little not sure how much it maybe putting some new mounts there. im going to do this to my 90 soon as i get some seats in vic at a good price

[Typhoon90]

I'm in Canberra. I do all my own upholstery work, used to me a sailmaker/marine trimmer for around 15 years. It's nice to have your own machine! Newer seats sound nice but I think I want to try and keep the car reasonably original, so I will hold out for  awhile and see if anything close to original turns up, if not, I'll save money and buy some brown leather and redo the whole car. The seats work now, but the motors have very little grunt.
I'm not particularly tall, 6 ft, but am very long in the body, it's a huge problem in some cars, I don't quite fit in our Magna comfortably, have to sit leaned too far back, but my Volvo is great, was built for Vikings so heaps of room!
More work done today, butyl/ tar sealer sprayed over repairs to help with corrosion protection and to hide my ugly body work!




Regards, Andrew.

[Typhoon90]

I got a few "big" issues fixed on the weekend. The blower motor on the climate control system wasn't working, the wipers were really slow and the headlight switch made the lights flicker on and off.
The wiper was an easy fix, I've come across this issue before. Bosch wiper motors of this era have grease in the reduction gearbox, it goes hard and oxidises after 20-30 years. The solution is simply to disassemble the gearbox, clean and re grease, teflon fortified greases work extremely well. I also oiled all the wiper linkages and gained about 10 extra wipes per minute for free.
The blower motor, again an easy fix. I strongly suspected the resistor pack, I've seen it a lot on older cars. The symptom is no blower motor at all, or on some cars, just blower on full speed. What happens is the resistor pack gets covered in leaf litter, resistor wires overheat and fail. The fix is to just re form the end of the resistor wire and recrimp/resolder it into it's hole. The only side effect is a very slight change in motor speed on this setting.
The resistor wires are simple coiled wires, the control switch on the console simply chooses which resistor go go through to establish a certain blower speed. The resistor pack is also fitted into the side of the airbox so they are cooled by passing air, unfortunately, they are always put at some low point, so they either trap leaves or on one car I owned, get immersed in air conditioning condensate when the drain backs up due to leaves. The resistor pack on the 90 is up and behind the console, fortunately for me I have the console and seats out, else I'd have never gotten to it.
The headlight switch was even easier, pulled the combination switch off the console, soaked the internals with contact cleaner sprayed in through the top and all fixed.
Alfas aren't scary cars electrically, they're put together exactly the same way as anything else of the era. I used to hear that sort of thing all the time when I owned a Jaguar, but common sense and a wiring diagram allows anything to be fixed!
I also spent the weekend cleaning the interior of the car with citrus cleaner, it seemed a good time to do it with the console and seats out. it's come up well. A little faded, but it's faded everywhere so it works out o.k!
It's starting to warm up now, hopefully I can get some paint on the car in the next few weeks.

Regards, Andrew.

[Sheldon McIntosh]

I'm enjoying this thread Typhoon90.  It sounds like you know your way around a car; I've had my 90 for over 4 years and done a lot of work on it, but I learn something new with every post of yours.  I hope you're going to enjoy the car when it's done.

[Typhoon90]

I hope I enjoy the car too! I'll probably register it and not look at it for a couple of months, will be sick of it! The seats will go back together this weekend, I might write up a pictorial of how to do that, the Alfa seats are very complex in their construction.
I've owned around one car a year since I left high school, all older cars except our Magna which was 2 yo when we bought it, so I have kind of had to learn to fix things or be broke paying someone else to do it. Luckily for me, I enjoy learning and also like a challenge.

Regards, Andrew.