World's highest mileage GTV-6 LIVES again!

["B. D. & Petei Zelazny" <unltd-ltd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Some of y'all may recall my GTV-6 woes prior to the AROC
convention in Santa Fe that prevented me from bringing the "ball
peen special" to the event.

As luck would have it, Andy Kaufmann and his family came to
Alpine to visit after the convention. Andy is the wizard wrench
at the Alfa shop in York, PA. We spent many hours checking and
testing things on the dead GTV-6. The fault was finally narrowed
down to two possible devises: the FI ECU or the air flow meter.

I sent both to Italian Motor Service in Austin (430 miles away).
They installed each devise one at a time on a known running
GTV-6. It turned out to be a totally fried a/f meter. This
occurred at 350,000+ miles!

Now I don't want all of you GTV-6/Milano owners running out and
buying spare a/f meters cause this failure was self inflicted and
not due to any "weakness" of the devise. FYI one lip on the
plastic a/f meter cover was gone and it must not have been sealed
very well. I am positive that a liberal amount of water was
injected into the a/f meter as I over zealously washed the engine
bay, thus inducing the failure.

My advice to all V6 owners: Be sure the cover on the a/f meter is
well sealed, especially if you live in a wet climate or like to
go to the car wash and go crazy washing under the hood (bonnet)
like I did (never again!).

If the car had still had the catalytic converter on it it would
have surely burned to the ground when I limped it home because
gasoline (petrol) was streaming out of the exhaust pipe.

- ---> Regarding Bernie Bennett's water pump survey, I have a few
comments: Years ago there was a weakness to the casting of an
"off brand" water pump for the GTV-6s (not sure if they are still
being made and sold). These w/p only lasted about 30K miles. I
don't feel like climbing into the attic and digging through 15
years worth of records, but it seems to me that I have gotten as
much as 150K and as little as 30K miles of use out of GTV-6 water
pumps over the years. (If B.J. is reading this maybe he will look
up the spread sheet I did several years ago on the maintenance of
my GTV-6 that IMS has in their file on me. If he does dig it out
he can give us more accurate info.) I do know that my last water
pump only went 53K miles before it started to weep.

If someone offers me $35,000 US dollars (FIRM) for my `83 GTV-6
it could be theirs! After all, there is only one "ball peen
special" in the whole wide world! It won't be easy, but I will
give it up if I have to.

Bernardo "dirty engine bay from now on" Zelaznini 
Global position of Alpine, TX (2:30 load @ 28.8):
http://www.brooksdata.net/personal/thc-aroc-usa/alpine_zoom.htm

Divided by Zero Productions web sites:

Texas Hill Country Alfa Romeo Owners Club-USA
	http://www.brooksdata.net/personal/thc-aroc-usa
Alfa Romeo Owners Club - USA
        http://www.aroc-usa.org <-- HAVE YOU CHECKED IT OUT YET?
Alpine Chamber of Commerce
        http://www.alpinetexas.com
Big Bend Astronomical Society
	http://www.brooksdata.net/personal/bbastro
Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering (currently messed up by the
server!)
	http://www.cowboypoetry.org
Big Bend Archeology Society
        http://www.brooksdata.net/personal/bbarch
Alpine, Texas Balloon Rally (NEW!)
	http://www.brooksdata.net/personal/balloon

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