164S Suspension

["Jonathan Wolff" <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

After several unsuccessful attempts at sending this from work I'm trying
again from home...


Mark Oglesby wrote
>
> (Fwd) In response to Ted, I have a 164S (UK car 164 Green
> Cloverleaf). Mine
> was stuck in sport mode, all the parts checked out but it still
> did not work. Eventually I took it to the main agent how
> plugged in the
> diagnostic to tell me that a rear shock was broken, with worn wiring.
>
> They wanted silly money for a new shock so I did not get the
> work done.
> Instead I got my local Alfa mechanic to replace the wiring to
> the strut. Hey
> presto, it was a broken wire and now the car is back in auto mode with
> no red light. The red light had been on for so long, I kind
> of miss it now,
> but no doubt it will be back!

Well just a few days ago I noticed the sunroof was rattling even more
than normal when motorway cruising in my Cloverleaf...  Yup, the
suspension turned out to be on permanent sport mode.  Perhaps it decided
that since it's in sport mode whenever I accelerate hard, brake hard, or
corner hard, it can save itself the trouble and go to sleep.  Hmm, never
really appreciated how much of a difference there was between sport and
auto before.

On Saturday when I was at my local Alfa dealer picking up a part I asked
if they could quickly plug it the diagnostic device in and get the error
code out.  The answer was they would have to book it in, and it might
take a couple of hours to find the connector, disassemble things to make
it accessible, clean it up and plug it into 'the brain' to do the
diagnosis.  This is clearly ridiculous, surely it just plugs into the
control unit in the boot.  I suspect the guy on the desk was speaking in
a rearward direction to avoid giving me a little free help.

Anyway, after a moments inspection on Sunday I found that the offside
rear strut's wire had worn through from contact with the tyre.  I don't
know how it got loose from behind the brake pipe, but it isn't clipped
in place along the panel seam like it is on the nearside - is that
normal?

So are you saying that the section of wire running from the boot (trunk)
to the solenoid on the strut isn't separately available?  Isn't that
just fabulous.  Any idea how easy it is to replace?

- --
Jonathan Wolff <jon@domain.elided>
Programmer
Argonaut Software Ltd.

------------------------------