164 with condensation, sticky sunroof, noisy power steering. Oh, and car performance simulations!

["Jonathan Wolff" <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

You may remember I wrote to the digest a while back recounting my tale of
woe concerning a bodywork repair to the rear quarter of my 164 Cloverleaf.
Well, despite taking the car back several times they haven't really sorted
it out yet, and the insurer's 'independent' engineer hasn't really helped
much either, tending to echo the repairers excuses.  Still I will keep
plugging away...

Anyway, a few other little problems have cropped up.

In the recent wet weather I have been finding a lot of condensation inside
the car - enough that it just smears around when I try to wipe it away.  I
don't think it's the front drain tubes for the sunroof, because a few months
ago - the first time it rained heavily after I got the car - I removed the
crud that was blocking them and flushed them through.  They have black
end-caps with two slits in the end, and these just seem to hold in any muck
that gets washed down.  Why are they there, do they do any good?  Anyway, I
want to flush the rear drain tubes.  I will park the car facing uphill and
carefully pour water into the well around the sunroof.  Where do the tubes
come out, and do they have similar end caps?

On one fairly wet day, just as the car started going uphill after an
enthusiastic standing start, I got a tiny sprinkling of water on one ankle.
I doubt that there is any way that water thrown up by the front tyres could
have got into the passenger compartment, so my guess is that there was some
water sitting around in the scuttle, underneath all the air-con equipment
(this is a RHD drive car).  Also on one other occasion while cornering I
heard a sloshing noise from behind the dashboard.  How is this area meant to
be drained?  I have since managed to pull out a bunch of damp leaves from
both sides of this area, but couldn't see any water sitting there.  I think
there are probably more leaves but I can't get my hand in far enough - is it
possible to move any of the a/c components for better access without
spraying myself with refrigerant?

Apart from that, any other suggestions as to how water is likely to be
getting in would be appreciated.

I've discovered that the sunroof has a tendency to get stuck if I try
closing it while travelling at motorway speeds.  It wedges itself against
the deflector.  Another 164 I test drove exhibited this problem.  Is it
common, and can it be adjusted easily?  Also is it likely to be related to
the rather annoying slight rattle that comes from the sunroof on all but the
smoothest of roads?

Finally last night while manoevreing to park I noticed that the car seemed
to be making extra loud 'reverse gear whine' noises even in 1st, but they
went away as soon as I tried to track the noise down.  This morning on the
way to work I thought I detected odd noises while steering but I wasn't
sure.  Then this evening as I accelerated crisply out of my parking space
and turned left there was a nasty graunching noise.  I stopped and there was
a constant whine which went away when I put the steering to dead centre, but
came back slightly to either side.  Now I realised that it was actually a
'steering at full lock whine' not a 'reverse gear whine'.  It then faded
away.  I guess it's the power steering pump - I hope to get a chance to have
a look in the light.  Is it likely to be a slipping belt, a sticking belt,
or what?  It may be a coincidence, but then again it might be related to an
incident during the drive asfter which it first appeared.  I was doing about
80 in the middle lane, with cars on either side of me, when a lorry going
significantly slower than me and maybe two car lengths ahead decided to pull
out in front of me without warning.  It was wet, and thankfully the ABS did
it's magic because I'm sure I was just inches away from him when I finally
matched speed with him.  I was too shaken to note how fast he was going, but
it was probably 40 or so - those brakes did a great job for a ton-and-a-half
car!

Now, some time ago I mentioned that my air-con display had segments missing,
but it couldn't make its mind up which segments should work and which
shouldn't.  I promised to try taking the unit apart to see if anything could
be done.  Well I'm afraid I haven't even managed to get it off yet, because
it is wedged behind the air vent and won't budge.  Looks like I will have to
take half the dash apart to remove it.  However at the moment, all of the
segments appear to work, but some of them are very dim and some tend to fade
slowly up and down instead of turning instantly on and off.  I still reckon
that there is probably one of those flexible connector strips and it is
moving sideways in its socket with temperature cycles or something, and
somehow some capacitances are getting introduced into the circuitry.  More
news if I ever get the damn thing apart.

Finally a few weeks ago I was looking for a program which would take a
torque/hp curve and some gear ratios and come up with ideal shift points.  I
found a couple both of which crashed regularly, wouldn't save in their
'shareware' form, and didn;t want to work with the 164's torque curve.
Today, in an entirely unrelated web-search, I stumbled across a program
called CarTest.  It's got a rather clunky DOS interface, but it does
everything you could possibly want, and comes with a database of 900-odd
cars including a healthy selection of Alfas.  It slightly overestimates the
acceleration of the 164 Cloverleaf, and underestimates the top speed, when
compared with the published figures - but then it does have to make
assumptions about the shift time and clutch engage time which may be
slightly hopeful.  It would be nice to get proper dyno data into it (I just
estimated figures from Alfa's published curve), and also correct numbers for
some of the other details (like frontal area, transmission efficiency
etc.) - does anyone have a source for details like these?  Unfortunately
Hotbot doesn't want to find the URL from home with the exact same search I
used at work, but I'll send it tomorrow.  If you can find it, try it.  It's
great fun, and it can even estimate lap times for race circuits around the
world!

Anyway, have fun everyone...

Jonathan.

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

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End of alfa-digest V7 #409
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