Re:Odds & Sods

["C.M. Smith" <cmsmith@domain.elided>]

Even though it's summer (??) up here (the tough sledding part of the year)
there appears to be some interest in snow tires. I put snows on the four
corners of my 164 in October and take them off in May (!!!??!!?), so good
handling winter tires are kind of an obsession of mine.  Hakkapelittas
provide good in line traction in a wide variety of winter conditions, but
they don't corner especially well and they are a bit of a handful on dry
roads. With admittedly less absolute grip, Pirelli 210P's are the best dry
road winter tire, which also handle everything winter around here can throw
at us, e.g. minus 30 and snowing (yes it can snow when it's that cold and
man can it get slippery until the snow packs down), cold ice warm ice deep
cold snow deep warm snow plus 20 degrees C in February, minus 20 C in
March, etc etc.

Disturbing news from the land down under, the toilets flush in the reverse
direction...!!... I was down there (in Kiwi land) recently and now I know
why the toilets made me a bit nervous, I thought it was just the sun being
in the wrong part of the sky. I always left before the thing flushed
completely though so never saw the reverse flush.

Timing belt broke? Ouch. The valves will be bent. If it's bad the head may
be cracked. The pistons take a beating too. The one I saw had "only" bent
valves and the owner was staring a CAN$3,000 plus bill in the face. BTW,
how long since the belt had been done? Factory says 50,000 miles is tops,
my mechanic suggests 40,000 is more like it. Did yours last 96,000miles or
46,000 miles, i. e. changed once or nonce before?

Back in the late seventies we joked that Alfa engineering had one question
to answer before deciding on the quality of the component to install: "
does it make it go faster?"  On that theory, bodywork, seats, electrics
such as heaters or wipers, or lights, or instruments etc would fail the
test because they were non essential components. Bodywork is to keep the
rain off the engine, the drivers seat is relatively important, the tach is
fairly important but the fuel gauge or the speedo would be expendable, and
so it goes....


Michael Smith
Calgary, Alberta
Canada
91 Alfa 164L, White, original owner 

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