RE: a little rant on newbie Alfa buyers and ownership (long-ish)

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@domain.elided>]

Neil Smith says:

> In my experience (having owned my Milano for 8 months now) I
> must have spent approx. $100 / month on maintenance. The car
> only cost $3000 to start with.

I'm going to go kiss my Spider.

I've spent about $130 on maintenance since buying her back in May 1999,
and about $100 of that was when I gave up and had a shop chase down an
electrical system problem (bad ground in a tail light causing a short,
blowing the brakelight fuse).  The rest went for supplies for an oil
change (and I went for synthetic, since she doesn't use, burn or leak
any oil), new Castrol LMA brake fluid in June, and distilled water when
I flushed the coolant also in June.  (I already had the coolant
additive, so I'm not counting what that cost me, any more than I'm
counting things like shop rags and Brakleen.)

Of course, that will double in the next few weeks when I buy all six
filters and another six quarts of Castrol Syntec -- it's time for the
full 12,000 mile maintenance.  And the filters alone are about $80, plus
I figure I might as well get new Golden Lodge plugs and the rest of the
tuneup replaceables.

I won't complain.  $20 a month in maintenance for a 25-year-old Alfa...
why?  Because I did NOT buy a $3000 Spider.  I paid up front, but I've
been enjoying it immensely ever since.

I've certainly done it the other way, so I won't say that one is better
than the other.  My '67 is *mine* in a way that few other cars have
been, because of all the work I've done myself (stripping down to bare
metal, for example, or pulling the transmission, or redoing the
interior, or... you get the point.)  But... it's a nice change to work
on the car when I *want* to, doing the maintenance as called out in the
owner's manual, and just driving the hell out of her in the meanwhile. 
I like this version of old-car ownership, too.

- --Scott Fisher
  Sunnyvale, CA
  '74 Spider
  '67 GT, uh, Junior Plus in the making? :-)

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