Re: alfa-digest V9 #253

[Will Owen <nashwill912@domain.elided>]

TJ Callahan sez, & I quote:

"I went to see the work in progress and it seems they haven't removed the
liners from the block yet. When I tried moving the liners with my fingers,
they seemed pretty stuck in place.

"Can the collective wisdom of the AD tell me:

"a) Are they supposed to be stuck tight in the block?"

Of all the screwy things that Alfas do or don't do, this is my favorite example of both. When I was dismantling a '74 2-liter engine a few
years back, and consulting several Authoritative Texts to help me through the process, said Texts were evenly divided along the issue of What
to do about the liners: half said to tie them down so they wouldn't fall out onto the floor as soon as the block was inverted, and the other
half gave tips about how to bust them loose. My particular liners chose to remain firmly cemented in place. I spent some time and effort
trying to pop them loose by wailing on their nether edges with a wooden drift and a large hammer, to no avail. I wound up selling the engine,
more or less apart and strapped to a pallet, to a guy in New Jersey, and can only hope that he found a way to shift those liners, given that
he would want to. In the meantime, I have known people whose liners came sliding loose with only gravity to induce them...

Speaking of 2-liters, Andrew Watry's posting about his Berlina's head-gasket problems revived memories of major corrosion issues. He said
that the '73 that he got from Arizona had suffered from old coolant to the extent of spider-webbing the headgasket. I have some experience
that says how very much worse it could have been: I bought a little Subaru Justy once that had not run in a year and a half, and which had
three-year-old coolant in it. On the third day I was driving it, it suddenly began overheating and blowing steam. Suspecting a head-gasket
problem, I checked it into the shop, where I was informed that the head itself had pretty much dissolved into aluminum alloy slurry, thanks
to the corrosive influence of the outdated coolant. It was both very interesting and quite scary, handling that head and being able to poke
one's little finger through a water passage into a combustion chamber.

Will Owen
Psadena, CA
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