Milano torsion bar nightmare repost (long)

["Derek Ealy" <dealy663@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I tried posting this twice before but it never seemed to get through when 
the list went down earlier this week. So here it is once again, hope someone 
can point out what went wrong this past weekend.

So I decided to go for it and perform this minor adjustment to my Milano's 
ride height myself. It started around the middle of last week, when I 
searched for a screw type ball joint separator that would work on my car. I 
found none in my area, just a bunch of pickle fork separators. It was too 
late to order the ridiculously expensive one from IAP, so I thought I'd go 
to all my local auto parts stores in the South Bay (near L.A.). Well no one 
had this thing, but I happened to have a screw type ball joint separator 
from my old Miata. It didn't have a big enough mouth to get around the top 
of the Milano ball joint, so I whipped out my dremel and proceeded to 
vaporize two grinding disks while enlarging the mouth of my ball joint 
separator (I'll post pics on the twiki site). Once this was finished I 
thought I was home free, just an M10x1.25x60mm bolt to purchase and I'd be 
in business.

Here things start to go wrong. Saturday morning while driving around looking 
for the ball joint separator I was only able to find a 40mm version of this 
tricky bolt, and it was only of grade 8.8 (which I was to learn more about 
later). So I got home and took the front suspension apart, separated the 
lower control arm from the steering knuckle and began to pull the torsion 
bar to the rear of the car. It was very tough going the whole way. This 
t-bar just didn't want to move, every 1/8 turn of the ratchet required large 
amounts of force. I initially used a stack of washers, but once the t-bar 
came out past the cross member I was stuck because the sockets I planned to 
use as spacers were all longer than the 40mm bolt I was using. Eventually I 
found a 50mm version of the bolt but still of only grade 8.8. I put it 
inside a large socket and began to pull. This bolt immediately stripped. Now 
the inside of the t-bar was screwed. The only bolt I could get into it was 
the old 40mm one (I guess it was stripped in a similar fashion). So I gave 
up and went to bed, but still thinking about how to get a good strong bolt.

Sunday I woke up with the brain on over drive. It finally dawned on me to 
look up fasteners in the phone book. I dialed every number but they were all 
closed. Finally a clerk at a local Lowes said he didn't have what I needed 
but another place Lovelady Hardware did. I went over there and they were 
opened, and I bought three M10x1.25x60mm grade 10.9 bolts. And not one of 
them would fit in the stripped t-bar on the left side. So I finally figured 
out how to use that harmonic balancer puller that was mentioned before. I 
used my only 40mm bolt to cinch down the puller to the t-bar. Then used two 
bolts on the outside of the puller to push against the cross member and pull 
the t-bar out the remaining 3 or 4 mm to free it. Once it was out I lubed it 
w/anti-seize and rotated it 8 splines clockwise and easily plugged it back 
in.

Halfway done and it is now about 2pm Sunday. Moving to the right t-bar I 
take apart the suspension and apply my fresh M10x1.25x60mm grade 10.9 bolt 
to the right t-bar. It comes out like buttah (oh I sprayed the inside of the 
t-bar threads w/penetrating oil first, it may have helped some, but the it 
couldn't have accounted for everything). But one problem I notice 
immediately is that it is much harder to rotate this t-bar. The left bar I 
was able to rotate by hand but the right one required a pair of channel 
locks applied to the splines ( I was very careful to only work at the back 
of the splines and not to crush them ). This should have served as a warning 
to me. Anyway I anti-seized the splines and rotated it 10 splines 
counter-clockwise (the ride height was uneven to begin with). So the goal 
was to lower the car .8" on the drivers side and 1" on the passenger side.

Now I think I'm home free, just plug it all back in and reassemble 
everything.... Not so fast grasshopper, you forgot to pray to the Italian 
goddess of mechanistic insanity. Not only should I have prayed but I should 
have offered a chicken in sacrifice or something. The t-bar won't go in very 
far. I can't even get it to contact the lower control arm in the front. 
After much pounding, cursing and sweating I finally back the thing out 
again. Apparently the rubber coating on the bar in between the front and 
rear splines got pushed into the rear t-bar mount and then was pinched when 
I tried to push the t-bar back to the front. I tried trimming it but that 
didn't work, so I tried once again to push the t-bar to the front of the 
car, this time I was able to get the bar to seat in the rear mount. After 
another hour of trying to get the bar into the front control arm I 
eventually succeeded. By now its about 7pm on Sunday.

I reassemble the front suspension, put the wheels on and drop the car off 
the jack stands. And what do I find...... the bloody @#$@$#@$ &%^%$&$%@ing 
car is now about 1" higher in front than it was before I started!

I'm so mad now I could just take a sledgehammer to the car! Before I commit 
ritual automotive seppuku with a pickle fork and an anti-seize cocktail (for 
good measure) could someone clue me in on what went wrong? I had three 
different sources on which way to turn the t-bars: the Milano shop manual, 
the Shankle torsion bar installation instructions and the article at the 
alfa twiki site. They all appeared to say that when viewed from the rear you 
rotate the left bar clockwise and the right bar counter clockwise to lower 
the car.

So I was beneath the passenger seats looking towards the front of the car I 
rotated the left bar (under the drivers seat) 8 splines clockwise at both 
the front and rear mount points. So with my inital marks in the 9 o-clock 
position I rotated them clockwise towards the center of the car. The right 
bar (under the passenger seat) was rotated 10 splines counterclockwise at 
both the front and rear mounts. With my initial marks at the 3 o-clock 
position I rotated the bars counterclockwise from 3 to 2 to 1 to 12 o-clock 
positions and so on.

What did I miss understand or do wrong? I remember that the previous owner 
of this car said he had a mechanic adjust the front ride height, could that 
have had anything to do with this going so terribly wrong?

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