hooray for small victories

[ethan schartman <eschartman@xxxxxxxxx>]

digesters,
i got my milano put back together after inadvertently
starting another round of rehabilitation.

it all started with taking it in to have the toe-in
adjusted after replacing a steering rack boot and
castor-arm bushings.

while on the rack, woody (in morrisville, PA) pointed
out that my lower ball joints were completely shot and
one of my rear brake disks was being ground away. and
while i was at it, i should look into my driveshaft
vibration (the worst he'd ever felt).

so i took it home and commenced work. while doing the
ball joints, i also replaced the lower a-arm bushings.
overall, working on the a-arms was the most fun and
least frustrating (except that i kept tearing threads
or snapping the end off my puller and would have to
take it to the shop and recut and thread it). while i
was at it, i replaced the front brake hoses.

i also pulled the clutch and took it to be checked for
balance. a year ago, it was a "new" unit from a
certain well-known source, so i thought this would be
just checking an item off the list of possible
vibration sources. no, it turned out to be a hack job,
4 grams out of balance. i found that incredibly
irritating, since my whole strategy behind the new
unit was to avoid balancing issues i might run across
with the old! BTW, if you have a clutch like this, you
can recognize it by the use of doubled-up thin washers
under the screws holding it together (the non-alfa
screws used are too long for the holes!). i also
replaced the input and selector shaft seals on T/A
since they were leaking (potentially putting the
clutch out of balance).

i also pulled the driveshaft. i weighed all the
hardware to make sure the various groups were the same
weight (a distant second to getting the whole thing
balanced, which seems to be quite difficult due to a
lack of tooling). and replaced the spherical bearing
going into the rear donut - the old one had fallen
apart.

and then it was time to tackle the rear brakes.
initially, this was so frustrating that i was pretty
much ready to cut the whole car into pieces and stuff
it into the recycling dumpsters. one piston refused to
move, no matter which direction i turned the screw,
nor how far. so i pulled the brake disk back out and
noticed that the piston boot had torn and rust was
building on the outer end of the piston. so i pulled
the calipers, tore them down, ground all the scale off
that was restricing pad movement (the pads wouldn't
even drop in properly), replaced all the seals, ground
the rust off the pistons and JB welded the pits (this
is on the very lip of the piston which doesn't contact
the seals), and replaced the piston boots. finally put
it all back together and bled the system.

today i rebled the brakes (still not quite right), and
took it out for a test drive. wow! before, when i took
it up to redline, i always felt that i shouldn't
linger too long. there was this sort of pervasive
angriness to the experience like the car was perfectly
capable of doing it, but not at all happy. no longer.
it's just smooth, and seems just as content running at
6000 as at 3k. amazing. and the front doesn't rattle
going over rough roads anymore! woohoo!

now, if i could just sort out my fuel issues for once
and all. and take care of the rust. and paint. sigh.
oh well, it's a long road reversing 15 years of
neglect.

-ethan schartman
-princeton, NJ
-'87 milano gold

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