Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 08:33:48 -0500
From: John Brase <jbrase@domain.elided>
Subject: [alfa] Smoking GTV6
Yesterday afternoon I got caught in a traffic snarl on the interstate.
I was stopped, or creeping, with the car idling for nearly an hour till
I found a traffic report telling me the interstate was closed due to a
big crash. At that point I decided the best option was to ignore the
legal niceties and drive through the median and escape in the other
direction. When I accelerated the car laid down one of the biggest
smoke screens I've ever seen. (Does anyone remember the ALFA powered
Indy Car blowing up - which it did regularly? It was that kind of
smokescreen.) My wife was several cars behind me in the queue and she
said it looked to her like the car was on fire. It quit smoking by the
time I got through the gears and up to around 80mph. I can repeat this
behavior, in a somewhat less dramatic way, by letting the car idle for
several minutes and then revving the motor. My guess is that this is a
symptom of worn valve guides, but that is just a stab in the dark. Any
other ideas? I think the car has 60-70k miles on it (the speedo was
broken for a while) and runs well with no obvious motor related
problems. Oil consumption verges on the intolerable but I always
attributed that to the old, leaky tensioner.
John
Indy