[alfa] GTV-6 daily driver

[Charles Koster <cjkoster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Our '86 GTV-6 is my daily driver.  Our '91 164S is my wife's daily 
driver.  Both are OK as daily drivers as long as you keep after the basic 
periodic maintenance issues particular to each car.

For instance, the GTV-6's TropicAire system works fine for me, keeps things 
cool enough even in the hot summer weather in Southern California, but some 
of the parts are hard to come by if you happen to need anything.  With the 
stock exhaust it's not very noisy at all, although our dogs seem to know 
when I'm in the neighborhood.  My wife doesn't like the steering when 
parallel parking, but for any person with the normal amount of upper body 
strength it's not a problem at any other time.

The 164S has other issues, such as the engine cooling system, but nothing 
that's insurmountable (except the @#$%^ flickering idiot lights).  As an 
aside, after owning the car for a couple years we had a complete engine and 
front end rebuild that cost more than the car itself did (we're not the 
original owners), but we decided we liked the 164, and the price we paid 
for the car plus the cost of the rebuild is still less than what it would 
have cost to buy, say, a new VW Beetle (yuck).

The larger issue for both cars as daily drivers seems to me to be the 
availability of specific parts over the longer term.  I don't know a lot 
about all of that, but good luck finding a window winder for a GTV-6 if you 
need one.


Charles Koster
San Gabriel, CA
1986 GTV-6 3.0S (mine)
1991 164S (hers) 
--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided