[alfa] unscientific survey of gtv6 owners

["B.D. Zelazny" <UnltdLtd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

fellow gtv6 owners:

in '83, 9 weeks and 12,000 (s)miles after i'd purchased my then new gtv6, it was
involved in a serious (to the car) collision. the car spent 3 months in the body shop.
when i got it back i noticed the driver and passenger side front wheels/tires seemed
placed slightly differently in the front wheel wells. at the time i measured several
brand new gtv6s on the showroom floor at the local dealership and found all of them had
about a 1/2 inch or so difference in the distance between the driver and passenger side
wheel spacing (wheel center to wheel center). i decided this must have been an
engineering issue...maybe even an advantage of some sort and thought no more about it
until recently.

a few weeks ago, while having my wheels/tires balanced and rotated the car was jack up
on all four jacking points. as the techs worked on the driver's side, the front
passenger side dropped several inches - lucky for me the wheels/tires were still on the
car. we all looked at each other and then checked to see what had happened: the jacking
point had collapsed under the weight of the car! argh!!

granted, this gtv6 has 415k (s)miles on it, but it is a texas car and never exposed to
salted roadways and has been garaged most of its life (while i wasn't driving it, o'
course!). today i finally got around to examining the situation and seem to have
determined why this has led to this failure.

    1. i've never cleaned out the cavity behind the front wheels that unfortunately
collects dirt over time. i removed about 2-3 cups of dirt from each cavity today.

    2. on the passenger side the front wheel is about 1/2 inch closer to the back of
the wheel well than on the driver's side. since i've run oversized tires (205s instead
of 195s) for most of the past 20 years this has allowed the slight and occasional
rubbing of the tire on the backside of the inner wheel well to be worn through both the
small shield that covers the cavity as well as in the forward passenger footwell area.
these small holes created by the occasional rubbing over time has allowed moisture to
create "cancer" in this area, leading to the jacking point collapse of late.

because of this i was wondering if any other gtv6 owners have experienced a similar
failure in this area due to the difference in wheel spacing. my request: could y'all
take a few minutes and measure the distance between the driver and passenger side wheel
centers and let me know what the DIFFERENCE is, if any?

i'd also suggest you closely examine this area on your gtv6 for similar wear through
and have any needed repairs done so as to avoid the situation i'm now faced with. i
hope my bad experience may save others from a similar fate.

'nardo - killin' time before the f1 race
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