RE: [alfa] unscientific survey of gtv6 owners

["Jeff Greenfield" <alfaguy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The variation from side to side when measuring from the center of the front
wheel to the center of the rear wheel, could be due to alignment variations.

Castor is adjusted by lengthening/shortening the forward radius rod that
attaches to the upper control arm. This will effectively move the wheel
forward or backward in the wheel well.

It is normal to run slightly different castor from side to side to
compensate for the crown in most roads so that the car will seem to track
straight most of the time.

If there is any doubt, have the car put on a 4 wheel alignment machine at a
COMPETENT shop with a COMPETENT tech, if there are any anomalies the system
should point them out.

HTH,

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-alfa@domain.elided [mailto:owner-alfa@domain.elided] On Behalf Of B.D.
Zelazny
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 12:51 AM
To: Alfa Digest
Subject: [alfa] unscientific survey of gtv6 owners

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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