Alfa Romeo

That wasn't all it was about, but no, not that good.

Actually, the 156 1.6 could be got at Mondeo money - around £12.

That's always the case with any garage of course, although to some extent we can tie in failures against sales of cars, so we get a statistic from it.

In the case of the Selespeed, we had 100% failure by the 24k service.

Of course, we had about 40% over-all failure, which means that 60% are OK.

But when you consider that Honda only have about 4% failure......

Indeed. That's why I ride a bike, I can choose something really dull and reliable, and still have 10x more fun than any car.

Yes.

Yup.

Aye, and they're about £400 too.

Consider yourself lucky then.

Go to a dealer, they bung the VIN into S.I.G.I., I frequently saw a list of up to 10 'campaigns' on any one car.

Yes, but the rear ones are worst.

Again, consider yourself lucky.

OK, so irrelevant information then.

Hmmm, it wasn't a 'fix'. It was a bulletin that gave an 'alternative' specification on customer complaint.

The camber is set for cornering, but as such causes excess tyre wear on the inner edges if you drive on straight roads a lot. They were designed this way for exceptional handling. However, the update merely adjusted the tracking to help the wear problem when people had basically bought the wrong car for their purposes.

Bugger, I was doing so well there too....... ;-)

I dunno, a diesel, 50k on brakes, 30k on tyres, and you never use oil. I somehow think you've missed the entire idea of having an Alfa!.

It's always possible to make a universal cone type filter fit on the end of an airflow meter ;-)

Academic at the moment.... my Passat didn't exactly get a lot of interest on ebay, fell *way* short of the reserve (which was set at, what I thought was a low price - £1695).

Bugger.

Still Adtrader and Autotrader to go this week, though.

Heh. I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking that.

The problem Alfa Romeo have, at least in the UK, is that they were bought by people who didn't understand they were buying a slightly tempremental Italian sports car. They expected them to be a Mondeo alternative, which they're not. However, Alfa shoulder some of the blame for marketing the cars in such a way.

I'd actually be interested to know the failure rates of owners club members vs the general population or even failure rates in Italy vs UK.

Knowing what you've bought and how to look after it seems to have a very big impact on the reliability of an Alfa.

LOL, indeed.

I have sold cars for silly money in the past when I got desperate.

I'm under instruction from Katie that this will not happen.

I can see her point, 'cos the Passat is a bloody good car, so I won't be too upset if it has to stay a while longer.

That's true.

My main motivation for doing it was to free up some cash to spend on the

1. Although this was soon overtaken by looking at shiny 156s and GTVs.

Still, fingers crossed it'll go this week and I can finally get both a V6 and have the rear arches professionally done on the 75.

Yes, I remember :-)

Hmm, well, good luck.

Indeed, I bought a cheap 155 T.Spark from a trader who, by his own admission "doesn't know much about Alfas" a few weeks ago.

It was cheap because it needed a variator [1], and didn't have any service history with it. Trader had priced getting the variator done and along with the cambelt and tensioner Alfa quoted him something like £600+ vat.

I paid a tame Alfa mechanic who I know £250 to do the job, using genuine Alfa parts (he also got the right bits, Alfa change them quite often and he's done enough to know which are the best upgrades).

I've so far done 1600 miles in the Alfa - 300 tonight just messing about - it's not used a drop of oil, and even with a moderate pasting will do 33 mpg on a long, fast, cross country run. Tonight I did 118 miles in 2 hours across North Wales (Holyhead to Liverpool) and didn't break any of the lower speed limits [2]. The Alfa averaged 41 mpg. [3]

Its my 7th Alfa [4] and I've never had a major problem with any of them. No sign of the electric faults everyone accuses them of, no sign of rust on any of them, and they're reasonably quick, good fun to drive, and surprisingly quiet when cruising at speed.

GTV - at least that makes sense. Gives you something to look at on the hard shoulder.

The 24v is absolutely loaded with everything other than leather, is a bit more expensive, in equally good condition, but it's an auto andin Birmingham.

---------------------- When our Megane ate its automatic gearbox last summer, and was taken to a gearbox specialist, I asked the guy there how hard it was to fix. "Nasty. But not nearly as bad as Alfa automatics; those are the worst auto gearboxes of all. Never buy an Alfa auto"

That's what he thought anyway; I must say 'Alfa' doesn't really go with 'automatic' .

In message , Andy Hewitt writes

I had a similar adjustment to the Civic for excessive wear on the inside edges of the rear tyres. Tyres replaced pro rata, too.

Same reason, or a fault?

Yes but that's the most basic model. Mine retailed for £21,500.

Those gearboxes were rubbish IMO. I've always advised people avoid them like the plague.

I don't know what that means - is it that 40% of cars had a warranty claim during the warranty period? In the case of mine, my ashtray spring failed and I got £70 out of my 3 year warranty. Not a great bargain given the cost of the warranty.

Yes the great Alfa question - why does this happen Alfa?

Really? I've never heard of anyone else's JTD drinking sump oil. Did you find any JTDs drinking sump oil like a Twin Spark?

Ahhh yes..I'll come back to this point later...

No, I keep my ear to the ground in matters relating to Alfas and puddles killing engines isn't one I've heard people mention before. At the end of the day, there will be a depth of puddle that kills any car.

I didn't complain as I didn't think my tyres were too bad - my Garage looked at my tyres and said they'd 'fixed the problem'. The difference in performance, while noticeable, wasn't huge. I don't disagree with your wording but to almost every lowered Alfa 156 owner it was a 'fix' IMHO.

Not at all. I just don't slow down and am sympathetic to my hard compound tyres. Remember that my tyres were (pre-adjustment) going to die by 12,000 miles (and that was optimistic). You think I drive like a pensioner? My passengers don't think so. I've never been asked to speed up..it's always been the opposite and sometimes they've been rather insistent about it.

What you're implying is that Alfas are designed to be driven like a maniac. I disagree. A responsible driver cannot drive like this for long on UK roads and Alfas are road cars not racing cars.

Then there's the perception that these things are 'Sporty'. Here again, the perception is somewhat different from the reality. The cars suspension is not designed at all for UK roads (not just mine) and does not allow fast driving on anything other than billiard-table-flat roads. If you do go for it, you risk taking out the sump or smashing the front spoiler. Then there's the corners where the suspension allows too much vertical movement of the outside front wheel. I've witnessed cooking Astras do fast corners 20mph faster than a 156 because of the poor suspension control. Indeed the Harvey-Bailey aftermarket kit targets this weakness among others.

At the time I bought mine, the only ones I thought had any go in them were the 2.4JTD and the 2.5V6 the rest just didn't do it for me (no GTA then). As I needed an everyday car too, and fully appreciated the weaknesses of Alfa petrols, I opted for the JTD and its fabulous 224 lbft of torque. In 4.5 years, it's consistently delivered useable on-road performance.

The 156 defies an accurate description IMHO - it's not sporty because of its flaws and it's not luxury because it tries to be sporty. The most accurate description, generally agreed upon, is that they are beautiful cars. You buy them with your heart, because they make no sense at all. I love mine...

How do you go about lowering an Alfa 156 owner? Is it a complex job involving a full geometry check, uprated shocks etc., or can you get away with just a set of lowering springs, within reason?

-- Tell me your birthday!

In message , AstraVanMan writes

I was going to say "tell him it's based on a Fiat Tipo", but I don't think the 156 is. Damn.

ZF 'box as used by a multitude of early 90s executive kit.

I think he probably meant Selespeed.

I already have a decent manual Alfa, but I want a luxo-barge. Unfortunately Lancia no longer exist in the UK, so it'll have to be an Alfa.

It is.

I knew that the 155 is Tipo based, but I had the impression that the 156 was a newer platform. Not the case then?

The only true 'new' medium-ish platform to come from Alfa and Fiat recently has been the new 159.

The 156 is very closely related to the later 'widebody' 155s.