Living in the garage lately

I guess it is time to announce that I have purchased Carlo Briscese's Alfa Romeo 164. Man am I excited about it! I figured with the Subaru going back to Nebraska with Luke and me just having the 2-seat Alfa Spider, I needed something with seating for four so I can get people at the airport on occasion or tote people around at lunch, etc. not to mention the idea of a car with A/C did hold a certain allure :=)

So I bought the 164, at a pretty good price I think ($3500). I soon found out a couple things. The A/C was not blowing cold air and the car, which ran well at speed, had a terrible idle, stumbling and bumbling when it sat still.

The a/c issue was quickly resolved with a trip to RML Automotive, where Alfa guy Ric Lovecchio refilled the system with freon and it now blows air at 29 degrees at the vent!! Yeah!

The bumbling, stumbling idle was not so simple. While at Ric's shop he took a look at it and suspected a leaky fuel injector, caused by a bad o-ring.

So when i got home I started the rather laborious process of removing the 6 chromed intake runner (which allow air to enter the combustion chamber), as well as the 6 fuel injectors and the fuel rail(which delivers fuel to the injectors).

Well it was a minor pain in the *ss but I got through it. What I found however is that 4 of the 6 intake runners had NO GASKET between the runner and the engine head. A gasket here is crucial so that unmeasured air is not sucked into the combustion chamber. Guess what happens when unmeasured air gets sucked into the combustion chamber...that's right, crappy idling of the motor!

Anyway, I knew I was going to be SOL trying to find 6 new intake runner gaskets at Autozone, so I opted instead to buy some bulk gasket material and trace out 6 new gaskets using one of the old ones as a pattern. Then I cut them out with an exacto knife and some scissors and voila...new gaskets!

I finally got everything reassembled and the moment of truth arrived. I started the 164 and was met with a beautifully smooth idle! Yippee doodle doo!!!!