Pulling the 1750 Motor, Exposing 36
Years of Grime in the Engine Bay
In July of 2003 the Tom Sahines-built engine that ran so well for
nearly two decades came out of the car. It was
replaced by a 2-litre motor.
Because my wife is not listening, I will confess that oil control rings, some
oil seals
and a clutch probably would have kept the Alfa happy for another
several years. But it wouldn't have been as much
fun as a fully balanced
2000cc engine with
10.4:1 pistons, Weber DCOE 45's, headers, aluminum flywheel,
ported
big-valve head, and Megacycle cams.
Twenty years ago Tom did the engine and good friend Steve Smith built the
tranny. This time we reversed it.
Tom supplied a late-model
transmission with lightened gear sets. Steve took a
Rich Goodrich cylinder head and
built a motor that's a blast to drive.
Because there is more than one Steve Smith in the Alfa world, I should add
that
Santa Clara Steve was an Alfa mechanic and parts manager, back when Alfa's were
still imported and the
company made cars that drove the rear wheels (as God
intended).
More Before Photos. It's Always Good to Remind
Ourselves Why We Spent
the Time & Money. Right?
Almost Ready for the New Engine
The New Motor
Note the TWM Induction ram pipes, left, and the aluminum housings that
stiffen the stock motor mounts.
The right photo shows the tri-y, equal-length headers: Expensive and fun, but
overkill on a street car.
The left photo adds no new info; I just like it. We dropped in the engine and
tranny with the rear of the
car raised and the nose almost on the floor. The extreme angle made me nervous,
but the install was a breeze.
I drove it without the hood for about a month, to allow easier access. The
new Weber 45's, combined with
new rubber bushings on the firewall-mounted
throttle linkage, gave us fits. One Weber had a sticking throttle
shaft
and some fool (me) painted the throttle rod, which made the bar fatter, which
meant the rod wouldn't
turn freely against the stiff new rubber bushings, which
meant the throttle stuck open when the pedal was
pumped to get gas to the big
Webers. This photo is sans hood, and still using
the Pipercrap air filter that has
since been replaced (Pipercrap/Pipercross -
long story about a terrible company isn't worth
repeating).
It was during this hoodless time that I met a nice
California Highway Patrol Officer. Didn't notice him waiting
at a stop
light as I powered through
a right turn, drifted onto an expressway, and left rubber roaring up an
overpass. The conversation,
when he caught up, went like this: "You were going pretty
fast." "Yes, sorry officer.
My car has a
new engine and I got a little carried away." "You
think you should push a new engine that hard."
"Probably not." "You know how fast you were going?"
"Gee, officer, I don't." "Well, I'll give you
a warning, but
I'd better not see you do that again." Bummer.
Now I've got to find a new favorite on ramp ... somewhere other
than Santa
Clara, in case Officer S.W. should read this.
Click on each of these for larger images. Note the ITG sausage-shaped
air filter and the Bosch blue coil. Ignition is now from
Centerline. The coil sits in the old Marelli Plex aluminum heat sink. I made my
own backing plate to mount the ITG filters. ITG
makes one that is probably okay (the Pipercross backing plate is flimsy), but I
wanted to move the air filter forward and up a bit to
give it more room, and I wanted a stiffer backing plate to eliminate any
independent movement of the two carbs. The latter
affects balance between the carbs, which affects idle and engine performance.
igure
out how to modify the navigation bars on this template, so "Product" is Webese
for "Here are the Alfa pix."O
