[kjp]

After some hours on my part and the assistance of my local shop, it is determined that one of my U-joints was bad. One end of one joint was seized up. Very hard to tell from my perspective at home without a lift!

The problem now is finding good replacement parts. Mechanic ordered a pair through Ricambi, both of them came in the wrong size. Possibly for a different model? We were puzzled at this one, since Alfa made the same U-joint for Spider/GTV for a good number of years from 1970 on up to the end in the 90's.

Second batch he orders comes from another West coast distributor, and these do not fit exactly either. In fact, one of the two did not even turn and move properly.

Third time we get them from International, one of the two fits, while the other one does not. So now a fourth call is put in, again to International to find a match. I expect to hear back today if this one is a winner.

Anybody else having problems getting parts that fit as they should? We are thinking that a bad batch of these things are floating around in our suppliers stockrooms.

Going on two weeks without a drive in my Spider and getting antsy .....