87 milano will not rev over 3k rpm when cold?

[Rookie ROX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PSk I suspect that Alfa Romeo have built in a rev limiter when the engine is cold. Good on them.

[Travis_k]

I drove the car today and the problem seems to have gone away. I hate stuff like that. lol I guess I really shouldnt be trying to drive a 20 year old car everyday.

[alfaspence]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Travis_k I guess I really shouldnt be trying to drive a 20 year old car everyday.

[Rookie ROX]

x2.

Day in, day out, very few problems.

ROCK ON
R~R

[Travis_k]

Hmm, well really the only good thing about driving an old car is that the driving feel is much better. Bad things, well gauges that only work when they feel like it, crappy brakes, crappy milage, intermitant drovability problems (like engine cutting out while acclerating/driving on the freeway, etc). I still like driving old cars, I just wish I could find one that was actually reliable enough to drive everyday.

[Grant]

Travis, your car was $1650 (after $100 discount) and a lot of the expensive work has been done already. You have to understand that this kind of money isn't going to buy you a perfect car, especially for an Italian car. I'm sure the people that posted above have spent lots of money on their cars to make their cars into reliable transportation.

My $500 Verde, has seen at least $1500 on maintenance items in the last couple of years, and the car still isn't even the same color. When I picked it up, it was running on 3 cylinders, had NO brakes at all, and wouldn't stay in gear with lots of transmission whine in the back. Had everything been done professionally, I would be up to at least $3500 including parts and labor:
abs accumulator,
abs pump,
spark plugs and wires,
distributor cap,
rebuilt transmission,
rear transmission mount,
new exhaust,
new 02 sensor,
timing belt and water pump change,
new pads front and rear,
rebuilt rear calipers,
repaired upoulstry (spelling),
new rear drive shaft guibo,
rear wheel bearing,
new clutch slave,
new brake lines,
and much more that I'm forgetting. This is not counting the $1500 spent on suspension parts alone.

Any 20 year old car is going to need a thorough looking over after sitting for a year or so, with little use before that. You have a few minor issues it seems like, that will take some money and perseverance to allow you to fully enjoy it.

The brakes on these cars DO NOT suck by the way. Your car might have an old seal some where, but I know these cars stopped very well when new. They're Brembos up front, and ATE in the rear, with no sliding caliper crap if you haven't noticed.

I just don't want you, or other potential milano owners reading this, to think that these are bad cars. They require a careful eye and plenty of maintenance, but I don't think you're giving a cheap 20 year old car a fair chance.

[AR4me]

+1. A car 20 years old at this kind of price just cannot be without some things to fix. However, with some work and persistence on your part you can get a fun robust daily driver, IMHO.
Jes

[Duk]

I'm gunna chime in here and say that you really do need to be a car enthusiast who has some skills, facilities and inclination to work on cars, to own an old(er) Alfa.

I personally have found them to be more prone to component failure than my Toyota MR2 is. I think this gets back to Alfa tending to use (back in the day) cheaper materials like hoses, seals, clamps, wiring, nuts and bolts etc. And poorer quality controls rather than poor design.

Sometimes they are frustrating and sometimes they are great!

Working through any problem methodically will win the day .

Failing that, rip out all the Jetronic wiring, install a quality aftermarket computer and get to tuning (or get it tuned)

When it is working well, go and find a nice twisting back road and enjoy it for what it is. An idiosyncratic drivers car

[Travis_k]

Im not trying to say just milanos have problems like that. The reason It is frustrating is that my last car had the exact same type of problems. It was an 85 shelby charger (it looked just like this http://www.dellabarba.com/ibug/Image...elbyScaled.jpg), which I bought for $1200, and I did about $3000 wiorth of work on it.
P/s pump
p/s lines
steering rack (twice, the first one was bad)
water pump
radiator hoses
fuel lines
fuel filter
clutch
battery cable
shifter linkage
front suspension bushings
strut mounts
brake lines, front pads and master cylinder
starter solenoid (twice)
spark plugs/wires
cv shafts
and a bunch more i forget.

But, even with all that work, the brakes never wored how I thought they should, and it only got about 19 mpg most of the time, and it should have been getting closer to 26. The reason I finally decided to sell it was that it was cutting out and missing all the time and after a few months i was never able to figure out what was causing it, and I really didnt like driving it anymore, so i decided to get rid of it. I know its a cheaper/simpler car than the milano, but really the perfornnce was about the same, and it was harder to find many parts for it than for the milano. I guess maybe the milano isnt the right car for me either? I know very well that 20 year old cars need alot of work, and fixing something that is not working anymore is no big deal. Its just furstrating so have a car that never really works well enough to be able to enjoy driving it, and not be able to figure out what is wrong with it. The whole time I had my charger is was either leaking a quart of power steering fluid a week. or just about the time i got that fixed, it started having the problems I mentioned with losing power to the ignition.

[Travis_k]

BTW, to Grant, I am not unhappy that you sold me the car, everything worked fine when you sold it to me and I wouldnt have bought it if I didnt like it. I hoped buying a car that had been as well maintained as this one had been would keep it from needing a bunch of work long enough I could wait until summer to do whatever work it needed. Whatever is causing it to run so bad is beyond my ability to fix, so I guess im going to have to decide to either pay someone to fix it for me, or buy another car.
Either way, I will still buy your suspension parts, becasue I told you I would and if im going to still be driving the car I want to use them. Just let me know what shipping will be and I will send payment.

[Grant]

Travis, get yourself a shop manual, or look on Craig's website for parts of it online. Once you start narrowing down the possibilities to what your problems may be, ask what your next steps should be. You may be able to fix everything yourself with the proper documentation. These cars are pretty weird and not always straight forward.

Don't mean to hi-jack, but I think it should be around $45 for shipping (mainly b/c of weight).

[Travis_k]

I did find one problem with the wiring that shouldnt be to hard to fix, so maybe it wont be as bad as I thought to get it running right again. I guess I will just have to fix it and see if it helps.