[gtv682]

My first 164 I traded for a Spider - seemed like a good idea. Circumtances dealt a different hand. 1991 164L w/bent valves. Anyone want to buy a project? Some documentation. Transmission was replaced. Drove very nice before problem. All windows work, all gauges - repairing heads, etc beyond my ability. Silver.

 

[76Alfetta]

where is the car located? Any pictures?

 

[gtv682]

Virginia

East Coast - Alfa-Base :: 1991 Alfa Romeo 164L for sale!

The car is the silver one. The website is PO's. I have only had it a few months - nothing is different with the exception of bent valves.

 

[MrT]

DC area? Is the car the 5-speed silver '91? Asking price? The car is within my geographic and technical reach, and I'm struggling with an AT car that's being a bit of a pain just now.

Some details about the bent valves would be welcome. My wife's car's P.O. drove the car 30 miles after a timing-induced clatter started, and a spun rod bearing resulted. The events around your episode would be of interest.

Michael

 

[gtv682]

164

I traded this car for a spider I had to accommodate my family. The car belonged to an AROC member, and Brewster Thackery acquired when the PO went out of town. Car was great the short time I had it. However about 2 weeks ago the timing belt slipped and a compression test shows bent valves - number 2 gets nothing. This is my first 164 and while I love the car, fixing is beyond my capability. The car is in Christiansburg, VA. I would like $1500. The transmission was replaced in this car. I have the documentation. I would really like this to be saved.

 

[Alfar7]

Head solution

I have low milage 164L heads pulled to port some time ago but never needed. They need no machine work, no cleaning, just installing. Cams removed (replace with yours) stainless valves. $600.00 cheaper than repairing .

 

[gtv682]

164

Thanks for the emails I have gotten - I am encouraged by the Alfa owners. I want to save this 164. I hope to find a way.

 

[MrT]

It could be straightforward....

With some knowledgable help and the heads Richard suggests, you could start Saturday a.m. and be done Sunday p.m., maybe even with Sunday morning free for something for the soul. Gaskets, t-belt, tensioner (that's probably what broke), and materials possibly summing to around $300+ on top of the head costs and their freight.

Oh.... and the valve shims. Well, maybe valve shims the first weekend and save the car for another? Or remove your cams and followers, keeping everything straight and labeled. Maybe Richard has time to fit them for you for some agreed-upon price before shipping them. Not that I'm volunteering Richard or anything like that....

I'd have had to swap heads for some I have in the garage (after sending them to a shop for attention).

 

[gtv682]

164

Thanks. Just a little beyond me and I am not sure I have the proper tools. Thanks for the advice. I am working with father-in-law and we'll find the proper solution.

 

[MrT]

Sorry if I appeared thoughtless. You'd need "knowledgable help," certainly, to do the deed in a weekend. It took me a terribly long time simply to swap an engine and A/T combination recently. Oh, yeah, it's not done yet. After four weekends. Gee, I guess I can't estimate very well. But in the best of worlds, what you're considering is a weekend operation plus the head preparation time.

Your car was tempting for me when it was on Thackeray's web site. On all but one of the 164's I've bought, I've tended to the t-belt immediately. That sole exception is a car that came from the DiMatteo family in Florida -- used to be Fred DiMatteo's car. It appeared to be in good operating order, although it had been out of their hands for a few months when I bought it from an Ebay used car dealer. Even on that one, the tensioner went "sproing" and the outer spring broke as I dismounted the tensioner to replace the t-belt six months after I purchased the car. Coulda happened earlier, and I'da been outa luck.

One car came with a mis-installed tensioner and a floppy belt. I'm just lucky not to have had my lunch eaten by that one. Another came with an already broken outer spring (the one which jumped time on the P.O. and he spun a bearing). Two others came with intact tensioners, but we didn't even start the engines before exchanging belt and tensioner. I've not yet had the misfortune of losing a tensioner in service, and I like it that way. But that mis-installed one was a near thing. Half of my personal automotive mechanical experience has come working on our 164 fleet after january 2004, and I fully understand not being confident on things I've not yet touched personally.

Michael

 

[gtv682]

No worries

Thanks. No worries, I am looking into how I can get it back. Car is way to good to just part out, put it got me down a little. Car has been cared for it's entire life and I would really like to have it back on the road.

 

[elite38868]

Did you do a compression test yourself? If so, did you test all cylinders? This could determine if you only have to remove the front head which would be a piece of cake. I bet your head isn't even damaged, so you wouldn't even need rebuilt heads, just a few valves and valve guides put in maybe.

 

[Alfisto Steve]

Thanks. Just a little beyond me and I am not sure I have the proper tools. Thanks for the advice. I am working with father-in-law and we'll find the proper solution.

I am also working with my best friend his "father-in-law and we'll find the proper solution." Stay tuned.

 

[nick43224]

DC area? Is the car the 5-speed silver '91? Asking price? The car is within my geographic and technical reach, and I'm struggling with an AT car that's being a bit of a pain just now.

Some details about the bent valves would be welcome. My wife's car's P.O. drove the car 30 miles after a timing-induced clatter started, and a spun rod bearing resulted. The events around your episode would be of interest.


Hello, Could you explain a bit more the "timing-induced clatter"? Reason being that I just bought a 164L that was pretty much rebuilt, but it has a clatter sound coming from the timing belt/pulley area along with a belt squeel. Belt dressing seems to get rid of the squeel, but I doubt it's good to squirt dressing on the belt every time i start the car. The clatter started about a week ago, and sound like a pully going bad, but reading your post made me wonder, so if you have any advise as to how to diagnose and eliminate the possibility of it being a timing issue I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks

 

[MrT]

Nick,

What I meant was that the P.O.'s t-belt tensioner broke its outer spring and loosened the t-belt to allow the crank to slip behind a couple of teeth. The valves were clattering against the pistons, but were relatively in time between the two heads but not vs. the pistons. Both heads needed all intake valves replaced and two of the exhaust valves. The pistons had clear interference marks from valve contact. The clatter was absolutely horrible when the P.O. drove the car onto the transport dolly. When I discovered the timing error during the engine pull process, I stopped that and re-timed, hoping for a quick and easy fix. No such luck, as the #5 rod bearing had indeed spun after it was overloaded mechanically by piston/valve interference and did lose its reference against the rod cap.

I had a bearing noise I once thought was the A/C bearing but turned out to be the idler pulley bearing. They're somewhat fragile and short-lived, it seems. I had one new one fail at 9 mos. service life. Your belt squeal should go away if you re-tension the serpentine tensioner pulley. But the wife's car has a tendency to loosen this belt. It may be that some of the dirt-dauber nest material still is clogging some of the serpentine belt rib valleys. This would do bad things to the belt tension, straining the belt and the water pump bearing, too. We should both investigate our problems.

Michael

 

[Alfisto Steve]

Rescue Project started last weekend

Thanks. No worries, I am looking into how I can get it back. Car is way to good to just part out, put it got me down a little. Car has been cared for it's entire life and I would really like to have it back on the road.

Rescue project has started.

I had Bill pull front cam and tappets out of front head last week as I did not have one in my spare parts stash. Imagine that!

Anyway Mary and I went out to Blacksburg this past weekend for a Hokie Mountain Alfa Holiday party at his F-in-L's (my good bud) place and I picked up cam/tappets.

We gave my 164B a good Italian 660 mile round trip tune up and only problem we had was 30 minutes of stop and go on I-81 cause of a 6 car pile up. Man I wish we had had my daughter's automatic. Have you ever tried to do clutch and brake at 2-3 MPH up a mountain pass with about 100 semi trucks and 500 cars? Was my left leg hurting.


Today I installed his cam and tappets in my spare reworked front head. tomorrow schedule permitting I will finish setting up spare reworked rear head and cam/valve clearances on Joe's 164L old core I had reworked. We did a head swap for him about 3 months ago as he had the 3 bent intake valve trick too on his rear head.

Found one of Joe's intake tappets cracked right in middle of face so had to put in a new one.

Expect sometime next year before we actually swap out these reworked heads with Bill's bent valve ones. Time and distance will be a factor in how and where the job actually gets done.

 

[Alfisto Steve]

Page two of Bill's Silver 164L Rescue Project

Here is is only February already but Schedule finally permitted us to plan this repair. Don arrived Thursday from Blacksburg with the car on trailer behind his Dodge Hemi. Took us awhile to 164 off trailer and turned around in driveway using wheel dollies so we could nose it into garage.

Took us three hours Thurday afternnon to do that and prep the patient for surgery and drain coolant. I have started a word document to cover the process.

Yesterday we put in almost a full 8 hours pulling heads and cleaning off old head gasket material. I believe these heads have been off before and somebody used sealant on head gaskets.

Heads were stuck on and we had to use engine hoist to break them free.

Just as we suspected all three intake valves on rear head were bent with #2 bent the worse.

Engine hoist really helped out and we were able to leave fuel injection system completely installed on both heads.

I posted some pictures over here on this work in progress of a How to Do It:

http://www.alfabb.com/bb/forums/164-168-1991-1995/54720-ar164-01-replacing-heads-12v-v6.html

 

[Alfisto Steve]

Well, Saturday morning was taken up with some honey do items like moving furniture and putting bathroom together after wall paper job finished so we got a late start on car.

Jim and Joe came over for a bit. Joe took a couple starters to repair shop for me so we could install a rebuilt starter while heads off and we could actually see THAT REAR UPPER STARTER BOLT WAS ALREADY MISSING. Since that is the hard one to get to if engine all together somebody must have pulled starter before for a clutch change or tranny repair and did not installed bolt?

In the meantime we replaced blower motor behind false firewall. Once out we found as I suspected with 127,000 miles on car the brushes were worn out. THIS WAS THE SUPER "B" OF A JOB THAT TOOK THE MOST TIME TODAY AND I DREW BLOOD many times on top of my right hand trying to get blower motor housing out

Next we replaced cooling fan motor with one I had rebuilt is new bearings and turned armature. Also found original low speed fan resistor in fan shroud would not work and run fan unless we keep jigglying terminals.

We then replaced voltage regulator and broken radio suppressor on alternator and then went to pick up our freshly rebuilt starters. Once we changed out starter and installed missing bolt we called it a day.

Zero timing out these components today should provide so long term trouble free driving that will save real big bucks later on.

We lucked out on a/c compressor pulley bearing we didn't have to change that as car has new compressor assembly or we would have changed that bearing, too.

Believe me the beer and pizza at Harold's Pub sure tasted good last night.