[alfaspider81]

Greetings all... My '81 has the monofarfalla intake on it and I've been reading that converting to another intake can help out performance a bit. I was curious what intake I should look for and what might be involved with the conversion. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[maxwedge]

Not sure about the intake conversion but I'm pretty sure I've had the monofarfalla pasta with chicken and alfredo sauce at the local italian resturaunt, and it wasn't half bad.

 

[alfaspider81]

I'll go out and try to sink a fork into my intake and let you know how it tastes ;-)

 

[Tifosi]

My understanding is that switching from the single to SPICA ITB, (you are on SPICA, right?), should be a straight bolt up, but you'll have to do a bit of scrounging to get all the stuff that goes with it, like the airfilter box for one and prolly a bit of tinkering with the throttle linkage among other things. Then there's the question of if the SPICA drive itself needs to be altered to accomidate those changes.

It's not something I'd do on a whim certianly.

If you want a bit more grunt and a lot less headache, I'd suggest going for cams, or header and freeflow exhaust, or mabe even a better ignition long before I'd suggest swapping the manifold. (this ain't smallblock chevy world where everything is a sixpack and a set of vice grips )

 

[Art Vandelay]

The injection pump, intake manifold, air filter, and exhaust (and even the ignition) on your '81 are all different from the '72 -'74 Spiders, which is where you'd want to source your parts to get the best bag for your buck. I wouldn't bother just changing cams, or exhaust on an '81, as the improvements will be minimal - the restriction on the intake side will still be there. Your best bet it to find someone who's removed all those parts from their earlier Spider and installed carbs and headers in their place, hoping for a performance gain. Whether or not anything runs better than an early Spica Spider in optimum tune is a matter I'll leave open for others to debate, but my '74 is intact, and it's staying that way.

 

[davelgee]

Hi Eric, I used the whole system from a 75 Alfetta on my 80 Spider -everything but the injectors themselves (what was available and inexpensive locally).
This is a very worthwhile swap as the earlier Spica is easier to tune and all maint. on the intake side of the eng. is far easier also. I suppose that there is some performance gain too, but I did so little time with the "blimp" attached (and other eng. work was done at the same time) that I could not swear to it!
Just from a "ease of maintainence" point of view the earlier Spica systems are far superior IMHO.

Cheers!
Dave G.