Joined
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325 Posts
Hello all,
I'm Frans from the Netherlands and since a couple months owner of a red 1987 Spider QV.
After riding motorcycles since I was 18 and owning lots of cars and motorcycles over the years I decided to sell my trusty old Kawasaki 750 turbo and its big brother KZ 1100 in full Vetter trim.
My wife and I attended lots of meetings with the turbo but the last couple of years we didn't enjoy the long rides on that narrow saddle anymore, numb fingers and cramping hamstrings, guess every hobby has an expiration date eh ?
Soooo, the little light above my head lit up, how about a little convertible?,to be able to sit next to eachother, enjoying conversation, the sun on our heads and the wind through our hair.....sounded like a plan !
Because I owned a Alfa sud once, I still remember the Alfa Romeo experience, nice low seats, really sitting in the car and that typical sound of the engine, Before we knew it we were testdriving a beautifull red QV at a local specialist,we should have done this years ago, what a joy !!
Unfortunately that particular car was way out of our budget, also pretty overpriced imo so after a extensive search on the internet we found our own lady in red.
At first glance it appears to be in very good nick for a 24 year old Italian, seats and paint are really nice, engine started right up and after a short testdrive and a quick checkup of the bottom of the car we decided to buy it.
Only 250 miles were driven in the last 8 years with a total of 70K, lots of bills from the garage that maintained her showed all kinds of little repairs that had to pull it through the annual safetyinspection, nothing serious so far.
Driving it home little things were starting to show, some blue smoke from the exhaust while braking on the engine....hmm, well, the last oilchange was also 8 years ago so that could be the cause, a couple of new valvestemseals and an oilchange will fix that.
All kind of little things started to show, mirroradjustmentswitch broken, heater doesn't work, second gear is making noise while shifting back from third and there's also a strong smell of exhaust fumes with the top down.....
do you recognise that gut-feeling when you did something stupid?
Did we buy a lemon?, is this what we sold our beautifull bikes for ?
I took the car to another local specialist and let him judge it, after a testdrive it's not so bad after all, it needs a little welding below the front fender but overall no bad car for the money,pfew ;-)
Since then, the oil was changed from the motor, diff and gearbox, I changed the intakerubbers from the (Solex) carburettors, replaced the cracked 1-4 exhaustheader,all fuelhoses and the valve from the heating.
While taking it apart there's always something else to replace so a new waterpump with fresh hoses is on it's way as I write this.
What surprises me the most is the state of the engineroom and the interior.
Everything is soooo dirty, how come people buy such a nice car and don't take care of it ?, it took us really two days to clean the interior and going along you find all kinds of damage to rubbers, trim, doorpanels, clumsy fixed with screws that don't belong there.....I just don't understand.
Well, she's in good hands now and becoming more and more 'our' car, I also took the mirrorswitch apart (nice little puzzle) and that fixed the mirrors, straightened the glovebox-lid, got the interiorlights working again, she'll be fine soon with all the advice and knowledge here on the site.
Funny thing is, we went on a cruise in 2009 and the fine people that we shared our table with those 12 days also own a spider and are member of this forum, what are the odds ?!?
Here a couple of pictures of our pride,
greetings from the Netherlands,
Frans and Inge
I'm Frans from the Netherlands and since a couple months owner of a red 1987 Spider QV.
After riding motorcycles since I was 18 and owning lots of cars and motorcycles over the years I decided to sell my trusty old Kawasaki 750 turbo and its big brother KZ 1100 in full Vetter trim.
My wife and I attended lots of meetings with the turbo but the last couple of years we didn't enjoy the long rides on that narrow saddle anymore, numb fingers and cramping hamstrings, guess every hobby has an expiration date eh ?
Soooo, the little light above my head lit up, how about a little convertible?,to be able to sit next to eachother, enjoying conversation, the sun on our heads and the wind through our hair.....sounded like a plan !
Because I owned a Alfa sud once, I still remember the Alfa Romeo experience, nice low seats, really sitting in the car and that typical sound of the engine, Before we knew it we were testdriving a beautifull red QV at a local specialist,we should have done this years ago, what a joy !!
Unfortunately that particular car was way out of our budget, also pretty overpriced imo so after a extensive search on the internet we found our own lady in red.
At first glance it appears to be in very good nick for a 24 year old Italian, seats and paint are really nice, engine started right up and after a short testdrive and a quick checkup of the bottom of the car we decided to buy it.
Only 250 miles were driven in the last 8 years with a total of 70K, lots of bills from the garage that maintained her showed all kinds of little repairs that had to pull it through the annual safetyinspection, nothing serious so far.
Driving it home little things were starting to show, some blue smoke from the exhaust while braking on the engine....hmm, well, the last oilchange was also 8 years ago so that could be the cause, a couple of new valvestemseals and an oilchange will fix that.
All kind of little things started to show, mirroradjustmentswitch broken, heater doesn't work, second gear is making noise while shifting back from third and there's also a strong smell of exhaust fumes with the top down.....
do you recognise that gut-feeling when you did something stupid?
Did we buy a lemon?, is this what we sold our beautifull bikes for ?
I took the car to another local specialist and let him judge it, after a testdrive it's not so bad after all, it needs a little welding below the front fender but overall no bad car for the money,pfew ;-)
Since then, the oil was changed from the motor, diff and gearbox, I changed the intakerubbers from the (Solex) carburettors, replaced the cracked 1-4 exhaustheader,all fuelhoses and the valve from the heating.
While taking it apart there's always something else to replace so a new waterpump with fresh hoses is on it's way as I write this.
What surprises me the most is the state of the engineroom and the interior.
Everything is soooo dirty, how come people buy such a nice car and don't take care of it ?, it took us really two days to clean the interior and going along you find all kinds of damage to rubbers, trim, doorpanels, clumsy fixed with screws that don't belong there.....I just don't understand.
Well, she's in good hands now and becoming more and more 'our' car, I also took the mirrorswitch apart (nice little puzzle) and that fixed the mirrors, straightened the glovebox-lid, got the interiorlights working again, she'll be fine soon with all the advice and knowledge here on the site.
Funny thing is, we went on a cruise in 2009 and the fine people that we shared our table with those 12 days also own a spider and are member of this forum, what are the odds ?!?
Here a couple of pictures of our pride,
greetings from the Netherlands,
Frans and Inge
