noooooooooooo!!! why must owning an alfa be so hard!!!

Noooooooooo!!!! Why Must Owning an Alfa Be So Hard?

bianchi1 said:

..hitting a curb? distroying our waterpump? that was one tall curb..did you not also distroy your nose of the car and the rad?

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The solution is simple, owning an Alfa is not hard at all, sell it. And yes, that was meant as humor. You'd miss all the fun like this of learning from mistakes, although, some of them may be expensive ones. Hopefully, ones you'll never repeat.

We've all been there and done it, maybe not this particular mistake, so don't feel alone that you're the only one that has done something stupid with your Alfa or any car, driving or repairing it. If you really need some emotional uplift and humor over this, read the thread on the bb about the "Stupidest Thing I've Ever Done" or something like that. You will see that others have done much worse, probably including me when I tried to burn down the garage putting out a Giulia Super engine fire or smashed the nose of the Giulietta spider that Pat had just repaired when I stopped while towing it and suddenly realized the car was still coming at me.

Clutch Inter-lock Sensor

Tifosi said:

Ah, the subtle differences between owning a true sports car and a joe-every-car: no clutch pedal interlock in the starter circut..... (it's never 'I thought it was in neutral' but should always be 'I check that it's in neutral')

On that note, you could prolly scrounge up a clutch interlock off almost any joe-every-car in the junkyard that's been made since the mid 1980's and incorporate it into your system. They look simular to and operate in the same fashion as the brake light switch on the brake pedal. (likely tying right into the ignition switch wires which happen to be just a couple inches away)


I'm curious too:

How did you wreck the waterpump but not the tinwork, the radiator, the oil sump and/or the crank pulley? (they all stick out by a little to a LOT more than the pump)

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Clutch inter-lock/ignition systems are fine to protect, imo, idiots that don't know how to properly start a manual transmission vehicle, but they are essentially a pain in the rear for anyone that does; and especially when they go out and you can't get the car started. My daughter has been through two of them on her 2004 safety-equipped manual transmission vehicle.

When they first came out my first husband's brother had a Vega with the clutch inter-lock/ignition system and he bet me I couldn't drive his car at a family Thanksgiving dinner. I had a MGB-GT at the time. He had counted on me never being able to get it started, let alone get it out on the road and drive it since he knew my car did not have that feature, which had nothing to do with my ability to drive the car because I didn't know either. But I had been taught properly to always start a manual transmission with the clutch in and the parking brake on with the extra precaution of the brake being held down if you were starting on a hill, which I was in this case.

Yeah, the cooling fan itself is fairly inexpensive and easy to replace. After having a broken fan blade flying off inches away from my face (hood was open and I was revving the engine at the throttle lever) on my mother's '84 Spider, I check the fan every time I pop the hood on my mother's car (mine's a '91 w/ electric fans so no worry there). I once had my fingers chewed (not eaten thanks God...) by the cooling fan on my mother's '53 1900M. Mind you, the fan on this car is of cast aluminum!! The shroud is designed in a way that it sits right in front of the fan, not covering over the fan.

criler,

I still don't understand how you end up destroying the water pump in the way you described. How did you determine that it needs to be replaced? Do you have any water leak? If so, chances are that your fan poked a hole on the radiator, which could happen when the engine is pushed up (or down in case of sagging engine mounts) excessively and the fan hits the radiator.

Alfajay said:

Did you damage the waterpump or the fan and/or shroud? Your mechanic's estimate of $100 to buy and install a waterpump seems very low (the part alone cost about $90 in the Centerline & IAP catalogs). I'm guessing that the oilpan hit the curb, kicked the running engine upward, and the rotating fan impacted the shroud, breaking one or both of these plastic pieces. Since the fan and shroud are plastic, and since this plastic becomes brittle with age, you may have done yourself a favor to have forced their replacement - having a fan explode on the highway can do more serious damage.

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criler said:

wow your quite right he just told me 100 for the labor and yes the fan shroud is broken but not the fan itself.... should i just replace it with the waterpump?

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