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Thousand [2150?] Dollar Supercar's 1988 Alfa Romeo 33 1.7QV


V8Pete

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*finally spots this thread* :rolleyes:

There was rust around the tail lights, around the bottom corners of the rear window, surface rust under the bog on the bonnet (which had cracked off in the middle due to bonnet flexing, and everyone kept telling me there must have been an engine fire!)... I've since fixed or hidden some rust in the boot, around the sunroof, in behind the front bumper, a random hole through the floor in the passenger footwell, and the rust around the windscreen is waiting until a WOF inspector complains. :P

I suppose it's not especially bad for a car from the '80s, but if you're not doing the work yourself, every time a panel needs repainting, there goes a few hundred bucks...

Snoozin, I know the factory airbox is supposed to be just as good (or better) than anything else you can come up with. I have a K&N filter for it, and that's the setup I drive around on. But the noise isn't as good!

When Weber Specialties were doing my carburettors, they found that my car had been supplied with 36mm elbows joining the carbs to the airbox. The carbs on a 1.7 are 40mm, 36mm is for the 1.5 motor! Typical Italians, putting on whatever parts they happen to have stock of. :rolleyes:

But it would be helping my intake velocity...

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  • 6 months later...
If another thread exists, I'm sorry. I did search, I did not find. There was no link.

apparently i suck at searching redface.gif

i have a bit of catching up to do you understand :-)

about the car :

i had one of those digital tachos in the ute till recently too :-) have you considered wiring up the revlimiter option? or does yours already have that via electronic ign?

nice steering wheel! not tacky.

love the stacks on the carbs! both the look and the sound are just awesome :-)

love the pic of the car next to the gravel road sign covered in dust. last time i stopped near one of those it went home with me :-)

the photo with the sun behind is lovely :-) fantastic photo!

about that fuel hose :

the bits under the hose clamps also haven't been exposed to O2 which is what causes the perishing. I strongly doubt that the 10% alc caused you any problems, more likely a coincidence :-) the yanks have been using the low alc blends for a long time without headaches.

it should burn more cleanly too. what octane is it? are blends like e85 available in nz yet? that would be sweet. i could leave my compression as is and run high boost on pump gas if we could get that.

keep an eye on those repco hoses in a few years if you still have her. they dont age the best. going hard and cracking in a period of months or a year or two.

you should youtube the trackday vids of your car with the stacks from chelles track day a while back. it sounded nice ripping past. link them here if you do!

fred.

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i had one of those digital tachos in the ute till recently too :-) have you considered wiring up the revlimiter option? or does yours already have that via electronic ign?

I already have that via a centrifugal rev limiter on the distributor rotor. I'm all about technology! ;)

Sticker on the rotor says 6800rpm but I'm afraid to test it.

I've considered setting up a shift light off that digital tacho but with the carb trumpets I can easily hear when to change gear!

love the pic of the car next to the gravel road sign covered in dust. last time i stopped near one of those it went home with me :-)

That gravel road was a trap, starting halfway along a road between SH1 and 90 Mile Beach. It wasn't maintained by the council and was barely suitable for cars or CD players. =|

about that fuel hose :

the bits under the hose clamps also haven't been exposed to O2 which is what causes the perishing. I strongly doubt that the 10% alc caused you any problems, more likely a coincidence :-)

Quite a coincidence! Why doesn't my other engine bay rubber die that fast, and why do Gull's pamphlets state Alfa Romeos shouldn't use their E10 petrol? One of the guys who attends the Alfa club evenings works for a European car importer and he has seen some impressive dissolving by weaker ethanol blended petrols than Gull's.

it should burn more cleanly too. what octane is it? are blends like e85 available in nz yet? that would be sweet. i could leave my compression as is and run high boost on pump gas if we could get that.

It's 98 octane. Gull reckon it should give at best the same power as normal 98 octane petrol cos of Ethanol's higher oxygen content but lower energy yield. Or something. My car ran fine on the fuel, apart from this coincidence. :P

http://www.axys.co.nz/ben/alfa33/FUELHSE1.JPG

Gull are the only company offering anything but conventional petrol. Here's a link:

http://www.gull.co.nz/html/force10/welcome.htm

keep an eye on those repco hoses in a few years if you still have her. they dont age the best. going hard and cracking in a period of months or a year or two.

Will do. The repco hoses (marked as not for fuel injection) are thicker rubber reinforced with something and they don't have an outer fabric covering, so it'll be easy to see when they're perishing.

Stay tuned for the next developments in my car project thread, scheduled for once businesses open in the new year! 8)

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"...afraid..." chicken :wink:

i always thought shift lights were total rice, but lindsays car almost needs one with the limiter and the redline being the same exact 8k and the engine pulling all the way hard. and the ute also could benefit from one particularly in the lower gears as an indication (incase the other clues didnt give it away) that you are spinning your wheels. on other engines i've had the pleasure of thrashing the time to change gears was obvious from a "its not pulling anymore" point of view. including the skyline.

that gravel road sounds like fun :-) i love rough n tumble, it emphasizes your ability to choose a good line :wink:

I still say that fuel hose was already 20 years old and would have been cracked before you filled up. possibly any softening reduced the small remaining strength and initiated your leaks, but other than that, all fuel is corrosive to normal rubber and all fuel system rubber is treated (i forget how, nitrile?) for that reason anyway. it will be an interesting experiment to find the knock threshold of timing in boost with mobil, bp, and gull 98 at say 8 or 10psi on my high comp pistons. i wonder, do the spec its MON number? i rang BP and Mobil about that once, and one was 1 unit higher than the other, but i forgot which soon after. MON makes more difference to a boosted engine.

will definitely be keeping an eye on you! :wink:

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Three years old. I have the receipt. :P
keep an eye on those repco hoses in a few years if you still have her. they dont age the best. going hard and cracking in a period of months or a year or two.

:wink:

mine didnt last a year before looking just the same. two seperate vehicles, my old mirage that i binned and the utes intermediate carburated incarnation too. also, my pieces of spare werent looking healthy just sitting in a box :-) thats why all the hose on the ute is quality goodyear hose :-)

will be interesting to see how its liked 2 years soaked in 33% toluene though. meant to flush it out, but didnt get a chance.

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Interesting dyno result... will try to find my old one and compare the power/torque curves.

Mine made 76kw atw, slightly more than 100hp... I used the standard airbox, but I had tuned length headers and a 2.25" exhaust, and a couple of other minor tickles... and a very good tune.

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Mine made 76kw atw, slightly more than 100hp... I used the standard airbox, but I had tuned length headers and a 2.25" exhaust, and a couple of other minor tickles... and a very good tune.

On an Alfa forum I've heard of a rebuilt standard 1.7 with a different exhaust (kit car Porsche replica) getting 97hp atw. So even allowing for variances between dynos and today's warm temperatures, mine might be down a bit. I should be clearing that up though. To start with, an exhaust guy has recommended replacing my leaking standard system from the rear 2->1 junction of the standard headers (which meets poorly at too much of an angle) back to my Pitstop rear muffler. He also said he'd use 2.25" pipe. That's booked for Thursday. :D

After that is doing the heads using some of the parts I got off you - if I'm losing any power because of reduced valve lift then the head swap should fix that.

These pictures are from parts left over from my original engine:

http://www.axys.co.nz/ben/alfa33/CAMLOBE2.JPG

http://www.axys.co.nz/ben/alfa33/LIFTER.JPG

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dont read to much into that dyno result as i got a really low reading from the shore performance dyno , also found that they didnt really know what they were doing and didnt get much feedback from them .

the dyno that murray from "webber specs" uses is good and he really knows what hes doing if your on carbs , hes in parity place in glenfield .

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dont read to much into that dyno result as i got a really low reading from the shore performance dyno , also found that they didnt really know what they were doing and didnt get much feedback from them .

the dyno that murray from "webber specs" uses is good and he really knows what hes doing if your on carbs , hes in parity place in glenfield .

I asked the Shore Performance guy if he could explain how the torque figure on the dyno printout related to the torque output of the engine (cos I don't think my engine makes 218Nm!) and he couldn't tell me. He said noone ever asks that question! He also told me 60kW was 90hp atw, 120 at the engine so I thought the car was doing well until I went home and checked the numbers!

Maybe he wanted me to feel better.

I know Murray from Webber Specialties - he reconditioned my carbs and gave a talk at an Alfa club evening once. I didn't realise he had a dyno though, maybe he should be the one to retune the carbs after this project's over.

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