Fall Picnic
the on-line newsletter of the delaware valley alfa romeo owners' club
Fall PicnicThe 1995 Fairmount Park Vintage Grand Prix will once again be the venue for the DVAROC Annual Picnic, Club Meeting and Election of officers for 1995-6. Our picnic will be adjacent to the designated Alfa marque area in the Car Club Field at 12:30 PM.
Inside this edition, you'll find an official Car Club Advance Registration Form with admission information ($15.00 per car plus $5 for each passenger in addition to the driver) and other details on the event. The best and safest parking for the event is always in the Club Field, so be sure to arrive before 10 am for primo parking. (After 10, you'll have to do the remote parking routine!!!)
The Club will be providing lunch at a highly subsidized $3/person, so please RSVP your plans as soon as possible to xxxxxxx.
Notes from the PresidentDave West
I'm sorry, but the summer went by too fast to do a newsletter. You blink twice and already it's time for the Vintage Grand Prix and our annual picnic on Sunday, October 8. I hope as many of you (or more) are able to come this year as last. The event keeps improving, and it deserves our support. Especially since we now own collector cars. As was the case last year, you will have to let Steve or me know if you are coming so we can buy the right amount of food. Unlike last year, we will have to charge $3 per lunch so we don't empty the treasury in one day. This amount represents about one-third of what we actually spend, so the event is still heavily underwritten by your dues. I haven't heard anything about advance ticket sales or discount coupons, so might want to check with the folks at Algar, who are under new ownership, I might add. So please mark your calendars and make every effort to come.
When you call Steve or me to let us know if you're coming to the picnic, please also tell us if you're interested in coming out for a fall tour. It would be nice to have about ten cars, so if we do, the tour will be Sunday, October 29th. Time and place will be announced later. Even if we don't do a tour this fall, I would very much like to repeat our trip to the Burn Prevention Foundation Concours in Reading next spring. My thanks to those of you who came this year. It might not be Pebble Beach, but there were a lot of spectacular cars there, and it's right in our back yard.
Speaking of Reading, Autoweek reported that the Formula Motorsports Park has broken ground and expects to be open next year. This is a 350 acre facility with a three mile road course, autocross site and enough other stuff to attract the entire family. The project will cost $24.1 million, so they're going to need lots of members. Memberships will cost between $500 and $3500 per year. Interested? Call 1-800-747-8544. Actually, it's in Morgantown, and I think I actually saw it while flying home last week. Must be for real.
Convention
ReportYes, we [Dave and family] went. Yes, it was hotter than we thought possible or reasonable. We did have a good time, though. The drivers' school at Road Atlanta was well run and gave us plenty of time to learn our way around the track. You have to actually drive off the cliff that is turn 12 in order to appreciate it. The Time Trials was a disappointment. Different people ran this event and they had a communications/organization meltdown (the heat?) which resulted in each driver getting less than ten laps over the course of the day. The people who did the lunch time touring got more track time.
Andy Kauffman of York has his engine expire, so we loaded his car on my trailer, and he drove my unlicensed, unregistered, uninsured GTV thirty miles back to the hotel. He had his license plate taped to the back window, so that made it O.K. Andy and I shared my car at the autocross and he had the good grace to drive it .06 seconds slower than I did, which allowed me a third place in class C. The banquet was far longer than it needed to be, as usual.
The Concours was held at a winery which was beautiful, but incredibly hot. We then said our goodbyes and headed for home. Look for more detailed and coherent coverage in the Alfa Owner. I almost forgot, one of the high points was getting the chance to see the collection of Alfas owned by John Murphy. John had let his Monterey-winning TZ sit in the lobby of the hotel, but back at his house were 2 more TZs, 3 GTAs, an Autodelta prepared Montreal, a 33/2 race car and several others I won't remember until the pictures come back. John is very ill and undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia, so it was incredibly gracious of him to allow so many of us to invade his garage and drool on his cars. Next year's convention will be in Phoenix in June. One hundred ten degrees Fahrenheit, but less humid. One more thought: we were in Atlanta exactly one year before the Olympic Games are scheduled to begin. My advice is to stay at home and watch it on TV. Don't say I didn't warn you!
I look forward to seeing you at our club picnic and annual meeting at the Fairmount Park Vintage Grand Prix on October 8.
[Editor's note: See other information in this issue. You'll need to arrive before 10 am if you want to bring your car onto the show field. It's definitely worth it, since it's the best and safest parking you can find.]
Notes from the EditorStephen Freed
This column might more appropriately be called "Notes from the Underground" with the quarterly publication schedule being as much fantasy as FlAT's marketing Alfas in the U.S. or Bill Gate's release dates for Windows '95 before it finally hit the market. (Believe me, that's probably the only valid similarity between me and Gates, although I certainly wouldn't mind a small fraction of his personal wealth or even a fraction of his personal garage space which I understand rivals that of some commercial parking garages.)
Since the last La Voce hit the presses in late Spring, I've been reading in abject misery all the absolutely glowing reports in the U.S. and foreign automotive press about the new Alfa Coupe and Spider. Later on in this issue, I've included a few telling excerpts from an excellent collection of articles in the July, 1995 Car magazine which refers to the new Alfa Spider as a glorious, magnificent car that, when it goes on sale in Britain a long year hence, will be disdained by only the most abysmal of xenophobes." I know I should just learn to get used to the idea that I may never purchase another new Alfa in my lifetime and I'd be much better off if I did. What keeps gnawing at me is the irony that now that I'm in my mid-40's, able to enjoy mid-life and finally making enough money to purchase (or at least finance) a brand new automobile of my choice, a brand new Alfa can't be included on my short list.
As some of you know, I had advertised my white 1991 164s last winter in this and various other Alfa and sports car publications. My asking price was at the high end of advertised prices for an "s" with over 40,000 miles and although I was optimistic about getting my price, I simply had no idea what would happen, given the soft market for used 164's. What did happen was that I received so many calls - including two callers from the west coast who were willing to pay my asking price sight unseen for a relatively rare, white "s" - that I reconsidered my decision to sell the car that had been such a source of entertainment for me over more than four years. Owning an Alfa is an emotional thing, and my heart told me it would be wrong to sell my baby at any price, so it's still my daily commuter (that my co-workers in their minivans and sport-utes envy).
Of course, once I made the firm decision to keep the car, the Alfa gods took revenge on me for harboring thoughts of abandoning the vehicle, and I found myself taking the car to Algar to diagnose a spontaneous deceleration problem. As I explained it to Algar's excellent service manager, Mark Cedrone, once the car was thoroughly warm, having been driven 15 or 20 miles, the brake pedal would begin to rise when I stepped on it and miraculously, the brakes would apply themselves without my touching the pedal. It was intriguing and sort of fun at first having the ability to come to a complete Stop without touching the pedal, but the novelty wore off very quickly, particularly when I had to drive in a lower gear just to overcome the automatic braking. Mark had no problem reproducing the problem and after day or SO came up with a diagnosis of ABS unit failure. A new Bosch unit was ordered. About a week later Algar replaced the old unit and I had my car back. (Fortunately, my extended service contract covered the cost of the unit which retails at over $2,000). After driving the car with the new Bosch unit for about a week, I realized the same symptoms were appearing again. I kept wondering whether it was my imagination, but no, the car was stopping itself again. When I took the car back in to Mark, he handled it like a pro, rising to the challenge. What Algar's technicians discovered was Alfa had made a mistake in describing the proper wiring (and diagnostic procedure) for the ABS unit in their own service manuals - and because of Alfa's error, Algar misdiagnosed a good ABS unit. The real problem was the master cylinder. Alfa of course wouldn't own up to the error and flatly refused to pay for the master cylinder replacement or the unnecessary ABS unit. Once the master cylinder was replaced I was back on the road, except for the mandatory 40k mile motor mount replacement which I did about a month later. Let the fall tours begin!
I want to thank John Jeffries for yet another literate and enlightened article that he penned for our publication. I think we can all learn from his attitude about the marque: the company is gone, but they can't take our cars away, so let's enjoy the hell out of them. Thank you John. I welcome and encourage all contributions to La Voce: classified ads, technical pieces, travelogues and other anecdotal accounts of interest to motorheads of the Alfa persuasion.
Enjoy your cars, and we all look forward to seeing you at our Fall picnic.
The Restoration Shed, July 1995John Jeffries
If there is a problem common to us aficionados of things Alfa, I reject the notion that it's the demise of Alfa as a company in the United States. The problem is more internal, and centers not around the waning influence of an outside organization, but rather the all-consuming passion of the car enthusiast to want more, more, more. I imagine you have the same, double-edged malaise upon which I obsess daily: on one hand, I really want a Ferrari. That 250 GT short-wheelbase is probably out of the question, but a nice 308, or even a Mondial would do. On the other hand - and this is central to our consideration - I barely have the opportunity to enjoy my '74 GTV.
Reasons abound, but we all, in one way or another, are caught in the time/money conundrum. When you were in college, you had plenty of rime to indulge in fun, time consuming activities, but no money to afford the spoils of materialism. And once that adult phenomenon of "Real Life" drags you into its unrelenting grip of responsibility, accountability and general burden, you may have some money to play with, yet the ability to, say, jump in your Alfa and drive to California, is not just diminished, it's made despairingly difficult.
Bummer, huh? Of course it's not all that bad. But the fact that our leisure time is valuable does reinforce my suggestion that we don't dwell too long on Alfa's American demise. What's gone is the company; we have not been forced to return OUR cars, like overdue library books. My hope is that the long overdue death knell will give all us Alfisti the much needed kick in the arse to get out there and enjoy these cars in which we invest SO much time, emotion and capital.
This gets better! The more time I spend using my car, the more I appreciate what an utterly exquisite machine it is. My Ferrari pangs mellow. An hour in the car on a summer's evening, tooling around the back roads of Chester Springs, or even down the Schuylkill, represents pure sensory delight. That my (trusted, ultra-low maintenance) Accord V-6 can do all the "same things" with hushed efficiency and opulent comfort is besides the point. In the GTV I smell, hear, feel through my spine the evocative sensations that addicted me to this car ten years ago. Did I say "250 SWB Berlinetta"? The magic of Alfas is how close the cars are, both technically and spiritually, to those grand vehicles that Europe produced in sadly diminishing numbers through the early Seventies. And while I have glibly suggested forfeiting vital components of my physiology for, say, an Aston Martin DB 4, I'm so glad that I get to keep said appendages while having such pure fun in the Alfa.
I have spent more time and money tailoring the car to my grand touring dreams in recent months. Last October, I ordered a good roll-bar. It came directly from its manufacturer, Autopower, of San Diego. They built it just as I asked, with a diagonal support and a horizontal, from which I could mount the shoulder straps of my five-point harnesses. Friend and fellow Alfa guy Jay Horowitz conveniently stopped-by during the initial stages of installation, and was able to provide that extra grunt to get the assembly bolted in. It fits perfectly, a very nicely made piece indeed. No seat interference, no headliner contact. And it looks great, especially with the "racing" seat belts, to this SWB wannabe who spends all day dreaming of running in those action packed, aura-oozing retro-races across Europe, and now, America. Does the roll bar improve handling? No. Would it be a "good-thing" if I flipped at 120MPH at Watkins Glen? Yes, but the car only spends about .001% of its time under those conditions.
I also had my cylinder head overhauled by Ruth and Vince at Nick Falcone's. I'm glad I did. When re-doing an Alfa head, one has numerous options as to where and how to have the work done. Get an exchange head from the mail-order house? Send it to Sperry, all the way off in California, local dealer? I did not want an exchange head, because I knew mine was in such good shape, with no corrosion or overheat-induced damage. I also believe we should support our local specialists. Vince did a great job, re-surfacing the existing valves instead of wastefully installing new parts. All he needed to replace were the exhaust guides. The rest was careful machine work and perfect adjustment of the valves (I checked). The price was competitive.
To take advantage of Vince's great work, I carefully went through all the Spica settings, admittedly undoing many of the uneducated and counter-productive adjustments I had made over the years. I took my time and it paid off. The Spica instructions Braden provides in the Alfa Bible are accurate and effective. It took me a couple of attempts to get everything correct, but I was eventually grinning ear-to-ear in a car that now starts well, idles at a steady 800 RPM and does not backfire on decel. The throttle response is superb, and I am re-convinced that a well maintained, properly adjusted Spica car is indeed a superior piece of machinery. Another valuable lesson regarding Alfas: the ultimate tune-up on an engine with some miles includes a freshening of the cylinder head.
Remember, we have to be vigilant in our efforts to put these cars to their intended use. To that end, while I was not able to make the Connecticut chapter's Lime Rock event in June, I am booked into BMWCCA two day driver school at Watkins Glen in late September. Can you think of a better combination of location, (theoretical) weather and machinery? If you have never participated in such a thing, it will be difficult to relate to my enthusiasm. Suffice it to say the opportunity to drive a great race track, with an instructor at your side and like-minded enthusiasts sharing the space in their fine European machines, well it's all pretty darned cool and makes up for much of that adult conformity burden I mentioned at the outset.
If that sounds like too much, just get in your little critter and drive, the more miles, the better. By all means work on it, understand its function and admire the aluminum castings. But when you're done doing that, start it up - let it get up to temperature - and be off down the road. I'm not sure about you, but while those other guys are stuck bitching in the pages of Alfa Owner about The End of Alfa, I would rather spend more time grinning behind the wheel of my noisy, taut, leaky, precise, uncompromising, fast, in-your-face sportscar!