alfa east wrote:Good to know for the Q4-owners here!
And I guess that that location means that your Alfas are relatively safely parked in that part of town!
Indeed! It's reassuring to know the cars are mostly safe. Not that I live in a bad area, but you know what I mean!
Time for a Q4 update, which I'm going to split into sections as there's quite a lot to type. I've made good progress over the last 4/5 days so the list of jobs on my 'to do' list was slowly decreasing. However, I keep finding new problems.
During the last few days I've fitted/fixed:
-Front brake discs
-Front brake pads
-Front brake hoses
-2X front brake pipes replaced
-Front half of the underside of the car has been treated with waxoyl underseal
-Removed front bumper and headlights - cleaning and wet sanding lenses to remove scratches and dirt, and started sanding and filling front bumper ready for fresh paint
-Exhaust rubber hanger replaced
-Engine bay relay replaced
-Cleaned up rear right jacking point, bent the jacking point back to how it should be and preparing for welding
-Weld along exhaust downpipe
-Little bit of rust treatment behind each headlight + repaint
-Rear brake hoses
-2X rear brake pipes
-Idle valve replaced
As of yesterday morning, the list of remaining jobs was as follows:
-Fit rear discs (awaiting from Alfissimo)
-Fit rear pads (awaiting from Ricambi Tuning in Italy)
-Check/adjust handbrake
-Re-fit engine belt covers (1 left to reinstall)
-Check all lights, wipers, etc
-Fix gear issue (
more on that below)
-Replace left door mirror glass
-Paint front bumper
-Refit interior parts - door card, footwell carpets, etc
-A few other odd jobs.
New problems:
So I felt like I was finally making some good progress and I thought I might be able to have the car back on the road in time for the UK National Alfa Day on the 10th of July. However yesterday while working on the rear brakes I noticed the left rear coil spring has snapped on the second coil up from the spring pan

which I guess would explain why the car sat quite low at the rear. The dust boots on both sides need to be replaced too. As many of you will be aware, Q4 rear springs are no longer available...
Also, while welding the exhaust I realised that what I assumed was one hole that should be easy to weld, was actually three holes. There's a split around one of the downpipes, a small pinhole in one of the cats, and a large hole (which feels more like a crack) that runs along the top of the other cat, which therefore needs to be removed for me to fix it...and the exhaust bolts look very rusty so I know it will put up a fight! I don't really want to spend hundreds of pounds on new standard downpipes and catalysers at the moment, as my recent expenditure on the Q4 has been quite high, and I plan to spend money on a nice stainless system in the future. The mid section and end section both look OK and don't sound like they're leaking. While typing this I've thought about it, and I think what I'll do is:
1) Remove the cats
2) With cats removed it should be easier to weld the bad downpipe, and then:
3) Fabricate a couple of de-cat pipes to join the downpipes and mid section together.
Now for the gearbox problem.
With the car running, you can engage 1st and reverse without any problems. However the rest of the gears will not engage, unless you push down on the gear lever quite hard when selecting a gear in which case you can just about manage to engage 2nd gear. Moving the gear lever through the gears feels strange - it's difficult to describe, but it feels like the gates for each gear are present, but the gear lever doesn't seem to go into any of the gates 'properly'. For example the gear lever feels like it's too far back if you try to engage 2nd, 4th or 6th. I've removed the leather gear surround and when pulling back the gear knob to engage these gears the lever shaft is almost touching the centre console? If you push it forward to engage 3rd of 5th it feels like it's about to spring straight out of gear. Also, if you put it into 3rd gear and slowly pull the lever back towards the back of the car the gear lever has to travel quite far back before it pops out of the gate for 3rd gear. Can anyone make any sense of this? I'm sorry if it's unclear but it's difficult to describe! I've had a quick look at the linkage and I can't see any obvious problems such as excessive play, so I honestly don't know what to make of this? If anyone can point me in the right direction I will be eternally grateful.
To end this post, here's a picture of the Q4 looking like I've started breaking it apart for spares (I haven't - not yet anyway!)
Haydn