Alfa 145 gets a timing belt just in time, and the very stuck A/C compressor

hello welcome to furious driving and today we're in my alpha 145 cloverleaf a year 2000 car one of the very last of these models actually and although i've done a couple of jobs on this car over the last few weeks so the thermostat the oil service that kind of thing i haven't actually driven it all year it's not been taxed uh in 2021 i don't think um because basically most of last year it was spent having a floor put in it i did a lot of welding myself during lockdown and then we spent a lot of time i spent a lot of time waiting for it to be welded having new um suspension struts these are all the usual rust spots on one four fives and it's why they're almost none of them left now they're a very rare car indeed anyway so i didn't want to be driving it through the snow and the salt and all the bad weather that was going to be taking my nice new floor out again i mean it needed yet another floor so it's been off the road the other reason for that is because it occurred to me uh kind of into last year actually this car hasn't had a cam belt in all the time i've had it and i've had it i'm thinking two years now i'm just gonna double check this but i bought this around christmas time and i'm thinking it was just as i was starting this channel which i think was about two years ago unless i've been doing this channel a year longer than i thought now i've not done the cam belt on it the owner previous to me had only bought it to sell on so i had a short time um he did some welding on it which i've now redone obviously and then before that it belonged to alex duke motorsport quite well known alpha tuning place down on the south coast they do a lot of restoration and modification but they sold it because of the rust but they bought it because of the engine so they'd passed it on and i kind of assumed that they'd done a cam belt while they'd had it for some reason by chance i actually spoke to them on facebook the other day and they hadn't and that means that the cam belt is now at least four years old i reckon and these cam belts are a dicey thing on these cars when they were first building were going i thought they were making a terrible noise when the car was new the uh timing belt interval was 70 000 miles i forget how many years but anyway there was a bad batch of belts and they changed that they halved it to 35 000 miles which really is nothing at all so uh you have to be kind of cautious with these belts and there are receipts in this car's folder for 7 000 pounds worth of work and bear in mind this car is worth i paid two grand for it i reckon it's probably worth about three that's that's crazy money that's just an insanity insanity on a stick anywho right so i'm taking no chances and i decided i wasn't going to drive it anywhere until i had a new cam belt because it's potentially a time bomb every time you turn that key it's a lottery are you going to be turning the key for the time that makes that belt shred and explode but that's not a chance i'm willing to take i've only taxed a car this morning and i've not driven it at all i've turned it on as little as possible in the intervening weeks so i'm now going over to an italian car specialist garage called go italia just outside maidstone where jamie the owner actually used to work on my alphas when i had new alphas for everyday cars and he was trained an apprentice on alphas of this era so he knows him very well and so he can also check the car out make sure there's nothing else needing to be done so join me again there when we arrive in a few minutes well instantly for you hi i'm jamie at go italia this is a 145 cloverleaf twin spark uh with today we're going to be doing time belt change and balance belt change so we'll be checking everything off as we strip it all down and we'll see how we get on now i've been planning on doing this job myself i've got the manual to do it and i thought it would be quite a nice experience to delve into the engine and get it all done but jamie's been working on these cars for absolutely years and he worked on my 156 and 159 when he was at a main dealer before setting this place up so he knows these cars inside out so it's great to have an extra pair of eyes who knows what they're looking at to go over this car and find any potential faults that i haven't spotted yet so now down by the spark plugs everything is clean and dry nothing's gonna fall into the cylinders [Music] did you see any t-sparks anymore still yeah still obviously gtb's more more than anything yeah um the odds uh jeet gt um the older sort of stuff really that's just like basically like a sealer that goes in these corners where they always used to leak on these corners bear in mind this is a twin spark engine so we have got eight spark plugs in a four cylinder so when you do the spark plug change it's not cheap or fun so basically the smaller plug on the two you've got to be very careful with especially during the map and that's where over the years a lot of apprentices over tighten them thinking they're not standard standard size plug and they basically snap off the threaded part and that obviously remains in the head and then i'll see you so how do you get it out it's going to go basically just like um easy out it like drill into it and then use an easier to take out because in theory there's no tension on it so it should just easily wind back out again well that doesn't look too bad on the tips but it's rusty where a bit of water has been sat down the block wells bit of damage up here so something has gone and ground into the side of the engine uh plastic casing so someone has bulged a flathead screw through this mounting bracket just here which is not necessarily great does your mouse click got in and went around and called over a thousand pounds well which is one of the ones that seized oh okay five meraniki bolt on the lowerca timing cover um so now we've got one of those great things which all us home mechanics absolutely love or dread i suppose that one bolt that won't come out that takes as long to undo as the rest of the entire job one of the casing bolts for the lower timing cover we've got the timing cover off because it's got a crack in it um but the bolt itself is still there so jamie is currently battling a stuck rusted bolt so it's not just us i don't have to deal with this thing what kind of state is that it's just starting to go oh okay so it's good timing do you see the weights already fraying yeah so that's we are getting this just in time then yeah i'll probably rip that you're ripping yeah that's not good so it's probably not so much just in time with just slightly overtime let's have the camber it's in better shape than that so that was the counter rotating balancer shaft drive belt balance belt tensioner which um looks usable still we can so yeah it's still serviceable but hopefully that'll so dtr post cylinder one what does dtf stand for it's playing top dead center so this is a far more precise way of working out where top dead center is rather than putting your finger into the cylinder while the piston comes up and finding it's about at the top also we can actually hear the canva creaking a little bit so it shows it's probably not in its first flush of youth basically on the inlet shaft you can see i'll see website just a fraction out on this cam and on the exhaust cam again it should be sitting nice and flush inside the actual recess of the cam lock so that needs just a slight adjustment it's not too bad just a little tiny little starting to pray a little bit it's a little a little bit left in it but not it's definitely not a great deal not breaking it all right anything to do with the belt obviously the pulleys are all obviously stayed obviously the water pump will be placed the idler tensioner the belt itself then the tension on the balance about the balance belt so everything i think beyond the time about covers that's all new or replaced yeah so now i've got this tool on the exhaust cam you see there you go so just fine tuning the timing on the exhaust from a tiny tiny bit would that have been done for performance at all putting it out there no that's probably either ribs don't they've not all the way the belt stretched a little bit over time okay because they only work perfectly they have to be absolutely on yeah there's no kind of mechanical tuning like an old yeah well i suppose there's a little bit where you can obviously advance by doing that you can advance it a little bit okay silly question why do you take the uh pulleys off uh gain access but i'll take this trim off here and to gain access to the actual water pump so it just makes it a little bit the fact that it's only five bolts just makes a lot i see now you've got so much more room and again this is why i've got someone like jamie doing it who can literally do this job blindfolded i'll be second guessing myself every step of the way going back and rereading and rereading and rereading the book three or four times terrified i'd make a mistake he could see that the cams were not quite right just virtually by eye and you had to correct them which i wouldn't have known either so the car is being infinitely improved even with just a basic maintenance job now a lot of people did say to me i'm kind of wasting my time doing the thermostat the other day because we're going to have to take the water pump out anyway but you know tough very nice you might not be able to hear this but it does sound like a tiny tiny duck when the water bumps and there's a little bit of that creek freaking it's a bit of play in the actual shaft so there's a little bit of knocking yeah [Applause] [Music] it's not just us at home this happens to that flat edge screw just sheared off in that bolt bracket what you need is a heat extraction tool my favorite thing in the absolute world and you got one yeah brilliant this is an incorrect bolt that's been kind of wedged in there and has to come out and it's been about half an hour so far on one bolt so finally that bolt gave way broke off or broke out came free whatever the word is so that's done we put the carpet together there is a broken bracket on the corner of the timing cover oh it's just a plastic cover basically and the stunt to go so that was also frozen in there and that also won't come out so it's a very very very very very fine grip [Music] and the water pump goes back in should just click into place this is an exceptionally tight one when you put the cam pulleys back on do they have to be lined up in a particular way at this point now you basically put it on not with them slack and then you basically get it all absolutely spot on and then you can lock them all out then and then that way obviously then it should be absolutely spot-on timing-wise and you'll get the most out of the velvety variable valve timing these are all the parts we're using today dayco stuff so decent quality going into the engine and now the moment of truth how many years were you a main dealer for doing this a main dealer so when i left school so 16 and then i've been dealing with 11 years on my own so what's that you worked out you did apprentice on these didn't you yeah so first initially on fear and then as soon as we um we weren't allowed to have an alpha match we moved in tomorrow so we as soon as we moved to mesa was allowed to have our affirmative and i sort of went so just basically knit these up are these down to a particular talk or are they done so just by feeling they are they will be obviously just nipping these now just by the you you get to start to feel the bolts anyway if you look i'm only holding the ratchet there oh just checking that the engine rotates properly there's no interference and all the time timing is as it should be this is now slackening down to running tension from the maximum tension on the tensioner at first if that makes sense so now the uh timing locks come out again that's it that's it that's all done just which case you're just talking up talking from the fireball and then they'll be literally balanced but that's quite nice quickies doing the actual talk talking down what talk figure we're going for on this 16 16 on the 16 meters on the um the little bolts it feels like so fragile yeah you don't especially as they get older you don't really 16 feels not too much i feel every single one of them because i turn the camera off will she off camera i don't want to go any further that's literally that is tight there now peace of mind to know you've done all the bulks up if you just get a bit of a marker on there so you know you've talked them down you won't forget you know you haven't forgotten these are 60 000 mile spark plug so you shouldn't need to change them more than a couple of times in the car's life and the plug tips themselves look fine it's just where there's the water sitting in the plug well look at manky so we're getting a quick clean up so that they'll be good to go for a few more miles and years hopefully and the spark plugs go back in obviously not going over tight [Music] this is the balancer belt going back on you literally line that up so basically you have to get it so it's banging like in the middle of the two [Music] built on stoppers need to go and find a new one of these lower covers because this has been mangled by something in the past and this um bolt hole has been broken by i guess the same event that's more shopping items for this particular car so this is the sealant that goes on the corners is it just those two by the way it literally does that you get a lot of gauge it will literally cover the whole gasket you can see but that's that's only basically they notoriously leak so you've got two so you've got the head then you've got the there's obviously a bit of steps up we'll see what goes around the actual the bearings for the camshafts so you've got them two main surfaces and then you've got the rock cover because you've got three bits coming up together one spot then we've got the coil packs all going back in [Applause] clean up so well nice and clean these are the coil pack connectors going back on so look at getting the air conditioning pump off which is hidden quite well down inside the engine bay this is the replacement one that's used from clover breakers hopefully the same oh man um yeah that's what i struggled with so that's why i'm doing it is it yeah i struggled with i struggled with this bolt and i thought jamie would have less trouble than i had it's the classic case of a steel bolt going into aluminium is a biometallic yeah just brush your walls yourself but normally you like give them a little crack and they do free off so the bolt that i got stuck on first of all is still causing a problem by metallic corrosion it's aluminium and steel and 20 years on the front of a car up in the rock road salt and road dirt hasn't been kind and see if we can get it off or taking it off from underneath the car fingers crossed the worst thing that could happen at this point would be that bulk shears off that's a long old bolt and that would be really awkward question is how much do i want air conditioning in this car so it's not seized up inside the body of the um the compressor pump it's actually the thread coming into the the engine you can feel it twisting and talking but not undoing this would be a job for the heat induction tool if i brought it with me but i didn't so as there's no coolant in the system right now we'll take off so jamie will take off there's a wee business a coolant box next to it in the royal week jamie will take off a coolant pipe and we can put the old-fashioned oxy torch on it and try and heat it enough to free it off so now there's an extreme heat applied to that bolt now let's try the violence part of it oh [Music] this is sounding promising yes now i first tried to tackle this before i had my heat extraction tool and that that time i discovered it was very very difficult to get access to the bolts on the air compressor thing from above the car it's much much easier to do it like this from underneath and the front of this car is so kind of low and bulbous it's quite hard to do it on a jack and also because we're doing all the belts at the same time it seemed like a good idea to let it all get done here in the workshop on a ramp sometimes it's just easier on around them and here it is i think help it's a bit of a only stuck on the end of the thread ah so one of the impossible bolts is now out of the air con pump now it's the other impossibly stuck bolt on the aircom pump this is actually proving harder to change a simple pump than it was to do the uh the entire cam belt just because knackered bolts which are the scourge of old cars but we will get there it's the royal we again we will get there this is moving that feels like kind of rusted bit on the bottom of that okay yeah so i'm now wondering if maybe these bolts were rusted in place a while ago when the aircon pump actually broke in the first place and that's why it was left the way it was because the way the car had been set up but i don't know who buy really um instead of having the correct length of drive belt auxiliary drive built around all the different components including the aircon pump they usually use the shorter one for the non-aircon version of the car and just bypassed it because the clutch is locked on that old compressor so i wonder if they just decided it was too much aggro and just left it and that's why it's now problem here today bolt is now up to 123 degrees centigrade will it now turn it's making some promising cracking noises under the blowtorch the problem is it's such a long bolt that there's room for it to twist along its length and then snap rather than actually undo so turning it too far or too forcefully will be a problem well it's off it got to the point where jamie said do you want to risk breaking it or leave it and i said risk breaking it and of course it broke but there are enough other bolts on there we can live with it of course that thing is too hot to touch because it's been under the uh blowtorch for so long still so it's almost out yeah i can't touch it but it is well it really worked its way out but didn't quite that's fortunate the o-ring we need is still in this one so it's much easier to put this compressor in from underneath my phone only possible is a better way of phrasing that because there's no room from above has to come out from the bottom that's now going back on again three out of four bolts isn't bad but the thread is damaged in one of the bolts sockets in the bracket that holds the compressor onto the engine so i have to find a new compressor bracket at some point but it's not urgent because it's kind of overkill the number of boxes got on there sounds a bit slack and dodgy but no it'll be okay for a while amazing there's only one bolt that holds the uh fluid lines onto the um onto the compressor i'll just show you this quickly this timing cover with all the plastic wear on it we know jamie now thinks this is the wrong timing cover belt for this engine which is why it's worn broken in a couple of places so there's a gap between the timing cover and the engine is not correct now just the coolant and we are done apart from the engine cover and the wheel [Applause] [Music] well that was the job done in just about the nick of time i guess you would say because if those belts were very much on their last legs i don't know how many more miles they would have done before something fairly catastrophic happened in all fairness so uh yeah i'm glad we finally got this done it's a job that i know i could have done at home myself but a tiny belt always worry me it's that whole possibility of it going horribly wrong and a couple of teeth out the car doesn't work properly or worse puts the piston into a valve and you've done horrific damage and of course in a few broken bottles there as well which makes the game even more fun [Music] so whereas jamie have you done thousands of these before can breeze through it i'd have been checking the manual over and over and over again and taken forever and of course he could see how everything should fit together and how all the bolts should go knew exactly what he was looking at so sometimes when you've got a friend who knows how all this stuff works it doesn't hurt to to call on their their help and assistance and services to make sure the job gets done properly it's a lot of reassurance and of course also he's got special tools for locking the cam i would not have spotted but the timing was a degree or two out and i have to say it does run really sweetly now so post oil change post thermostat now post cam belt and getting that timing just fractionally changed this engine is absolutely singing i need to actually try that a bit now i barely use it the time i've had it i've hardly used this car there's always been something needing to be fixed but now as it were virtually a point where there's not much left to be fixed i did notice that on the ramp today when it is at face side there is some rust bubbling through that front driver's wing i had not noticed where it's bubbled through the paint very fast indeed and aggressively uh but i do need to go and get this to a body shop and get that front wing looked at pretty quickly but that's another week or so it's going to be off the road which is another week i don't want it off the road obviously so thank you jamie job done well car is running beautifully thank you everyone for watching if you have enjoyed do please hit like and subscribe as always and don't forget to check out the links below for merchandise opportunities such as this hat that i'm wearing right i'll see you next time doing something else

Channel: furiousdriving

Views: 10,980

Rating: 4.9496503 out of 5

Keywords: car, cars, blog, vlog, retro, classic, classic car, retro car, motoring, Alfa 145, 145, 145 cloverleaf, alfa twinspark, twinspark, cam belt, cambelt, timing belt, garage, workshop, italian car, air con compressor

Id: 3WEmWZgkSx4

Length: 27min 24sec (1644 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 14 2021