[Jeroen]

Yesterday (Sunday) was a gorgeous day here in the Netherlands. Sunny, little wind and about 14oC. So I went for a very long ride on my bicycle.

I found myself passing a parking place South of Utrecht where I had never been before and look what I found:

A whole bunch of Citroen 2CV and Solex moped! The all belonged to one and the same company. You can rent them for the day or by the hour.

Most people have a soft spot for the 2CV. Many people in the west will have owned one at some point in their life. They used to be just about the cheapest and simplest way to owning a car.



At one point, they were considered THE car for the alternative types. That went well until environmental concern became a thing for the alternative types. This thing might have a very small 2 cylinder engine, a run very efficient, it still spews out a lot of emissions!



But they are fun to drive. What with their special suspension going around corners is hoot! You lean over so much you think it will topple over, but it never does.



In the Netherlands the 2CV is commonly referred to as eend (turtle), or as lelijke eend as in ugly duckling. Because that is what is was referred to initially. But these days it is more like a pet name, or term of endearment.

But wherever there are “lelijke eend” around you will find eend sticker and eend mobilia, obviously.



The Solex moped is a similar story as the Eend, but on two wheels. Not sure if the Solex ever made it to India. This was the cheap and simple moped for the masses. It is basically a bicycle with a tiny engine strapped on top of the front wheel. The engine drives a little wheel that just pushes on the front tyre.



When I was growing up, we had for more elaborate, powerful and fancy looking mopeds already. Mopeds in my days were considered for very old people. But as with the Eend, over the decades that has changed significantly. These days a Solex is considered a true vintage moped and owning and running one is pretty cool. The Solex brigade often dresses the part too. And you could dress up in these huge leather coats here as well:



I know of several companies that rent out Eendjes (ducklings) or Solexs. This is the first time I came across a company that does both. Most of the Solexs were originals, these days there are quite a few cheap Chinese import ones about.

Back to cars; My eldest son Luc is coming round with his VW Golf GTI next week for his annual regular service. Just oil and filters I think. As you might recall his speedometer had not been working for a while. And whilst we had spend considerable time and effort over the last couple of years, we never managed to fix it. I was actually about to call him and tell him to bring his car to me for the week as I have some time on my hands and I want to fix this.

But Luc had taken his GTI for its annual APK (MOT). It was fine, except the reverse lights were not working. Apparently they had to change some wiring and with that fixed, the speedometer is now working again! Which just confirms to me that it must have some chaffed wiring, or a pour ground, or a dirty connectors or so.

I have also developed a new theory for why my W123 still pulls to the right. I don’t think they did the allignement correctly. I believe you need to fix the steering box in the middle position. I have had a few discussion on my W123 forum. Most people don’t agree. But there are two guys I know and they are extremely knowledgeable and came up with some good understanding of this.

I have also found a W123 specialist that claims to do the alignments exactly like this. So I am going to call them a make an appointment. Fingers crossed!

Jeroen

[Thad E Ginathom]

I had a colleague (my manager, actually!) who owned an old 2CV. Really, it was not safe: never mind seat belts, not sure if they were properly fixed to anything, the front (bench) seat had come adrift from its fixing.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

I had a colleague (my manager, actually!) who owned an old 2CV. Really, it was not safe: never mind seat belts, not sure if they were properly fixed to anything, the front (bench) seat had come adrift from its fixing.

Even when brand new these are not safe cars. In Europe by and large the rule is that if a vehicle was not equipped with seat belts at the time it was produced, it will not require seat belts. So quite a few classic cars are driving around without seat belts all toghether. And of course, 2CV are particular flimsy cars to start with. No protection none whatsoever. They also rust badly, to the point the body actually starts sagging/buckling.

I took the below from an UK 2CV website:

he 2CV does not have a self-supporting car body. Instead, this is built completely upon the vehicle chassis. The chassis is the 2CV’s load-bearing component, and for reasons of cost is built in a wonderfully uncomplicated way!

A covering sheet of metal on the top and bottom makes it impossible to look at the inside of the chassis, where there are lots of vertical plates spot-welded to the cover panels. This creates a lot of hollow sections that are hard to preserve from rust!

Combined with a lack of any underbody coating and the minimal thickness of the panels, these can become rusted through after as little as 5 years. The situation is aggravated by the fact that due to the clever system of panels, up to 3 panels all overlap. It is virtually impossible to create a perfect seal around such a chassis!

Even if from the outside the chassis is only rusted through in a few small places that can be quickly sealed up for the car’s roadworthiness test (TÜV, MOT etc.), it is highly likely that rust has also attacked the vertical panels, which are ultimately meant to give the chassis its rigidity. In extreme circumstances, the chassis can even buckle just in front of the rear axle! As a result of this, the rigid steering column can break and you’re no longer able to steer! (You can tell that the chassis has buckled if the steering suddenly becomes very difficult and the size of the gap between the sides of the bonnet and the A-pillar gets smaller!).

It’s practically impossible to repair a vehicle chassis that this has happened to! We watched on for long enough as 2CV owners suffered these problems and decided in 1997 to develop a vehicle chassis that no longer had the weaknesses of the original.

I had a 2CV at one time, probably my third or fourth car ever. Still in naval college at the time. If I braked the doors would pop open. There was so much flex in the chassis it could not keep the doors shut! This was long before the annual MOTs were introduced in the Netherlands.

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Took the Spider out for a couple of hours touring yesterday. Lovely weather, lovely drive.

Unfortunately, the speedometer is still not working. So when I got home I decided to do a bit of trouble shooting. First thing to check is whether speedometer drive cable is working.

So I undid one end and had it stick out of the hood, so I could see if it was turning when the car is driven. Bit of styrofoam on the enige to keep the hood open.



Only need to drive a 20-30 meters. Sure enough it was not turning. So either the cable is broken or the little pick up device on the gear box. The latter is pretty rare.

I did notice that the speedometer cable was damaged, so it is going to need replacing no matter what else might be wrong.

Interestingly enough it is not illegal to have a broken speedo in your car in the Netherlands. As long as you have another device that will tell you your speed. E.g. a smart phone or a GPS device.

Also, the fact that your mileage is not recorded is not illegal in itself. But you are supposed to disclose any mileage discrepancies when selling the car. Mileages gets recorded in a central data base whenever a car goes in for service, during its MOT and in case of serious accidents.

Checking of the speedometer is therefor not an MOT item here.

I usually have my TomTom with me in the Spider. But I want everything to work, so I have already ordered the cable. Should arrive next week.

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Next Saturday the very first (cub) tour of the year with the Jaguar Forum group.

So the Jaguar needs to look good. Spend about 3,5 hours yesterday cleaning and waxing. The paint is still very very smooth, no need to clay bar it.

Nice weather for it too. About 140C, half cloudy/sunny.

During the winter months I will take the Jaguar through various car washes. But nothing can beat a good hand wash and a proper wax job!

[Jeroen]

My son Luc came around for a lunch with his fiancee, soon te be wife. And to get his VW Golf GTI serviced. We have done a number of jobs on this car over the years and also all its annual services.

Luc hardly drives it, probably only 5-6000 km a year. We don’t know exactly as the speedo was broken, but that is now, long last, fixed. Yeah!!

For every service I run through the Haynes workshop manual.




This car also just had its annual MOT, or APK as we call it and had four new tyres fitted. So a number of things have been checked within the last two weeks.

I just run through the various chapters:



Each job in some more detail:



Based on what we know of the car and its maintenance state, we make a little lists of jobs to do




The most obvious was an oil and oil filter change. I have shown that a few times earlier already.

It’s all pretty straightforward, including the next few jobs

We jacked up the car, wheel choked and an axle stand underneath as a safety measure





From last year we knew that the rotors were getting a bit on the thin side. But they measured virtually the same as last year. The rear rotors are still 8mm and the minimum is 7mm. Front is 24mm against minimum 22mm.

Also both front and rear pads have still quite a bit of life left in them.

So we put the wheels back on:



Getting the wheel bolts undone was a bit of thing. The tyre shop had overtightened them big time!!! I don’t understand, these guys are supposed to be the specialists!. Anyway, we torqued them properly to 120Nm.

We also checked the brake fluid with my little brake fluid sensor.



Its shows green LED, which means it does not register any water content. Even so, I think we will replace it next year, just to be on the safe side. Same thing for the cabin pollen filter, air filter and the V-belt.

We also ran a complete diagnostic check. No DTC codes, a few spurious faults, but that can’t be helped on these old car. Resetted the oil and service warning.





So Luc is good to go for another year or so.

I took the Spider out for a bit of a test drive. I have noticed it is running a bit high on idle RPM. This car has a Bosch L-Jetronic system. One of the earliest electronic injection and ignition system. But it is not a full closed loop system. So the cold start and the subsequent warming up of the engine is done completely independent of the ECU by means of some simple thermo couples.

Adjusting the idle RPM must be done with the engine at proper operating temperatures. It involved a very simple mechanical mechanism.



However, I could not get it to run lower, its running on average around 1200RPM and it really ought to run around 950RPM. It’s not a big thing, other than it makes it even a little bit more difficult to engage first as that is not synchronised.

So there are two options. Either the rubber ring, knows as the doughnut is perished, which is an easy fix. Or I have a minute air leak somewhere. Which is a royal PITA to find!!! I will talk to Goos tomorrow, Hopefully he has these doughnuts in stock. I also need to check with him whether he has received my new speedo cable. Time for a few more jobs.

If all goes well, by mid June we will embark on our usual Spiders to France tour once again. Like previous year it will be four Spiders, three couples, one guy heading for our mutual friends Cees and Annelies who are running a Bed And Breakfast in France. France is supposed to return to normal, Covid-19 wise a couple of days prior to us setting off.

We do hope we will be able to go. Will be so nice to be on a real little holiday in the Spider with our old Spider friends.

More to come

Jeroen

[Thad E Ginathom]

Seeing your diagnostic display, I at first thought defa ult must be something in Dutch.

Took me a couple of seconds to put 2 and 2 together, realising that it makes 22!

[Indian2003]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

I had a colleague (my manager, actually!) who owned an old 2CV. Really, it was not safe: never mind seat belts, not sure if they were properly fixed to anything, the front (bench) seat had come adrift from its fixing.

I have driven a 2CV before and also a Renault 4. When you drive in a tin can you automatically adopt a defensive driving style. Same as when I ride a bike.

I often vist a scrapyard down the street from my place. So many new cars with the latest in safety equipement and sensors damaged in single accidents or running into the car in front.

I think people trust their sensors than their own driving skillis. In the 80s when ABS brakes turned up, the insurance companies were thinking of increasing the premiums because of accidents in these cars. Almost all were single accidents.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Indian2003

I have driven a 2CV before and also a Renault 4. When you drive in a tin can you automatically adopt a defensive driving style. Same as when I ride a bike.

Very true, and of course, you can’t go fast if you tried too! Mind you those 2CV will corner very spectacular.

Originally Posted by Indian2003

I think people trust their sensors than their own driving skillis. In the 80s when ABS brakes turned up, the insurance companies were thinking of increasing the premiums because of accidents in these cars. Almost all were single accidents.

It is a fact that when cars (but also planes) get equipped with more safety equipement and features, be it seat belts or auto pilot, it does give people a false sense of safety and they (at least some) are likely to take bigger risks.

Even so, the nett result tends to be still positive. So yes, you will have some more accident due to people becoming a little less weary, but the total number of people killed and or injured is still coming down.

One of the big problems with ABS in its early years of introduction was between cars equipped with and cars without ABS. The latter ones kept crashing into the former ones!

I was reading an interesting article the other day. Over the last decades our cars have become a lot more safe and environmental friendly. But they have also increased substantially in weight and size.

There is something to be said for very simple cars, to your point, they have build in careful driving and they were actually pretty frugal on fuel too. With some few minor modern tweaks those cars could be made quite environmental friendly too. Less weight means you need fewer horsepowers, so potentially less emissions too.

Jeroen

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

It is a fact that when cars (but also planes) get equipped with more safety equipement and features, be it seat belts or auto pilot, it does give people a false sense of safety and they (at least some) are likely to take bigger risks.

Even the thin steel box surrounding us gives us a false sense of security. I do try to remind myself of this regularly, but... yes, me too.

[ajmat]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Very true, and of course, you can’t go fast if you tried too! Mind you those 2CV will corner very spectacular.

....and due to the interconnected suspension and low speed, it is difficult to overturn.

I had a classmate in Bangalore who got wind of this and although his facts were a little twisted, he managed to topple his egg-shaped car around a sharp corner!

Why? The twisted fact was he was told this was applicable for VW Beetle's, you know what swing axles can do!

[Jeroen]

I never go to to go on the Jaguar Forum drive. My wife was not feeling well and decided to take a Corona test. Whilst waiting for the rest results, we needed to quarantine. Luckily it was negative. But as the saying goes, better safe than sorry.

As of last week, shops have opened up again. There are some restriction as to how many people can enter at one time. And you have to wear a mask and keep your distance, wash hands etc. But at least some sort of normality.

So I decided to go a visit ER-Classics, only about 25 minutes from us.

I have written about them before:

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/beyon...therlands.html (A visit to Classic car showrooms in the Netherlands)

IN all honesty, these kind of showrooms tend to have the same sort of cars on display all the time. They do have high turn overs, but they also cater for the volume part of the classic car market. So you know what to expect. But I always enjoy having a look around, having a little chat with the staff or others that are looking.

I have taken images of what I thought are the more unusual or special cars, at least from my point of view.

Nothing usual about a Ferrari Golf Cart! I don’t play golf, but a little cart like this would be cool to bum along our dike!



Next a bit of an unusual and rare Fiat 600 Savio Jungla, 1972. Only 3200 ever build, Just a shade under €20,000.



Actually, this was the reason I went to ER Classic, I am on their mailing list and they just announced this Mercedes Pagoda. Spanner Mater and Classic Car Valuer Peter knew this car well. It is in very good condition and has been maintained for the last decade by one of the MB Pagode specialist in the Netherlands





Asking price € 120,000

This is something I don’t think I ever came across before. Most of us would be familiar with the lovely Datsun 280. In the USA they were known as the Z cars.

But a Florida based company, Griffith, chopped off the roof, made some more modifications. This is a 1977 280Z, 6 cilinder 2800cc. First owner, Only 12,770 miles driven.



Read the customer disclaimer/waiver!!! Basically, if you get yourself killed in this car, don’t sue us, we told you it was not safe anymore after we put our hands on it and chopped the roof off.



Not my kind of car, but anything from this era is always very photogenic



I am familiar with BSA Motor bikes obviously. And I do know Peugeot made (motor) bikes too. But I havent come across many. But here is one:



I showed some Citroen 2CVs a little while ago. ER Classic had quite a few of them on display and for sale. This was a particularly well preserved or probably restored one:







Technically, this could be called an Alfa Romeo Spider. Spider is just an Italian generic name to an open top car. Peter knew this one, apparently its basis is Alfa 1900 from 1953. He called it criminal.





Of course, there are always a few real Alfa Spiders around. They don’t come much more real than an original Serie 3, QV. Identical to mine. Although I have take the side skirts and the front spoiler off.



This is a gorgeous Volvo P1800. Long before the Volvo Management adopted the 3B dogma. (Cars need to be boxy, boring and bourgeois) Cars like this were owned by cool people and used in movies and cool TV series. Does anybody remember the series The Saint, with Roger Moore? He drove one, much more rare than say an Aston Martin DB5





Another cool little car, Citroen mehari. They are all the rage these days with some. This is a 1970 one. Based on a 2CV underpinning and engine. So you get 2 cilinder stomping away a staggering 602cc. This one had its frame galvanised.

Asking price € 26,950. To put that in context: That will buy you a brand new Ford Focus will lots of options. Or it will buy you at least 3 classic W123 is excellent condition!



I really liked this little car too. A 1956 Fiat 600 Multipla, 4 cilinder, 633cc. A people mover long before the word was invented!

Asking € 45,000







Not that special, although these days they are becoming rare, a very nice Peugeot 404. I always like these 404s. My second car I ever bought was a Peugeot 404. Bought it for around 50-75 Dutch Guilders at the time. That was 2 weeks worth of delivering news papers for me!

This is a 1963 one, Asking € 17.000. Gorgeous colour and the chrome was in very good condition and all original.



I don’t know much about Japanese rag top sports car. There are a few, but they are pretty rare. This one a very nice Honda.



A nice little Fiat 850 Coupe. The reason I always look at these was my elder sister Renate bought one when she was 19 and had her first job as a journalist.



I spend about an hour and half roaming around, looking at all the cars. I bumped into a guy I knew from the Alfa Spider Register. Nice catching up.

When I got home, the Viton O-rings for my Alfa Spider had arrived. When I doubt about size, try and buy as many different sizes as you can get your hands on, or afford.

Not sure it has to be Viton perse. This O-ring sits in a by pass line of the air intake, so it should actually get just clean air, no oil or anything like that. Still, better safe than sorry. Viton, no matter what, will outlast rubber by a very large margin always. Nothing but the best for my Spider.



I will probably try and fit one these and see if I can cure the high idle problem this coming week

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

I worked on the high idle on the Spider this Sunday.

This particular Spider is equipped with the Bosch L-Jetronic injection system. Very early Spiders were, for a short while, equipped with mechanical injection. A so called Spica system. There were not to many to start with and they have become very rare these days. Finding anybody that knows how to adjust these Spica systems is a bit of thing as well. I remember about 25 years ago the Dutch Alfa Romeo Spider Register had organised a technical meeting at a Spica specialist in Belgium. Cant remember much about it, other than it was quite complex.

The serie 4 Spider got a Bosch Motronic system. The main differences between the Jetronic and the Motronic is that the former is all analogue versus all digital processing. Also the Motronic is a full closed loop system and the jetronic is not.

Which is one of the reason that my Spider with its L-Jetronic has all these idle air adjustment bits. Starting, warming up and idling is all done and controlled outside the computer with simple sensors. These engines and system are equipped with a special cold start injector. When the engine is cold, some extra fuel is injected. Controlled with a simple thermo couple and a timer.

There is also an additional air valve that opens up during cold start and the warming up of the engine (so called AAV). Again, simply controlled by a thermoswitch

The below schematic is from one of my Bosch manuals. Bosch produces excellent manuals/tutorials for all their system. All the old ones are still about and you can find them on the likes such as Ebay and specialist classic car book sellers.



The idle RPM according to the Bosch manual is controlled by means of the AAV, which allows extra air to bypass the throttle valve. There is also an idle adjustment screw is the air volome meter. Not shown here is the additional idle adjustment as found on an Alfa Spider. I don’t know why Alfa went for a slightly different implementation. Actually, the throttle valve itself has a mechanical stop and that allows also some adjustment of the idling rpm. All these different idle adjustment all have different effects on the overal performance of the engine. So tweaking one, usually means having to tweak the others too.

This is what it all looks like in real life under the hood



Although I know my tachometer in the dashboard is actually pretty accurate I hooked up a proper one. As you might recall I bought this from a guy sometime ago for I think euro 5 or 10?



As you can see it is showing about 1300 RPM. As I mentioned before, one of the biggest problems with these system is likely to be false air, caused by something leaking. The first thing I wanted to do is check the proper closure of the AAV. So I just clamped down the hose and observed no change in rpm. So that works well.



I should point out, that I had warmed up the engine prior to all this. When cold and open AAV the engine idles at about 1500 rpm. Which is also 250-300 rpm to high. So the cold start and warm up seem to working properly.

Although I had done it once already I decided to do another leak test. There is a very light vacuum inside the air inlet pipe, al the way from the air mass meter to the throttle body. So with the engine running I just spray starter fluid on all connections and possible cracks in the rubber hoses. The merest of leak will draw in the starter fluid and you can hear the engine rpm rising. No such thing happened, so no leaks as far as I can tell.

Next I opened up the idle adjustment assembly.

It doesn’t look like much. It is very simple



The culprit of all my woes is likely to be this O-ring, the infamous donut.









As you can see the O-ring is very much squashed. So I put one of my new o-rings in. But when I started up the engine, it did fire, but the idle rpm kept hunting between 1000-1800 rpm. No amount of fiddling with the adjustment would get it stable.

In the end I popped the old ring back in. I managed to adjust the idle by tweaking the mechanical stop of the throttle plate a tiny bit.

Here you see it, with its original Alfa sealing still intact



Of course, that seal did not stand a chance against me and some of my tools. Actually took me 15 minutes to clear it!



So now the engine is at least running at a decent enough 1000 rpm.



As I was fiddling around with all of thee different components I also took of the rubber air inlets with it’s bellows. For no other reason, they are know to get cracks in them over time. I had already checked with the starter fluid but another visual inspection would not hurt.



So with everything tested to the best of my abilities I just cleaned up my tools for the day;



I had been using my bench 220VAC/12VDC convertor to power my little engine diagnostic box. Noticed one of the contacts had come loose, so I decided to open it up and check:



One of the nuts on the inside, holding the connectors had come undone. Very surprising, because this thing sits om my worktop for years doing absolutely nothing. I hardly ever use it. And I would like to think I would have noticed the last time I used it. Must be the gremlin. Quick and easy fix, tighten the nut!!

Normally the diagnostic kit would be powered by the car 12V battery and when using all its function you should do so. Problem is, my Spider has the battery in the boot and the leads are not long enough. The rpm are measured with a very simple inductive device, so there is no need for any electrical connection between the diagnostic kit and the car as such. Hence the 12VDC convertor.




But I want that O-ring replaced, because it is not going to get better.

So, back to the drawing board. I checked on AlfaBB. By far the best Alfa Forum for DIY Alfa Mechanics.

https://www.alfabb.com/threads/quest.../#post-8644698

There are a number of threads on this very topic. The problem is there are different sizes of O-rings floating about. And then they are using imperial measures and an USA standard norm for O-rings too. Way too much confusing information for my decrepit brain to process these days. Looks like I got the wrong O-rings.

Even so, nobody is entirely sure what size O-ring it is. I spend an extraordinary amount of time online yesterday trying to find more information or finding a real Bosch L-Jetronic specialist. My conclusion is that finding somebody who knows about this O-ring is one thing and not easy, finding a part number of just the exact dimensions is impossible.

I spend some time this morning calling all my known Alfa Specialist here in the Netherlands, Germany and the UK. Some know about the O-ring, nobody is sure about the size.

So I have decided to go with the original imperial sized O-ring mentioned in that earlier AlfaBB thread.

Finding that particular O-ring has been challenging. I have found the correct size, and made from Viton at Eriks. They are a huge industrial supplier of fittings, hoses everything. They will not sell to consumers, only to businesses. Luckily both my wife and I also have a business. Although dormant, we still have a chamber of commerce registration and that is al Eriks requires.

So I tried to order it, but then ran into a problem with their webshop. It would not put the O-ring in the shopping basket. I am waiting for them to call back on how this will be fixed. Seems this O-ring project is jinxed!!

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Just to add to my earlier post about the illusive O-ring in the Bosch electronic ignition; Those who have followed this thread might recall I overhauled the carburettor of my Mercedes W123 some time ago.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/diy-d...ml#post4435069

I was thinking of this earlier today; yesterday I also posted a few question on Facebook on my O-ring problems. And as usual with Facebook within hours I had about 50 replies. Two of them actually helpful, most not, and of course a lot of old gits cursing Bosch electronics and claiming car should have carburettors.

But if you check my experience with getting parts for my carburettor and parts for electronic system there is not a lot of difference. The W123 uses a Stromberg CD carburattor. Millions of those have been produced. But even on the W123 I found out several different variants are used. And none of the manuals, neither the Mercedes or the Stromberg ones, are clear about what version is used on what engine.

So you need to find a specialist that really knows its stuff and is willing to help you out. With the Stromberg I was lucky. The absolute Carburettor guru in the Netherlands ran its webshop from a village near my office. He told me to come over and bring all the old gaskets, rings etc.

I do believe that the automotive industry has made some significant changes in how they track and trace parts per car (per VIN these days). So hopefully twenty years from now when I am working on a thirty year old car from late last century () getting parts might get a little easier.

In all honesty, most of the time I can get all of my parts for all of my cars fairly easy. Or at least the parts and parts numbers are known and it is known whether they are still made.

Even so, most classic car owners will have similar tales to mine. It is all part of the enjoyment of a classic car and spending time fiddling with it, googling, joining discussion on forums, Facebook and meeting people.

Jeroen

[Jeroen]

Last Saturday the illustrious O-ring version 201 finally arrived.

Here you see it, side by side, old vv new. I guess I don’t need to point out which is which!



So I popped it in. The good news: at least with this new O-ring the engine doesn’t hunt. It idles very nicely, but too high, 1300 RPM. Note: I had warmed up the engine prior.

I tried to tighten the idle adjustment nut (note locking nut removed). The idea is that it squeezes the O-ring flat, thus compressing it and reducing inside diameter. Not very high tech, admittedly, but it has worked for millions of cars for decades!

But I found then idle adjustment bottomed out on the thread before compressing the O-ring fully:



So, I experimented a bit with adding some shIms, rings to increase the length of the idle adjustment in relation to its thread.



Still, no dice. I did check for air leaks once again. These systems are notorious for air leaks. Over the years I have found quite a few on other people’s Spiders! But if there is one on mine, it is still eluding me.

Also, verified the mechanical stop and also the linkage of the throttle valve. I thought maybe the linkage was set too tight, but no.

So popped the old O-ring back in and she idles beautifully again!



I spoke to my good friend Niek. Niek’s gorgeous metallic blue Spider Serie 3 can be seen in earlier posts. Niek is a very handy guy who has a lot of experience working on cars too. More importantly, at his work they have a large stash of O-rings and he is going to see if he can find me a selection of rings with smaller inside diameters.

i also discussed my broken Speedo cable with Niek. He gave me a tip on how I might fix the old one. Worked for him, so I decided to have a look. Put the Spider up with two jacks and added two axle stands for safety.



The Speedo cable attached to a mechanical pick up on the side of the gear box. Which means you really need to slide underneath the car, so safety first.

Fiddled around a bit, but I don’t think Niek’s trick will work for me.

This morning my friendly Alfa Spider Garagist Goof called. He received two speedocables. My Spider is also leaking a tiny bit of oil. So I agreed with Goof to come and see him this Thursday. We will put the Spider on his lift to investigate the leak. And have a quick look at which is the correct cable for my Spider.

Tomorrow morning I am meeting spanner mate and classic car valuator Peter and our friend Miriam. I showed images of the Spider she bought earlier. It needs a new valuation for her classic car insurance. So we decided to meet up, my wife coming along too.

I will take some more images of her beautiful Coda Tronca.

It looks like our Spider trip to France is definitely on. Niek is one of our friends that is always part of this annual event. He and I usually take care of the routes. So we are both exploring and building some new interesting and challenging routes to be used in our TomTom’s.

Jeroen