Hey Angel,
I lied, I only had 6 Alfas... but seventeen sounds like a very sweet number.
a 1969 1750 Spider,
1967 Guillia TI 1300 with mechanical clutch
1968 'Split-lip' Junior - ( Similar to the Bertone 2000 GTV )
1982 Alfetta Guiletta 1800
1984 Alfetta Super 2000 (ended up with two of these)
They were a lot of fun -- Drove the Spider from Johannesburg to Cape Town after doing a carburetor overhaul it ran like a dream ... stopped for petrol about five times because if had a 40 liter tank and a range of about two hundred miles because I was doing an average speed of around 90mph...
No sign of overheating in the African summer driving through a semi-desert area called the Karoo.
But that was in the days when i had grease under my nails and a very heavy right foot.
what made pre 1980's Alfa's unreliable was that most mechanics did not know how to tune them properly.
They were used to single carb, single overhead cam or Side valve motors.
Balancing Twin-choke Twin carbs and understanding how to reset the timing chain tension and setting points gaps and setting dwell was something of a weird science to mechanics who were used to solving every problem with chewing gum and insulation tape.
I learned to fix them myself and never had any issues.
In fact my 2002 BMW was a lot more unreliable than my Alfa's were.
Blew Head Gaskets with alarming regularity.
How a normally aspirated engine with 133hp/liter is "just desgn and noise"? And then there is the Ferrari handling, that is even more impressive compared to a Porsche, for example.
This:
Or this:
They suffered from rust issues, the splined shaft on the clutch would corrode meaning that you had to be patient shifting between gears, or pull the clutch and have the shaft hard chrome plated. But as Sleepwalker writes, mostly they suffered from people who didn't know the cars "fixing" them.
I had one, and I'd take another in a flash, but rust free examples are quite expensive now. Everything else is reasonably easy to rebuild and most parts are still available aftermarket (but not so much as BL/Jaguar restoration parts), but figure on 25K-30K CHF for addressing even moderate tin worm.
The later GTV isn't rust prone, and the mechanicals are mostly unbreakable, but they suffer from electrical issues with age (mostly just poor connections/earths). They're also a sweet car, but they're cheap as dirt. If you get one, you'll want to be able to trace electrical faults. The suspension bushings and droplinks age (same with the earlier Spiders) so they tend to groan when you go over speed bumps, but they're relatively cheap and easy to replace.
Both decent cars for a moderately competent amateur mechanic to maintain. If the engines haven't been run without oil, and the timing belt (and the hydraulic synchronizer on the newer one) has been replaced, the engine will be fine.
the legend behind the development of the 3.0 liter GTV goes like this:
It was developed for the South African Saloon Car Racing circuit. Initially, Alfa was using the 2.5l GTV but they were plagued by problems with carbonation.
They had six single choke Dellortto Carbs that were an absolute bitch to syncronise and had pewter in the housings that was being eroded by the petrol/alcohol blend that was south Africa's way of dealing with the trade embargoes and sanctions that were in place during the eighties.
[SASOL - was and oil from coal extraction company and the fuel they produced was blended into the petrol sold by the international Oil companies]
Anyway, getting back to the point, Alfa works engineers in SA figured that could increase the capacity of the 2.5l motor by increasing the bore and lengthening the stroke on these babies. They also realised that adding a fuel injection system would increase the reliability since the system would be under pressure and because fuel injection unites were not as vulnerable to the issues that plagued cars with carburetors. [Accelerator pump diaphragms need to be changed regularly on the side-draft Stromberg and SU carbs... downdraft carbs were not affected as badly ]
All this development on the motor was so that Alfa could compete with the beefed up Ford Sierra XR8 [Another South African innovation - A 351 cubic inch (5.7 liter) Ford block was dropped into the engine bay - Oversized ventilated brake disks were fitted on all four corners and 'ninja' skirting and spoilers were added just for good measure - Only tow hundred were made just so that the car could qualify as a production saloon]
The other two cars the GTV had to beat were an Opel Record with a 350cu Chevy Block and an Mazda RX7 ( which I think was also turbocharged )
This might be interesting for your to fact check - I couldn't be bothered
Best regards
That was 1976, the car still had its brand new smell, and I still have a vivid impression of the direct feel of the wheels on the road and the precise handling.
A short but very sweet and memorable journey.
I've had a short run in an original Autodelta GTV - scary good fun.
My GTV was injected.
By 1980 it was finally possibly to make a PI control system which really worked. Anyone who has ever worked on a Spica or Lucas injection system is very grateful to Bosch.
SUs don't have accelerator pumps. Some, but not all, Stanglebergs do.
But the Alfa virus is not so easily laid low, and I was finally lucky enough to acquire an excellent metallic brown 1972 Montreal that became available in the Geneva area. In fact many Montreals have survived the years very well, since the bodywork was treated on an advanced finishing line that had been set up by Bertone in October 1970.
International Alfa Montreal meetings have been held in Switzerland in 1989 (Bürgenstock), 1991 and 1998 (Agno), 2003 (Interlaken), and 2010 (Jongny, near Vevey). The Jongny meeting was attended by 121 participants from 13 countries, with 61 beautiful Montreals and 7 other cars. Next year's meeting will be held in the region of Inveraray in Argyll, Scotland.
The first time a saw a Montreal in the flesh was some months ago at the Alfa Romeo Museum in Arese, near Milan.
By the way, I highly recommend this museum for any auto enthusiast.
Love this one..
But theres tons of others I could add
A work colleague of mine owned one, which he sold for £2 million. When he died childless in 2012, he stipulated that most of his wealth "within the UK" should go to the Royal Society, not realising that half of his fortune, held in bank accounts in Jersey, was not actually in the UK. Following a legal battle between the RS and the descendants of his brother, the courts decided that he had just made a "common error", and awarded it all to the RS.