milano clutch (warning - whining and bitching)

[Jan Ben <ben@lucent.com>]

Now that I know people can hear me , please let me vent...

I posted last monday that the milano clutch failed on me, and I saw a
puddle of fluid in the area of the clutch slave.
But then I started thinking that if it was the slave seal problem, I'd
see a gradual failure, not the catastrophic one, with a nice <BANG>!.
So I was thinking, maybe the throwout brg popped out of the press. plate
somehow, or the fork broke.
Well, turned out the fork pivot is SUSPENDED (sorry if it's old news to
you, but I was surprised)  so it's loaded in tension, not compression.
Talking about doing things ass-backwds!    The damn thing is made of
mild steel, the ball head is 3/4" or so OD, stemmed to maybe 10mm
without any relief .  Every time you depress the clutch, the stem load
cycles (2x actually).    no wonder it fatigues.
I was trying to think of ANYTHING that could be done wrongly by the
PO or PO's mechanic
during previous clutch work, to vindicate Alfa.. I am at a loss - I'd
LOVE to hear why it's not Alfa's fault - please restore my faith!
BTW, the pivot is a stock item at IAP, if it's any clue.. ("Oh yeah,
they brake all the time").

You know, I can live w. rust, 50k water pump changes, dinky synchros,
dashboard X-mas lights... all in the name of a car w. a soul and
engineering w. a passion.. but this kind of shit *really* pissed me off.

So I got my work cut out for me tomorrow... if I can fish out the head
from the clutch housing, and unscrew the beheaded pivot base though the
fork opening (no hex on the base, of course!).   If not, I'd rather sell
the damn thing as-is.

Jan