Weekend Labors

["Giller,Bruce C." <bgiller@domain.elided>]

	I worked on trying to replace all four Alfa Ricambi Sport springs with
the old stock units to raise the Spider so that the new cat. would gain
more clearance and not act like a road grader.  I was only able to
complete the front two since I was also replacing all bushings and ball
joints; I left off replacing the upper ball joints since I couldn't
remove the right side easily (bloody Bosch FI is in the way) and they
seemed to be ok, I'll do this when I rebuild the engine later.

	While taking settling down to work on the right side, I saw that two of
the springs coils were very close together and for a very good reason. 
The spring had broken in two!  Just at the mid point of the spring;
seemed to be an old break for there was accumulated rust on both broken
ends.  MMMmmmm, this might be the cause for creaking and groaning when
going over rough ground.

	Then on the other side, I found that the inner metal sleeves on both
the lower A-arm bushings were profoundly attached to the support bar.  I
took them to my local Alfa mech. who said (now, everyone sing along at
this point) that he had never seen this before....  It took an
application of gas torch to burn/melt out the interior bushing, some
pounding with a BFH to extract the bushing from the arm, and a cut-off
wheel to remove the outer and inner metal sleeves from the support bar. 
The support bar had some galling on it but nothing that a licks from a
file did not fix to get a new bushing to slide right on.

	So now my Spider has OEM springs on the front and Alfa Ricambi Sports
on the back give the car a 'heads up' look.  Kinda like a cartoon car
that is rear'n back with that accordion bunching, to spring down the
road.  But steering seems a bit harder when going slow but it does need
new tires and a front end alignment.  Next weekend, I'll replace the
rears with the old OE units to level it out.

	Bruce 

	'86 Spider
	'73 GTV - still not ready to leave the body shop; no paint

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