[alfa] Re: GTV6 Wheel Centers

["Mark Manley" <WarpOMatic@xxxxxxx>]

       'nardo ,
     My '84 GTV6 measures 94.5" left side center to  center and 95" passenger
side center to center. I also recently discovered rust behind the left front wheel 
wheel plate on my otherwise rust free Oklahoma car. Passenger side front wheel 
well rust was in plate in front of the wheel.
		Mark Manley

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 01:37:18 +0000, alfa-digest wrote:

>From: "B.D. Zelazny" <UnltdLtd@domain.elided>
>Subject: [alfa] unscientific survey of gtv6 owners
>
>fellow gtv6 owners:
>
>in '83, 9 weeks and 12,000 (s)miles after i'd purchased my then new gtv6, it was
>involved in a serious (to the car) collision. the car spent 3 months in the body shop.
>when i got it back i noticed the driver and passenger side front wheels/tires seemed
>placed slightly differently in the front wheel wells. at the time i measured several
>brand new gtv6s on the showroom floor at the local dealership and found all of them had
>about a 1/2 inch or so difference in the distance between the driver and passenger side
>wheel spacing (wheel center to wheel center). i decided this must have been an
>engineering issue...maybe even an advantage of some sort and thought no more about it
>until recently.
>
>a few weeks ago, while having my wheels/tires balanced and rotated the car was jack up
>on all four jacking points. as the techs worked on the driver's side, the front
>passenger side dropped several inches - lucky for me the wheels/tires were still on the
>car. we all looked at each other and then checked to see what had happened: the jacking
>point had collapsed under the weight of the car! argh!!
>
>granted, this gtv6 has 415k (s)miles on it, but it is a texas car and never exposed to
>salted roadways and has been garaged most of its life (while i wasn't driving it, o'
>course!). today i finally got around to examining the situation and seem to have
>determined why this has led to this failure.
>
>    1. i've never cleaned out the cavity behind the front wheels that unfortunately
>collects dirt over time. i removed about 2-3 cups of dirt from each cavity today.
>
>    2. on the passenger side the front wheel is about 1/2 inch closer to the back of
>the wheel well than on the driver's side. since i've run oversized tires (205s instead
>of 195s) for most of the past 20 years this has allowed the slight and occasional
>rubbing of the tire on the backside of the inner wheel well to be worn through both the
>small shield that covers the cavity as well as in the forward passenger footwell area.
>these small holes created by the occasional rubbing over time has allowed moisture to
>create "cancer" in this area, leading to the jacking point collapse of late.
>
>because of this i was wondering if any other gtv6 owners have experienced a similar
>failure in this area due to the difference in wheel spacing. my request: could y'all
>take a few minutes and measure the distance between the driver and passenger side wheel
>centers and let me know what the DIFFERENCE is, if any?
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