Ive just had open wallet surgery

Third Opinion · 2 Mar 2006 at 21:40

Bit of a long story made brief.

4 years ago I purchased an Alfa 156 Sportswagon on a 2001 for £9000. It had 18k on the clock with full history. I paid cash and with no finance loan and it felt good to have a newish car without credit.

Bad news was I fell ill shortly after spending some six months in hospital. Lost my job etc and landed up on state sick pay for a couple of years. Having returned to work on a low wage, my wife and I struggled to feed the kids and pay the mortgage. We neglected to service the car for a bit.

As posted on another thread it either ran low on oil or just suffered neglect. Bang went the engine costing over £1800 rebuild :-(

.

However if there is a positive note I have factured in some mods. A few new mods such as high performance cams and a re-chip will see the lump hopefully produce over 170 BHP. All seals and gaskets have been replaced along with the valves, guides and oil stem seals. A full 72k service with cam belt, tensioner, pulleys and variator.
The cylinders have been honed with new piston rings. The Crank has been re-ground with new con rods and bearings. Coupled with a performance clutch the car has just set me back £2600.

Nearly the value of the car and I can't even thrash it for another 500 miles.

I now have to hide the receipts from the ball and chain.

ajgoodfellow · 2 Mar 2006 at 21:47

Ouch

Sorry to hear that. Hopefully your on the mend and the car should give you many more years of service

Hopefully this will serve as a poignant reminder as to not miss the service intervals

Third Opinion · 2 Mar 2006 at 21:56

ajgoodfellow said:
Hopefully this will serve as a poignant reminder as to not miss the service intervals

Yeah but not by choice

ajgoodfellow · 2 Mar 2006 at 22:09

Yeah - sorry - I meant for other people interested in this car

I didn't mean it against you

I forgot to edit it to make it clearer

[TW]Fox · 2 Mar 2006 at 22:18

With a bottle of oil costing 15 quid and services only needed once a year or about every 10,000 miles there really is no excuse no matter how skint you are, but I guess you found out the hard way.

Not sure I'd have spent cash on performance uprating for an engine that's known to be... iffy, though.

Third Opinion · 2 Mar 2006 at 22:23

[TW]Fox said:
Not sure I'd have spent cash on performance uprating for an engine that's known to be... iffy, though.

Yeah that was my dilema. About £2000 with a standard clutch (mine was knackered) and get a car back without noticing the slightest diference. I chosse to spend a few hundred quid more and get some kind of result.

Conanius · 2 Mar 2006 at 22:53

Third Opinion said:
Yeah that was my dilema. About £2000 with a standard clutch (mine was knackered) and get a car back without noticing the slightest diference. I chosse to spend a few hundred quid more and get some kind of result.

2k for a clutch? the guy at work had his 575 marenello clutch done for less...

Del Lardo · 2 Mar 2006 at 22:56

Probably best not to tell you what my Alfa 156 2.5V6 cost me over 14 months

panthro · 2 Mar 2006 at 22:58

Im never owning an Alfa until I am a millionaire.

DRZ · 2 Mar 2006 at 23:04

panthro said:
Im never owning an Alfa until I am a millionaire.

Not planning on staying a millionaire long then?

Del Lardo · 2 Mar 2006 at 23:08

panthro said:
Im never owning an Alfa until I am a millionaire.

Don't be daft. You only new a few hundred thousand

Will · 2 Mar 2006 at 23:46

I don't think that the £2.6k is just for the clutch Conanius

, as I read the thread its for a heavily reworked and tuned engine, 72k mile service and an uprated performance clutch!

I won't stick up for Alfa/Fiat main dealers as they're hopeless but use a specialist and they're not horrifically expensive to fix, and the cars don't necessarily break all the time either!

I'm speaking from the experience of my dads old 146Ti which was flawlessly reliable and yet the 146 was generally considered to be much poorer in terms of build than the newer models such as the 156, and my uncles ancient J-reg 164 T-spark never broke down once until last year, having always been serviced at a specialists and having racked up about 220,000 miles!

I'll accept the latter as a rare case, sure, but the point I'm making the general consensus on reliability doesn't *always* match reality (our two VW Passats being a case in point - both owned from new, the first was so bad my dad threatened to sue VW for the cost of the car, the second that was given to us as a replacement was only marginally better). But ask about VWs here and you almost always get told they're bullet proof, quality German engineering..hmmm.

No doubt people will see this thread, and the words 'Alfa Romeo', 'Open Wallet Surgery', and that'll be it, there'll be pages bemoaning how crap they are....neglecting the fact that if you fail to properly service any car chances are it may well go bang at some point and end up costing a lot of money!

Matt82 · 2 Mar 2006 at 23:54

DRZ said:
Not planning on staying a millionaire long then?

well that'll be when i die then. at least the 'alfa experiance' wont be too much agony then

Dogbreath · 2 Mar 2006 at 23:59

[TW]Fox said:
With a bottle of oil costing 15 quid and services only needed once a year or about every 10,000 miles there really is no excuse no matter how skint you are, but I guess you found out the hard way.

To be fair the twin spark engines can drink oil like it's going out of fashion. 750 miles/litre is not unheard of...

Matt82 · 3 Mar 2006 at 00:00

are they 'meant' to be like that?

Fantom · 3 Mar 2006 at 00:31

i dont know if i read this correctly but it seems that due to this situation your children may be going hungry and you just spent a considerable amount of money on unnecessary car modifications. now correct me if im wrong and im not trying to be judgemental or anything but i think you may need to get your priorities sorted out.

but then again i dont know much about the situation so sorry if im wrong

pinkaardvark · 3 Mar 2006 at 02:55

Aye I think the first thing I would have done was sell it and recover the 9k and buy a £500 fiesta for the missus until I had a job and decent wage again.

rG-tom · 3 Mar 2006 at 04:21

L337 LooX said:
i dont know if i read this correctly but it seems that due to this situation your children may be going hungry and you just spent a considerable amount of money on unnecessary car modifications. now correct me if im wrong and im not trying to be judgemental or anything but i think you may need to get your priorities sorted out.

but then again i dont know much about the situation so sorry if im wrong

i'd hazard a guess that he is no longer out of work

Tom.

Third Opinion · 3 Mar 2006 at 08:03

L337 LooX said:
i dont know if i read this correctly but it seems that due to this situation your children may be going hungry and you just spent a considerable amount of money on unnecessary car modifications. now correct me if im wrong and im not trying to be judgemental or anything but i think you may need to get your priorities sorted out.

but then again i dont know much about the situation so sorry if im wrong

Sorry but I take major offence to that. The reason the car was neglected was because my children come first. I am working now and can afford the bill but it still hurts. When I bought the car I could afford to run it but my situation changed. If I wanted a rock solid reliable vehicle I would have bought another Primera or something.

This was a specialist price not a dealer. I didn't want a recon engine which would have saved me about a grand but I have heard that recon engines are not always that good.

Many of may think the car isn't worth repairing or modding but that is your opinion and your entitled. I am not an accountant but as the cars value is about 4K it wouldn't have made much financial sense to scrap it at this stage.

I suppose I could have had it botched up to p/ex or spent the 2.6k on another car. The car has been rock solid up till this fiascal and is still in first class condition inside and out. Touch wood the engine is now of similar quality.

Gilly · 3 Mar 2006 at 08:38

panthro said:
Im never owning an Alfa until I am a millionaire.

And by that time you'll be able to afford something nice instead

Third Opinion said:
Sorry but I take major offence to that.

Don't think you need to dude, he's just missed the point.