Things that make you go hummmm.....

When working on these cars you always seem to find things that confound the imagination. Sometimes it is something a previous owner did as a cheap fix. Other times it is a factory decision that makes you curse the engineers who designed it. And other times it is just facts of life type stuff.

Last night I had two out of the three. First I have my fact of life moment. I get all ready to work on the car, snap on some gloves, grab my drop light, and.... wait, why is the drop light not working? Let's see, it's plugged in. It worked last time. I have not dropped it recently. Hmm. Must be a bad bulb. Zoom, zoom in the spider to the store, come back with a new bulb. New bulb does not work. Well, this new bulb has a weird rattle to it. Go back to store, exchange bulb for model with less rattle. Still no dice. $#@$, must be something else. So not I figure the ballast in the light must be bad. I can probably get something like that from radio shack right? Let's take this light apart. Oh, wow, why use a regular off the shelf ballast when you could use and entire circuit board with microprocessors and stuff. Gotta love those engineers at Sears!! Oh wait, I guess I had three out of three after all! Anyways, I put it all back together and went back to the method all mechanics have used at some point in time.... I beat it on the work bench! And darn if that did not work... sort of. Not to mention that once the light came on it was all yellow instead of white. Grrr!! But at least I can work now. Until I accidentally turned it off an hour later...

So finally I resorted to taking the surface of the sun halogens off their stand and setting them under the car where I would be working. Whew, those things are bright!! Either way, that leads us to me being confounded by the previous owners. Or at least their mechanics...

I was rebuilding the front section of the shift linkage on the Milano. Once I got into it, I found piles and piles of bearing grease. The stupid part of it is that there is nothign in there requireing so much bloody grease! I ended up taking it all apart, wiping up the grease, regreasing, and putting it back together. If you have ever done this job, you know it is slightly more complicated than that, but you get my point. Either way, I used alot less grease. I also fabbed up a shim from some sheet rubber to take the slop out of the ball joint in the shifter. And with new o-rings in the lower joint it is as good as new. Now I just need the $160 kit from performatek to rebuild the rear part!

The end result is, now I have a shifter that works and a drop light that doesn't. Hey, you cannot win them all!!

There is something in the air....

Sometimes I wonder why we do all this. I mean, do we really need Italian sports cars? Do I really need a convertible? Why don't we all drive Honda Civics? Hell, Andy drives an Accord, and he owns more Alfas than I do! So why do we put up with all this crap?

I will tell you why! It is for those brief moments when everything is just right. I had one of those today. This was nothing special. It was just one of those times when you understand why we do all this. One of those things that puts a smile on your face the rest of the day. No I did not pass a Ferrari going 110mph on the interstate. No I did not get out of a ticket because of my charm and good looks. And no, I did not figure out a unified theory of everything in physics either. This was so simple. So elegant. So basic and humble.

I know you must be chomping at the bit...

Well, lets set the scene first. It has been raining here every day for a week now. If it is not raining, it certainly looks like it will. After being drenched in the monsoon on the way home from the last Alfa meeting, I have been ready for some top down driving. No dice. Well, finally this morning, there was no rain. And on top of that it was cool enough outside you did not get soaking wet from sweat after ten seconds. So this morning on the way to work, I let my Italian mistress do my hair. And she does a great job too. Anyways, here is the special bit. I am lucky enough to work in down town Baton Rouge. Apart from small skyscrapers and old office buildings there is also a small factory. No not an industrial factory. This is a bakery. And do you know what happens when you drive a convertible down the road and the wind is just right a couple miles from a bakery? Yeah, thats right, the smell of fresh baked bread fills the air. Ahhh... It makes me smile and sigh just thinking about it. There just really cannot be too many things better than cruising down the interstate, engine singing, wind in your hair, sun shining, and fresh baked bread wafting around you.

So thats it. Thats my story. Whether you liked it or not, it made me really happy. If you happened to be on that stretch of road this morning, in your Camry with your a/c blasting on recycled stale air, you would have seen me. I was the kid with that funny goofy Alfa grin we all seem to get from time to time.