These Are Your Worst Car Projects

My Alfa GTV6’s clutch was stuck. This is actually a pretty common problem and normally not a huge deal, although annoying. Some revving and engine braking on jack stands can usually break the disc free. In my case, nothing would work. Weeks of trying every technique in the book short of live animal sacrifice. The thing was fused together like it had been welded. No choice – it had to be removed.

Once I got the car on stands I realized my front driveshaft giubo had an entire section missing and the rear was badly cracked, so kismet. I also discovered BOTH of my rear brake calipers had seized and two bleeders broke when I tried loosening them. Since they’re inboard and difficult to remove in situ, I made the call to just drop the entire rear suspension, which includes the transaxle, and take the opportunity to clean it up, replace all of the bushings and mounts, and treat the deDion with POR15.

I start ordering parts from the usual sources. No giubos available in the country. No rear brakes either (I was just going to swap cores and get rebuilt calipers). No new CV boots available anywhere, so universal cut-to-fit had to be the answer.

It wasn’t just the parts supply that was a problem, but the age of most of the components. The driveshaft was stuck to the flywheel and required a slide hammer to loosen it, flattening the threads on one of the studs in the process. The clutch line was seized to the slave cylinder and then the line sheared off while working on it. THEN while unsticking the clutch disc I lost alignment. The GTV6 clutch is factory balanced. Normally with a clutch this old you’re just going to replace it, and a few years ago I would have, as they were $500. Now, post-COVID and Clarkson, I couldn’t find one for less than $2,200 shipped. I had to call 20 shops to find a place that could rebalance it, as clutch balancing is not a service offered by any local transmission or rebuild shops (I finally found found a crusty old diesel rebuilder way up north who had an antique lathe balancer and did it by hand and decades of practice – God save these people).

More parts are ordered and start to arrive – the brake rebuild kits, new rubber and poly bushings and mounts, giubos – although almost all had doubled or more in cost since COVID, with many coming from England or Italy because Stateside inventory was wiped, so I also had to pay import duty. A job that would have cost $300 a few years ago was now $1,200, just for two rubber giubos, mounts and bushings, etc.

To add insult to injury I accidentally cleaned off the marks on the transmission input shaft splines for the shift linkage. It’s certainly not impossible to realign them, as folks swap transmissions all the time, but dear god is it tedious and frustrating.

Then, worst of all, the two old guys who were the local Alfa gurus both died within weeks of each other. Cancer + COVID for both of them. The local Alfisti were devastated. These two guys had generations of knowledge and experience, and would help out anyone with whatever problem they had. Now, gone.

Anyway, this was a year and a half ago. Somewhere around the time I realized I had to reinstall everything by myself, I decided I just wanted to sell the car. It no longer brought me any joy and was just a near constant source of anxiety and frustration. But knowing I was going to sell it caused me to not want to work on it, because part of me absolutely does NOT want to sell it (even though I’m definitely getting a Vox AC30 and a new Jazzmaster with some of the profit). So it’s still sitting in the garage, while we’re facing the worst heat we’ve ever had in Texas. It’ll be October at the earliest before I have the guts to go back out and finish it. And that’s just mechanical! It needs some interior work and paint correction before I can even think about listing it.

Anyway, 1982 Alfa Romeo GTV6 for sale. Ran when parked (technically).