3.02.2003-Tapped Out

Follows a tale of two cars, one of Italian origin, long in the tooth and in need of love.  The other, much newer and of Teutonic background still requires occasional love (as do all things with wheels and hearts). 

My wife's 1997 Z3 had developed an oil leak that continued to get worse as the months passed.  By last week the oil slick underneath the engine was starting to get embarrassing.  Despite the fact that our garage floor is painted it was getting to be a real drag cleaning up oil every day.  Besides that, German cars, new German cars, should just not leak oil. 

I decided to find the source of the leak but a floor jack and jack stands did not allow me the perspective I needed to see where the oil was coming from.  Last week I stopped by to see my good friends at Independent BMW of Palo Alto to see if they could help me out.  With the car on one of their lifts Mike quickly informed me that it was the oil filter housing (huh?).  "Costs about $500 including the part", he said.  Yikes.  I gave him some money for his time and thanked him before getting on my way.  Since our car was supposedly still under warranty I decided to take it back to the dealer to have them fix it.  Turns out BMW North America knows about this leaking oil filter housing problem.  There are service bulletins out on it, and a revised part # that fixes the problems of the old part.  I schedule the car for the service and drop it off.  Three or four hours later I receive a call from the dealer ungraciously telling me that the car's warranty expired two weeks ago and that they would have to charge me (over $500) for the part and labor.  "Sure you will", I thought to myself.

The reason I'm telling you all this is that I spent Saturday morning installing the part myself.  That, combined with the other chores and workload on my desk right now prevented me from getting much quality time with the Alfa block, but I did manage to touch it for a little while and effect some positive change.  As it turned out, the work on the little Bimmer was not too arduous, and only took 3 hours or so.  Modern engines are both fun and frustrating to work on as despite the compact nature of their design, the fasteners and components themselves are usually in good shape and easy to remove.   The Z3's alternator has it's own air intake and duct to keep it cool!  The oil filter housing itself is something that Alfa Romeo would be proud of.  It's cast aluminum, rather pretty for a German part, and rather intricate.  It also costs a lot of money.  Now the work is done, the car is driveable, and there's no more oil on the garage floor after she leaves.

On to the Alfa.  I borrowed a set of Metric taps and dies from my father and am chasing all the threads on the studs and tapped holes in the block.  Some of the auxilliary studs are a bit damaged so I'll be replaceing them when the time comes.   Once that was done I chucked up a wire brush in a handheld drill and worked on removing the corrosion from the cylinder head studs.  I've got some more work to do, but so far the brush does a good job and the studs themselves look great.

Next weekend is a TEMBA weekend and my current coursework is Economic Analysis for Global Business so I'm sure I'll have something fun to talk about next weekend in relating my Bschool learning to Alfa Romeo.

Ciao!

TJ