ALFAGTV6.COM

[PietereQ]

Now I'm pretty desperate. My car either tests my patience or simply doesn't like me. This is why:
Here's some background so you can imegine how pissed I am- I bought my GTV6 on 12th of January, since then I have driven it for THREE (3, III) times, and the car constantly returns to the garage. Here are the symptoms: the engine looses power, shakes like hell, doesn't rev regardless how wide the throttle is open (usually won't go over 3000 rpm non full throttle), basically it looks like it works on it's own will, sometimes will pull sometimes not. Generally has nothing of the V6 working culture. To make things better it happens always on highways so I have to trudge with awesome warp speeds of 60 km/h on the fifth gear. But almost always on the way to my mechanic the car seems to be ok. Bloody hell! Now here what was done to tackle with the problem:
-Fuel pressure was checked and it was ok
-fuel pump also was checked and guess? ... ok of course (by the way there was a crack on the bottom of my fuel tank which eventually ruptured and flushed 50 litres of gasoline on the garage flor)
-new sparkplugs were installed
-heads were checked
Aaaand... f&^%$#ng nothing! Engine works like crap anyway, making the car literally undriveable. Of course it works more or less properely when I leave the garage, but about 5 km's away the whoe thing starts over.
Guys, please help me out, I really want so start driving my car, cause so far I'm wasting money on ineffective repairs. Or maybe should I'll start calling my car "Christine"...
Thanks,
pete

[Murray]

Pete when your car is acting like this have you had a look at the spark plugs ? Describe their condition and we may be able to help you track this down.Problem could be too much or not enough fuel caused by either the cold start injector circuit or the AFM.It could also be an leak in the air intake system.Start by telling us if your plugs are wet or dry when this situation is occuring.
I assume that your garage checked the condition of the distributor cap/rotor and spark plug wires when they did the plugs ?

[Steve R]

Sounds like you've some evil gremlins in there !

Hard to diagnose from the info to hand, but for what it's worth it sounds like you should start looking for either an electrical problem, or a major air leak. Although the garage should have spotted these (assuming they know what they are doing!). Unlikely to be mechanical - hopefully !

Q - Does it run OK cold, then deteriorate when hot? or always run bad cold too?

See Greg Gordons site for a really good tune up description on a GTV6. You should follow this from start to finish.... http://www.hiperformancestore.com/L-jetronic.htm

In brief:

1/ Check ALL the hoses for holes & fraying then check all connections (including the 6 short ones under the plenum that everyone forgets) and make sure the clamps are tight.

2/ Go through the electrical earths. Disconnect and clean ALL of them.

3/ Set the ignition timing properly.

4/ Check that the green wire coming out of the distributor body has not frayed or is starting to come loose. This carries the distributor signal to your ignition and gets brittle with age....

5/ Clean all the connections at the coil.

Others will probably add to this list, but the above should be a good starting point covering the common stuff. Expect to take a couple of hours going through it.

& Feedback to lets us all know how it went, if there are still problems then there's always more you can check...

regards
Steve

[PietereQ]

I have just recieved a call from the mechanic, they took the car to second garage which specializes in car electronics. They are supposed to plug the car to a computer and find what's wrong . Most irritating of all is that I didn't even had a chace to get familiarized with my GTV6, so I didn't and now I can't check the sparkplugs. I don't even know how many speeds does the windscreen wipers have! Crap! I'll keep you guys informed, but speaking from experience the car won't give up so easily. Heck, If there will be no results I'm taking the car home and with your hints I'm gonna fix it once and for all.
Thanks for your tips guys, it's good to know that you can get some good technical feedback from other users
Thanks,
Pete

[MerrilGordon]

Pete,
I second Steve's recommendation on Greg Gordon's web site. That will tell you all you need to know.
Another thought, with Bosch L-Jetronic being a common older fuel injection system, any professional mechanic worth his wages should be able to troubleshoot the problem. If they can't, I would't go back as they'll have proven their ignorance. I'll bet you can figure out the problem your self and learn the car's systems along the way.
Good luck !
Merril

[PietereQ]

Guys listen to this...

So I called to this second "electro garage" or somethin on Friday. The car sits there since Tuesday... And I talked to the guy who "takes care" of my GTV6, I asked him, is it possible, that the car will be fixed on Saturday. He said that he's moving, so he does'nt know whether hell make it on Saturday but he assured me that they'll continue working on the car from Monday on Little thing to emphasize : car sits there since Tuesday (!) but actually they started working on it on Thursday
And on the 12th of April (next week) it will be TWO months, since I have bought my dreamed GTV6 which has spent ONE night in my own garage so far! Do you guys get the grave of the situation?
Ok, end of this foreplay, when I mentioned the guy about possible airleaks he denied, although I can bet that they haven't checked it. And said that it has to be something with the ignition. So guys what's your opinon on that? If it is r e a l l y ignition so where to look for the problem?
Thanks,
Pete

[Steve R]

Hi Pete,

It's hard to know whether your "mechanic" is pulling your chain or not..... Maybe he's using the force and that tells him "Luke, the fault is in the ignition" !

I don't pretent to be an expert - but there's others on here who are. I've had my GTV6 for 15 years and I'd check for air leaks, earths & ignition - in that order before delving deeper and perhaps swapping components.

Tell us more about the fault: How is it when cold, & is it any different when hot. Does it EVER run good ? Noises? smoke, all 6 plugs even coloured or not, wet plugs? tracking marks in the cap? ....

These cars are 25 years old tech so they're not hi-tech (anymore), so don't be afraid to check stuff yourself. As Merril says any mechanic worth the title should go through all this basic stuff very quickly indeed.

S

[Mats]

Change distributor cap and rotor...

[PietereQ]

Just talked to the dude from the garage and, they found that car runs on mega rich air/fuel mixture, and said that the problem can be attributed the AFM or the injectors. I'm just glad that they found what is wrong, and now solving the problem will be easier.

@ Steve
Well from my vast experience with this car I can tell you that everything was fairly ok when the engine was cold, but even when it was warm it sometimes worked pretty good, hard to trace any pattern here... And I don't know how the rotor cap looks like or in what shape the spark plugs are... I don't know yet where this second garage is...
Hopefully I'll know something new tommorow
Thanks to you all guys,
pete

[PietereQ]

This is not happening. What have I done? Was my karma really so bad in previous life? The "electroboyz" gave up yesterday, said that everything SEEMS to be fine with the electronic part of the engine, but they just can't find out why the engine isn't working. From what he said it you could deduce that the shortest way to tackle with the problem would be to buy new engine. Anyway I'll have my car back home tommorow and I'll check for AIR leaks, grounds, etc. which were obviously not checked, by the proffesionals.

[Mats]

Cap & rotor...

And it's something you should change anyway.

[Murray]

Pete in order to resolve issues like this you need to be "in love" with Alfas.Obviously the mechanics you dealt with didn't share this passion Once you get your car home, get back here and we'll help you get her singing again.Start by examining all 6 sparkplugs.If you have a digital camera and can take good pictures and post them here that could help.

[PietereQ]

Ok, I was quiet for a while cause i was testing the car. I picked it up on Thursday, and it was fairly ok. The only bad thing was very low idle rpm namely, at 400~500 rpm, and I'll have to deal with it also. She was also ok on Friday (if I exclude the fact that the fuel hose leading to the cold start injector ruptured spraying the fuel all over the engine bay) till the moment when I took her for a ride. After few meters she started to choke, I guess it started to run on 5 cylinders or so. Then the engine died, I cranked it for 5 times, the engine fired, but couldn't maintain idle. I drove back home and it was even worse. With each cranking attempt it seemed that the number of "working" cylinders was diminishing, so finally the engine died, I cranked it for 10 times or so and nothing. Here are the pics of the sparkplugs and rotor cap.
I hope it is visible enough that all sparkplugs are wet. Seems like mixture of oil and gasoline but not sure.







Antother thing that caught my attention. This is the "acordion" section of the air intake hose. See? It's full of gasoline!


And, here's the rotor and cap.




hope this will pics will be useful

Thanks you all, and by the way happy Easter!
Pete

[matt]

[quote="PietereQ"] The "electroboyz" gave up yesterday, said that everything SEEMS to be fine with the electronic part of the engine, but they just can't find out why the engine isn't working. From what he said it you could deduce that the shortest way to tackle with the problem would be to buy new engine. quote]

Don't go back there !!!! a new engine?? hope you told em to shove the bill up their ass!

Those plugs are dirty, way too rich! and confirmed by excess fuel in air cleaner hose etc,
You have a mix of plugs there, stock is NGK BP7ES, some BP6ES's and another one (i think)
If the plugs are a bit oily too run the hotter plugs BP6ES
as said Mats said change your cap/rotor
Whats the ignition coil like? are you getting good spark?
Take one of the leads off one of the spark plugs and positon the end of the lead on the cylinder head so you can see the spark while cranking have an assistant crank the engine while you look at the spark. You should be able to get a spark greater than 1cm long and not orange (thats weak)possibly dodgy ignition coil or other(leads/cap /rotor/engine earth lead to chassis etc) it should be a bright white spark with a little blue to it.
Obviously take care, no excess fuel vapour, don't hold the lead while doing this etc etc, i don't think this test a problem for EFI but check with others before, i use carbies
You still got the stock Bosch coil and leads ?
The earth strap on the 4 cylinder from eng to chassis is from starter motor to behind the cross member the steering rack sits on, should be the same on the V6, its a flat copper braid strap about 20cm long, maybe worth a look too?????
Happy Easter too Pete!

[Murray]

Pete in addition to Matt's suggestion that you verify the condition of the spark ,my first step would be to disconnect the plug (normally blue) which provides power to the cold start injector which is at the rear passenger side of the intake plenum,just behind the throttle.The fact that you have fuel pooling in you intake leads me to suspect this circuit.Try running without the cold start and get back to us.