Since I gained temporary custody of the '72 Spider Rosina, (Rossini named the heroine in "The Barber of Seville for her, visionary that he was in 1815) in 1997, she has supported the old truism that somehow, squaretails suck exhaust gases in through the trunk seal and through naugahyde/ferric osmosis, into the cockpit. It's like the belief that stuffing a towel into the folding rear window prevents scratches when there's no contact to create scratches unless the gap is stuffed with a grit-enhanced towel against the dusty plastic, but oh well that's Alfa lore. In any case, the exhaust fumes were persistent, stinky and really obnoxious in spite of new trunk seals, two or three complete exhaust systems and a downward-pointing exhaust tip. They were a good part of the reason I just didn't want to take any long trips in the Spider. Till yesterday.
Yesterday, for today's Columbia Gorge Rally, I cleaned the old gal up including shooting the engine with engine cleaner and flushing it with the hose, which left pools of water in the spark plug pockets. I removed as much water out as I could with a turkey baster, then fired it up to boil out the rest. Bubbles came from around #2 and #3 spark plugs as the engine idled. Hmmmm. I hastened water removal by poking an old t-shirt down there with a screwdriver to absorb it, and the rest boiled dry quickly. I pulled the plugs, and sure enough, around #2 and 3 plug holes there were ancient, irregular deposits of something black. I've always been careful to remove grit and whatever else from the plug pockets before removing the plugs, lest it fall into the hole and grind the engine, but somehow, these oil/chemical/mud deposits had established enough irregular thickness to destroy the gasket seal, and those were combustion gases bubbling through and working their way into the cockpit after they'd come around the firewall gaskets, a much more logical flow than the mysterious Kamm-damn through the trunk. For the first time, I realize there may be a chemical basis to Squadra Empirica's motto: "Sono lento, ma sono brutto." Carbon monoxide will do that for anybody. I put the plugs back into the holes a couple of threads to prevent crap getting into the combustion chambers, then cleaned away the offending deposits with a small flat-blade screwdriver and soft brush until I had a shiny aluminum surface for the plug washers to seal against. Snugged the plugs down and voila, no more stinky exhaust fumes in the cockpit. Amazing happy thing when that happens, when you discover that Rosina wasn't really Lucretia Borgia trying to do you in so she could sneak off and marry a Miata. This did not prevent us from finishing ignomiously in today's competition, vanquished by a couple of ringers in a '63 Pontiac Bonneville and many others in the rally and owing to our naove trust in the English language, while rally masters, like lawyers, speak a music only they and theirs hear or understand but require everyone involved to pay the piper. But that's another story and by god Rosina pulled her skirts up and kicked around some of the most wonderful Italian twisty road folk dances you could ever hope for. It wasn't her fault. Allora. -- to be removed from alfa, see http://www.digest.net/bin/digest-subs.cgi or email "unsubscribe alfa" to [email protected]
