Bruce Sharer wrote: A number of years ago, I put off cleaning out the area that collets leaves where the fresh air intake feeds the heater. A club member suggested installing a piece of screen wire just under the intake area. My son was driving the Milano when smoke erupted from the heater vents. He pulled off the road and turned off the car. Fortunately, it extinguished itself and there was little damage done.
The young man who bought my old Milano was not so lucky. He was driving on a Los Angeles freeway when suddenly smoke came billowing out of the air vents. It caught and burned so fiercely that the brake MC was almost instantly toast. With a combination of handbrake and downshifting, then stalling the car, he got it onto the shoulder and stopped, but he got out just in time. I felt terrible about it -- I would have anyway, but I'd been feeding him chunks of important Milano lore as I remembered them, and had forgotten that one very important one. As Bill Werner at Alfa Only demonstrated to me one day, you pretty much just have to get down on your knees (Oh, for a lift!) and reach through a cubbyhole on the driver's side of the airbox, under the dash, and haul out whatever leaves you can reach. (Maybe try a shop vac too.) That's how you get the cabin blower fan in and out too -- I let him do that! Will Owen Pasadena CA 1987 Milano Platinum 1991 164S -- to be removed from alfa, see http://www.digest.net/bin/digest-subs.cgi or email "unsubscribe alfa" to [email protected]
