Comments by "Dave Cooper" (@davecooper3238) on "Number 27" channel.

  1. I have worked on the spanners in both used car & new car dealerships. Back in the 60s & 70s in the used dealers I would rebuild engines & gearboxes. There used to be specialist engineering firms for machining engine parts. Those shops have more or less disappeared. These days new vehicle dealers contracts with the manufacturers. Holding them to providing warranties on work carried out. The only way to achieve that to use factory supplied parts. In practice this means exchange engines, gearboxes etc. These days I can’t even pop into my cars local dealers parts department. I now have to email them & wait for their reply. Even if asked they don’t quote parts prices. Only quoting supply & fit.
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  2. Anyone asking me to name my least favourite car to work on/drive & my answer is this car. In my case the Renault engine version. Dreadful gear change. Pedals seemed designed for people in leg irons. Plus the visibility from the driver’s seat absolutely abysmal. A slime 5ft 8inch driver needed a two foot neck to see through the drivers window & the rear view I found almost nonexistent. The gear change on the R16 & R16 TX were miles better. Once you realised it rolled when cornering but would not actually fall over. The 16 TX made a lot better sports car.
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  3. I have a feeling an insurance company will very rarely refuse money.
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  4. I worked on many Italian cars the 1970s. Once used to the pudding stick gear change I loved driving the Alfa sports with the narrow V4 engines. The big trouble came with the Magneti Mareli electrics. The copper fuse box internals just used to rot away. The wiring connectors etc. also just crumbled.
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  5.  @miks564  Italian motorcycles also had dodgy electrics. They were seen as the bikes weak point. The problems mainly disappeared when they swapped to Japanese switchgear etc. I think sometime in the 80s.
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  6. The thing I remember about these plus other Italian vehicles of the time is. The electrics. The wiring terminals & the inside of the fuse box just sort of rotted away. Having said that the Alfa & Lancia of the time were a cracking drive.
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  7. Do I remember correctly that one of the early Alfa Sud front suspension arms had a habit of snapping. It happened to a fellow tech while out road testing. ( Mid 1970s ) The arm looked OK on the outside but had rotted internally. Being better safe than sorry we changed the arm on the other side. Word went round the trade that is was a well known thing.
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