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The idea and the start

My daily/weekend racer bored me, it's fuel consumption wasn't great at all, and day by day I was thinking to get new daily. It had to be cheap cause: daily beaters are popular these days don't have money to buy something not broken Friend of mine accidentally showed me this Alfa, made inception and overnight I made my mind to get it. Not the least, hands were itchy to get to work on car, cause it was a while I worked on last project. Its 2004 Alfa Romeo 147 1.9JTD diesel, 85KW, manual transmission. It had been through hard times: accident on front drivers side clutch gone gearbox broken cause of idiots driving without clutch It's price was very cheap 260euros, engine alone costs something like that, engine seemed fine, which is basis for my decision, so I got into this gamble. Which is to make this absurd cheap Alfa drive good for under 500euros in total. 500euros challenge if you will. My thinking was to fix this car as cheap as possible an...
Recent posts

Gearbox explotion

Haha - catchy title but judge yourself if total bullshit or not Basically clutch kick series ruined it, after numerous clutch kicks open differential said bye bye, inner gear broke into pieces and pushed out from the gearbox.  First time this happened to me, but good experience. No regrets there, especially when extra cheap alfa project continued cheap, fix cost me 2 bottles of gearbox oil. Main gears were ok, gearbox case took from original box together with differential. All in all, happy with experience and this alfa so far.

Finalizing Alfa fix and this blog

So this is it, Alfa is running fine, totally spent 571 euros on different bits and bobs to make car fully street-able. Basically reached my goal to fix car hell cheap around 500! Well, under 500, but oh well had to make my OCD happy and spent extra on oil, filters and those kind of things. Overall it was interesting experience to fix so much beaten car, areas I worked on: donor gearbox clutch and pressure plate slave and master clutch cylinders bodywork to align front nose to original  drivetrain joints refreshment rear window wiper cleaning  regular maintenance Worth mentioning that aluminium to iron connection spots suck, cause aluminium oxidate, had quite a hassle to disconnect shock absorber from aluminium fork. Other than that was easy to work on. To celebrate this point and say goodbye to old front tires made some smoke.

Clucth cylinders - lesson learnt

Repair kits suck, if cylinder is worn out it's done, no simple rubber rings repair will help.. This is what I experienced and had to throw repair cylinders away and buy new ones, both slave and master and it starter to work like charm! Car runs fine, no leaks or similar, happy there. My zero fucks alfa (under 500 euros car) project is basically over. I am not expecting this car to drive or look like new, my expectations are just have running car I could have fun with time to time. Maybe burn some tires while standing still, which appears to be not that easy from what I experienced last few days with it. Maybe I will throw this car back into scrap yard after some time I get bored - where this car belongs to be honest. Or invest few bucks over 500 and make it more like daily, cause engine looks happy one. To make it daily I need to fix wearied out spots of drive train, like few con rods and bushings and respray both bumpers, but really last thing to do if do.

Clutch cylinders

Problem I bought car with was no clutch and later found out myself, broken gearbox by previous owner happily switching gears without clutch, strange people there are! First fixed the gearbox, by swapping with another used one. Working on things noticed leaky slave cylinder, installed repair kit seals. But that didn't fix clutch issue, which was that clutch was engaging at very bottom. And pedal feels was like there were some air in the lines. After several attempts to bleed the lines and several methods: pump air pressure through brake fluid reservoir sucking fluid out with special pump through slave bleed bolt pressing pedal, opening slave bleed blot, letting fluid out, closing bolt, repeating Decided to inspect master cylinder, also because fresh fluid got dirty almost instantly, which is a sign of wear out seals. After installing repair kit on master cylinder and cleaning cylinder itself and bleeding in several ways, got no positive change in clutch wo...

Scrap yard rocks

Because of target budget of 500 euros to make the car running on road, main parts I need to replace had to be bought from scrap yard. Found few cheap spots, got gearbox for 50euros, half done pressure plate for 10euros, and pretty good condition clutch disk for 15euros. Pretty good deal I would call. Inspected new/old gearbox, meaning opened the case, apart one strange thing it is in good condition, no metal shavings, no clear visual wear on gears or syncros. Strange thing was oil, in particular some of it was nasty gel, like slime kinds like playing with nowadays. Probably oil had never been changed, like 17 years, haha. Anyhow, good to go. Started assembly, which is 5 mins work, apart hour or so cleaning the case from outside. And believe me this is one of suckiest things. Cause you get dirty by oil and solvent you use, floor gets dirty, you have to breath smelly air front solvent evaporating. Anyhow, work done. Put the clutch on, put the gearbox on. Noticed that clutch slave c...