Alignments, Rear-End Work, More Driving Impressions

Last time, we had just finished installing the front end. The thing is, parts of the suspension are adjustable to make sure the wheels point in the right direction, and to have them sit at the right angle with respect to the road. To do this, I needed a specialized alignment shopt to do this - this could not be done at home.

In addition the rear end needed similar repairs as the front end: replace bushings, springs, dampers, clean things up, and check bearings. In addition, since the rear wheels are the ones driven by the engine, there is a differential back there to deal with. I figured I'd have the differential inspected and serviced as needed.

Before these repairs, the car seemed to float laterally over the actual suspension and wheels while turning and during transition. So rather than "pointing" in a fixed manner during a turn, the car pointed left and right of your intended target during turns. This made for scary-interesting driving, since every time you steer the car, you needed to wait to see what the rear end did, then correct your steering inputs, then see how these corrections affected the car, and so on.

Bushings are one of those things that tend to wear out over time on solid axle, trailing arm suspensions such as the ones found on the GTV. Replacing bushings and tightening up things would help minimize the lateral play on the suspension, making for crisper steering inputs with minimal need for mid-turn corrections and the such.

Given all these repairs, I figured I'd take the car to Group 2 and have them do all this work for me. They are my favorite car shop, and they happen to specialize in all things Alfa Romeo. The problem is that in mid-summer, every other AR owner in the region decides to also drive their cars (just like me.) Which requires lots of maintenance work, making for very busy times at Group 2.

So, I figured I'd just have the front end aligned, and do part of the rear end work: bushings, springs, dampers. I would wait until later in the year to do the differential work, as well as any bearing replacements and the such. That way, I could get the car back on the road and start chasing any of the numerous gremlins lurking in the car. And besides, it helps spread the cost over a longer timeframe, which is always a good thing.

Unlike the front end, the replacement rear end bushings were the polyurethane types from Centerline Alfa. The shop replaced the trunion arm-to-differential bushings, as well as the bushings in the trailing/radius arms, and the bushings holding the rear sway bar in place. Polyurethane ("poly", for short) tends to be stiffer than rubber, and hence, helps keeps uncontrolled supsension motions to a minimum, but at the possible cost of a bit harsher ride. However, this upgrade is a very popular one in the Alfa community, and worth trying out.

The shop also installed the AR Ricambi springs I had purchased earlier in the year (which matched the already installled front springs), as well as Koni Sport dampers (again, matching the front end Konis I had installed already.)

The service was very much worth it. The car now rides in a much truer fashion. During turns, the car feels predictable and easy to point within the turn. There was still a bit of tail-end lateral slide, which can be tuned down by using these poly washers where the trunion arm connects to the chassis.

Regarding the rear springs, the car rides a bit higher in the rear than I would like (about half an inch.) The ride is not harsh, however, so from a spring rate perspective, I am very happy with them. Correcting the ride height involved cutting down springs, so I asked the shop not to do this for now, and see how the car rode before going drastic on the springs (one thing at a time...)
At first, the adjustable shock absorbers were set a bit too stiff (which was my bad - I had set them myself), which made the ride jarring and shakey - even over smaller bumps. After softening the fronts to almost full-soft, the car's ride became much less jarring while still keeping the car motions under control.

(I will be posting my spring rates, shock absorber settings, and other technical numbers in a future post.)

One thing that started worrying me were the brakes; they felt soft and spongy, with what seemed to me as too much pedal travel. This kept me from driving as I normally do - in traffic, I had to leave extra space between cars, brake earlier, and the such. This is something that needed to be addressed quickly.

But even with the soft brakes, I had a bit more confidence in opening up the car and seeing how it ran. And run it did - the car accelerated quickly and pulled strongly (for a 2.0 liter four-banger, of course!) Throttle response was quick and sharp. Steering inputs were much sharper and predictable. The transmission was loud, and shifting required very long throws and patient double clutching during downshifts (especially 3rd-to-2nd downshifts.) The clutch felt nice, though, engaging smoothly, linearly, and strongly. The sounds emanating from the engine compartment were nice - lots of fan noise at slow speeds, changing to loud engine intake noise, manifold growls, and a shade of valve clatter. Very good sounds indeed.

Highway driving was loud - lots of wind noise, road noise, engine noise, car noise. All this noise could be confused with music for Alfa addicts such as myself, however, and I was happy to put up with it during my short test drives.

Overall, the car drove very nicely, for a 34 year-old car.

I still needed to service the rear differential, and address the soft brakes. And I still need to chase all of them gremlins lurking out there...