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General All hail the Mighty Barchetta!

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General All hail the Mighty Barchetta!

I'm waiting for some money to come through to buy a van for the business. More tax efficient, diesel etc and less vulnerable to knackers in West Dublin..not the same street cred for stealing a Focus van (I hope)..Then LBB can snooze happily in the shed til spring. I don't like abusing her in the snow and slush.

Be interesting to see how a modern wagon behaves in the snow.

Cleverest thing I ever did (apart from getting Mrs B to marry me) was the hard top..the thought of -8 blasting through the shot holes and tears in the plastic roof makes me goollies want to drop off...
 
larkim said:
Another happy B driver in this weather. Plenty of snow packed uncleared roads earlier this week which B handled with aplomb. Usual problems with frozen handbrake (cured by leaving in gear), stuck handles (cured with an old library card) and now frozen shut doors (cured with a bit of effort!) easily worked around, and on the road she has been predictable and reliable.

Am constantly amazed at the lack of patience some people have though. I don't care if they feel "safe" at the speed they're driving at, nothing they can do will make me go any faster than I feel safe at.

Did park the B 1.5miles from home on Tuesday night when the hill near us had turned to ice. Other drivers were "going for it", and whilst I had no doubts that B would make it up, I wasn't so sure that a nutter wouldn't come the other way and slam into me. For a pleasant 1.5 mile walk in the snow I wasn't going to risk someone else bumping into me!

Matt
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I agree about the impatience Matt. I live on the A6105 and today the road is down to one lane. HGV's have been struggling badly on 6" hard packed snow and ice and have tried to operate a one way system, using CB radios to wait while a number of trucks came the opposite way. Car drivers simply refused to wait and squeezed past the line of trucks, only to meet the heavies coming the other way which had to stop and couldn't get moving again. This went on all day. Hope the car was ok when you got back to it.

Steve
 
Well, praise the B again. Mazda's gone and fuggered it's coil packs (you think Barchetta parts aren't cheap... :cry: )

Started first time out of the garage, running like a dream :)

You know, I was even starting to grab the Mazda door handles when I need to change gear I've had to rely on the B so much recently :D
 
Had a strange experience in all the thick snow with a Honda Civic hybrid, fairly horrible thing in normal driving but pretty damn excellent on snow in electric mode..and silent, all I could hear was the wheels and the slush noises.
 
Well, the Barchetta sailed through another MOT. Brilliant little machine.

It's been pressed into service again as this time it's the Alfa that's failed - the power steering rack has started dumping all its fluid out the gaiters. Lovely.

Still amazed by the reactions of other road users, mostly positive but some proper ends-of-bells out there at the moment!

Decided that seeing as though the B has been such an utter hero, I'm treating it to its first Barchettaparts order. I'm having the new heatshield, the rollback devices for the seatbelts and the leather handbrake gaiter as it just looks smart.

Has anyone tried any of these bits? Interested to hear results.
 
HP said:
the power steering rack has started dumping all its fluid out the gaiters. Lovely.
Click to expand...


My barchetta is doing that for almost 2 years now. Still drives great though:D
 
HP said:
The Alfa's dumping about 100ml per km, so it's not really something I can live with! Waiting to get it repaired under warranty.
Click to expand...

hehe no my doesn't lose that amount. Its about 80ml/year.
Don't feel so good with it, but it's such a pain to change it
 
Well, I've part fitted the new rollback devices for the seatbelts. I say part fitted as they need a bit of work before you can put them on - as they stand the belt will run across an edge of stainless steel unless you grind it back so it sits under the roller.
Also had to find some new bolts to attach them with as the standard ones are too short and there weren't any new ones supplied as suggested.

Currently the passenger belt is unuseable as it is now jammed against the hood bay cover until we have the coincidences of both the sun coming up and me not being at work.
 
Update on the Barchettaparts ...er ...parts!

Handbrake gaiter. Comes in a plastic bag with a ty-rap and no instructions. Being blunt, it doesn't really fit without work.

I'd like to be able to put the pics into the text here, but I can't figure out how to do it so I'm doing it in several separate posts, sorry.

Ok. You pull the felt covered piece off the base of the handbrake lever and stretch the leather gaiter on. Champion - nice tight fit. You overlap a little of the end of the gaiter over the handbrake handle to make a nice rolled edge effect. You fit it to the car and... the leather bunches up so much underneath the lever that it stops it going all the way down. This is how it looks without any work:
 

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To get it to fit, I had to do a few mods. I attacked the felt covered surround with a stanley knife to make some clearance under the lever to allow the leather to bunch up and not jam:
 

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This still wasn't enough though. I had to hack a lump off the handle to create more clearance and tape some packing onto the metal part of the lever to allow the gaiter to sit flush and not under:
 

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Then I could finally attach the gaiter, ty-rap it on and put in place. The surround had to be glued in place as there's enough pull and push on it to dislodge it as you pull and release it. I think it looks ok now :)
 

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Ok. The seatbelt rollback devices. As standard, they don't sit in the middle of the belt - which is an issue as the belt runs over a stainless steel edge and will eventually wear and fray:
 

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Then, the roller and belt catch the plastic hood on the bay cover... Fixed this by adjusting the position of them as far as possible, then adding a little lump of rubber to lift the hood away and stop it rubbing. To be honest, they work quite well now :)
 

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