Time for a new car?

I have finally gotten most of the problems with my car 1987 Alfa Romeo Milano Gold) fixed, other than the things I am going to mention, it runs and drives excellent, and only needs a small amount more work. But, there are a few things that are making it not work out as a daily driver, so I am starting to think its time to sell it.

I made another thread about this, but the headlights

The high beams dont work, and even with good quality bulbs the low beams are really dim. It sounds like the only solution is to fix the high beams and add relays (which i cant do myself), and buy $600 euro h4 reflectors/lenses.

The brake lights dont work (the fuse keeping blowing). I cant read the wiring diagrams, so other than pulling the whole dash and tracing the wires by hand to look for a problem, I cant really get anywhere with this either.

The heater blower motor doesnt work, and the best i can find out is that good used ones are pretty hard to find, so most likely I would have to adapt one from another car, or find/make what ever part has failed in mine.

More just annoying than a serious problem, but you cant put the back windows up and down because the lock switch is broken. I know I could buy a new one, but this is the 2nd replacement that broke in just a few months, and its annoying to spend $10-$20 on another used part that is about to fail.

The throwout bearing failed, and although I replaced it with a good used replacement, the original one only had 122k miles on it. If it breaks again, a replament with cost $1000 ($800 clutch, $200 clutch fork). I knew the clutch was $$$ when I bought the car, and the original clutch is still less than 1/4 worn out, but now that the throwout bearing isn't available alone, thats a different story.

Other than that, the car runs good, the brakes and suspension have had all needed parts replaced, I just got new tires a couple months ago, everything works great. The only minor problems are it had a cheap repaint before I got it so the hood is pretty faded, and it was in an accident when it was fairly new, although the only noticeable effect of that is the passenger side swaybar mount is a bit bent so reinstalling the swaybar if you take it off is pretty difficult.

So what do I do? I cant use it at all with no brake lights, or I would just drive it and not worry about it. I have fixed everything I cant myself though, and paying exotic car repair prices to have the other things fixed isnt really an option, so I dont really know what to do.

I don't know the answer, but I appreciate the reminder why not to buy one of those.

belteshazzar wrote: I don't know the answer,

Miata.

A regular auto-electrician should be able to fix your brake light problem, for not too much $$$, I would expect.

I dont think most shops would touch it, it actually took a couple tries to find a place to do the alignment, and its no more complicated than doing a miata.

Im not really sorry i bought it, its fun to drive, and the engine and suspension are great. It just makes me mad that I spent a bunch of money on it and now i cant drive it, and now that I think about it, I have fixed everything I can, and there are still things left about it that i really dont like that aren't within my ability to fix.

Doesn't answer your question at all but: http://www.polyperformance.com/shop/Brake-Light-Pressure-Switch-p-309.html Add an inline fuse and that's a quick and dirty solution to bypassing the stock brake light harness.

This could be a cheapish solution to the brake light issue, which would at least get you back on the road.

I suck at electrics and even I was able man-handle installing relays for ancient headlights. It is seriously easy, just try it! (This coming from the guy who usually has issues wiring stereos for gosh sakes!)

Agreed on thanks for education of what not to buy.
Note to self, "avoid bargain Milano that just needs a clutch"

Have the existing clutch plate rebuilt by a local specialist, it is way less expensive.

Rewiring headlights is straight forward and very effective.

Brake light issue is probably a switch but rewiring is pretty simple job for a electrician

The brake light issue is not the switch, it failed once before so that was the first thing I tried.

The clutch disc and pressure place are fairly durable, mine has 122k on it and is still fine. But, the only part available separate from the assembly is the disc, the throwout bearing is no longer sold separate. I got it all put back together and working fine, but if the throwout bearing fails again, the cost to replace it with a new one is $1k, because you have to buy the whole thing.

Basically sound like every Fiat I have owned! Sometimes it is all the little things that can kill a project, especially if it is a DD. Whudda want for it? Where are you located? I am always a sucker for electrical gremlins!

From what I have read, better headlights are just an e30 away. You should be able to get the relays too.

Do you have a Community College close by? If so take some time to go by and talk with some of the Automotive teachers. They will use your car in class and you only have to pay for parts. I have done this a couple of times with AC stuff.

Didn't they have grounding issues? I thought I read that somewhere.

Go to any bearing supply company and order a Timken 614102 for your throwout bearing. If you look at a Timken cross reference guide there are a handful of other bearing companies that make the bearing too. (I signed up for Show me the Parts and found it be pretty useful. ps you have to sign up to see more than just a few years)

For a gtv6 you can use normal round lights, the milano ones are an odd shape. Yes they have grounding issues for sure, but the problems with mine lie elsewhere. As far as if I decide to sell it, I live in California, and id probably ask $2800.

Once upon a time, I owned and daily drove a Milano. It was a wonderful driving car and living with it was an adventure. Mine had a headlight issue as well. It was essentially stuck on high beams becuase if I switched to low beams ALL of the lights on the car went completely out. One day a bolt worked it's way free of the shift linkage so the funny contraption just sort of fell part. I managed to wrangle it into a gear and limp home. Luckily, the bolt was still hanging out down there and I managed to put the whole thing back together that afternoon. On another occasion, I heard a strange noise when I hopped in to make a quick trip to the store. It sounded exactly like a slipping belt to me so I hopped out and popped the hood to see if there was anything to see while leaving the engine running and the windows defrosting. The view under the hood revealed nothing and the noise which was loud inside the car was much quieter. I closed the hood and proceeded to discover a lot of thick white smoke escaping from the heater vents. I imediately turned everything off and stood back to see if the fire that went with that smoke was going to make an appearance. It didn't and I went to the store. Surprisingly, the heater motor still worked somewhat after burning that day. I still remeber that car fondly. It had ~ 170K miles on the clock when I parted with it and was still a blast to drive.

In reply to Travis_K:

You are correct, not enough coffee yet.

Travis, you really do have issue with electrical snafu's.... :) J/K

I would do some research on generic auto electrical educational material. I find that if people think of electrical circuits in terms of plumbing, they defuse a lot of the negativity behind it and focus on making sure the electrons can flow through the "pipe" properly.

My guess? It is Italian, so the first step? Grounds. They are notorious for going bad on older Euro cars. Clean them all and cover in protective grease (vaseline works in a pinch) Adding relays to the headlights and the window switches might fix their issues since most cars route all of the current through the switches (its cheaper/easier to do). On my Daytona, I got tired of replacing those switches and found that the worn switches worked fine when tested with a little current, but couldn't pass the heavier current needed for windows/headlights, so a set of relays later and the heavy current load is handled by the relays and the switch merely activates one of two relays to lift and lower the window or turn on the headlights.

As for the brake lights? The short is likely at the taillights, climb into the trunk and look closely at the taillight wiring, bulb sockets, make sure everything is clean and you don't have a screw through a wire someplace along the door sill, interior.

At this point, you have nothing to lose but a little time spent cleaning connections and using a test light to verify connectivity. If after all that, the dog still won't hunt, then cut your losses and find something more reliable.

Im going to give fixing the taillights a try this weekend, at least check the wiring in the back part of the car. If im not successful, I am going to start cleaning the car up to sell it. BTW, the Timken throwout bearing appears to be imaginary other than the part number on that site. It either never existed, or is NLA.