Once again, not wanting to scare you or talk you out of getting a 164 Q, even though since I have owned the car it has literaly spent more time in the workshop than with me, I love it and can't wait to get it back hopefully on Monday.

My car was inspected by Hugh at Monza, and besides minor issues associated with a 16 year old car, nothing out of the ordinary was noted. The diff/gearbox issue that I had was undiagnosable and the car sounded and drove fine right up until the spider gears broke.

Like I said, don't let that put you off, but keep it in mind

Hugh did have a 2nd hand box available, but that would have been 3500 plus fitting, plus the labour to Italian Job for taking the gearbox out and appart to begin with...
After evaluating all those options as well as getting something from O/S, adding the risk of getting something from the UK which needs to be rebuilt anyway, the way that it's being currently done looks to be the most economical while hopefully still making it somewhat reliable...

I know I won't be gunning it in 1st at all, I think I'll be too scared to even drive it for the first week after I get it back!

Haha Len I apologise for spooking you out with my gearbox woes.

To be specific, the exact issue was with the spider gears within the diff. It was the spider gears that basically broke and unluckily for me decided to shoot their teeth outwards and hurt the rest of the gearbox.

Funnily enough, last night I found a Road & Track review of the 164 S - US version of the Q, and even they couldn't get away from the spider gear issues on a brand new car!

Apparantly after just the 2nd hard take off, the spider gears in the diff broke and the car had to be sent back to Alfa!

I've only had the pleasure to drive the car for 1 week, but I loved every minute of it. Can't wait to get it back on the road, change the timing belt and all the other belts, and take it for a nice shake down cruise either down the GOR or through the black spur to marysville!

Ok this switch needs to be replaced as it's no longer working and contact spray didn't help.
I can either pay around $80 for the switch here or around $20 inc shipping from the US from www.alfissimo.com

After speaking through email to Jason of alfissimo, he is very certain that the US and Aus spec switches are the same - the thick thread one.

Can any of you guys verify this at all? Or does anyone know the part number? The car is still at Italian Job getting gearbox done so I have no access to it.

Unfortuantely there was nothing else available at any of the other wreckers.

We have found some parts in QLD and basically the gearbox and diff will be rebuilt with some new and some used parts. Will end up being roughly $4k

I think I will always be paranoid of breaking the gearbox and will probably baby the car from now on!

Thanks for all your help guys!

Thanks for that advice John, and pep105 I definately agree with you. I'm generally a very hands-on car owner but I admit, I got a bit intimidated with the Alfa compared to my previous Jap cars which by comparison seem simpler...

I'll give Foleys a call then and see what they have available.

The advice of the Italian Job is to replace all the gears, bearings, shafts etc with brand new parts. Honestly, if I had the money for that, I would probably do it and then at least have some sort of piece of mind.

haha good point!

Just take it easy in 1st gear and everything shall be well!

unfortunately it is, or was my daily driver!

I hate catching the bus to work...

I found a 2nd hand gearbox minus the diff o/s, but I will have to still buy a new diff as that can't be found. This way I will save about $2k!

*bump*

any offers at all from any 164 owners?
The money will go to a good cause!
I need to sell these to pay for a new gearbox

I've only owned the car for a week and already am being punished by the car gods!

Took the car for a spin on Monday night, it was a bit wet but as I had unplugged the battery to do something else, and that most likely reset the ECU, I wanted to drive it for 10 minutes or so to get the idle back to a good point etc. Anyways, during the drive, I took off from the lights - nothing excessive, but the wheels still spun.. as soon as that happened I started getting a bad clunk noise every now and then when in gear and  it sort of felt like a brick was stuck to one of the wheels and the car almost jumped up every now and then when the "clunk" happened.

I was only a minute away from home so I babied it there... however I found that the problem was a lot less frequent if I drove faster.
Anyway, in the morning I was already booked in for a major service to change the timing belt etc at the Italian Job as it's about 5 minutes away from my house. So I decided to just drive the car there while still taking it easy. In retrospect, I think I could have saved a lot of heart ache and money if I just towed the car instead!

When I was about 400m away from the workshop, I lost all ability to accelerate in any gear - all I got was a heavy grinding noise.. I got one of the guys from TIJ to tow the car back to their workshop. This morning after dismanteling my gearbox and diff they found that something caused a couple of teeth to break off from most likely the first gear which then went and broke some teeth on half of the gears as well as the spider gears inside the diff. Also most of the bearings are now stuffed and apparantly need replacing...

Now I have been quoted roughly $5k including labour to rebuild the gearbox with a brand new diff ($940), main shaft, pinion bearing, internal debtor, a few of the gears and roller bearings and the rest of the shibang...

They highly recommend the new parts as apparantly the car I bought has already had its gearbox rebuilt in the past after one of its previous owners thrashed the $#!% out of it and the job was done using 2nd hand parts on the cheap which is why it broke again.

Is $5k a fair price?
I have found a reco gearbox and diff in the UK which I can get to Melb all up for roughly $1800 plus another $500-$600 fitting plus maybe $600 for the removal and dissasembly of my broken gearbox.

Should I just get the new parts? What is everyone's opinion?

Thanks for all the advice John.

Yeah I found the fuse box finally.. of course everything's in Italian but I simply checked each one of the fuses one by one. The manual didn't come with the car. I ordered a dvd manual from cardisc.com - hopefully it will be worthwhile because it cost a bit!

Only one fuse was burnt out, and when I tried replacing it, the new fuses kept getting burnt as well. Must be a short somewhere. But from the broken translations of babelfish, I gathered that fuse is for the lamp that lights the actual fuse. However I can not be sure of this as it may also be responsible for the front map lights!

Good thing the long weekend is here! hehe looks like I'll be spending most of it in the car!

Sheldon, the Alfa just came up in one of the carsales searches I was doing for a manual 6 cyl car and I thought, that looks quite different to the magnas etc.
Funny you should say that about the sound, because when I came to see the car, sure I thought it looked pretty good, but it was the exhaust note that sold it to me!

Having said that, the exhaust isn't stock, but I'm sure even stock it would sound great!

Wow Joe! that's a long time to have a car! must be something ey? hmm being in an exclusive club is pretty good however I'm sure the lack of support and parts do make it difficult!

thanks for the comments guys

and thanks Pep, now I know where the rims are from - not useless info at all!

Yeah it's got lowered springs and sits at a nice height.
The previous owner put a custom cat-back exhaust on with a smaller cat and smaller hot dogs as well as a straight through muffler. It's pretty loud and while it sounds quite tough, I want to replace the cat with either a stock one or a larger a/m one as well as maybe put in a larger hotdog.

Of course being an Alfa it's not without it's electrical faults... The cigarette lighter doesn't work, the front map lights don't work - the globes are good, and worst of all, the reverse lights aren't working either.
Last night I replaced the old and what looks like oxydised reverse globes with new ones but that hasn't fixed it. I'm hoping it's as simple as a couple of blown fuses for the above issues.

Ok here comes the funny question... where is the main fuse box???

Also, is The Italian Job in Oakleigh a good place to go for Alfa servicing and etc? They're only 10 minutes from my house...

Thanks Phil!

I took some pics yesterday before I washed the car and haven't had a chance to take more pics now that it's all clean, but here's what I've got so far...

Hi everyone!

A couple of days ago I picked a 1992 Alfa Romeo 164 Q with a little under 150,000kms
Funnily I wasn't even looking for a euro car, I was just looking for something simple like a Magna or a Telstar, but I definatelly do not regret getting the Alfa!

The car is two tone black on grey and comes with 17" alloys from a 156 I think.
I will have pics up shortly, but just wanted to say hi first.

Also, the car came with custom number plates - AQ164 which I'm not a fan of so they are now listed in the for sale section.

Looking forward to meeting everyone at a cruise or club meet!

Hi Guys,

I just bought an Alfa Romeo 164 Q - loving it!

It came with custom number plates - AQ 164, white text on black.
I'm not a big fan of these plates and would prefer something different or just the standard plates.

Anyways, these would obviously suit an owner of an Alfa 164 Q or just a 164 that wants to stand out.

Not sure what it's really worth but at the moment I'm looking for offers around $1k.

Looking forward to meeting you guys at a cruise or something!