Spettacolo Sportivo

On the 8th and 9th of July 2000 the dutch Alfa Romeo Owners organized a racing weekend. Of course Hille and I wanted to join in in the fun but something nasty stood in the way!

On saturday the 8th we finished the last preparations (fixing a headlight and waxing the car).

The engine was running smoothly again after replacing the headgasket. And the next morning we left early for Assen. A couple of fellow 'alfisti' would join us at a gasstation along the way (of course they were late)

When they arrived we hurried on our way 'cause we had to reach the racetrack on time to take a spin on the circuit. And yes it was raining cats and dogs, don't you just love the lowlands? By the way the Spider on these pics is owned by Marcel who is driving it 'top down'!

We asked our friends in the Spider to take some pics of our Bertone too! These pics would prove to be the last before disaster struck! (they are very nice I think)

Eric 'the mad scientist' B., missed the gasstation where we hooked up with Marcel (this tells you something about his driving skills), so we met at the next gasstation (he's driving the black Alfetta). At this point we were suspecting that something was wrong with the engine 'cause we lost part of the normal power of this engine.

Between the upper left and upper right picture lay several hours. Let me tell you what happened. A couple of minutes after we left the place where the left pic was taken, Hille and I where feeling very uncomfortable and we decided to turn around and go back to our barn. The car had a weird sound and didn't feel right. The prospect of having the car break down on the way back, later in the evening, wasn't very promissing. After we announced the news to Marcel and Eric, by mobile phone, we took the first chance to turn around. While leaving the highway the engine started to make a rattling noise. Hille and and I were looking at each other knowing this was serious.

We stopped the car on the side of the road and called for assistance (called ANWB in dutch). While we were waiting for assistance we could see several Alfa Romeo's passing who were heading for Assen. Our mood was getting really bad and we were even questioning our love for Alfa's. We also noticed a lot of other oldtimers pulling over (Porsche 356, Jaguar Mk II etc.) asking if they could help, it seemed someone had organized an oldtimer run nearby.

When the road assistance arrived it took about half a second to determine that this problem couldn't be fixed (of course we figured that out too!) and since you have to be a member of this road assistance organisation (which we are not) they couldn't bring our car back to our barn. We felt like we were knee deep in @#$%!!! The man was nice enough to tow us to the next village were we could get some help. Turns out that in this village everything (and I mean everything) is closed on sunday, our mood reached an alltime low! First thing we had to do was get some transportation out of this hellhole. It took me over a hour to wake up my girlfriend (by phone) to tell her she about our misfortune and ask her to pick us up, in the meantime I called her father to ask if he knew anyone who ownes a trailer, to our surprise he called back within 5 minutes to tell us he found one!!! Thank you again for that Peter! Hille's friend Michael (and his brother), who has a car with a towing hook, was willing to sacrifice his sunday to pick up our Bertone and bring it to the 'ricambi' barn! The result was driving around in the netherlands for most of the day, but our beauty was home again. We kept our fingers crossed regarding the cause of our problem.

The next weekend we let Eric listen to the engine and he confirmed our fears, 'probably something to do with the pushrod'. As it turned out we had major engine failure, propably due to the oilpump (but we're still not sure about that) But we needed to replace a considerble part of the engine (the part that houses the crankshaft, don't know what that is in english) It took almost half a year (december 2000) to find a good one, but we have and we're preparing it now to be remounted into the Junior.

More to come!