Maintaining Your Alfa - Alfa Romeo 1966 to 1994 Spider Faq

installation book for convertible tops. This is taken from a factory shop manual. Get this book
and follow it religiously if you want a leak-free top. Always replace the windshield-to-top gasket
every time you replace the top.
Other than that ownership is similar to other cars. Wash it when it"s dirty, change the oil
regularly, follow a maintenance schedule religiously and your Spider should last a long, long
time.

Maintaining your Alfa

Many people are afraid to purchase an Alfa Romeo of any sort because they think it will be
impossible to work on, difficult to find parts for, or repairable only by a handful of mechanics.
Nothing could be further from the truth. With the exception of the SPICA system, Alfa Spiders
are very straightforward cars. 75% of the things that go wrong with them can be fixed yourself if
you have the right set of tools and a garage. Even the SPICA system is easy once you get the
right manuals and tools.
Parts are in fact harder to find than, say, Chevy or Ford, or even Toyota or Nissan. You won"t be
able to walk in to just any old parts store and find what you need. However, most foreign auto
parts stores will carry at least some parts for them, and there are at least a dozen places scattered
over the US that specialize in Alfas (if you live in a major metropolitan area, one is probably near
you check your yellow pages.) This means that even if you live out in the middle of nowhere
nearly all of your parts needs are just an overnight shipment away.
A word on the parts peculiarities of Alfa:
Alfa Romeo before WWII was a company that built hand made, very expensive cars in very
small numbers (in this, they were somewhat similar to what Ferrari has become today). Even
though the company switched strategies and went to midrange mass-produced automobiles, they
never really lost that "hand built„ legacy.
While not as bad as the 750/101 Spiders before them (when entire drivetrains would be placed in
cars they weren"t listed for), your Alfa Spider will probably have quirks unique to it AS A
SINGLE CAR. The older the car, the more likely you are to have unique features. For instance, I
have never seen the radio antenna on a pre-... 75 Alfa Spider in the same place twice. I have also
seen at least one ... 74 model with totally different interior door handles and window cranks than
what I found on other ... 74s (it was a one owner car that had never needed restoration
it just
came from the factory that way). Wiring and brakes seem to be the most likely areas for these
"off part„ occurrences.
This tendency also led to some interesting transitions in the models as time went on. For
instance, Alfa"s 2.0L engine was introduced in 1971, but I have only seen 1750 engines in ... 71
models (in the US at least). It was quite common for Alfa to introduce significant mechanical
changes without the slightest bit of promotion or notice (again, this had gotten better than it was
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