Alfa 159 1750 tbi (208000 miles)

[rallycross]

That's a nice looking car but you must be nuts or simple, never buy dodgy cars of people who 'say' they are called Jay. FAIL.

[Zombie]

jumare said:

What's the well known hesitancy issue? I'm having EGR issues, tried a blanking plate which caused DPF issues, flushed DPF and cleaned EGR have made it better but it's not as good as before, think I need a new EGR valve.

But when you look at it everything is forgotten

Have a look here;

http://www.alfaowner.com/Forum/alfa-159-brera-anda...

It's more pronounced in the 2.2 but the design of the exhaust is presumable common across the brera and 159 range. Theres a pic of the brera rear box cut open on page 2.

[Zombie]

GraleEvo said:

And my Mrs thought it was my dodgy driving, quite easy to stall. Will show her thread! Are you going to the National meet at the end of the month? We are heading down.

Hadn't thought about it TBH, but it looks like it's not too far away. Will give it some thought. Take it you're going?

[Zombie]

davebem said:

That is a bit odd, it shouldnt make a sound. If its not that its worth seeing if you can cleanly remove the upper wishbone balljoint without damaging it. Then move the wishbone up and down by hand, check its pivoting on the front and rear bushes smoothly. If the rear upper wishbone sliding (it allows some sideways movement) bush sleeve has seized it pviots tearing the rubber and kind of resonates through the cars body making a knocking sound.

Thanks for the advice, will look at in more detail when the track rod end turns up.

[Zombie]

rallycross said:

That's a nice looking car but you must be nuts or simple, never buy dodgy cars of people who 'say' they are called Jay. FAIL.

Yep, "Jay" as a name certainly doesn't inspire trust . Fortunately he clearly wasn't into marketing, that really would've been the final straw.

[Zombie]

IMG_8596-2 by Chris, on Flickr

[Andrewph75]

Well done Sir, fortune favours the brave and all that. What a lovely car, now if they only combined the looks of these with the chassis of the Guilia. Have fond memories of renting 159s in West of Ireland ten years ago as the used to have them at Shannon airport and so much better than the usual rental stuff.

The interior is great, leather looks amazing for 200k+ I have a current 330D estate and makes my interior and exterior look very dull by comparison.

[Jonny_]

"Jay" sounds like he deserves to own a few less teeth...!

Clearly a tosser of the highest order, and no doubt he'd cottoned on that you'd invested a fair amount of time and effort in travelling to view the car, and were unlikely to walk away. (As an aside, when I've travelled a long way to see a car, I've always told the seller that I'm working nearby. )

Fair play for sticking it out though. Car is looking excellent, you'd never think it had covered that sort of mileage! The paintwork looks notably better than that of our Giulietta at similar age and half the mileage. Chap next door to us has a diesel 159 Ti saloon in a very similar colour scheme as yours: black paintwork, tan leather and those same lovely wheels in that same near-impossible-to-accurately-colour-match finish.

[B'stard Child]

What a lovely looking wagon - I'm not averse to high mileage cars but I coughed a little at 208,000.

Have you found the original owner and spoken to him - be interesting to know his experiences and what the chuff he did to rack up that sort of miles!!!

[Zombie]

Andrewph75 said:

Well done Sir, fortune favours the brave and all that. What a lovely car, now if they only combined the looks of these with the chassis of the Guilia. Have fond memories of renting 159s in West of Ireland ten years ago as the used to have them at Shannon airport and so much better than the usual rental stuff.

The interior is great, leather looks amazing for 200k+ I have a current 330D estate and makes my interior and exterior look very dull by comparison.

Both of my brothers have BMW 330D/335D Estates. They're lovely bits of kit but way more expensive for the equivalent age/spec. I was looking at a 123D before the 159 popped up. Glad I did as it's proving to be a good tool.

[Zombie]

Jonny_ said:

"Jay" sounds like he deserves to own a few less teeth...!

Clearly a tosser of the highest order, and no doubt he'd cottoned on that you'd invested a fair amount of time and effort in travelling to view the car, and were unlikely to walk away. (As an aside, when I've travelled a long way to see a car, I've always told the seller that I'm working nearby. )

Fair play for sticking it out though. Car is looking excellent, you'd never think it had covered that sort of mileage! The paintwork looks notably better than that of our Giulietta at similar age and half the mileage. Chap next door to us has a diesel 159 Ti saloon in a very similar colour scheme as yours: black paintwork, tan leather and those same lovely wheels in that same near-impossible-to-accurately-colour-match finish.

I did consider the 'I'm nearby tactic, but when I rang him initially, I was hoping my location would illicit an honest appraisal of the car's condition. Doubt it would've made a difference in the end, he was just of a particular mindset.

[Zombie]

B'stard Child said:

What a lovely looking wagon - I'm not averse to high mileage cars but I coughed a little at 208,000.

Have you found the original owner and spoken to him - be interesting to know his experiences and what the chuff he did to rack up that sort of miles!!!

It honestly feels as well screwed together as my Mum's brera, which has done 50k and appears to be far better in terms corrosion - sub frames are known for going rusty.

Not spoken to the previous owner, seems a bit of an odd thing to be doing really; Hi - I have your old car and have undertaken a light bit of stalking to track you and your phone number down...

[Zombie]

After spending all day yesterday (Saturday) in the woods chopping up a 4m length of Oak trunk and taking it home, I absolutely, definitely was NOT going to spend all day working on cars. Not a chance. The weather was far too nice.


I started with by re-attempting to find the knock in the offside front suspension. Which was proving difficult. I waggled everything using ever increasing sizes of prying tools. Nothing.

But following Davebem's advice (cheers Dave), I disconnected the upper arm ball joint;

IMG_8601 by Chris, on Flickr

And still couldn't find any movement in the upper arm or problems with the bushes. Until, that is I rotated the arm up to a position where it would be with the weight of the car on the suspension and hey presto, movement and knocking noises.

New arm on order...

That didn't take long to resolve but after getting showered in dirt whilst releasing the ball joint with a lump hammer, I decided to give the front wheel wells a clean and degrease the underside of the engine, which has benefitted from so rustproofing in the form of an oil leak.

IMG_8609 by Chris, on Flickr

The sh*t screens in the front are hard plastic, so we pulled them out, enabling a more thorough inspection of the front subframe and inner wings, both of which are exceptionally good if our (limited) previous experience of 159's and Brera is anything to go by;

IMG_8605 by Chris, on Flickr

IMG_8607 by Chris, on Flickr

There's obviously some surface rust that needs attention but I've left that covered in waxoil spray as a temporary fix.

Cleaned up;

IMG_8613 by Chris, on Flickr


I'd had enough by then and decided to go home - I was working on it at my parent's house...


... Rear Arches were FILTHY;

IMG_8615-2 by Chris, on Flickr

IMG_8617 by Chris, on Flickr

I didn't take the rear arch liners out as with the fabric type ones I feel they're easier to clean them with a pressure washer in situ. In my experience, if you take them out and you just end up chasing it down the road with the water blast, whilst still getting a face full of muddy water.

Clean pic;

IMG_8619-2 by Chris, on Flickr

IMG_8620 by Chris, on Flickr

I really did go home after this. And set about restocking all the oak rounds I cut yesterday, ready for chopping. And then I tidied the shed.

And now I'm sat lying on the sofa, back hurts, all my major joints hurt (I've got AS) feeling sorry for myself.

Edited by Zombie on Monday 11th June 00:18

[wal 45]

I've just sold my TBi Ti Sportwagon after having it for 4 years, had a 61 plate facelift one that had just short of 90k miles on it when it went. Your car looks very tidy and excellent work by you and your Dad, sure it'll turn out to be a bargain.

Utterly reliable in the time I had it, only extra work over the usual consumables I did were one of the arms (same one as yours!) and a couple of coolant hoses. I did have the fuel injectors cleaned and set up at around 85k miles (Autolusso) as they are a known problem on these (they leak and dilute the oil with fuel), car was noticeably better afterwards. It isn't cheap but if I was spending money on a TBi I'd do this first along with the turbo oil feed pipes and filter.

I caught my front subframe really early on and had it waxoyled, I ran mine with the undertray on but I know a lot of people don't to try and stop the subframe rot. Always used Alfa Workshop for servicing, they are really good with these cars but was impressed with Autolusso as well when they did my injectors. Guessing though you'll be doing your own looking at the work you've done so far.

You'll struggle to get much over 34 mpg from one of these even on a slow motorway run, worst I saw was 9 mpg in a long traffic jam...economical a TBi certainly isn't. I always thought the engine sounded a bit dull but it is a really excellent unit and would love one in a car that weighed half what a 159 does.

It's interesting what people have said about stalling them in the posts above., easiest car to stall I've ever had and was still occasionally doing it after 4 years. Don't know what it is but you're not alone!!

Good luck with the car and hope it works out OK for you.

[B'stard Child]

Zombie said:

B'stard Child said:

What a lovely looking wagon - I'm not averse to high mileage cars but I coughed a little at 208,000.

Have you found the original owner and spoken to him - be interesting to know his experiences and what the chuff he did to rack up that sort of miles!!!

It honestly feels as well screwed together as my Mum's brera, which has done 50k and appears to be far better in terms corrosion - sub frames are known for going rusty.

Not spoken to the previous owner, seems a bit of an odd thing to be doing really; Hi - I have your old car and have undertaken a light bit of stalking to track you and your phone number down...

I’ve always sent a letter - stuck my phone number in it and offered to return the call - never had anyone decline and often got a bonus result like an extra key etc

[davebem]

For the mileage it does look in remarkable condition, personally I think you got a good deal, sometimes with an Alfa you never know what your going to get anyway from one end of the price range to the other. To be fair to Alfa the body protection is very good, but I think the front and rear subframes were only powder coated black in a last ditch attempt to save money, VW have been doing the same recently. I think the suspension struts f&r will have the same cup collapsing issue as 147/156s in a few years time, also watch the rust on the bottom of the front wing where the paint wears off.

[Pommy]

Crikey, looks lovely but nearly £3k for a 8 year old 4 cylinder Alfa with over 200,000 miles and a bit of refurb needed - you are a braver chap than I!

I loved my 156 and understand how they get under your skin though.

[Zombie]

The replacement upper arm turned up this week so we replaced that yesterday.

Elearn (workshop manual) says that you should remove the arm after taking the suspension strut out, which seemed like a PITA, but that is based on our experiences with 156s etc.

But looking at it, we thought the (E18) bolts would come out using a spanner and wiggling the suspension strut...


IMG_7819-2 by Chris, on Flickr

IMG_7821-3 by Chris, on Flickr

IMG_7823-4 by Chris, on Flickr

IMG_7830-3 by Chris, on Flickr

IMG_7822-2 by Chris, on Flickr

Took about an hour, which was a pleasant surprise.

[Zombie]

Pommy said:

Crikey, looks lovely but nearly £3k for a 8 year old 4 cylinder Alfa with over 200,000 miles and a bit of refurb needed - you are a braver chap than I!

I loved my 156 and understand how they get under your skin though.

Which sums up this bizarre obsession we brits have with mileage. Age and maintenance regime are a bigger factor in future reliability than use. They (cars in general) really do NOT like not being used.

We also have the befit of a comparison in the form of my Mum's 2006 Brera, which is the typical one lady owner, 50k from new car. That has needed 1k spending on it this month on the form of timing chains, and now needs new rear springs - as does my 159 - the smart alecs on AO have bee counting the number of coils in the pics I posted...

The fact that it's an Alfa shouldn't be a factor, would you be saying the same thing if it were a BMW or VAG product? They all use the same or similar component underneath! the only real difference IMO is the amount of money the respective manufacturer has spent on realigning their customer's perception.

[Pommy]

Zombie said:

Pommy said:

Crikey, looks lovely but nearly £3k for a 8 year old 4 cylinder Alfa with over 200,000 miles and a bit of refurb needed - you are a braver chap than I!

I loved my 156 and understand how they get under your skin though.

Which sums up this bizarre obsession we brits have with mileage. Age and maintenance regime are a bigger factor in future reliability than use. They (cars in general) really do NOT like not being used.

We also have the befit of a comparison in the form of my Mum's 2006 Brera, which is the typical one lady owner, 50k from new car. That has needed 1k spending on it this month on the form of timing chains, and now needs new rear springs - as does my 159 - the smart alecs on AO have bee counting the number of coils in the pics I posted...

The fact that it's an Alfa shouldn't be a factor, would you be saying the same thing if it were a BMW or VAG product? They all use the same or similar component underneath! the only real difference IMO is the amount of money the respective manufacturer has spent on realigning their customer's perception.

Well I'm a brit in Australia and they also wouldn't been too keen on a 320,000kms Alfa for strong money and they definitely don't have an age or km issue here when it comes to prices.

Alfas aren't renowned for good depreciation so its surprising what yours cost that's all. And it does appear to have needed a bit of maintenance from yourself to get it 'clean' so I must admit I was surprised at the cost.

Would I say the same thing about a BMW or VAG? Yes - a 200,000 mile 8 year old car being nearly 3k is a lot for the types of cars being talked about.

As said, I do understand them getting under your skin having had one myself but I'm not sure I could bring myself to spend that much on a high mileage, old Alfa needing a chunk of visual refurb from a dealer masquerading as a private buyer when there are a few online not that much more with much lower mileage but admittedly not a Tbi however am unsure how much more of a draw that is.

Still admire what you've done and do like what you've got so all the best with it.