Alfa Romeo Spider S2
1972 Alfa Romeo Spider 2000 S2 Owned by Russ Smith russ.smith@gmx.com Time owned Eight years Miles this month 12 Costs £244.56 Previously Radiator sprung a leak, putting paid to any ideas of springtime miles for a while...
Iended last month’s instalment waiting for a new radiator to be delivered, along with the various mounting rubbers required. While that was all being couriered up from Classic Alfa, I used the time to take out the old radiator and do some cleaning up in that area. That was when I made my first discovery – there were no top mounting rubbers where the radiator bolted to the inner front panel, just some very fat steel washers. That explains why one side of it had pulled away from the header tank, leading to the leak – it was all under stresses it hadn’t been designed for.
It’s one of those things with old classics that have been through many hands. When
you take ownership, unless something is glaringly obvious or you are a marque expert, small details like that are easily missed. You just accept that’s the way something is. It’s far from the first and I’m sure not the last thing to be rectified during my time with the Alfa.
On the positive side, once the coolant had been drained into twin drip trays under the car, removing the radiator took a matter of minutes. It’s just three hose clips, two bolts, then you pull it out of the U-shaped lower mounting rubber. In theory it should take longer because there would originally have been a fan shroud attached to the radiator with four bolts (something else I discovered from Classic Alfa’s online catalogue). But the corrosion on the bolts suggests it’s been gone a long time. A quick check of engine bay shots showed that many other Spiders are missing their shroud too – and because I’ve never had overheating issues, I’ll leave it that way. It does greatly improve access in that area anyway.
Fitting the new radiator was just as simple, until I went to reattach the hose that runs from the expansion tank to the neck below the radiator cap. It wouldn’t reach, because the outlet on the new radiator was on the other side. That’s because the expansion tank sits on the other inner wing on most left-hand-drive S2 Spiders. Not a big problem; I just needed a longer bit of 5∕16in (or 8mm) hose. Try finding that in Cambridge on a Sunday afternoon.
So no run out that day, and two days in the office meant it was Wednesday before I was able to finish the job and test the car for leaks. Of which there were none.
Right, bring on that sunshine. After missing much of last summer because of a damaged left knee, I want to put a decent number of miles on the Alfa this year.