Alfa Spider 2000 S2
My last Our Cars episode, in the December 2020 issue, produced my largest ever email bag. It recounted the tale of how the Spider had twice ground to a halt seemingly from lack of fuel while coming home from the British Motor Museum on the hottest day of the year. Needing a rest on the verge with the bonnet up to let the heat out. It quickly became clear that plenty of other owners of Alfas and other classics had suffered from similar problems in the past. Some even had some pretty convincing answers.
The email that really struck a chord with me was from reader Ken Taylor. His 1972 Alfa Romeo Berlina 2000 had done exactly the same thing on a holiday to France. His mechanic eventually traced the cause to a clogged fuel filter. Both cars have the same filter, one of those domed-glass-bowled devices mounted to the offside inner wing.
A big reason for why I was so ready to accept his diagnosis was the feeling of guilt that swept over me. In the nine years I’ve owned the car I’d never once thought to change the filter. In fact I’d not even really noticed it, buried in an inaccessible corner where from no angle can you see the glass dome, which points downwards and is obscured from below by the Alfa’s winged sump. Guilty or not, that filter definitely needed changing. I felt even worse about my neglect when a new filter and sealing rubber cost just £9.13 from Classic Alfa.
Removing the air filter and expansion tank allowed access, though as with so many jobs in the Alfa’s engine bay, working on the filter housing involved ‘seeing with my fingers’. Thankfully, an unusually good diagram in the workshop manual made it clear what my hands were looking for and I soon had the dome unclipped and a handful of filter (and petrol).
The whole job took me less than half an hour, and yes, the old filter and glass dome were both stuffed with fine debris. That must be restricting flow, and perhaps the effect increases as things get unusually hot. As the problem only occurred at an extreme temperature the only way to test the hypothesis is to wait until the mercury soars to 36 degrees again, then head out across country. Writing this on a cold, damp December morning, I’m rather looking forward to that.