Alfa Romeo 164 Register.com

So almost 10 years since I started this thread and while the last couple of years have been very quiet, I have done some more disassembly to get going again


- I finally managed to get the steering wheel off, which was really difficult
- Inner & outer door skins are off, no rust, as expected
- Engine bay behind firewall also cleared
- Luggage compartment is emptied & tow hook removed - I don't plan to put that back on the car...

No rust in the door sills, a little in rear strut housing and some slight surface rust in places, so all in all not so bad. I plan to remove all undercoating before rust is being handled and then paint. I plan to have the entire outside painted, as the last repaint didn't match the correct Rosso Proteo.

Some parts can now be cleaned and tested and some new ones will go one the car, so the list in the first post of this thread hopefully will be all done, once the car is ready to roll again - some day

Some more photos of the inside of the sills

Got the engine bay cleaned up a bit more and sent the intake pipes for rechroming. The valves seem to be fine, but working on the engine will be at a later point.

Brake servo is now removed (and some old mobile phone wiring), so next step will be to remove surface rust in the engine bay and prime it. Will be later, as some of the other cars require some attention before the summer season

Good news you keep on working on this project, very long timme indeed

And it will take quite a bit more time...

Had intake pipes rechromed, also for some other Busso V6's

looks promising

So slightly moving forward on the Q4, starting to put rust remover on some spots, then need to figure out how the best way is to clean the entire underside properly to found out exactly what needs to be treated/repaired/replaced. Deadline still some way into the future...

I guess it's either the fast or the right way to do it.
The problem of course is there will be a lot of micro cracks everywhere in the insulation and protection coating causing corrosion underneath. You won't easily find them without totally stripping the surfaces and sandblasting away all the rust.
So what's your idea about the car? A total restoration or just a major overhaul to working condition?

So prepared it for high pressure cleaning the car underneath, hopefully the coming weekend. This will be a simple clean to see, if more things appear. I am not expecting major things to appear, but I will take it from there and also hear what those fixing the rust spots will say. There is no need for blasting the entire car, as I know the condition of it pretty well after 20 years ownership.

So it will not be a concour restoration, but with a repaint and proper rust protection, and a proper mechanical walk through, I expect it to last for many more years & kilometers

Here are a couple more photos in preparation for some cleaning.

So yesterday I did some cleaning of the underbody protection and find no nasty surprises, happy with that

It was a messy job, but fortunately was able to do it outside - and I cleaned up well afterwards also

Rear wheel wells need some attention, and then some surface corrosion needs to be treated. I don't know when that will happen, but I will put some attention on the mechanical parts in the meantime.

I like

Hopefully the rust spots will be fixed in the near future, so that the shell is done and painting can happen

So I have taken the bumpers apart - so many rivets in these, but after 30 years and 550kkm I can only conclude that they are well made

Also the inner roof is now out, as I want to remove the front and rear windshields next weekend, so that it is prepared for rust work, which will hopefully start in April.

Looking at the pictures, I can’t believe the condition is so solid after so many kms - it just proves that using a car is better for it then it sitting about

The 164 was a solidly made car in so many ways, something Marchionne never really did understand...

Last weekend I got the windscreen out (it was cracked) and got the chrome lists of in good shape. I have new screen and lists. Also the rear screen was removed, but that ended up in a lot of pieces and the lists were not reusable - fortunately I have new parts here as well. Slight rust in the frames have to be fixed, in particular at the rear, since a leakage developed after having the car repainted in 2010.

So now it is ready to go to the rust repair

Wow, I must admit, I wasn't paying attention to the forum for a longer while, and I come back to this! Amazing work, document as much as you can from the Q4-specific details for the future generations which will have to undertake this Very inspiring! Fingers crossed and will come back to check out how you're doing, but I can already smell a Q4 meetup when you're done!

Not really much Q4 specific up to this point, but will be later. And good to have you back on the forum

Yes, a Q4 meetup would be a great idea, some day it should be possible

So started to take the engine apart. By handturning the engine, I got 5 - 6 bar on each cylinder, so happy with that.

Taking the top apart has mainly shown a good state of the parts, which I am happy about - and also expected to some point

A little bit of marks on one of the cams, will have to look a bit more into that.

Lots of photos for you to look at

The green fluid in some of the photos is fluid for checking where the potential water leak was - clearly it was water in the oil, shown by the mayonnaise

Beautiful work! Glad you're making good progress, she will be all nice and shiny when you're done Keep us posted!