Jon Anderson wrote:

ears ago a friend had a nice clean Fiat X19 I admired. She offered to
let me take it out for a good spin, if I gave it a tune up, as her
boyfriend wouldn't touch it. Well after that disaster, neither would I.
Several very oddly bent wrenches are required just to access needed
fasteners on the distributor. But the best, though I certainly didn't do
it, was the water pump on that car. Now, being a dingy blonde, maybe she
got ripped off. But her car had air conditioning, something apparently
quite rare for that model. The stock water pump bearings would not take
the additional stress added by the compressor so it took a special pump
with a shaft extending out the back of the pump and alongside the block
to a support bearing. This made it impossible to remove the pump in the
car. So the entire engine had to be pulled out the bottom. $1400 for a
water pump, IIRC and 4 weeks waiting for it to come from Italy. I did
btw, enjoy the hell out of flogging it (the car) on some twisty roads.
Handles great. But I lost any interest I ever had in owning one...


Did you replace the timing belt every 20K miles?

Wes