I have long been irritated by the weak torque of my Alfa 156 TS. That’s why I was so persistent to upgrading the final gear to the facelift version. The upgrade improves the low rpm performance, albeit it is still not quite right until I found the root cause eventually, I reckon. The broken air intake hose.
Not long after have I bought the Alfa 156, I learnt that the air intake hose is a consumable part. Therefore, I stocked a spare hose long time ago and checked the hose regularly. From the top, the hose looked fine each time. And I’ve overlooked the problem as a result.
How did I find it?
All of sudden, the car refused to start. By turning the key, the engine started as usually but quit immediately just like this.
The computer gave all sorts of error codes.
This time I took the hose off and checked the bottom, then bingo.
Side by side, it isn’t that easy to spot the problem. Stretching it is the only way to check if it is still ok. The dilemma is that stretching it could actually cause the splitting of the already on-the-blink hose……
Anyway, with the new hose installed, car starts, code can be cleared successfully. The most important thing is that torque below 2500 rpm is back, I can tell that’s what the normal performance the car should have.
Though the actual air intake volume is still deviated from the desired figure, it is already far better than before.
August 2022
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