I finished installing new brake pads. All of them were worn down to the sensors and one was worn down to about 1mm at one corner. I drove a gentle 500 miles after the service pads light came on. As others have noticed, brake pad wear on the multi-piston solid mount calipers tends to be uneven. Some of the pads had irregular wear as well (rough spots, grooves). Once the service brake pads light was on solid, I got a static on AM radio stations when braking.

Be sure to open your hood before you lift the car, or use 2 jacks or a proper shop lift to lift the car evenly. Otherwise you may find that the hood will not open.
The hydraulic fluid reservoir seems to be pretty generous, so I did not have any overflow issues even though the fluid had been topped up at 20,000 miles for the brake line recall.
Maybe it is just me, but the car seems quieter now.
The piston retractor tool that I bought worked well on the fronts, but I found that removing the outside pad and inserting a crowbar in it's place worked best for the rears.

After reconnecting the battery and getting the usual Christmas tree of death on the first start up, I had the car ignore the interior door lock button (3rd startup, no warning lights). It would neither lock nor unlock. It worked fine when I started the car again the next day. Perhaps this proves that it is an Alfa?

How much lash are the axles supposed to have? I could turn the wheel about 2" at the tread to take up lash. That seems like a lot to me.

 

I changed the oil in Giulia myself (first time I did the work) today (38500 miles). It took about 1.5 hours including checking oil level, resetting service interval, finding tools. The used oil was brown-ish rather than black. The new oil strongly resembled Maple syrup ready to pour on pancakes.

I bought Pennzoil Platinum Euro LX 0W-30 from Qwest on Trimble in San Jose. Beware, their out of date credit card reader was rejected by my credit card company.

I filled only 5 quarts in spite of the engine capacity being 5.5 quarts. This yielded 1 tick below max.

I added oil to the filter before installing it. Due to the angle of the filter, it can only be filled half way or the oil will spill out during installation. The tiny oil filter acted like a TARDIS and took an amazing amount of oil to get to the 1/2 full level. Removing the old oil filter was the only messy operation, as it is angled and quite a bit of oil runs down the outside of the filter while you unscrew it.

The oil pan plug has a rubber seal. I probably should keep a spare on hand, just in case.

Don't forget that the intake valves of the 2.0T are operated by oil pressure. The car may hickup once or twice to clear air from the lines when it is first started. Pre-filling the filter should reduce this behavior.

My previous oil change was at Dawydiak S.F. I had asked them to replace a missing underpan screw (very long, boring story), which they promised to do at no charge. Not only was the screw still missing but most of the other screws were barely hand tight. Some were loose (threaded in but not seated). I think only 2 were tightened. It is a good idea to count bolts when tightening, it is very easy to miss one. There are a total of 19, unless you are missing one...

Also, the oil change reminder is 9600 miles (16k km), not the 10,000 stated in the manual.

Lots of scrapes on the underside of my front fascia <sigh>. None visible from the top.

 

Mine took 6 quarts to get to full. Good tips!

 

nah, insignificant amount.

I jacked up only the front, and when I rear the level I had jacked up the rear in order to get it a little closer to level.

 

Now my confidence in the electronic readout has fallen. After 5000 miles of driving I noticed that the oil fill changed from the mid point to 1 tick lower. So I added 8 ounces of oil (1/4 quart). I expected this to be enough to raise the reading at least 2 ticks. 250 miles later, the reading has not changed.

 

Continuing my saga of HVAC issues with the car getting very warm inside when it is cold outside. It was -4F in Hope Valley tonight, according to the exterior thermometer. The nearest weather station is reporting 0F, but that area was "warmer" according to the thermometer in Giulia. Thus, I do not think there is any fault with my exterior thermometer. I had to set the interior temperature control to max cool to get a tolerable interior temperature. Max cool also turns the fan up to max, making the interior noisy and windy. Further down the road it warmed up to 19F and a temperature setting of 63F produced comfortable air. I was wearing a long sleeved shirt and jeans, no jacket so it is not as if my warm clothes were the cause of this fault.

Is anybody else experiencing this craziness?

 

Continuing my saga of HVAC issues with the car getting very warm inside when it is cold outside. It was -4F in Hope Valley tonight, according to the exterior thermometer. The nearest weather station is reporting 0F, but that area was "warmer" according to the thermometer in Giulia. Thus, I do not think there is any fault with my exterior thermometer. I had to set the interior temperature control to max cool to get a tolerable interior temperature. Max cool also turns the fan up to max, making the interior noisy and windy. Further down the road it warmed up to 19F and a temperature setting of 63F produced comfortable air. I was wearing a long sleeved shirt and jeans, no jacket so it is not as if my warm clothes were the cause of this fault.

Is anybody else experiencing this craziness?

Sounds like the issue is in one of your internal thermometers...
Can you read them with MES?

 

MES says some curious things, nothing definitive though. This is with the car inside my 45F garage, 1.5 hours after having driven it. The car is on, but the engine is not running.

Requested air temperature is set to 64F but MES shows 64C. This seems likely to be an MES issue, but maybe I should try setting the system to metric units?
My always too warm wife took the system out of "sync" mode and set the passenger side to 71F. That might be contributing to the issue in Hope Valley but it is not the cause since I am having problems with overheating when the outside air is cold when the system is in SYNC.
Left distribution air flap reports as 0% while right distribution air flap reports as 100%. Other flaps report as middle of range. I get plenty of air on the left side when I am on the road. Maybe the system is confused regarding which side is getting heat?
All temperature sensor values are plausible. Of course the interior of the car is still warmer than the outside temp.
Sunshine sensors report as 0, as they should. I usually drive at night, so that 0 should not be a problem. Reading too high would cause the interior to be cold, not hot.

 

I find my car getting warmer and warmer during summer drives, almost as if the air conditioning is growing weary. Maybe something similar? Hoping for better A/C performance in my 2020 MY.

 

In your case I would guess that the evaporator is icing up. Do you have the fix installed (an update to the FW)? Presumably a defrost cycle needs to be run from time to time.

 

I just got my car back from Walnut Creek Alfa. Nice operation, easy to get to, rental car provided, McLaren show room next to the service desk...

They installed the 85 update to the FW, so I now have the larger rear view camera and hopefully fewer problems with the system restarting and/or turning on by itself and draining the battery. I do not have the menu option to disable easy exit. I do have the really loud chime for the lane departure warning now. It seems a little more "trigger happy" than before.

Strange comment by the service desk guy: he said he had never seen a Giulia that was not tracked that needed brake pad replacement. He thought my brake wear was normal until I pointed out that I had replaced the pads fairly recently myself.

 

Since the 085 update, I have had no random reboots. Regarding the dead battery issue that I have experienced a few times, I really think it was my android phone maintaining a phone call connection. there have been more than a few times where I get in the car, start it up, plug in my phone to the USB cable, AA starts up, and I have no audio. Turns out that somehow it has made a phone call... to my number. If I hang up using the Phone button on the steering wheel, it disconnects and I get audio back. Really weird, and could totally be my phone doing it, not the car.

 

I'm not sure how much of this is my phone and how much is the 85 FW update.

With the car running, terminate phone call allowing the far end to drop, I got the silent treatment from Giulia. Once I pushed the disconnect button on the steering wheel the audio came back on, but it switched to "media" when I had been listening to the radio.

I now seem to get advertisements for tunes available from google, popping up on the top of the screen of my navigation map. That is clearly a google issue with their latest new and degraded OTA update.

To go with that, when I got out of range of the radio station I switched to "media" and got such a google tune rather than the tunes on my flash. I did nothing to select said google tunes, although there is some chance that with my phone stowed in my armrest cubby something inside the cubby managed to randomly do said selection.

 

Maybe here is part of why the MY2018 Giulia service manual is no longer available:

The 2.0T muffler removal instructions are incomplete and incorrect. Instructions that the muffler removal instructions need to reference are also missing or at least I cannot find it. Thus, try one to install my Fiamenghi Titanium exhaust was a fail. As far as I can tell:

Remove rear belly pan (instructions only say remove rear side belly pan--singular)**
Remove rear side belly pans.
Remove rear fascia and diffuser (no mention of this in muffler removal and no instructions in the manual)*.
Take 4 muffler bracket bolts loose. Two of these cannot be reached without removing the fascia--as far as I can tell anyway.
Take center exhaust pipe clamp loose.
Swear at the thing and bust knuckles until you can get the center joint apart and the center muffler support rubber off of its hanger.
My OEM exhaust pipe has a lot of rust on it--it is not $$.

* I stopped here because this is a delicate project best done with instructions and a helper. Maybe there is a way to get the hanger rubbers off without taking the bracket loose?
** Some vents in my rear center belly pan were defective (plugged with plastic) as made. The pan had a handful of dirt and rocks on it too.

 

OK, I gave up and hired Larry Jr. at Alfa Parts Exchange (APE) to install my Fiamenghi Titanium exhaust. He took the rear fascia off (it snaps on) to get clear access to the muffler. Removing the rear fascia is definitely a 2 person job. Without 2 people to do the job there is a substantial chance of damaging the fascia. Somehow I managed to forget to bring the wiring harness for the valve, so I drove the car for a while "wide open". Curiously outside of the car it measured only 5dB louder than stock, but inside of the car it was much louder.

Here are some pictures I took after I reopened things to install the wiring harness.

Note the cast titanium valve body and the minimized number of welds. There is a little bit of blueing on the welds, but nothing out of control.

I forgot to weigh it <sigh>. It certainly weighs less than 10 pounds while the OEM parts weigh in excess of 20 pounds.

About the valve, which I have partially working:
With the valve closed the interior of the car varies from a little quieter to a little louder than OEM. In this position plus D mode plus full throttle I got an alarmingly loud hissing sound. It is probably not a good thing to do, even though I did not get a CEL.

WIth the valve open the interior of the car varies from pretty loud (low RPM) to only modestly louder than OEM.

What Larry did:

Put car on rack (very helpful).
Remove rear wheels.
Remove 3 rear underpans. The center pan is very straightforward. The side pans have one of those push pin plastic rivets to swear at; the pin is at the lower rear corner of the wheel well, plus the one on the right has the vent hose for the battery attached to it. Larry had three tools on hand for dealing with those rivets; if one doesn't work try the next and if worst comes to worst the rivets are cheap and readily available.
Remove rear fascia. First remove several more of those plastic rivets at the back edge of the wheel well. This is why the wheels were removed. Once all of the rivets are out, the rest of the fascia is held in with snaps and it is removed by pulling on it. 3 wiring connectors have to be disconnected and if you don't have a helper to hold the fascia up you have a problem.
Next up is the muffler. Take 4 bolts out to loosen the hangers take the joint to the rear of the resonator loose, pop the rubber off of the hanger between this joint and the muffler, and then the grunting starts. It helps to have some tall jacks that can support the muffler while you twist and yank and hammer on it. There are advantages to replacing the entire exhaust rather than axle back. Be careful to not bend the two fragile bodywork support brackets that hang immediately behind the muffler.

As an extra plus, when Larry re-installed everything the rear fascia mated up to the rear fenders more accurately than as-delivered.

Fabio Fiamenghi suggested a different method of removing the muffler. Instead of removing the rear fascia take the three nuts off that hold each fake tip in place. Slide the tip forward to gain access to the plastic spring clips that hold the panels that hold the fake tips in place. Unclip the plastic panels, then you can remove the fake tip, gain access to the rear muffler hanger bolt and gain some ability to slide the muffler backwards to disconnect joints. This trick should be very handy for installing real tips without removing the muffler.

 

I forgot to weigh it <sigh>. It certainly weighs less than 10 pounds while the OEM parts weigh in excess of 20 pounds.

The OEM axle-back section weighs in at 13.0 kg, so about 28 lbs.
At least that's what these guys measured:

 

Spring has sprung 3 months early (note the mud on the exhaust pipe pictured above) and my driveway is very muddy.
Maybe some mud flaps are in my future?

 

I've avoided the dirt roads (plenty of those around me) but have a good layer of Michigan, New York, and Ontario winter deposits. The back is even worse.

 

FWIW: Nokian R3 tires are SNOW tires, not MUD tires. You need big chunky blocks to get traction in mud. It was a bit of a wild ride up my driveway and TC/ESC cut in hard a couple of times (very annoying when it cuts power). I may try powering through in D next time...

 

Got my first Blackstone oil report back, from the 48k mile oil change:

Metals lower than average; some metals are much lower than average. No measurable fuel, water or coolant contamination. Viscosity etc in range. All of this in spite of my going 2000 miles longer than average before the oil change.

The only thing that looked at all abnormal was Boron at a little above twice average. How does Boron get in the oil?

 

How does Boron get in the oil?

Sources of Boron

Sources of Boron

testoil.com

 

So if I read it correctly, high Boron levels indicate that the oil is not "spent" and is actually a good thing.
Hopefully it does not indicate Boraxo hand soap contamination of the oil.

 

What oil?

 

Interesting. They did not test the Euro spec Pennzoil, nor the 0W-30 grade. However, their low rating for Motul (which version?) is perhaps alarming.

 

If you search his channel I believe there are a few other comparisons that may have the types tested.

 

OK, here is a new one for anyone doing an oil change on a 2.0T Giulia (QV and diesel may have similar issues, I do not know). I do not recollect seeing this in the service manual or the forums.

The front underpan is fastened in place with 19 screws. Those screws are NOT identical to each other. In particular some of the screws have a 1.5mm shoulder while others have a 3mm shoulder. The 1.5mm shoulder screws are apparently for locations that thread into something solid, like a cross member, while the 3mm shoulder screws are for locations that use clip on nuts.

If you use the 3mm shoulder screws in the 1.5mm shoulder locations the underpan can rattle.
If you use the 1.5mm shoulder screws in the 3mm shoulder locations you will not have enough 1.5mm shoulder screws to reassemble, plus the 1.5mm screws may allow the parts to shift.

 

The latest news: my car is experiencing intermittent CAN bus communication faults. Almost every module is reporting multiple intermittent faults, all with CAN bus communications. I also see low battery voltage. For some reason auto start-stop is working even with the battery reporting 31% charge status. I have ordered a new AGM battery from Pep Boys. Said battery is currently on sale and is the only non-OEM battery that I could find that is a proper fit. It is AGM, avoiding the need for the vent that most batteries lack.

I had an episode 2 weeks ago with the transmission "jumping out of gear", then re-engaging once I let off the accelerator. It did this twice, while I was cruising on the freeway. I do not recollect anyone else reporting such behavior. For now I will assume that this is the same as the CAN bus fault.

I have confirmed that my ECM has not been updated per W05.
I have confirmed that my DTCM probably has the wrong SW version to allow Race mode to work.

 

I had an episode 2 weeks ago with the transmission "jumping out of gear", then re-engaging once I let off the accelerator. It did this twice, while I was cruising on the freeway. I do not recollect anyone else reporting such behavior. For now I will assume that this is the same as the CAN bus fault.

Were you in Advanced efficiency mode? It does exactly that in A mode.

 

Hopefully the new battery will take care of it.

 

I misunderstood what happened in this case... quite strange behavior...

 

That was my fault for not explaining what I experienced properly.

My hope is that it went into sailing mode for a moment as I let off the accelerator for a slight downgrade, then when I tapped the accelerator CAN bus errors resulted in the transmission not re-engaging. I did not think at the time to see if the problem happened in N mode. This behavior happened twice and has not been observed since then.

I did pop open my center console in order to install a DNAR switch and a harness for a controller for my Fiammenghi valve controller. It is alternatively possible that this disturbance created some fault on a cable that carries CAN bus signals. Note that the Fiammenghi adapter does not touch any CAN bus signals, as the DNAR switch on an MY2018 Giulia lacks any communications.

FWIW: The center console is massively complex and overweight. I wonder how much of the 100kg weight reduction in the new GTA comes from getting stuff like this under control. I also wonder to what extent drilling out plastic bits could lighten it. It appears that a lot of plastic is solid for the purpose of making molding easy and cost effective, rather than for strength or rigidity. Also, in many places there are many layers of plastic apparently to make assembly easier

 

@lockem Every time I connect MES and check each module I see a lot of CAN comms errors similar to yours but perhaps not as much. The only errors I worry about are those in the PCM, TCM and ABS modules most of which will throw a warning or a CEL. The CAN/Comms errors will not show dashboard warning. I accept this is normal for the Giulia as has been the case over 3 years of ownership.

 

I had CAN bus errors when I would leave the SGW bypass installed. Once I removed it, no problems at all. I no longer have that issue though, for some unknown reason. It's installed permanently now. fyi.

 

I got in the car and drove to Pep Boys to get the Champion AGM battery. I enabled my OBD2AA IBS voltage tracking on the AA screen and the battery voltage immediately jumped to 14.3V (max charge rate) and when I turned the car off only a few minutes later the apparent resting voltage was 12.6 rather than the 11.7 that I had observed the day before. My experience is that this is classic weak battery (low acid level?) behavior. Also AA stopped working shortly there after, further pointing to a fault of some kind.

 

Next update:

Use scan DTC in MES to check for and clear error codes. It can find error codes on modules that it otherwise does not understand.

If you try to connect to a module in MES before the car is on, your next step is to shut down MES, disconnect the cables and start over. MES apparently does not recover well from this user error.

My phone disconnect problem still happened with the new battery and a good battery voltage being reported. Since the phone is reporting that OBD2AA is crashing, I suspect that the fault lies in my phone and/or the hack SW that I have loaded onto it.

The resting voltage across my battery appears to be properly stable now.

I have not observed any new error codes. Only time will tell...

Walnut Creek Alfa has agreed to do the SW updates this Monday. Hopefully this will go better than the first try.

 

Back from Walnut Creek Alfa, here is what I got:

According to them, the ECM and TCM are already up to date for my car. DTCM was updated (for a fee). They cannot figure out how to sample the transmission fluid for Blackstone. My SW versions are now:

ECM MM10JAHW232-00-G522TA10-000

TCM 10344202761-20-GK0901OD2FN

DTCM M0045027.01-21-M0110265-501

The first batch of numbers are the HW version. If that does not match your car, the rest is meaningless. Can anyone confirm if these really are the right versions for a car with W05 installed?