Alfa 147 advice

A friend of mine is going through a bit of a tough time at the moment and when his trusty transport (a battered, very high mileage Renault Trafic) turned out to be not-so-trusty, he was left in the Gloucestershire countryside with no wheels and virtually no budget.
After several days of him working from home and us exchanging "cheapest car on eBay" messages, he happened upon a possible solution, whilst signing the death sentence on the Trafic.
The garage had a 2003 Alfa 147 1.6 TwinSpark loitering around looking a bit sad. With only 85k miles and a reasonably solid body and mechanicals, my friend decided they needed each other and agreed a price with the garage owner (based on a thorough inspection and tour of the likely worst bits).
So, now he's got it, he is going to give it a full service and replace the front suspension, so that it's a bit less likely to kill him straight away.
You can tell he's one of us, because he'd already bought replacement Alfa badges on eBay before he got her home.

So, the questions to all of you amazing car people are:

What does he need to look out for?

and

What would you do if it were yours...?

Take it to see Roger at Power Italia for a health check. Rog loves those things. "Things do go wrong with them, but everything's cheap to fix". See what he says.

Make sure it's had a cambelt change! The worst for snapping are the 1.6's.

Thanks Trappy and T. I think a trip to Essex might be beyond his current spending plans, but I'll definitely remind him about the timing belt.

TS cam variators are prone to failing so if it's got a top end rattle that's a £300 component not including labour to fit it, with a belt as there's no point doing that work with replacing the timing kit.

Cheers, Joe, I'm passing on all info as I get it. My friend is still just about smiling at his purchase...!

One task that my newly Alfa-d up friend has discovered needs doing, is the gear change plate (apparently a common job). He thought it was the springs and bushes around the gear lever, but it turns out these are fine.
Obviously, he has access to the same Internet and forums as I do, but he is *extremely* French (and believe me, I've met some very French people) and may not fully understand the language used in English online groups. So, on his behalf, does anyone have any experience of doing this job? Any hints that I can pass on?
I haven't called Roger, as he is so far from us that I can't promise him any work at all resulting from his goodwill.

Also interesting

It's a horrible job - the mechanism seizes up at the gearbox end then the cables stretch and to replace the whole lot is lengthy and expensive. Had a 147 once with this problem but settled for freeing up the seized bits and living with the floppy cables, because I'd already spent shed loads on refurbing all the suspension. Nice car though.

Update: well, the inevitable has happened - the cambelt snapped and now the poor bloke is back where he started.
It anyone knows of any ultra-cheap daily bangers within an hour of Gloucester, please let me know. Also, does anyone want a non-running 147?!