The 166 project continues to evolve, all of the sheet metal is “hung” and lining up nicely. There was a considerable amount of time spent making that delicate mid-body detail line up between the doors and other panels and have the subtle compound curve. One of the trickier details was to get both door windows to open the same amount, the drives door left more glass exposed when fully down than the passenger door so we had to adjust and make compromises so they looked similar when down and up.

The grille on this car was a mess and had to be re-made. The original was soldered, riveted, welded and chrome plated over the years and began to look terrible. After making the templates we bent up some aluminum to make the surround and cross pieces and began to shape them with the shrinker/stretcher. Once it is all lined up and looking nice we will use the correct bucking style rivets to final assemble it.

Eben is making another copper “relief” (?) sculpture in a similar fashion to a life sized sturgeon that he made 4-5 years ago.

It starts out with 3-4 layers of MDF plywood glued together and hung on the wall. Next step is to draw a Rhino on clear paper and project it up on the plywood and drawing the animal on the plywood. Now is where the super tricky part comes in, carve away the plywood to make the shape more dimensional by using chisels and angle grinders with cutting attachments.

When the plywood carving is finished he will place 20 gauge copper over it and hammer the copper to duplicate the shape and elevation change on the plywood. The reason for taking all of the time to make the plywood “negative” is so you can make more than one copper “positive”.

We are currently going through a few engines. I did a post a few months ago regarding a tear down of a Ferrari 250GTE engine and we are in the process of assembling it. We had a set of new forged pistons made, cleaned and repainted all the castings and drilled and cleaned the crankshaft. I finished the wrinkle finish and it came out perfectly, now I have to run the ignition wires through the tubes.

Since we are assembling a Ferrari V-12, we decided that now is the time to break down two Porsche engines. One is a 1975 Porsche 911 engine that has a blown piston. Someone installed a very crude turbocharger system with no provision to retard the timing or increase the fuel pressure upon boost so this damage came as no surprise. It seems to me that major automotive companies dedicate millions of dollars to develop a reliable and powerful turbo-charged engine so why should a shop think that they can provide a working system for short money?

The other engine is a 1964 Porsche 356C engine. This engine had a few bad valves that were not sealing and when we popped the heads off we found broken rings on a few pistons. We often do not like to “split the case” but not knowing the history of this engine we decided to see how the bearings looked. Boy, I am glad that we did. The bearings were down to copper and the end float was .010 instead of the .002-5 that the book calls for. We are going to install brand new 86mm pistons and cylinders, lighten the flywheel, port the heads and turn the crank to first under size. Since the engine already had Weber carburetors we feel that we can get away with some performance modifications as jets and venturis are available for them.

We have overhauled 4-5 of these engines with 86mm bores and lightened flywheel and it really perks these engine up. I am so amazed at how well designed these things are to where they are so docile and easy to run while having tons (relatively speaking) of low end torque.

I bought another Ferrari 365 GTC/4 recently, a car that is blue chirao metallic just like the color we painted our project C/4.

With original paint and interior this car is so special. It is clean and detailed nicely even with some old age related deterioration. The interior has that special smell associated with leather, wool carpets, latex foam mixed with the years of oil and gas fumes!

The other reason that this car is so appealing is because the engine and transmission have been overhauled. There are photos of the engine break down and of it on the dynomometer, service invoices and dyno sheets. The engine does not leak a drop of oil and the transmission shifts like a dream.

As of this entry, the car has sold but I still have my 365 GTC/4 for sale. We are currently assembling the body, getting all of those tiny trim pieces assembled around the door frames. This car will probably be one of the nicest ones out there with fresh engine, trans, brakes, paint, and detailing. I am excited to do another post on this project.

My Father used to have a Mack B-61 single axle tractor that did not get used as much as he would have liked. He sold the truck but always wanted another one.

When he found this low mileage B-42 he had to have it. Unfortunately the truck has a gas engine with very low power but we will probably convert it to diesel. This truck is a little more usable as a dump truck than the single axle tractor, hauling fire wood, gravel and to transport a 356 Porsche to the sand blast shop!