We are doing some work on a 1951 Ferrari 212 Vignale coupe and one of the projects was to fill in a number of holes in the front and rear bumpers. When we ground the chrome off to get to the parent material we realized that there were multiple layers of copper and nickel which almost disguised these as being made of steel. We kept grinding deeper and deeper to find lead and then finally brass.

We had made 4 sets of bumpers for Cunningham C-3′s with Vignale bodies and the originals that we copied were made from brass so I was confident that these were as well. It turns out that after grinding away we did indeed locate the brass parent material. I am stumped as to why they would have used brass sheet stock to make bumpers, maybe someone knows why they chose brass over steel.

After I filled in the holes with the TIG welder they were sent to the chrome shop. After a short amount of time in the Cyanide tank the bumpers all but disappeared and now look as though they were at the bottom of the sea for 100 years.

Turns out that the brass was so thin from multiple accidents and had been leaded over so when they hit the tank they disappeared. We decided that with the cost of brass to re-make the bumpers out of steel

Time to make another set of Vignale bumpers!
I will post photos of the new ones soon.

Are cars like this worth anything. The owner thinks that since they have engines and other major components that “they have got to be worth something”. I am not sure because there are probably hundreds of thousands of these things in the exact condition of these cars. Am I totally wrong?

A guy stopped by the other day to have us look over his 1997 Porsche 993 Cab, we have sold a few lately and we were able to provide the owner of this car an idea as to what it is worth. He has asked me to help him sell the car and I do not think that it will be too hard a task.

In my database I have a number of people who have asked me to let them know when a clean 993 comes up and with the beauty of email I can contact these people instantly.

I think that in these colors and with the low miles (under 40K) the car should pull $45,000. These are the last generation of air cooled Porsches and they are a great drive while becoming very collectible

A 1979 Ferrari 308 came into our shop recently for a tune up and check over when we discovered that the compression and leak down numbers were too low to spend any time trying to make it run any better.

The engine came out of the chassis with usual difficulty, dirt mixed with grease and oil on top of the never ending flow of coolant spilling in your face. When people ask me how much to overhaul the engine I budget $3500 just to remove and re-install the engine to the chassis. It is a filthy job and no matter how many you have done you always end up struggling with one thing or another.

While the engine showed low compression in a few cylinders (60psi) and terrible leak down numbers on 3 cylinders (between 15-40%) there were no other major surprises. The water pump feels good, carburetors are clean and nice and distributor caps and wires look new and well done. This may actually be “just” an engine overhaul that does not lead into 1,000 other little things.