People have accused me of being too technical on this blog, they think that I should make it more appealing by showing great photos of the cars and making it more slick but this is my effort and the technical stuff it what interests me. I was going to work with a marketing guy to get us a nice image, capitalize on the sex appeal of these cars but it just does not work for me and I do not have the time to stage scenarios and have posed photos. What I am documenting is the day to day of what happens at the shop and why working on machines whether it be tractors, air conditioning units or classic cars, this is what I am interested in and hope that my readers can appreciate it.

Here is a slightly staged photo of a spectacular casting that like so many castings by Ferrari is both beautiful and a marvel of engineering. The forethought that went into making this to work as a transmission casting, differential housing, oil sump  as well as the surface to carry the engine is remarkable. It also carries internal porting for the scavenge and pressure side of the dry-sump oiling system for the engine. Since the transmission has its own oil pump, there is porting for pressurized oil system to lubricate the gears and bearings.  Ferrari spent so much time engineering this sort of part while selling so few cars that it seems that they should have been even more expensive to purchase when new.

I hope you can enjoy these photo. By the way, this part is huge, you could fit about 5 cats inside it.

Transaxle housing for Ferrari 512BB

Transaxle Casting Ferrari

A few posts ago I reported on a 1984 Ferrari 512 Berlinetta Boxer that had a knocking sound in second gear. It sounded to me like a bad cluster or a bearing with some debris caught in the race. When I jokingly called my main man Geof at Partsource (http://www.ferrariparts.com/)  asking him what he could sell me to fix the problem without disassembling the transmission, he told me that I was the 3rd person in the last month asking for the second gear cluster!

He wanted me to get him the acid etched part numbers on the gears to determine if they were shaved or ground gears but I said, “who cares if they are shaved or ground, I want a matched set of ground”.  Leave it to Ferrari to have even thought shaved gears would hold up to the torque that these parts need to withstand. By the way, if the odometer and the condition of this car is correct, there are less than 10,000 miles on this transmission! Great stuff! I could not find any acid etch numbers to confirm that the gears were shaved but I am sure that they were and not the higher quality ground gears.

As you can see in the photos, the smaller gear has many pits from metal fatigue, not from abuse or lack of lubrication, just poor quality materials and process. What a bummer.   Geof just located gears from a Testarossa transmission that cost a prohibitave amount of money but at least this transmission will not be apart for months and months while we wait for gears to be re-made!

Ferrari Boxer transmission repair

Later this week I will post this Jaguar XKE 3.8 cylinder head on ebay so if anyone needs a very nice head make me an offer or I can send you the ebay link. I have some other heads for Jaguar XK series cars which will be listed on ebay as well but I think this 9-1 compression high lift head is the most valuable.

We have some other errant parts for Jaguars, 2 complete engines, 2 complete manual transmissions, a few odd intake manifolds so if you know anyone interested let me know.

Cylinder head for XKE E-Type 3.8

It has been 10 years since this 1984 Ferrari 512BBI has been serviced so the owner shipped the car up so we could do a “major service” which includes replacing the timing belts, tensioner bearings and perform a valve lash. I drove the car 10 miles to get a feel for what else it may need and observed a nasty clunking noise in the transmission when in second gear so we have one more thing to repair on this car. Since we replace the bearings that support the timing belt drive pulleys we have to separate the engine from the transmission casting anyhow so it is no more work to get into the transmission to inspect for problems.

It turns out that the second gear cluster has some minor pitting as thought the gear (Ingranaggio 2 Velocitia) was not heat treated properly and the pitting is only on

Transmission Ferrari 512

few teeth. It is amazing that the noise was so prominent when driving the car with such a minor flaw on 3 of the 30 or so teeth. Anyhow, not sure how we are going to find new parts, I may research repairing this cluster because it is going to be a struggle to find these parts.

After spending a very busy 12 hours to remove the transmission on the 1935 Rolls Royce, I was not looking forward to removing the transmission in this 4-1/2 liter Bentley. The owner of the car was telling me that the car had a trick overdrive set up but I wasn’t really listening so when I finally crawled under the car and say what he was talking about, my motivation improved.

This car has a 4 speed transmission that isn’t geared high enough and the engine runs out of steam at 60 mph and about 50 mph the engine is spinning too fast to feel comfortable. To remedy this, a different ratio ring and pinion could be made for the rear axle but then you would have a very tall first gear which would be hard on the clutch. A shop in the UK installed this great little overdrive unit behind the transmission to lower the engine speed when cruising around.

The car is here at our shop for us to remove the non-synchronised transmission and install a transmission that has been modified with dog teeth type gear engagement to make shifting a little bit easier. This is a racing style of transmission that allows super quick gear changing without the crunching associated with a typical “crash box”. The way the transmission is set up, there is only a tiny amount of travel to go from one gear to the next even though the shifter is about 3 feet long! The owner of the car has some great connections in the UK and seems to know all the guys for this clever type of work on pre-war cars. I am not sure if the new transmission is made from all new parts and new castings or if it is a nice original unit but the workmanship inside is stellar. Once I do a few modifications and make an adaptor the car will be on the road so I can test out how much the overdrive knocks down the engine speed. I am guessing the engine RPM will drop by 15%.

Original Bentley transmission with Overdrive unit

New parts inside Bentley transmisison

Our blog administrator is going to be messin’ with the Ferrari Craft format this week. Thank you for your patience while we work on spiffing up our site.

After struggling for 12 hours to get the transmission out of the white 1935 Rolls Royce, our diagnosis of the severely worn clutch was confirmed. The lining is down to the copper rivets and has blown away in areas. More critical is that one of the 4 release arms is broken as you can see in the photo. I have been searching high and low for the part and would like to find one rather than make one because I am sure the part is extremely strong and well made.

The hardest thing about removing the transmission was getting all of the cotter pins out of the dozens and dozens of linkage rods that operate the brakes and other controls. The original cotter pins are super hard and brittle and just do not come out of there easily. With all of the oil that had leaked out all over the place for the last 75 years, at least nothing was rusted in place!

1935 Rolls Royce Clutch lining

Broken Rolls Royce Clutch release arm

Sorry for all the posts on this car but since I cannot seem to get the car finished it gets lots of attention from me. I am totally obsessed with the color of this car and on a rainy overcast day, the color comes alive like nothing else I have seen.

I installed an MSD ignition box to replace the Magnetti Marelli Capacitive Discharge dino-bot (as in dinosaur) but now I am getting RFI interference that makes it start hard, like it is too advanced at crank speed. Another issue which is not a surprise is the jetting in the carburetors which need to be changed. I should be getting my new rich-lean indicator from JEGS today and have already welded in the threaded oxygen sensor taps to fully dial the jetting in. If I could figure out the RFI noise issue the car would be dialed in and sorted and great to drive now that there is a new steering rack in the front end.

1979 Ferrari 512BB

512 Berlinetta

Maybe I should take the time to get the 365 Berlinetta Boxer out of the depths of the basement to have a major spread of the horizontally opposed 12 cylinder Ferrari Street cars. This photo shows the 1979 512 BB, the last generation of BB, the 1984 BBI in red and the first generation Testarossa with the single mirror and knock-off wheels.

The Testarossa is definitely a major improvement on the Boxers because you can drive it with ease and comfort. The Boxers have an odd driving position and showcase the race car lineage of being difficult to drive unless you are at a high rate of speed.

Ferraris with horizontally opposed 12 cylinder engine