I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this spectacular Barred Owl about 80 feet from the shop office. Time for me to get a good camera, I love my Canon waterproof, shock proof kids camera but if I had a nice lens on a SLR, these would be amazing photos.

VT Owl RPM

Good on plow

Jaguar XK-D type

Jag Type D XK

The D-type was just mentioned as number 17 of the top 25 cars of all time in the recent Classic and Sports Car magazine supplement. I love this car, with amazing progressive “speed sensitive” brakes, unreal torque and great sound. A perfect combination of aircraft and car.

Brass is a pain in the neck to weld, it doesn’t give you any clues as to its melting point like other metals. Steel gets shiny and looks like flowing liquid while aluminum gets super shiny and puffs up slightly which tells you when you can add the filler rod.

Brass just gets dark so you have to poke the area with the filler rod and hope it sticks even though it often just spatters and makes a mess. Unlike aluminum or steel, it is easy to build up brass on an edge of sheet metal like I am doing in these photos. What I found is that you have to keep the material extra clean with a stainless steel brush and glass bead blasting it when the piece gets black and nasty.

These photos are of little trim pieces on a Ferrari 166 Touring bodied Berlinetta that I am restoring. These pieces didn’t fit well from new,  I think my 6 year old daughter could have made them fit better. I have spent lots time welding on new material and filing it down to fit around the trim and re-locate the holes so the screws actually thread into something.

The reason Touring used brass is because it takes chrome nicely without any extra material like nickel or copper and is relatively easy to shape.

Brass Heli-arc

Tungston Inert Gas Brass

Brass trim welded and fitting

Maybe this is the reason Lampredi design features are not used in current engines such as Honda or Mercedes Benz and the reason Ferrari had the most success with the Colombo designed engines. The V-12 Lampredi engine has cylinders that thread up into the cylinder head instead of pressed into the block, but the camshaft and valve actuation are similar to the Colombo designs.

The block of this 4 cylinder Lampredi engine is actually the head, a huge casting with enormous cylinders that thread into it like the V-12′s. The valve actuation is a different style with a huge aluminum followers and a roller of the same size as the V-12 engines. There are huge and very strong “hairpin” style valve springs and enormous coil springs to keep the aluminum followers from floating.

Ferrari 750

Cam Follower Ferrari 4 cylinder

Roller followers Needle Bearing

Ferrari Camshaft wear repair

Due to lack of Ferrari Factory  testing in the mid 50′s, they didn’t observe that this is just too much spring pressure for the roller follower to handle so after less than 2000 miles something gives up, be it the roller follower or the camshaft… and in these photos you can see what happens. The tiny needle bearings come apart and scatter in the engine and the cam is torn up. Maybe the load is too much for the roller follower and it blows apart or the camshaft gets worn and hammers the roller follower until it deteriorates?

We are frequently on the road with our 2 car enclosed transporter, typically moving cars from the northern New England area to the New York Metro area. I just got back from a trip to deliver a Ferrari 512 BB to a customer in New Jersey, a Ferrari 4 cylinder engine that was crated up and dropped at the Port in Bayonne to go to England and the BMW 2002 that we just sold on ebay to a man in Verona NJ. There were some other cars to bring back which rounds out the trip nicely.

Many of the large transport companies don’t like to come up to the Northern Reaches of the US because this area is at the end of the line so they have a hard time finding a back haul so these guys call us to get the cars to there warehouses. Many New England roads require permits for the over length trucks and are narrow and twisty but our truck is easy to maneuver and doesn’t need these permits. Our truck is fully insured and since we have a knowledge of how these cars are built, we have a good sense on how to strap down them without damage. Let me know if you need anything moved around the PA, NJ, NY, ME, NH, CT, VT area. We can also go to Canada.

Enclosed transportation in North East

GTE in our Enclosed transporter

Freightliner M2

Oliver 2255

This is one of the last Oliver Tractors manufactured before the company was sold to White Motor Company. It has a Caterpillar 3208 V-8 engine and is  4 wheel drive. We had to get in and replace a bunch of rubber flex hoses that go from the steering valve body which is one of the hardest things to get to and required partially lifting the cab off to gain access.

Have a look at this lovely Austin Healey 100, it is in for some minor repairs even though it runs and drives so well. Is a clutch replacement  a minor repair? With the transmission out we always replace the bushings for the clutch release arm as they are typically totally blown out and any extra play in the linkage messes up the feel and engagement of the release bearing.

Healey Hundred