This is a very nice Blaupunkt Radio that is period correct for late 50′s  to early 60′s European Cars. It has all the little details such as the knobs, facia panel and amplifier. If you are interested in purchasing it let me know.

Frankfurt Blaupunkt

Carrozzeria Touring Berlinetta

Ferrari Headlight detail

Touring Carrozzeria Body Dashboard

High Build Primer Ferrari

Here are a series of photos of the block sanding process on the Ferrari 166 Touring Berlinetta. The sheet metal is all sorted and gaps are perfect but the body needs hundreds of hours of serious elbow grease (sanding) to make sure it is all straight as an arrow. Syl isn’t scared of the “mud”, he completely fills in all of the door and hood gaps allowing him to block sand right across them so when the light hits the highly polished top coat you won’t see any waves or change in reflection.

Even though the grill we made fit the opening in bare aluminum, Syl spends hours making it perfect with skim coats of body filler and attacks the headlight rim contact areas with the same level of perfection. There isn’t any room for error when working with super fine trim that is used all over this car like the delicate headlight rings and the low profile windshield and rear glass surrounds. Imagine these surrounds,  start with a long  section of 1/4″ aluminum rod and whittle it down so only a quarter of it is used.  We re-made this trim because the delicate original material was destroyed when the car was disassembled.

Right now, the car is sealed up in high build primer with a blue tinted epoxy primer that seals the polyester filler from moisture and greasy finger prints. Now we have some more fitting here and there before it goes back to Syl’s shop to work out some more details such as the incredibly complex belt-line crown that goes from the headlight to the tail light..

We’ll probably have more hours in sanding and painting the dashboard that it would take to paint an entire late model car like a Mercedes or Honda. The dash on this car is a thing of beauty but it requires a perfectionist sicko to finish it because like the rest of the car, the trim that surrounds the gauges and switches are like string bikinis

This is so cool, it must be some sort of World War II Aircraft Manufacturing technique for welding aluminum by smashing it together that was used for cars. This trunk lid was made by Carrozzeria Touring in the late 1940′s and as much as I curse the way they build cars, this is some of the most amazing craftsmanship I have seen. Since it isn’t adding any new material its keeps the panel very light and super strong and without the heat of welding, the panel doesn’t warp and distort. I’m guessing that the force of smashing the two aluminum pieces together in a focused area causes enough heat to melt and stick them tight.

Welding aluminum with a punch

Aluminum welding technique

I’d like to see other examples of this attachment procedure and find out what it’s called.

Casey just finished assembling this engine after all kinds of people blessed it to make sure everything is in the required specification. The reason it came apart is because the valve guides were loose in the heads and allowing oil to flow right into the exhaust and eventually fouling out the spark plug. When we disassembled the engine we found that the cylinders were polished to a very high level of shine and couldn’t imagine that the piston rings would ever seat. In conversations with Hastings Piston Ring Company it was learned that the cylinders needed to be honed to a coarse 280 grit rather than the ultra smooth mirror polish. Since the engine was apart, we decided to have a specialist cut the rear “slinger” off the back of the crankshaft so we could install a conventional lip seal to prevent oil leaks.

The engine is running great and just today we took the car out for a drive in the Arctic Cold air where it performed perfectly.

Here are some photos for Derek who seems to get very turned on by Ferrari engine photos, mostly the “basamento” which translates to “base” and in this context it stands for Engine Block.

Testa Normal

Bassimento 250 GT Ferrari

Here is a early Porsche 911 Engine that Casey has finished and will hopefully be running later this week.

This is a subject that I write about frequently because I just don’t understand why Ferrari Transmissions are bigger than the engine in front of it. We just had a transmission out of a 1955 Ford Pickup that was the size of a shoe box and a 5 speed ZF transmission out of a Maserati is tiny compared to the 5 speed out of this 330 GT 2+2. If I seem frustrated it’s because getting this Parthenon out of the car is a job that only Zeus can handle.

This transmission works well but the synchronizers are worn to to point of having a chrome plated polished look instead of the required rough cast finish but all the bearings and gears are perfect. We used to replace the operating sleeves on these transmissions but they take so long to “wear in” that I feel they are doing more damage than good especially considering how well they shift with the original parts re-installed.

5-speed 330 Transmisison

Stainless Steel Water Pipes 250, 330

Tubing for Ferrari engine

Since I have the jigs, stainless steel tubing and motivation, I decided to stock up on some commonly used water pipes for Ferrari 250′s. The top photo is a mixture of trashed original parts and my re-made parts that attach to the water pump and have a barb for the heater return and a threaded boss for the thermostat bypass. The pipe in the next photo is a custom job for a repilca 250 that was sent to me for duplication. This part doesn’t follow any of my jigs so I made a crude jig to complete this order. I’ve done 4 pipes recently for 1962 Ferrari 250′s, an early 1962 GTE, a ’62 250 PF Cab and two 1962 Short Wheelbase Berlinetta. Even though they should all be the same, all 4 of these are significantly different with barbs going in different directions and the main bend radius unique from one to the other. I’d like to know how these were made originally because there isn’t any consistency in  the style of construction or shape.

Head gasket and oil leaks

Since the late 80′s or early 90′s we have been servicing the car that goes with this engine and it has always been one of the best running examples we know of. I remember riding in the truck with my father to get the car on a cold and foggy night, probably around this time of the year, no, it had to have been early November. It was a brutal trip through that pea soup thick fog as we went over some of the mountains in the Berkshires on route 22.

The current owner of the car drives the wheels off of it and we have overhauled a number of components like the brakes, transmission, and fuel pump but now it’s time to address the engine. It runs great, starts instantly and doesn’t smoke but there are so many oil leaks that we have to break it down to clean it off in order to remedy them. We were blown away because as well as it ran, the compression and leak down numbers were bad displaying 30% loss in some cylinders where there should be no more than 5-10%.

So, apart it goes – it’ll run through our “process” that includes getting the rear main bearing cap cut and grind the crankshaft for a conventional lip seal, new forged pistons and a needle bearing roller follower set among thousands of other things. The motor mounts are blown out and the water pipes will likely have holes in them and will need to be replaced so we will be busy this winter getting all these 250′s back together for the spring.

As much as I hate to mention it for superstitious reasons, we’ve had great success with Ferrari engine overhauls over the last half a dozen years. A few times a week other shops call me asking how to get head gaskets to seal and how to make water pumps turn without leaking or how to make mechanical fuel pumps to work as intended. Their shops are struggling to find the exact formula, and we seem to have it locked down lately. Nate has assembled so many of these engines, he seems to have a real formula on setting the clearances, knowing the tricks to seal them up and making sure every detail is nailed down too.

Clutch housing on 250 engine

We seem to have an influx of 250 engines all of a sudden, the one Nate is working on just completed its first test run on the bench after overhaul and the other is coming apart because of problems with the cylinder heads. On this engine, the valve guides are loose in the heads allowing oil to pour into the exhaust system that made smoke pour out of the exhaust system once it heated up.

Bill took some video of the other engine running on the test stand so keep an eye out for that clip on youtube soon.

Ferrari 250 engines