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 often pick on people who say “all you gotta do is”, because there’s no such thing as “all you gotta do is”…. Anyone who says “all you gotta do is” either has never done it before or is trying to beat you up on an estimate. AKA, a looser

Most of the cars we work on have brand new brake components available to purchase which allow us to slam ‘em in and ship it. Unfortunately, we have to rebuild brake components on Ferrari’s which really sucks.  All you gotta do is…  Ugh. A guy sent me a totally blown out Master cylinder for a 330 GTC, rusted and stuck, terrible, horrible, so I sent steel fittings off to be cadmium plated, sent the cylinder to have a new sleeve installed in the bore, ordered an overhaul kit and when everything returned, I put it all back together. After assembling it the I noticed that the pistons were sticking in the cylinder so I took it all apart and the wrenches scratched the fresh plating and watched as the brake fluid stripped the black paint. I honed the bore and got the pistons to move freely, assembled it again and set it up to be tested on my high tech device that you can observe in the photo below. Now I am finding that the sleeve wasn’t drilled correctly and fluid couldn’t  into the forward chamber (that goes to the rear brakes) so I had to start all over again, scratching, chipping. Now, the cylinder is all back together and working perfectly after 7 hours of labor! “All you gotta do is”! Did I mention that the rebuild kit didn’t come with the correct first seal, there was a 30mm seal included when I needed a 25mm seal so after buying 3 kits, I resorted to making my own seal.

Ferrari GTC Brake Master Cylinder

If you get a chance, have a look at our ebay listings one of which is this spectacular 330 GT 2+2.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Ferrari-1966-Ferrari-330-GT-2-2-/320786529089?pt=US_Cars_Trucks&hash=item4ab05dfb41

We just sold a very tidy Tool briefcase for a 365 series Ferrari and have a guy ready to purchase a steel roof rack for a Porsche 911 (and other German cars like VW’s). This is a super nice piece with an original equipment manufacturers sticker on it!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Ski-Roof-Rack-Porsche-VW-and-other-models-Early-70s-stainless-/320789565039?hash=item4ab08c4e6f&item=320789565039&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_100&vxp=mtr

In the next few days I’m gonna get some other cars up there so I will let you know what I am posting and will see if Gene can start an ebay store to start selling the stuff we have been accumulating around her.

Ferrari Ebay 330 V-12

These 330′s look so spectacular to me when painted in a bright color like this light blue or silver. We’ve done tons of work to this car to make it run and drive better than it looks.

Something about the rear of the car, the “C” pillar area above the rear wheel looks so great, so clean and pure. How can you argue with Italian design!

Ferrari 330 GT Blue

I don’t offer much helpful information on this blog but want to share some photos of the font and progression of transmission, engine, and axle number stampings on Ferrari castings. From now on, i’m going to photograph stamps on Ferrari castings as I have the ability, the transmission stamps are hard to photograph because the interior has to come out for access. These are all photographs of Transmissions from 250’s and 330’s.  As things progress, I will post photos of Engines, axles and trans-axles.

Numbers from early 330 with Overdrive

Series II PF Cab, late production

Early production GTE Ferrari

Transmission Ferrari Lusso 2505-speed 2 mount engine

Ferrari 330, Porsche 356

A local guy just purchased this 330 GT 2+2 and has asked us to take a look at the car before he drives it this summer. It is one of the best paint jobs I have ever seen on a Ferrari, super crisp lines and totally flat panels because it was block sanded to perfection and there isn’t a spot of orange peel anywhere. These bigger Ferraris look great in colors such as Argento or Azuro.

The Porsche is ready for delivery after spending time to sort out some tie rod details and brake overhaul. I had a chance to take the car for a long drive and am continually amazed at how wonderful these cars are.

After overhauling nearly every part on the yellow GTE and driving it for 1500 miles, the rear axle started making some ugly noises. Unfortunately, the bearing wear allowed the pinion shaft to walk back and forth which damaged the ring and pinion gears.  Ferrari 250′s are notorious for having a low final drive ratio so since we had to replace the R&P, we decided to change from a 7-32 to a 8-34 so when the car is up and running I will report on the how the characteristics of the car change. A friend of mine with a 400 5-speed put a rear axle center section from a 400 Automatic in his car only to find that the car felt sluggish and less than athletic. Going from a manual to automatic rear axle ratio is drastic where we are only changing the ratio in this project slightly, from 4.57:1 to a 4.25:1. I would imagine that the ratio from an automatic would be something in the range of 3.5:1 versus a 4.11:1 with a 5-speed.

Just as I do with all of the early Ferrari axles we get in, this one will be converted to use a much more robust bearing assembly to make sure the expensive gears and other parts won’t be destroyed prematurely as this one has done. I’ve commented on this  before and I will note again that we don’t see axle failure on other cars such as Jaguar or Maseratis unless they are operated for an extended period of time without oil. With the Ferraris, we see catastrophic failure due to a cruddy design regardless of lubrication!

GT 250 Ferrari Axle

We’ve seen synchronizers worn to the point of being polished to a mirror finish and still work properly but the ones in this 330 transmission still had the new looking cast finish but it wouldn’t go into gear without grinding on downshifts. It turns out that these synchronizers were likely to have been cruddy replacement parts that don’t have the proper spring tension or the correct measurements so we are going to replace them as well as the operating sleeves.

Some of the operating sleeves had chips in the teeth but the transmission looked good inside but we still replaced the bearings since I feel that they are likely to get damaged when removing them from the shafts and case.  This transmission is a monster!

330 2+2 transmission

Here are some photos of V-12 Ferrari engines for Dominick.

330 engine with cylinder heads

250 GT "outside" plug engine

Underside of 330 engine

Inside plug 250