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.

As promised, here are some photos of Maxwell’s amazing Carbon Fiber workmanship. It defies logic to handle these parts because they are so rigid and tough but weigh next to nothing. Max sells these parts to major Race Car Parts Suppliers by the dozens.

Brake Ducts Carbon Fiber

Race Car Carbon Brake Duct

Things are coming along nicely on the 1950 Ferrari 166 Touring Berlinetta, here you can see the dashboard lining up nicely with the upper door panels and the windshield glass fitted with new mahogany tack strips installed. All around the body openings are hand whittled wooden strips to jamb the glass into place while providing an area to tack the headliner and upholstery. Hidden under the painted aluminum trim on the top of the door is a tack strip to which the leather door panel upholstery is attached . Near the rear vent windows, the tack strips secure the headliner on the top half and the rear package shelf leather to the bottom half. Unfortunately these tack strips are in channels around the glass openings which means they are sitting in pools of water every time the car is washed or driven in the rain so all of the strips were rotten to dust.

Six tack strips secure the front windshield, two on top, two on the bottom and two on the sides. These dog bone strips were in decent shape because they are located on the sides and didn’t spend much time bathing/rotting in water but since they are so thin, the tacks securing the headliner caused them to splinter and blow apart. They are totally different pieces left to right and had to be hand shaped for 6 hours to make fit correctly. This is a lesson in how not to build a car!! They don’t make them like they used to… thank god!

Mahogany Tack strip

Lining up Dash Ferrari

275 GTB’s look so great with the 15″ Borrani 4010 and 4011 wheels, the factory should have fitted all of the cars with these instead of the little 14″ wheels. While the rear fender vents are interesting, they look great when they resemble the vents behind the front wheels, more square and in keeping with the 250 GTO. We have learned lots about this car recently and enjoy having it around the shop.

GTB/4 Ferrari 275

rear vents Ferrari GT

Breaking its back

Earlier this summer we had five (!) Austin Healey 3000′s in for service needing tons of small details addressed. Thankfully, nearly all the replacement parts are available for these cars and arrive the day after you order them through Victoria British, Moss Motors and my friend Mike Bounanduci in Vermont. Mike has some amazing new old stock stuff and has pulled a rabbit out of his hat on finding  odd parts for me on many occations. People complain that the reproduction parts are of low quality but i don’t care… the original parts were terrible as well and when you pay $15 for a complete gasket set for an overdrive unit or $9 for a thermostat housing, who cares if they aren’t perfect. We have had difficulty with repro brake and clutch hydraulics but when you pay $30 for a cylinder that has a 50% success rate, it beats the $250 clutch cylinder for a Ferrari with a 30% success rate!!!

Here is one reproduction item for the Healey that I don’t like. The rear leaf springs are too stiff and make the car ride high in the rear. A Healey with original springs has a nice ride but these replacements make the car feel like a empty boat trailer, in fact, maybe these are trailer springs that happen to fit the Healey.

Anyhow, after removing 2 leafs per spring pack, the car still rode high in the rear so here is how a redneck like me re-arches the springs to get the correct ride height and to get the LR on this car to be at the same height as the RR.

After overhauling dozens and dozens of Ferrari transmissions I have a good idea on what to expect when the case is opened up and shafts are broken down. Whether it’s a 250 GTE 4 speed, a 246 GT Dino trans-axle or a 330 GTC/Daytona style 5 speed trans-axle,  synchronisers on Ferrari’s do not last many miles however, the rest of the components are over built and hold up well.. The bearings and gears are over built and the machined parts like flanges and shafts are impeccably machined using incredibly hard steel. The transmissions have oil pumps that pressurize the main and lay shafts to keep everything thoroughly lubricated so the bearings that the gears turn on are flooded in a pillow of oil.

This transmission out of this 250 shifted well but had the typical severely worn synchronisers so I was prepared to perform the “normal” repair of cleaning, inspecting and replacing the end bearings and synchros. This trans had been run without oil for a long time and the bearings in the photo were so wiped out that there was about .020″ clearance between the gear and bearing where there should only be about .005″. How did this thing work at all?

250 GT transmission overhaul

Transmission overhaul bearings

Bearings Ferrari transmission

Eben built the 212 body from pictures, as you may know. His metal work and sculpture are fantastic – that’s why we insist on taking him away from his art – to work on ours. Here’s his website showing other projects he has been working on besides the damn Ferrari.

http://www.ebenmarkowski.com

Fuel and oil pressure

Here are the two pressure gauges, the one I created, the BENZINA, and the one we based it on, the OLIO pressure. I used a thick acrylic urethane paint with lots of catalyst to make the needles white. It was done in the original fashion with a heavy build up of paint that I “floated” on the part.

The gauges are almost finished, I started on restoring these late last summer (ah, how time flies by) and as you may remember from a past entry, I had to make one complete gauge that was missing on the car. We had the oil and water temp gauges as well as the oil pressure gauge but old photos show that the car had a fuel pressure gauge so I had to create one from scratch. Since we had to make one, we had to re-make many parts of the other gauges so they all match which meant fabricating new beveled-edge jewels, bezels and faces.

The original faces were 60mm aluminum discs with an acid etch screen for the font. I used a different process of clear anodize the disc and laser engraving the font into the aluminum which gave an identical contrast to the originals. Using the oil pressure face as a template, a graphic artist created the art work to make the “benzina” and instead of 0-10 Kg/Cm2 we used a 1/10th scale of 0-.1 scale. He had to create the artwork on all of the gauges since the fonts are so unique and the laser engraver wanted Adobe Illustrator file instead of a jpg file.

The bezels were scratched and ugly we we had to make new ones, not so easy since they have to thread onto the case using a super fine 1.0 thread pitch, a 65 mm by 1.0 thread!

The Benzina pressure gauge uses a 1/4 scale movement and no one makes a low pressure mechanical movement so I had to adapt an electrical movement and install a special sending unit that could register the super low (5-10 PSI) scale.

A water jet shop cut out the delicate needles from brass sheet and I made a bunch of tiny spindles and pegs on our lathe to complete the package.

So many sub-contractors and suppliers to make a set of gauges work for this car, and I am so happy with the final product!

Fuel and oil pressure