I’m getting frustrated with all the photos in my IPHOTO window, every single image is washed out and nasty so its high time to replace the trusty D10, also known as “the childs toy”.  The D10 is great for a shop like ours (or a child toy box) because it can handle a nasty shock from being banged or dropped and it’s waterproof. I had so much fun to taking photos and videos of people underwater with their hair floating around in the artsy looking natural sepia tone of the river water. The D10 is a great camera and it won’t be tossed, it’ll just be downgraded for non glamorous work on dirty projects.

It smokes when the flash goes off, there are paint drips on the body and the lens has some welding spatter baked in, she-is-the Power Shot! No retractable lens to get jammed up with metal shavings, rugged body, she’s a good ‘ol girl.

For more glamorous shots I will use my new CANON G10! It isn’t a child’s toy. It is just what I was looking for, not a highbrow SLR but a super high tech point and shoot. It takes good video and amazing photographs, I’m really happy with it.

I don’t have many name brand loyalties, I think the Supermarket brand Oreo’s are better than Nabisco OREO’s and think pencils with my name on them are better than Dixon Ticonderoga but I must have Canon cameras.

Green Iron bridge 1908

Bridge in VT 1908

Canon D10 Powershot

Well, I did it, I finally convinced the original owner of this spectacular original 1972 Porsche 911 to sell it to me. 3 years ago we did the top end end of the engine, shocks, brakes and tires and replaced a few rubber seals. The only thing  that isn’t original on the car are the wheels, we painted them silver as the original chrome was peeling and nasty, so to make them silver was an attractive solution. If someone made me a strong offer I may be motivated to sell this sweetheart but when something this great comes along, it will take a strong offer!

1972 911T

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

A 1971 Porsche 911 came in with a melted main wiring harness. A number of shops advertised new-old stock  harnesses on their websites but when I inquired they admitted that these parts haven’t been available for years. I called some used parts shops such as CarQuip and a place in CA, cannot remember the name…. and they had nothing. It seems that these harnesses get damaged and need replacing frequently!Tom at CarQuip did send me a used harness for a ’71 but the wire colors and gauge of wire didn’t match which I thought was very odd.

Y-nZ’s has supplied us with spectacular harnesses for 356 Porsche’s and most recently an amazing harness for a 1952 Chrysler Imperial but they quoted a larger price than I thought it worth so here is Casey making one from scratch! We bought all the terminal ends and had the PVC housing so for a major cost savings, here you go, a harness with factory color wire and correct appearance harness!

Main harness Porsche 911

Porsche 911 early wiring harness

Here’s another 250 engine being assembled, we didn’t overhaul it but had to disassemble it to correct head gasket leaks, water pump leaks and replace the roller followers with the needle bearing type. We have had great results with the needle bearing style followers and but poor results with the bushing type which wear out in 600 miles! When an engine needs this much work we pull it from the chassis so it can be test run and inspected for leaks. Here are our famous formula head gaskets in use which have proven themselves reliable and consistent.

250 GT engine 27XX

Hemmings Sports and Exotic Magazine did an amazing article on a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTE belonging to our customer in New York.  The owner had a spectacular Alfa Romeo 1900 for a number of years and decided it was time to sell. He did an incredible “feature” of the Alfa to sell it on ebay which had video links on youtube showing how the car performed on the road. The Alfa sold very well and guy now has a pocket full of cash to get what he really wanted, a Ferrari GTE.

He bought this car and had it shipped it to us where we picked it apart and did some major repairs to bring it up to a standard that it can be driven and enjoyed. We repaired or rebuilt every mechanical component on the car except for the rear axle so true to form, after 1000 miles, the ring and pinion started to growl.

At this time, the rear axle is overhauled and we have driven the car about 20 miles after performing a check over on the work we did last year. We have a few things to address so the car can  be driven regularly for the summer of 2011.

As you can see from a previous post, we changed the rear axle ratio from 7-32 to an 8-34 which I recommend for an early Ferrari 250!

Here is the link to the Hemmings article. Pics and words by David Traver Adolphus.

http://www.hemmings.com/hsx/stories/2011/04/01/hmn_feature1.html

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

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?