Ferrari Craft » body

Rust in the Rocker Panels

admin — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:07:39 +0000

Our customer wanted us to re-paint this 330 GTC because the paint was faded and cracking but the car appeared to be very straight and showed no signs of rust or accident damage. As we exposed the bare steel under layers of blue and red paint we found some minor accident damage at the left front headlight that was expertly fixed years ago. The other damage was from the infamous “rust worm” slithering about the rocker panels and rear wheel arches. There wasn’t any bubbling in the paint because someone (expertly) applied stainless steel tape over some perforations in the bodywork which did a great job sealing water from behind and lift the finish.

I cut away the rocker panels and cut the inner structure from behind the rear fender arches so I can properly fix and seal the panels so they’ll last at least another 45 years. Water can get into the rocker panel area but there are many areas for it to leak out but there were these big sand bricks trapped inside which allowed the water to linger in there for a long time which caused the most damage. As bad as it looks, there won’t be any major re-construction other than a few new inner sill struts and new rocker panels.

Refinishing a Ferrari 330 GTC

Rocker panel Ferrari

Hundreds of Hours of Labor

admin — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 19:20:28 +0000

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

An Amazing Way to Build a Trunk Lid

admin — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:08:01 +0000

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.

A 330 GTC in Preparation for a Paint Job

admin — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:24:01 +0000

Re-finish Ferrari 330

It doesn’t look bad in this photo but the paint on this 330 GTC is displaying it’s age with small cracking, a few minor rust bubbles and areas where its flaking right off the sheet metal! I was looking carefully for signs of the original color which appears to have been blue from new. There is a hint of red paint around the front window but I can’t tell if the car was red at one time or if it was just some extra protective coating in an area that needs lots of rust protection. The car will likely be re-painted a dark blue.

330 GTC in for Paint

Ferrari 308 Door Repair

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:29:25 +0000

It’s hard to tell how deep the crease is in the photos but the door skin actually split at the rear edge and crushed the framework at the closure area. The crease went on the panel behind the door as well so Nate took the door apart and pulled the fuel tank to access the inside of the rear panel. I had to make a few custom tools to get inside the door to shrink the sharp crease and other dents without having to remove the entire skin. It would have been a bear to remove and replace the skin because the door fits so well from the factory and to duplicate that is tons of work. A complete replacement door would have been equally intensive so my gut reaction is to fix what you’ve got

The paint match is excellent, the car is the newer tint of blue sera metallic, a slightly lighter shade than I have seen on older cars like Dino’s and 330′s. I like the older shade more because the paint contains more gray where the shade on this car has more violet in the tint. Either way, I am happy with the results, the car is fully polished and looks killer

GTSI Door repair

Quattrovalvole 308 GTS

Aluminum panels, rough and smooth

admin — Thu, 13 May 2010 11:56:41 +0000

The panels on this Aston DB-4 GT Zagato probably looked like the firewall on this Auburn Special Racer before being smoothed and polished to perfection. Can you imagine the time involved in filing and sanding all the welds let alone building such a complex body. Hello? Isn’t that what body filler and paint are for!

The Auburn firewall is super cool, made by someone who had the talent to smooth it out just like the Aston but chose to leave it rough for effect. These cars were photographed at a VSCCA event at Lime Rock Park last Friday.

Zagato Aston Martin DB-4

Firewall on Auburn SpecialAuburn

Testarossa Hood

admin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:27:35 +0000

A customer swung by with the pictured Testarossa hood asking if we could repair it. We said we’d check it out, and he asked for a very rough ballpark estimate of what it could run – you know, is it $20 dollars or twenty-thousand? Initially we said it’d be a few grand, but when Eben saw it, his experience as the panel beater and sculptor rang true, with an estimate of about $5k to make it perfect again. The aluminum can only be worked so much, and new material would have to be welded in.

It was a better deal to just replace it with a used panel and let the owner keep the crushed one as a souvenir – you may ask, how’d he do it? The guy he bought it from did.

100mm Carello Tail lights

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:15:12 +0000

These are 80mm Carello Tail lights, where can I get the identical ones but 100mm in diameter? These were on a Vignale Ferrari 225 Berlinetta at Cavallino and I need the 100mm ones for the 166 Berlinetta that we are restoring.

Tail light

Polishing beat down gangster style

admin — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:14:50 +0000

Here is our gangster punk friend putting a beat down on the red Ferrari BBI and a 250 GT Pininfarina Cabriolet series II. Shiz Bro, he does a nice job!

He used wool on the BBI and foam on the 250, what it is Syl?

Polishing

A nice photo of a 330 GTC that we have for sale

admin — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:28:33 +0000

GTC photo