These gauges are made by Smiths for Touring, a company in Italy who built bodies for Ferraris in the early 50′s. They built bodies for other brands like Maserati using light tubing for an armature and thin aluminum for the “skin”. They called this style of construction “superleggaria” or Super Light.

Since Touring of Milan built the body, they also outfitted the car with an interior and all the little delicate detailing such as door release handles and had Smiths make these beautiful gauges.

After photographing a number of Touring built cars with this style of gauge, I found  most to have a beige/tan background color where these gauges appear to have always been dark blue. Maybe because the car was originally dark blue? We carefully stripped the paint and could find no evidence of another color so we had them restored as you see them.

Smiths gauge

Touring ferrari smiths

Here are photos of our jig to re-make a common sized water pipe on a Ferrari 250. We have been making flanges at the water jet shop and have a bunch of the large bell flanges that adapt the 1″ tubing to the larger thermostat housing.

This 304 stainless steel is great stuff, very workable, machinable, weldable.

To see the ones that came off the car click http://www.ferraricraft.com/2009/12/corroded-ferrari-water-pipes/

Fixture to reproduce water pipe

Reproduction water pipe in stainless steel

Alright, all puns aside, the number of different variations of wheel nuts at RPM is astounding. Here are some examples and some more interesting facts about them. Firstly, Ferrari wheels employ singular nuts to fasten each wheel to each axle or hub. So, in your road car, you have generally 4 or 5 lug bolts or lug nuts that hold each wheel on – trucks have more. Ferraris more than any other make, use large racing style wheel nuts, quite similar to those in use on racetracks all over the world, even here in the US in Nascar. Many other Italian cars and some English cars used this method of fastening as well.

The big difference between the wheel nuts on current race cars and on vintage Ferraris? The method of removal. The current race cars use a large diameter socket, while the vintage cars have 2 or 3 ears extending off the nut. The method of removal is repeated smashing of these tabs by the standard equipment lead hammer found in every Ferrari – it isn’t just for fending off would-be attackers. The lead hammer packs a punch, and the softness of the lead won’t mar the finish of the nuts, just watch out for your fenders on the back swing. At RPM wheels are removed frequenly enough to destroy these hammers, so we have a mold to recast the hammer head.

On to the nuts themselves. The word “smontare” seems to be on nearly every nut. » Continue reading “KNOCK IT OFF – WHEEL GOING NUTS”

I sent these gauges off to our trusted re-build shop to be inspected and disassembled and they promptly sent back all of the metal parts for me to send to our trusted chrome plating shop. The Chrome shop but a dull nickel flash on the housings and did a spectacular job re-plating the chrome bezels. The bezels are made out of very thin aluminum and there was a deep scratch in one of them but the shop worked it out and only a trained eye can see the minor imperfection.

The instrument specialist re-painted the faces and needles as well as re-screen printed the “SMITHS” logo and Ferrari logo on the combination gauge. They did quite a service on these, making sure the temperature sensor capilary tube had the correct steel flex housing over the end and everything.  They also calibrated the fuel level sending unit to the gauge. These should work as new when installed into the 166 Berlinetta.

When I look through Hot Rodding magazines, none of the cars photographed have gauges as interesting and beautiful as these, shame on them for not looking at these old european cars for influence on what is cool!

Hand Made Gauges restored

This car looks too cool in this flat black primer to hide from view. We sprayed an epoxy primer to protect the car as we begin to trial fit every little piece of trim. This car is built as though it was a piece of furniture using trim caps and decorative pieces to cover all of the ugly details.

There are chrome end caps for the interior door top strips, trims around the door catches and small mouldings around all of the glass. We had to re-make these mouldings because they were full of cracks because they are a brittle alloy. We made the new moulding from a much softer aluminum alloy so we can bend them into place so everything fits nicer.

Ferrari 166 berlinetta touring

Ferrari Berlinetta

I do not think that Ferrari ever really understood the forces involved in the rear axle of their cars. I am not claiming to be an engineering expert, but we have to repair major damage to about 2 to 3 Ferrari axles per year. Not only do they need new bearings and seals, but they also commonly suffer from broken bearings or damaged ring and pinions.

Other make’s axles seem to go bad because of high mileage or being run without grease. Ferrari axles self destruct because as you can see from the photos, the bearings used are to allow the pinion only to spin and do not account for the incredible axial thrust put upon it when power is applied or the car is coasting against the engine.

If the ring and pinion were straight-cut gears this would not be a problem. Yet with spiral cut gears, the fore/aft load is huge and Ferrari only used roller bearings on the pinion.

On the differential carrier, they used large single row ball bearings, which again, offer little in handling the side loads.

I never replace the bearings with the original type and set these axles up with tapered roller bearings on the pinion and diff carrier. I have done this to many cars over the years and have had none of them fail. This Lusso axle is next in line, followed buy a 212 axle, and then a 166 axle.

Here is a recent shot that I took at the shop.

The Blue Boxer is finished right now after a full re-paint, new adjustable ride height shocks and a major service.

The 166 is getting ready for assembly to make sure all of the trim fits and panel fit.

The 365 GTC/4 on the lift it getting closer to finalize the restoration. We are making sure all of the electrical things work and just sent the ignition key steering lock off to have a new key made after breaking the old one in the switch.

The Daytona was painted and assembled by another shop but came to us to diagnose a poor running condition.

After much researching to figure out what style headlight the 166 Touring bodies Berlinetta had and then searching for the correct headlight assembly we have finally seen some progress. The headlight opening in the body was all beat up from past work to fit an American style headlight with a large finishing rim so we had to re-work the entire headlight opening.

The trim ring on the correct style Carello headlight assembly is so small and fine that you cannot have one imperfection on the body. The assembly needs to fit up to the aluminum perfectly. Also, there is not a very good way to hold the assembly into the body so it really needs to “snap” into place as well as using a fastener.

These lights really make the car look good though!

Once painted, the reflection of the paint work on the trim ring will make any minor gaps disappear so we will not be too hard on ourselves.

Here are some more images of sheet metal work to get the 1950 Ferrari 166 Touring Coupe closer to finished. So much of the aluminum is work hardened and cannot be repaired, so it has to be replaced.

The 166 project continues to evolve, all of the sheet metal is “hung” and lining up nicely. There was a considerable amount of time spent making that delicate mid-body detail line up between the doors and other panels and have the subtle compound curve. One of the trickier details was to get both door windows to open the same amount, the drives door left more glass exposed when fully down than the passenger door so we had to adjust and make compromises so they looked similar when down and up.

The grille on this car was a mess and had to be re-made. The original was soldered, riveted, welded and chrome plated over the years and began to look terrible. After making the templates we bent up some aluminum to make the surround and cross pieces and began to shape them with the shrinker/stretcher. Once it is all lined up and looking nice we will use the correct bucking style rivets to final assemble it.