Over the last Month I’ve been disassembling a dark blue1967 Ferrari 330 GTC to re-finish the paint, chrome and interior. Even though Pininfarina did a spectacular job building these beautiful Ferrari Coupe’s, there are some things that I can’t live with. These photos show the fit between the “B” pillar cover trim and the “C” pillar window surround trim just behind the door. The gap was enormous on both sides and was filled in with black urethane rubber from the factory. I ground off the chrome and copper and welded some new brass on the trim (which is made of brass) to tighten up the gap.

Trim on GTC Ferrari

Ferrari Pininfarina detail

Brass welding and fitting

Another area that bothers me on the most of the Ferrari GTC’s that I have seen is the fit of the center console at the shifter opening. Like the other cars I have looked at, the shifter isn’t centered in the opening so naturally, I have to adjust this area too. This GTC used to have an odd reverse lockout tab like some of the 60′s race cars, but it didn’t fit so someone bent up the sheet metal in the opening on the left side of the opening.

GTC Interior

Now it fits properly

It’s only original once.

This Ferrari 330 GT 2+2  interior is original but the wear and tear is getting a bit out of hand with cracked and split leather and blown out webbing in the seat bottoms.  The drivers seat is so crushed down that I couldn’t even see over the dashboard! The owner was thinking of changing the color but wisely decided to keep the red leather (slightly darker, less pink) and red wool carpets. Even though the headliner is in good condition, we are going to replace that material since the foam in the pleats is falling out and the glue is coming undone here and there.

Red Leather seats upholstery for Ferrari

Leather for Ferrari 2+2

Re-upholster 330 Interior

Signs of things to come. Later we found 35˚F temps and 7" of snow

After a drive to Long Island to pick up cars, and Philadelphia to drop off an incredible Velocette Thruxton motorbike, we finally made it to Hot Springs, Virginia and the colossal hotel resort, The Homestead. The hotel is rich with history and while lobby alone is massive, a series of parlor rooms runs its length such that any small group can get away and feel as if they have their own private space. (Gallery after the jump) » Continue reading “Mountain Mille – Day 1″

Here’s a super cool 1960 Jaguar MK IV, a solid car owned by the same family from new. It’s been sitting since the late 90’s and is in nice condition  but it has a horrible smelling interior. All of the mechanical components need to be overhauled but Who cares how well the car drives when you the musty smell overwhelms your senses and some odd fungus grows in your mucus membranes.  This interior is made up of all natural fibers such as a wool headliner, leather seats,  latex foam and wood trim which hold fast to these nasty odors.  In order to move forward, we will least have to replace the headliner and shampoo the carpets, hopefully it the rest of the upholstery can be cleaned.

Click and Clack, the Car Talk guys suggest placing coffee beans throughout the interior making the claim that the beans not only absorb the smell, but they give off a nice fragrance, not a bad deal. I was thinking of pressure washing it with tomato juice like we do with dogs that have been “skunked”.

Jaguar 4 door MK

Jaguar Interior 1960

Looking for something to post other than the boring work we have been doing lately, I stumbled across these images on the other computer and thought you would like them.

Bare metal body

Gift wrapping an elephant

You can run but you can hide

The Morgan required some new parts to make the windshield wipers work well again. We removed and overhauled the old regulator and replaced the worn out bits with new ones that we made. Here’s Steve on the lathe turning out the new piece from solid aluminum rod stock. The overhauled wiper motor assembly will take the play out of the worn original unit that looked like it’d never had a squirt of grease since the Morgan rolled out of the coachworks.

Termometro gauges, olio and acqua, in Celsius. New beveled glass jewels,  newly machined bezels and restored movements. Now I have to replace the protective housing with nickel plated ultra-flex material and recharge the capillary tube. Originally the tube was filled with freon but now we have to use purified argon since freon is hard to purchase since it is banned due to the terrible impact it has on the atmosphere.

Termometro

Temperature Termometro

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

Jaeger Oil Pressure

When I had to explain why we had so many filing cabinet drawers full of suppliers and subcontractors to our bookkeeper, I realized how much we rely on other shops to keep these cars on the road. We try so hard to maintain good relationships with these shops through many long and arduous projects and feel blessed that we have some of the best people in the business as our ally.

This 212 gauge project is an example of the different suppliers that we use for the smallest of projects.

When we got the car to our shop we were missing the fuel pressure gauge but had the oil pressure, oil temperature and water temperature gauges. The fuel pressure should have the 1/4 pivot just like this oil pressure gauge and say BENZINA instead of OLIO and use different numbers for the lower pressure of the fuel system. We have to create an entire new gauge, new case, jewell, bezel, movement, needle, and the hardest part, the face.

To date I have bought a movement from an aircraft company, got fittings from a Ferrari Supplier, used a specialty shop to make hand ground beveled glass and used David to water jet cut a bunch of 60mm aluminum .030 discs. I sent the discs to get anodized, then to a laser engraver to have the script and graduation marks done. Another shop made the delicate thread on four bezels and make one complete case. I will then send all of the gauges to my friends who restore gauges to make sure everything is calibrated after I send them the correctly plated capillary tube!