People frequently ask me if we have to make lots of parts to keep old cars operating like new. We end up making things here and there but it’s amazing how much is available from very organized parts suppliers and places that make reproduction items. This is a part that we just couldn’t find, it’s a oil pump pick-up to a front wheel drive V-8 Cord 810. The original part was bashed up, the screen was missing and the little elbow pipe was kinked so we made an entire new part. The copper screen came from a local art store, I guess they use it for making sculptures that are covered with clay or paper mache.
This part is identical to the original with silver solder attaching the tubing and screen.

Oil Pump Pickup for Cord 810

Oil Pump Pickup Copper Screen

Cord V-8 oil pump screen

Rolls Royce Continental

Is this a Rolls Continental? I think its a 1954. If anyone out there wants a very nice example of a Rolls Royce that has a classic look and can keep up with modern traffic, here is your car! It has those iconic Grey Poupon Mustard Trays in the back seat for the filming the next Wayne’s World Movie.

Pardon Me? Do you have any Green Poupon!

Steve Maxwell “Max” works in the “second building” next door to our main shop and makes spectacular parts out of Carbon Fiber, Kevlar and other composite materials. This is a complete front clip to a Triumph Spitfire, one of many body panels he’s made molds for. He makes tons of body panels for Datsun 510 Race Cars as well as Formula Ford’s, Hyundai and Subaru  Rally Cars and the occasional Classic Italian parts for me. I’m always blown away with the quality of work that Max churns out and amazed at his attention to detail to make the parts very rugged while staying extremely light weight.

Later this week I’m going to show you photos of brake cooling ducts that he makes for a major Catalog that sells race car parts so stay posted for these incredibly light weight and rigid examples of “black art”.

Body parts for Triumph Carbon Fiber

Stainless Steel Water Pipes 250, 330

Tubing for Ferrari engine

Since I have the jigs, stainless steel tubing and motivation, I decided to stock up on some commonly used water pipes for Ferrari 250′s. The top photo is a mixture of trashed original parts and my re-made parts that attach to the water pump and have a barb for the heater return and a threaded boss for the thermostat bypass. The pipe in the next photo is a custom job for a repilca 250 that was sent to me for duplication. This part doesn’t follow any of my jigs so I made a crude jig to complete this order. I’ve done 4 pipes recently for 1962 Ferrari 250′s, an early 1962 GTE, a ’62 250 PF Cab and two 1962 Short Wheelbase Berlinetta. Even though they should all be the same, all 4 of these are significantly different with barbs going in different directions and the main bend radius unique from one to the other. I’d like to know how these were made originally because there isn’t any consistency in  the style of construction or shape.

Head gasket and oil leaks

Since the late 80′s or early 90′s we have been servicing the car that goes with this engine and it has always been one of the best running examples we know of. I remember riding in the truck with my father to get the car on a cold and foggy night, probably around this time of the year, no, it had to have been early November. It was a brutal trip through that pea soup thick fog as we went over some of the mountains in the Berkshires on route 22.

The current owner of the car drives the wheels off of it and we have overhauled a number of components like the brakes, transmission, and fuel pump but now it’s time to address the engine. It runs great, starts instantly and doesn’t smoke but there are so many oil leaks that we have to break it down to clean it off in order to remedy them. We were blown away because as well as it ran, the compression and leak down numbers were bad displaying 30% loss in some cylinders where there should be no more than 5-10%.

So, apart it goes – it’ll run through our “process” that includes getting the rear main bearing cap cut and grind the crankshaft for a conventional lip seal, new forged pistons and a needle bearing roller follower set among thousands of other things. The motor mounts are blown out and the water pipes will likely have holes in them and will need to be replaced so we will be busy this winter getting all these 250′s back together for the spring.

As much as I hate to mention it for superstitious reasons, we’ve had great success with Ferrari engine overhauls over the last half a dozen years. A few times a week other shops call me asking how to get head gaskets to seal and how to make water pumps turn without leaking or how to make mechanical fuel pumps to work as intended. Their shops are struggling to find the exact formula, and we seem to have it locked down lately. Nate has assembled so many of these engines, he seems to have a real formula on setting the clearances, knowing the tricks to seal them up and making sure every detail is nailed down too.

Clutch housing on 250 engine

Blue Sera BB

Ferrari 512BB Blue

The new Canon G10 is working out well as you can see from these photos. Admittedly, part of the reason they’re so sharp is because I shot them at the end of the day with that mystical diffused light coming through high clouds which eliminates the major dark and bright patches on the car. Bill gave me some tips on standing way back and using the zoom to fill the lens with the car which gives the image such better depth. This camera has been great. Keep an eye out for more amazing displays of photography in this blog!

More Group B Fun

While I am obsessing about the Audi Coupe, here’s a good article in Hemmings Motor News on the Cars of the Group B Rally series in the late 80′s. The RS200 Ford is my all time favorite and one of these days I will own one.

You can’t really look back at the Class of 1986 without taking a look at the Group B homologation specials that reached their zenith that year, the last for the highly advanced, extremely powerful and now legendary rally cars.

The original intention of the FIA-sanctioned Group B rally and sports car racing category, accepted for the 1983 rally season, was to replace Group 4′s homologation regulation of 400 units with half that number to encourage more manufacturers to join the fracas. With a need to produce just 200 cars, the acceptance of all-wheel drive, exotic materials and very low minimum weight restrictions, manufacturers pulled out all the stops and created street-going race cars, like the outrageous, flared-fender MG Metro 6R4… read more at Hemmings.

1984 Audi Turbo Quattro Coupe

If there is, this may be the one. We just purchased this absolutely original 1984 Audi Turbo Quattro Coupe, aka the UR Quattro. I’m not going to get into the crazy details but this is a very rare car, hand assembled in a back room at the Audi facility. The letters UR are some odd reference to the German word for “primordial” or “original” as this car is the first generation Quattro which so many legends are based.

We have some work to make this car rock solid so you can buy it and chuck it over a rise on a gravel road or blast through the trees at the Maine Forest Rally. The next car we need is an E30 BMW M3. Then a Lancia Delta Integrale, followed by a RS200 Ford, my all time favorite car of all time of all the legends Iconic series

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