Tight, real tight

I start on the front end disassembly by draining some of the coolant. There is a petcock in the block hiding below the rear exhaust manifold. The reason for draining coolant is because I need to disconnect the coolant tube that's right in front of everything. After that, I turn to removing the accessory drive belt. This car has two belts -- one driving the A/C and the other driving the water pump and alternator. To start, the alternator belt needs to be removed. Ok, problem number one. How do I reach the alternator hold down bolt?



It may LOOK like there's a lot of room, but there's not. The passenger's side fuel tank is right next to the alternator. There's no way I can get my arm in there to loosen the mounting nut, which is facing toward the inside of the car. I guess the next step is to drain and remove the fuel tank. Not too big of a deal -- there's 20 year old gas in there and they need to be drained anyway.

The Ferrari 308 has two fuel tanks, one on each side of the car. There is a crossover pipe under the car that connects the two tanks. The total tank capacity I think is about 16 gallons, but I have no idea how much is in the tanks. I have about 5 gallons of holding capacity in plastic gas cans and I hope it's enough.

The crossover pipe has a large drain bolt at the lowest point. I decide (foolishly as I would later determine) to drain the tanks using this bolt. The drain hold is about 3/4" and fuel flows pretty quickly from a hole this size. In hindsight, it would have been much wiser to just pull a fuel hose at the fuel pump and drain it that way from the much smaller line. Anyhow, after spilling gas all over the place, I quickly fill all the cans and there's more fuel left in the car. Guess I'll go get another gas can to drain the rest.