New scoots for the pony

I took advantage of Les Schwab's annual Spring tire sale and got some new tires for the new 16" wheels. There are a lot of tires out there and I ended up choosing the Toyo Proxes 4 in 215/55-16 for the front and 245/50-16 for the rear. The Proxes 4 is a V rated all-season high performance radial. I know there are much higher performance tires out there, but it's not as if I'm going to go out to the track tomorrow. This is a good tire at a good price and I'm happy with the purchase.



On a side by side comparison, you can see how much more aggressive the new wheel/tire combo looks. I originally really liked the look of the 14s and the "balloon" tires but seeing the new combo completely changed my mind. Seeing them on the car is amazing.





I got the new wheels mounted as my sister and her family showed up for dinner. I took the opportunity to take the car out the check out the new clutch and to give my brother-in-law, DZ, a ride around the block. DZ's a pretty tall guy but he seemed to fit in the passenger's seat fairly well. This was my first drive in the daylight and I only did a 5 mile loop on backroads. The car feels pretty good, but I need to adjust the clutch a little. I need to push the clutch pedal all the way to the floor for full disengagement so I think I need to take a little slack out of the cable. I think there is supposed to be 3/4" of free play in the pedal and there seems to be much more than that. Back up on jackstands!

That's the good part. The bad part is that the change in gearbox oil did not help the 3-2 downshift. I'm pretty sure the 2nd gear synchro is shot so I'll need to be gentle until I can fix it at some point.

See what happens when you don't check everything?

Since it's an awkward job, TK helped me put the engine cover back on the car. As we were working, she pointed a spot on the inside near the hinge and said, "hey, what's that?"



Turns out that one of the replacement hinge bolts I used was too long. Not realizing it was too long, the pointy end of the bolt pushed against the wall of the engine cover. It cracked the paint and put an "outy" there. Oops. I got out a pick body hammer and pushed the metal back in place. A spot of putty and some touchup paint should make it barely noticeable. Also, before putting the offending bolt back in, I took a grinder to the tip, just so this never happens again.

Dare to dream

Perhaps it's not too distant, but I do dream of a day when I can come home after work on a sunny day and just take the 308 for a drive. Like yesterday, for instance. It was sunny and what felt like 70 degrees! But no, the car is still up on jackstands just waiting to be put back on terra firma. It seems like there are so many little things I want to take care of before it's ready to jump in and drive. Some are legitimate safety concerns (like needing to replace the old tires and fixing the headlights) while others are just plain vanity related. Let's face it, I've waited many years for this car and I don't want to drive it until I'm comfortable with the way it looks. I've been filling and spraying paint chips and I'm still not ready to put that darned Ferrari emblem on the front yet.

On the bright side, it's only March and driving season is only just beginning.

Silence is not necessarily a bad thing

It's been several days since the last post, but it doesn't mean anything is wrong. I've been busy with some other work around the farm, as well as getting out and enjoying life.

The good news is that the car is (at least mechanically) ready to go. I put oil back in the transmission and buttoned up everything in the wheel well. This time, I used Redline 75W90NS and hopefully the 2nd gear downshift will improve. Before I put the engine cover back on and lower the car to the ground, there is one minor detail I want to tend to. There are about a half-dozen paint chips around the car and two of them are only accessible with the engine cover off. Since the cover is off right now, it's a good time to fill these chips. I used some automotive glazing putty to fill the chips, then I sanded them flush to the surface. Next I'll use an airbrush to apply a color coat. When that's done, I can put the engine cover back on.

Linkage on and adjusted

It took a lot of wrestling, but the clutch linkage is back together and adjusted. The entire mechanism consists of a clutch cable on a turnbuckle pulling a pivot arm on a spring, which pulls another turnbuckle, which pulls another arm, which is attached to a shaft, which is attached to another arm which moves the throwout bearing.

To adjust it, I loosened all the turnbuckles and put a drill bit into a hole to lock the main pivot arm in place. With the arm locked, I adjusted the first turnbuckle to take the slack out of the cable, which also raises the pedal. Then I adjusted the other turnbuckle, to provide just enough slack so that the throwout bearing does not contact the pressure plate when the clutch is disengaged. It's actually a pretty slick system for adjustment. It took me a while to do all this because I wanted to make sure I was doing it right. Next, I'll put oil back in the transmission and reattach the last few pieces to finish off this job.



In case anyone is wondering on the exact adjustment procedure, there is a very good writeup on F-Chat. This procedure is only for the early 308 clutch as the later ones have a different linkage configuration.

I think I'd better keep my day job

There is a reason I'm not a mechanic for a living. I mean, I certainly get the job done and do it correctly, but I'm not exactly the fastest worker around here. Any "real" Ferrari mechanic could probably replace a clutch in less than 8 hours. So far, I think I'm up to 30 or so.

Tonight, I finished putting the drop gears in place. It involved putting the snap rings and bearing back on the transmission input shaft, then putting the gear back on and tightening the ring nut (with the special socket). I then cleaned up the gasket surface and put the transfer case cover back on, with a bead of the Loctite 518 anaerobic gasket eliminator.



I'm almost there! All that's left is to put the clutch linkage back together, adjust it and refill the transmission with oil.

Clutch back in

Well, after lots of swearing, the clutch is back in and the bellhousing is back on. I started by borrowing a bearing puller from BG to remove the pilot bearing. I first tried the old "fill the bearing pocket with grease" trick, but it didn't work. Come to think of it, the grease trick has never worked for me. It ends up making a huge mess and the bearing never moves. The bearing was in there pretty good and it took a lot of work with the puller to remove it.

I put the new bearing in place and bolted the flywheel back on, lining up the timing mark. I didn't have a clutch alignment tool, but I had a plan. First, I put the friction disc and pressure plate on and only made the bolts finger tight. I had a 10mm deep socket that fit almost perfectly in the pilot bearing so I used it with an extension as a center. Then I aligned the disc by sight to get close. Once it was close, I put the bellhousing back on to use the actual input shaft for final alignment. I carefully, remove the bellhousing again and torqued down the pressure plate bolts.



With the clutch secure, I put new o-rings on the bellhousing and put it back on the car. What a PITA! It came off much easier than it went back on. It was a struggle so I decided to call it a night. The rest of the assembly will need to wait for another day.

Flywheel faced and ready to go

I got a call from BG today and my flywheel was done. On my way home, I stopped by his shop to pick it up. Wow, this thing looks great. There's nothing quite as cool as a freshly machined surface.



Too bad I wasn't there to see the machining. I would have liked to see the machine that did this work. There is a cool swirl pattern around the flywheel face and it just looks really cool. I should be able to get everything put back together this weekend.

Through thick and thin

I saw a post today on F-Chat that was kind of interesting. Someone was asking about whether they should reuse the clutch on their 328, and they wanted to know if a 9mm thick friction disc was acceptable. For a 328, 9mm is within the wear limit and is probably fine.

This got me wondering, so I looked up the spec in the 308GT4 workshop manual for an early 308 clutch. This is what I found:

Thickness of driven plate without load: 9,2 - 9,5 mm
Thickness of driven plate under load: 8,5 mm
Wear limit of driven plate: 1 mm

I read this as the new plate should be between 9.2-9.5mm and the disc is considered worn and "out of spec" if it's less than 8.2mm thick. My new friction disc is about 9mm thick (depending on where it's measured). The fried one I pulled out was 6mm thick. A difference of 3mm, or 3 times the wear limit. Hmmm...I think my clutch is worn out.

Wheels on the bus go round and round...

For the past several months, I've been struggling with what to do about wheels and tires. The car has OEM Cromodora aluminum/magnesium 14" wheels, which severely limits my tire choices. In fact, there are essentially no performance tires made for 14" wheels anymore.

Last week, I saw an eBay auction for a set of Ferrari 308 wheels. From the description, they sounded like the reproduction 308 QV 16" wheels made by KN Alloy in the UK. The wheels in the auction were new and had never been mounted on a car. There was a Buy it Now price that was right around half of the new price directly from the UK. The only problem was there was no photo. By reading the description, I was 90% sure these were the wheels I wanted so I decided to take a chance. After I agreed to buy, the seller sent me some photos and verified that they were indeed the UK repros. Whew! I'm glad I took the chance.



Aside from one nick on the inside lip of a rear wheel, the set seems to be in perfect condition. Now I have a much better choice in performance tires. The factory size in 16" are 215/55-16 for the front and 235/50-16 for the rear. I should be able to find some good tires at a price I can live with.

Gee, why's my clutch slipping?

Well, here we go again. The car is again up on jackstands, this time to work on the clutch. I'm getting pretty good at raising the car off the ground and pulling off the inner wheel wells. Seems like I've had to do this a lot lately.



One of the great things about this car is the access to the clutch. Almost everything is accessible from the wheel well and the only thing you need to get under the car for is to drain/fill the transmission and to disconnect/reconnect the clutch linkage. After draining and disconnecting, I removed the transfer case cover to expose the drop gears. The engine output shaft is connected to the top gear and the transmission input shaft is the lower gear. The ring nut on the lower gear needs to be removed with the special ring nut tool. The nut is torqued to 140 lbs-ft, and I needed a lot of leverage to get it loose. First I tried my air impact hammer, but the nut didn't budge. Then I got out my breaker bar with a really long extension. I used a block of wood to support the extended end and the nut loosened right up.



After removing the nut, I was able to slide off the lower gear. Behind it is a bearing, held on by a snap ring. So far so good. I removed the snap ring, then proceeded to remove all the bolts holding on the bellhousing. The bellhousing was stuck, so I had to make a puller out of a scrap piece of metal to gently pull the bellhousing from the back of the engine.

When the bellhousing pulled away, I grabbed it by hand and pulled it away until...clunk. What the heck? Clunk. I was trying to slide the bellhousing off the transmission shaft, but there was definitely something in the way and I couldn't tell what. I slid the bellhousing back on and looked at the shaft again. Then, I saw it. Far inside at the back of the output shaft was a snap ring. It was hard to reach and the type of ring that I didn't have a tool for. My snap ring pliers are the pin type, and they didn't work on this flat ended snap ring. After trying (and failing) for a few minutes, I heard our dog barking. I looked outside and here comes BG coming down the driveway. What great timing! If anyone had the right pliers, it would be him. Turns out he did have the right pliers (several in fact) and we were able to get this sucker off. With the ring out, the bellhousing slid off with no problem.



SL came by and helped me with the rest of the disassembly. With the bellhousing off, the clutch pressure plate was exposed and it removed easily. This revealed the source of the clutch slip. The clutch friction disc was really worn, It was about half of the thickness of the new one and worn past the wear indicators and almost to the rivets. As I suspected, this car has been driven hard and put away wet. After all, there are only 46K miles on the odometer. Did these people not know how to drive? The clutch disc from my Golf at 100K miles looked almost brand new! Also, there is evidence that clutch has been replace before. That means that the previous owner ran through at least two clutches in 46K miles? Incredible!



As much as I had hoped that I would be back on the road quickly, it was not going to happen. Not only was the clutch fried, so was the flywheel. It's worn pretty badly, and it's a bit discolored from overheating and has small cracks in it. I talked to BG and thinks it's salvageable by resurfacing. He doesn't do this type work in his own shop, but has a guy who does. Hopefully, this will be done in the next few days.

You learn something new every day

In gathering all the pieces I needed for the clutch replacement, I learned something new. The procedure will require the removal of the transfer case cover. The cover is bolted on to the transfer case without a gasket. Several folks on F-Chat have suggested using something called Loctite 518 as a sealant. What is Loctite 518 and what's so special about it? It is an "Anaerobic Gasket Eliminator." Anaerobic? What the heck is that? How's it different than the good old Permatex RTV Blue?



As the name would imply, an anaerobic gasket sealant works in the absence of air. When used between metal mating surfaces, the thin film is not exposed to air and therefore cures. Any excess which squishes out the side are exposed to air, and therefore will not cure. Regular RTV sealant, on the other hand, will cure no matter where it is. What's so important about this?

Let's say you're putting on a valve cover and you use a bead of RTV to seal the gasket surface. Some of it squishes out and cures on the inside of the cover. Let's say that some of this "extra" on the inside breaks loose and wanders through the oil passages of the engine. If the errant RTV blob is big enough, it could plug a passage and starve your engine of oil.

Supposedly, an anaerobic sealant will not do this. Any errant sealant on the inside surface will not cure because it's still exposed to air. If it does break away, it stays a semi-liquid blob and will not potentially plug an oil passage. That's the theory anyway. It sounds good to me so that's what I'm going with. It seems that no one at the local auto parts stores has even heard of Loctite 518. They all stock Permatex products. Permatex does make an anaerobic sealant, but since the Loctite product was so highly touted, I wanted to track some down. Since I still had some time before the teardown, I just ordered some from Summit Racing.

Hey, I just saved some money!

A while back, I complained about how horrible my headlights were. I did some homework, and decided the lights I wanted to get were Cibie Euro-code lamps with some powerful H4 bulbs. I also wanted to install some relays to reduce the voltage drop to the lights. A wonderful place to read all about headlight technology is http://www.danielsternlighting.com/ . His website is full of relevant information on lighting. Anyhow, I was going to place an order but DS tells me the Cibie headlamps are temporarily out of stock. Tonight, I went out to the shop to look at my lights and I couldn't believe what I saw. It turns out that I already have Cibie Euro-code headlamps -- the exact same ones I was going to buy! Duh! I just assumed that my lights were the old sealed beam units and needed to be replaced. Since the lights are usually retracted, I didn't pay that much attention to the actual lamps. Also, it turns out there are H4 55/60W bulbs in there. I suspect that the poor performance was solely due to voltage drop in the wiring, which will be cured by installing relays and bigger wires. Also, I'm going to get some higher wattage bulbs. Yahoo! No need to spend the money on new headlamps!

Getting ready for that clutch replacement

More parts are here. I got the clutch kit on Friday, which consists of the pressure plate, friction disc, throwout bearing and various O-rings. While I was at it, I also ordered a new transfer gear ring nut and replacement rubber pads for the clutch and brake pedals.

Today I got the loaner ring nut tool (Thanks Birdman!). It's made by Baum Tools and it's only lot in life is to remove and install the lower drop gear ring nut on the Ferrari gearbox.



While I was at it, I also got a set of Mat Grabbers from Birdman. He came up with these nifty devices to avoid the "Italian Cruise Control," which is the throttle sticking open due to the floor mat sliding forward. This condition (unlike the Toyota problem), is solved by using the Mat Grabber clip to secure the back of the mat to the seat mounting bolts. To get your own, have a look at Birdman's website: http://birdmanferrari.com/mat_grabber.htm

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