Quick Saturday morning outing

I wanted to take a few hours this morning to head down to the E@RTC gathering. It's something that happens every Saturday morning (weather permitting of course) and I'd been meaning to check it out for a while. It was Ferrari Day and there were LOTS of Ferraris. In fact, lots of many kinds of cool cars. Most of your more popular exotics where there -- Lambo, Porsche, Lotus (only one). There were also a few Acura NSXs, some BMWs and even a few muscle cars. By far, the best showing was Ferrari and probably the most Scuderias that I've ever seen in the same place.



Everyone really came though to see the new Ferrari 458 Italia. It was rumored that one would be showing up, along with a new Ferrari California. I had seen a Cali up close, but I had never seen a 458 before. It was AWESOME. I daresay it's the best looking modern Ferrari. When it showed up, everyone swarmed around it to get a closer look. Now only if I had an extra $350K laying around...



I was parked next to a beautiful Argento 512TR and had a great conversation about the 512TR and the Testarossa. I had no idea that the 512TR, which is the Testarossa's sucessor, is almost a completely different car. To the untrained eye, the Testarossa and 512TR look identical, but there are some pretty major differences. You learn something new every day!

Here's a shot of me as I was getting ready to leave. The event started at about 8am or so and the crowd started to thin out at around 10am. I had other commitments so I needed to get going. Fortunately for me, the 308 started right up and I was able to leave the parking lot without any embarrassing noises.

It's always something, isn't it?

Tonight when I got home from work, I wanted to spend some time in the shop. I wanted to richen up the idle mixture just a little more, as well as install some foam insulation under the front hood to improve the airflow around the radiator. I go out to the shop, reach down for the driver's side door handle and...snap! The handle flops around like a fish out of water. What now? Don't even ask me how it happened, but the cable connecting the door handle to the lock mechanism broke. I didn't really intend on removing the door panel again, but there I was -- removing the door panel again. Luckily, I'm an old pro by now and replacing the cable only killed about an hour or so.

I moved on to the carbs and opened up the mixture screws about half a turn each. It does seem to run a little better now, but there's still a hesitation. However, I think I can live with it. It was about 9:30 and dark when I got done, and I wasn't able to get to the foam. TK and I needed some food so we hopped in and went down to a great little restaurant 3 miles down the road.



It really feels like I have a "jump in and go" car now. In fact, tomorrow morning I'm going to jump in and go to a local regular car event. They call it E@RTC and it's basically a place where people bring their cool exotic cars on a Saturday morning. I've known about it for a while, but never had the chance to make it. Tomorrow's E@RTC is Ferrari day, so how can I miss that?

On the road again -- for real this time

Yes, for the first time in what seems like an eternity, I drove the 308 again. TK had someplace to be tonight and before she left, she helped me put the engine cover back on. I did one final check around the car, started it up and backed out of the garage. First stop -- gas station. The last time I drove the car was on Mother's day and because of the misfire, I was anxious to get it home in spite of the nearly empty tanks. After that, a short 5 mile cruise around the neighborhood. I took it pretty easy (like I usually do) and stayed around the speed limit. At one point, I got a little scare when out of nowhere a cop showed up with his lights and siren on. Couldn't be me, as I wasn't speeding. Luckily, he was in a hurry to catch some bad guys and he blew right past me.

The car's running ok. I think it's running a little lean now as there is a noticeable hesitation around 2500 rpm. Maybe I'll switch back to the 0.60 idle jets. I think they even have sizes in between 0.55 and 0.60 so maybe I'll try one of those. The CV boot is tight and there is no more grease being thrown around. We're in for a bit of a dry spell so maybe I'll get some driving time in!

Lean, mean, fightin' machine

In between chores tonight, I had about an hour or so in the shop. I took the opportunity to mess with the carbs a little.

Last year (has it been that long?) when I first started the engine, I was getting lots of popping and spitting back out the carbs at and just off idle. I had heard that this is usually indicative of a lean air/fuel mixture, so I decided to try swapping out my 0.55 idle jets to 0.60 size. This seemed to fix the problem, but I always thought it ran a little too rich, even with the mixture screws turned in pretty far. The exhaust smelled really rich at idle, and although I didn't keep track, it seemed my mileage was really bad.

Since I still had the engine cover off, it was the perfect time to make some changes. I decided to drop back down from the 0.60 jets to the 0.55 jets. Now that I'm much more familiar with 308 engine tuning, perhaps I can use the 55s and still get rid of the carbs spitting. Burning less fuel and getting better mileage won't hurt either.

Once the air cleaner housing is removed, it's really easy to change out the jets on the Weber DCNF. The idle jets are on each side and the main jets are in the center. It took me all of 15 minutes to swap out the jets. I started the engine, turned out the mixture screws a little to compensate for the smaller jets and balanced the carbs again. The result is not bad -- I let the engine get up to temperature and there is almost no popping or spitting. The next free moment I get, I'll put the engine cover back on and go for a little drive to test out the new jetting. Also, since I replaced the XR-700 ignition units, hopefully my misfire issue has been resolved.

Back on the road...soon...

The paint on my new bracket for the XR-700s finally dried completely and I was able to finish mounting the units. I liked it better when you couldn't see them, but it makes them easier to access...just in case.



I had a bit of a scare when I hooked them up, turned the key and...no start. What? All I did was swap out the XR-700s and check the static timing. What did I screw up now? I went through and checked the basics. All the wire connections were tight. I had a good ground. The strangest thing was that I was getting spark out of the coil, but not at the plugs. Huh? I didn't mess with the wires or the distributors, other than to remove the rear one to verify nothing was broken. I made one final pass and then I saw what happened. Remember that this V8 is like two 4 cylinder engines. Each bank has it's own distributor, coil and ignition trigger. In the spaghetti of wires, I managed to cross connect the XR-700s to the coils. So, the front bank distributor was triggering spark on the rear bank and the rear distributor triggered the front bank. Duh! Once the switched the wires, the engine fired right up.

On to the CV joints. What a messy job! I went through almost an entire roll of paper towels to clean off all the old grease. Each joint is held on the shaft by an external snap ring. Once removed, the joint comes off the spined shaft pretty easily.



Each joint has the outer cage, inner cage, inner hub and six ball bearings. It's a bit of a puzzle to get it disassembled. However, complete disassembly is the only way to get all the old grease out. Once everything is apart, it's an easy but messy job. In addition to all the paper towels, I went through about 5 pairs of gloves on the two CV joints.



After cleaning and reassembly, I repacked both joints with grease. I bought a CV boot kit from Dennis McCann at allferrariparts.com . The kit came with four CV boots, grease and clamps. My old boots were intact, but really dirty and nasty so it was easiest to just replace them.



Other than the mess, I'd have to say CV joint service is one of the easier tasks on this car. Installation was as simple as removal. I cleaned up and reused all the nuts and bolts as they were in good shape. Everything was torqued and I dropped the car back down on the ground. Before putting the engine cover back on, I think I want to tinker with the carbs a little more. Months ago, I switched to larger idle jets because the engine seemed to be running rich. Now I'm thinking it's a little too rich and I'd like to lean it out just a little to see what happens.

Well that wasn't so bad!

I was feeling a little down about the thought of pulling the half shaft to replace the CV boot. After reading a few posts on F-Chat, I decided to go back out there and give it a go. Would you believe it's actually pretty easy? I spent less time removing the half-shaft than making that silly bracket earlier.

The CV joints are bolted to the flange using allen-head bolts and locking nuts. At first, I was trying to figure out how to get a wrench in there to hold the nut while turning the bolt and keep everything from turning. I did remove a panel under the car so that I could see better. Turns out that the flange actually holds the nut and keeps it from turning. All I needed to do for the inner joint was use a really long extension and a breaker bar. To keep the axle from turning, I stuck a screwdriver in the brake rotor to jam it against the brake caliper. Voila! Six bolts undone without a lot of drama!





The outer joint was easier to access, but it was a bit tricky to sneak a ratchet handle past the suspension arm. After figuring out the position, these bolts were also easy to remove.



Having the half-shaft on the bench, I can see why it was leaking grease. The boot was intact, but the inner clamp was not tight enough to make a good seal. Now comes the messy task of cleaning up this thing, packing it with new grease and installing new boots.

New bracket

One of the reasons I needed to raise the car is because I needed to replace the Allison XR700 ignition modules. I suspect one of them is causing my intermittent loss of the 1-4 bank. They're reasonably cheap so I'll replace them both. The units themselves were tucked in the driver's side wheelwell, behind the inner wheelwell liner. Since I was replacing them, it was a good time to relocate them to someplace easier to access. A few months ago at a car show, I saw a carb'd 308 that also had XR700s. They were on a bracket just forward of the ignition coils. Brilliant! This seems like a great place so I'll do the same thing.



I started with the cardboard template, then made the final one from some angle iron. As soon as the paint is dry, I'll put the ignition system back together.

Another thing I wanted to get a closer look at was the passenger's side inner CV boot. I realized a while back that the boot is leaking and throwing grease all over the place, including the hot exhaust.



You can see it's definitely leaking. I don't think the boot itself is torn. It looks like the clamped end has slipped and grease is slipping past the end. It's a real mess down there. Removing the CV joint is going to be a PITA too. I can barely see it, much less reach it.

Yikes!

Wow, has it really been over a month since my last post? Well, I'm happy to report that I've finally carved out some time to work on the car tomorrow! No, the bedroom project isn't done yet, but it's getting close. After some paint and trim work, we'll be ready to move our bedroom furniture back in. Good thing too -- I'm getting tired of sleeping in the other room.

We're having our once-a-year heat wave here and it's been in the low 90s for the past two days. I came home today and decided to prep the car to be worked on. The engine cover is already off, but I wanted to raise the car on jackstands as well. In the hot shop, I was able to get it off the ground, but that was about it. I was sweating bullets and had to seek refuge in the cool(er) house. Tomorrow, I'm going to pull the distributors off and replace the old Allison XR700 ignition modules and optical pickups with new ones. It's supposed to be hot this weekend as well, but I'll get an early start to beat the heat.