Some day, I'm going to take these things to a paint shop and just get them redone correctly. The louvers are aluminum and need special preparation to get good paint adhesion. I said someday, and that day has not come yet. Instead, I just did a quick and dirty partial respray. If you look closely, you can see what a bad job it was. However, from 10 feet away, it looks great.
So if the weather is too bad to drive and the shop is too cold to work in, what's a man to do? Buy parts, of course! Continuing my quest for an imitation tool kit, I scoured eBay until I found a set of wrenches in the correct sizes and for a price I was willing to pay. I found a set sold by the Tool Academy in the UK. They are Sealey brand, and the set of 8 double open ended spanners (wrenches to us Yanks) are 6-7, 8-9, 10-11, 12-13, 14-15, 16-17, 18-19, 20-22mm just like in the OEM tool kit. For the pouch, I was able to get an F-chatter to get me the OEM dimensions and I had a co-worker make me a new pouch out of black leather. My tool kit is coming along nicely. All I need now are the screwdrivers, pliers and a spark plug tool.
Another part of the OEM tool kit is the jack kit. This consists of a pouch, scissors jack, handle, and lug wrench. On the advise of another F-chatter, I picked up this lightweight aluminum jack and handle from a Porsche 944. I know, Porsche parts in a Ferrari! Criminal! But, I won't tell if you won't. There is one modification I need to make this jack functional though. I didn't realize at the time, but the Porsche jack doesn't have a flat contact surface. The top of the jack has a tapered oval that must lock in to a tapered hole under the car. I need to make some sort of adapter to make the jack top flat so it will work under the 308 since I don't have a Porsche hole.
Some other parts I got are some rubber trim bits for the targa hoop and for the rear quarter louvers, as well as these polyurethane A-arm bushings. The 32 year old OEM bushings under my car are trashed and these new bushings should tighten things back up. These bushings are from Energy Suspensions (part 13.3101G). The original bushings are cast in steel shells and the proper replacements need to be welded in. However, the 13.3101G is split and once the original is pressed out, can be installed without welding. When it warms up, I'll tackle this project.
Last weekend (while I was busy) was the start of the 2011 E@RTC season. I can't believe I missed it -- the weather was beautiful there was a large turnout. There was even an Enzo and a 599 GTO there! Not to be thwarted, I decided I was going today. The weather was still a little dicey with a chance of snow today. When I got up this morning, it was 20 degrees but my driveway was clear. I started up the car and when I was ready to back out, I noticed some snowflakes falling. Hmmm...the car was running, what to do? I wanted to at least let it get up to temperature before shutting it back down again so I decided to just go. It was barely snowing so how bad could it be?
It was a fun and mellow drive to RTC. The turnout was pretty low because of the weather. Still, I counted 5 Ferraris, 3 Lambos and a handful of Porsche, BMW and Maserati. Representing the American Muscle Car scene was a beat up yellow Chevy Nova, Here I am parked next to a matte black F430 Spyder. This car was not painted this way -- the matte black was actually a vinyl wrap and was done very well. Wrapping is really popular in the Nascar crowd and we're seeing it more and more for "normal" cars (if you can call the F430 a normal car). Parked next to him was the red 458 Italia I was drooling over last year. Later in the morning another 308 showed up and parked next to me.
Things broke up pretty quickly and everyone left. TK had told me earlier that it was snowing harder at our house so I was braced for slick roads on the way home. Thankfully, everything was clear except our sidestreet and driveway. I know what you're thinking, "you'll drive the 308 in the snow, but not the rain?"
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