Sunday, May 15, 2011

Now THAT is an expensive service!

As I was looking through my photos from yesterday, I came across something that was pretty funny. There were a couple of Maseratis at E@RTC. One of them was a Maserati Coupé and I noticed the owner had some papers on the windshield. I had a closer look and it appeared to be a service receipt. I don't know if it was a joke, but here's what was on it:

A. CUSTOMER STATES THE CAR BEGAN TO IDLE ROUGH AFTER WASHING IT; WAS RUNNING FINE ON A 300 MILE DRIVE TO CENTRAL OREGON, BUT THEN ENGINE LIGHT DISPLAYED AND THE CAR LOST POWER.
B. TOW IN

Subtotal: $8,630.62

Ummm...Ok. Yet another reason to not own a Maserati!

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Car, cars and planes

What a great day. E@RTC was on this week, even though there was a chance of rain this morning. Throwing caution to the wind, I left the 308's targa top down as I left the house this morning. A few raindrops fell on my windshield on the way, but the sun was shining as I arrived.



Sure, there was the usual crowd, but apparently, today was Mini day. Let me tell you, there were A LOT of Minis. Mostly BMW Minis, but there were a few old ones too. I have mixed emotions about the new Minis. I mean, they're pretty cool but it seems like everyone has one. I think I like the old ones better, but that's me -- I'm old skool that way.



As I was looking at this green one with white stripes, the owner asked me if I wanted to have a seat. Sure! I'd never been in an old Mini before and I must say it was pretty cool. For such a small car, it's actually pretty roomy inside. I'm not that tall, but there was plenty of headroom. I haven't really looked but the owner told me that a decent old Mini is about $10-15K. Hmmm...Mini...

As I was walking around, someone mentioned another event at the Museum of Flight. Apparently, a high school student was doing a class project on airplane and automotive design. As part of his project, he had organized a car show and was still recruiting cars for display. I talked to the student's Mom and Dad and they were really excited about the event. What the heck, right? I had boring house and yard chores to do, but driving and showing off my car in the sunshine was more exciting.



Supposedly, there was to be a bunch of Teslas and even a Spyker. Sadly, many of the cars the student had lined up did not show. Still, there was a pretty good turnout and many of the E@RTC regulars were there. It's funny, the cars were lined up in a parking lot next to a live runway. Even though there were some amazing cars there, people would literally run to the fence when planes came and went. I got to see a Boeing 787 take off, which was cool. Surprisingly, the 787 is very quiet at takeoff.



Ok, how cool is this? No, I'm not talking about the hippopotamic land mass blocking my car. I'm talking about the Grumman F8F Bearcat buzzing the airfield. It taxied down the runway and took off while we were there, and it proceeded to make several low altitude passes. I was able to get this shot off on his final pass. Maybe I'll try and PChop this unwanted guest out of the frame.

As I said above -- what a great day. Sunny during the day when it matters. Of course, it started raining about an hour after I got home. Five hours later, it's still raining.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Thinking a lot about valves lately

A few days ago on F-chat, I was reading about the woes of a fellow 308 owner. Seems he just got his car out of the paint shop and was driving it around happily. All of a sudden, he heard a crunching noise coming the engine bay and the car stopped. After having it towed to a shop, he found out some really bad news. The engine dropped a valve and the engine was trashed.

In the early 2 valve 308s, Ferrari used sodium filled exhaust valves. The thinking here was that a sodium filled valve stem provides better cooling than a solid valve stem. On the exhaust side, this supposedly helped in drawing heat away from the valve head. Unfortunately, this also meant having a weaker valve. The stem had to be hollow so it could be filled with sodium and the valve head was welded onto the stem. Many people consider these valves to be time bombs -- the valve head could separate from the stem at any point and destroy the engine.

A lot of 308s have had head work done by now and had these time bomb valves replaced with solid stainless steel valves. What about my car? Since I don't know the service history, I have no idea if the valves have been replaced or not. I can tell that the clutch has been replaced before, but I can't tell if the heads have ever been off. I do have the contact information for the guy who has worked on this car in the past. When I get a chance, I'll call him to see if he remembers my car. Hopefully, I can get confirmation on whether my valves have been replaced or not. In the meantime, I don't know how much I should sweat the fact that my engine could destroy itself at any point.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Shocking -- two sunny Saturdays in a row

We've had lots of spotty weather lately and today happens to be another sunny day. This marks two Saturdays in a row that I've been out to E@RTC. Last Saturday, TK and I met SL for breakfast then headed over to see the cars. There's always a good crowd at the beginning of the season and I think 150 cars showed up last week. TK and I had other errands to run so we were not in the 308, nor could we stay long. It was SL's first E@RTC and it was cool for him to see all these cars in one place.

Yesterday I headed down by myself in the 308 under some sketchy looking clouds. We had a pretty good turnout, although the Italian showing was a little light. I parked next to an '85 308 QV that I'd been next to before. As I was wandering around, I looked back and saw a Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder parked next to me. I rushed back to check it out.



As I was walking around admiring the car, something struck me as odd. I took a closer look at the rear emblem. A quick chat with the owner confirmed that this was not a real 250 GT Spyder but a replica! I'm typically not find of replicas, but this one was very, very well done. He calls it a "Forrari" because it has a Ford 351 Windsor powerplant. One of the reasons the car looks so authentic is that it was made using the same molds as the Ferris Bueller car from the movie.



I usually spend most of my time wandering around looking at cars, but I spend most of the time there standing next to my car chatting with people. My neighbor HM came down in his Ferrari 400i convertible (one of 2 made by the factory) and I barely saw the Enzo come and go. When I went to leave, I was in line between a Red Lamborghini Countach and a Grigio Ferrari 458. The Countach was just puttering along but when we pulled onto the highway, the 458 blasted by me in the left lane. The noise! Oh my goodness, the noise! The 458 (and all the modern Ferraris) have this amazing F1 scream at high RPM. My car certainly does not sound like that.

When I got home, I continued my task of cleaning out my shop. I still have lots of random parts from old car projects -- most of which should just be thrown away. Looking at the pile of junk, I decided to finally try my hand at making some yart. Yart? What's that? It's basically yard art made of old bits of junk assembled to be something cool. I found some old broken yard tools and car parts and a few hours later...



Not bad for a first attempt. Truth be told, I borrowed this particular idea from a weekend trip that TK and I were on a few weeks ago. We came across a store with one of these on the lawn. Mine is not exactly the same, but there are similarities. It now sits at the end of our driveway next to a signpost and planter to greet our guests.