Vroom vroom

A few days ago, I put the car back on jackstands to investigate an annoying rattle. The noise was coming from the heat shields on the headers. All the shields were loose and I was able to tighten them down a little by using a hammer and punch to dimple the shields -- essentially crimping them to the headers. That should fix the annoying rattle.

Since the car was in the air, I had a look at the exhaust. I was planning on waiting to install the Stebro but this was a good opportunity to mount it. Removal of the stock muffler was pretty simple. The OEM muffler is a tank! It must weight twice as much as the Stebro.



There are standard exhaust donuts at each mounting flange and these needed to be replaced. Fel-Pro makes donuts for Chevy systems that are the right size and I picked some up from Napa. I also replaced all the mounting bolts. On disassembly, I noticed that one of the catalytic converters had a hole near one of the mounting flanges. Before putting it back on, I sealed up the hole with my MIG welder.



The Stebro was a direct bolt-in replacement. All of the mounting points and flanges are in exactly the same places as the stock muffler. Once I had all the parts, putting everything back together was pretty simple.

So the real question is, how does it sound? Well, it definitely sounds better than stock. The exhaust sound is not necessary louder, but the note is noticeably lower. At higher RPMs, the sound is more full and not as thin as stock. Overall, I give it two thumbs up!

Since I had the welder out, I decided to tackle another small project. With a new set of wheels, I was going to use one of my old wheels as the spare tire. I was missing the bolt to hold the spare tire in the well so I set about to make one. An OEM replacement is $200 and an aftermarket one is $100. Wow! We're talking about a bolt with a knob at the end. There's no way I'm paying that much for a stupid bolt so I'm going to make one that will work. I had a bolt that was the correct thread, but it was a little too short. First, I welded this bolt to another bolt to get the length I needed. Then I drilled, tapped and shaped the head to accept a faucet knob that I found at the hardware store. Result? I now have a bolt to hold the spare tire and it cost me less than $5 in parts.





I'm taking the car to an All Italian Car Show tomorrow. Let's hope for good weather!

Snug as a bug in a rug

Well, today was the most activity this car has seen in many years. After shuttling TK and me to and from dinner, the day was over and the car is back in the shop. I finally had a chance to use the dust cover that I got a while back. Just before parking for the night, I took the opportunity to quickly aim the headlights since it was dark out. Wow, they are definitely better than the lights I had before. Having 100W on high beam is crazy bright. At some point, I need to do a correct aiming job but just eyeballing it works for now.

Today is polish day!

No, not "Polish" as in the people of Poland. "Polish" as in "buff and polish to make something shine." Today was a nice and sunny day and I spent the first half cleaning, polishing and waxing the car. It's amazing how much better the paint looks after some buff and wax. It's been a long time in coming, but I finally felt good enough about how the car looks to put the nose emblem on.



After cleaning it, I fired up the car and went for a little drive. I need to get some more miles before I can get a feel for it's reliability. I ended up taking two of my neighbors as well as TK for some short trips around the neighborhood. It's funny how I was so nervous the first few times I drove it. Now I'm feeling pretty comfortable with it.



While the car is now drivable, I can't really call it "done" as a project is really never truly done. So far, I've got a short list of things that bug me. Some things can be handled pretty easily -- others, not so much. First, I need to get a front end alignment. The car tracks really well, but the steering wheel is not centered. Since the steering wheel shaft is keyed and not splined, I can't just pull the wheel off and put it in a different place. In it's wonky state, the steering wheel spoke blocks the speedometer and I can't see how fast I'm going. Also, the turn signal cancel mechanism is messed up because of the misalignment. The right signal doesn't always cancel and I end up looking like one of those idiots who forgot to turn off the blinker and it taking right turns around the word. 2nd gear is basically unusable for downshifting so I need to work around it. Lastly is the tuning. While I did a basic job of tuning, I think I need to take it to someone who knows what they're doing. When it's running, it seems to be ok but I've got this hot start problem that's pretty annoying. When I turn the car off and let it sit for about 30 minutes, it's a bear to get restarted. If it just sits for a few minutes, it's not so bad. Time to seek some professional help!

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have, but...

My car is quiet. With the stock exhaust, you can barely notice that the engine is running at idle. No rumble, no growl...nothing. Not that I'm looking for some crazy straight pipe window shattering noise, but I didn't expect it to be so quiet. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed someone selling a used Stebro exhaust. It came off an early dual cat 308 just like mine. The owner had it for a few years and it had probably a few thousand miles on it. He had replaced it recently with a complete non-cat system and didn't need this anymore. Hmmm...Stebro, eh? There are a number of vendors making aftermarket exhaust and they're all about $2500+ FOR THE MUFFLER ALONE. A Tubi is even more. Ouch, let go of my arm. A complete system including headers will run you well over $5000. Double ouch. The bottom line is that this fellow was selling his used Stebro for about 1/3 the cost of a new one. Stebro makes a quality exhaust with a good sound and their mufflers can accept "tip inserts" which allows you to adjust the exhaust note. Of course, this one is missing the inserts but I think I can get another set from Stebro directly.



On another positive note, I spent a few minutes tonight in the shop with my random orbit polisher. The touchup paint has had some time to dry so I thought I'd try and do some polishing to see how well (or badly) the color match is. Using some 600 sandpaper, I wet sanded the spot on the nose. Then I fired up the polisher using some Meguiars Mirror Glaze #2 fine-cut cleaner. It looks pretty good and at certain angles, you can't notice the subtle color change. Good enough for me! Hopefully this weekend I can roll the car outside, wash the dust off and polish/wax.

Quick

I had ten minutes in the shop today and I took care of another little thing that's been bugging me. I finally got some suitable screws to put the speaker grills back in the doors. Now I can say the doors are complete!

It's like watching paint dry...

Well, I sprayed some of the new paint and the answer is...still not a perfect match. It's a lot closer than the last color I used, but it's still noticeable -- at least to me. I've got to remind myself that this is no concours car and I shouldn't be so anal about such things. It's just a car, right? It doesn't matter that the paint doesn't match, right? Ok, it's close enough. Let's move on...

While the paint was drying, I tended to some other little things I've been meaning to do. One was to put the (really dirty and stained) floor mats back in. On the driver's side, I used Birdman's Mat Grabbers to keep the mat from sliding forward. On the passenger's side, I made a mounting bracket out of aluminum to mount my 2.5 lb halon fire extinguisher. Hey, maybe it's paranoia but I've read too many horror stories about these cars burning up. The extinguisher is mounted just in front of the passenger's seat. It's within easy reach and should not interfere with the passenger getting in and out.



The other little detail to deal with was a missing access plate on the engine. At the top of the bellhousing, there is an access port to see the timing mark on the flywheel. Normally, there is metal plate covering this hole so that nothing falls into the bellhousing onto the clutch. Sounds like a pretty important piece, right? Something falling onto the spinning pressure plate would be a bad thing. Well, like so many things on this car, the access hole cover plate was missing. I noticed this a while back but did not do anything about it. A new plate was like $50, for just a flat piece of metal. When the bellhousing was off, I made a cardboard cutout of the access hole so I could make a new plate out of metal.



A little cutting, a little grinding and a little high temp paint and I've got myself a new cover plate. All I need now are the right sized nuts to hold it on as well as a gasket that I'll cut out of a roll of gasket material.

I can see clearly now

Today was to be a big day. This morning it was REALLY cold and there was frost on the ground. It was too cold in the shop to do any painting so I decided to work on my headlights until it warmed up a little. I had everything I need to rewire the headlights -- 12 gauge wire, fuses, relays and connectors. I was going to take the load off the headlight switch by installing some relays. Here is a good description of why and how to do this upgrade.

Like everything else, this little project was not quite so little and took more time than I expected. To route the wiring, I removed the front bumper and grill. There were three large wires I needed to run from one side of the car to the other and securing it under the nose sheetmetal between the bumper and the radiator was the best routing. There was also a big fat primary wire to be connected directly to the battery which needed to be routed and secured. I crimped, soldered and heat shrank all the connections (and there were many) which took a long time. The old Cibie DOT lamps were replaced with Cibie E-Code lamps and the new bulbs are Narva 55/100W. The new setup is definitely a lot brighter than than old one, especially the 100W high beam. I just need to aim them now which should be pretty easy. Daniel Stern Lighting (where I got all the stuff) as a great headlight aiming guide here.



I was hoping to be able to spray some paint today, but the lights took nearly all day. Tomorrow will be paint day.

Back in Black...err...Red

I got a call today to come down to the paint shop and have a look at the color match. Apparently, the swatch was a good match indoors, but the guy thought the match was not so good in the daylight so he wanted me to have a look. I had a look and it seemed pretty darned good so I went ahead and got a pint. The paint is a single stage Dupont Centari and I'm looking forward to trying it out. The actual formula he came up with is:

Centari Red Match
758S - 37.5
715A - 300.0
733a - 15.0
Non-cumulative guide

Of course, these numbers mean nothing to me but if I ever need more paint mixed up, someone at the paint shop will be able to decipher it.



Also, my earlier thought that there was some fancy machine to match the color? Nope, nothing nearly that sophisticated. He started with a close match using a paint chip book, mixed up a sample then started adding ingredients to adjust. Wow, I had no idea that this was such a manual process. Lets hope it worked!

Red is hard to match

So I get a voicemail today from the autobody supply store. They tell me my color match is not done yet. Apparently, "that color is hard to match." Huh? Are they doing this manually? Add a little pigment, do a test swatch...nope, no match yet...add more pigment, do another swatch...nope, not yet...

Sheesh, are we back in the stone ages? Please tell me that in 2010, there is a machine that can do this faster!

Hurry up and wait

Seems like I'm waiting again. Waiting for the autobody supply shop to finish my color match. Waiting for the rain to stop.

Last Friday, I took a headlight cover to Wesco Autobody Supply to get a color match. They told me it would take a few days -- a week at the most. What? It takes A WEEK to do a color match? Don't they have a fancy machine that just analyzes the color and spits out a recipe? I didn't get a straight answer on this. Something about doing this during some "down time" at the shop. Ok, whatever. As long as it's a perfect match, I guess I don't care how long it takes.

Why is it raining so much? Yes, it's still only April and we won't get good weather until after July 4th. Now that the car is mostly workable, I don't seem to have a chance to drive it. Yes, it's only a car after all and it won't melt but I don't know if the top leaks and I've not had a chance to seal the quarter windows yet.

On a positive note, I finally got all the stuff to upgrade my headlights. I got a relay kit and some new bulbs. I also got some new headlamps as well. A while back, I looked at my lights and THOUGHT that I already had the Cibie lights I was planning to get. Turns out I was wrong (again). The lights I have are the DOT approved Cibie lights. The ones I wanted were the euro spec E-code lights. Since I was getting the relays and bulbs, I went ahead and ordered the lamps as well.

Not all reds are the same

A few months ago, I decided to get some touchup paint knowing I would need it some day. I ordered it online and just ASSUMED that my car was repainted Rosso Corsa (Glasurit FER 300/9). Well (as is often the case), I was wrong. For the early (1976-1979) cars, Ferrari used paint manufactured by Glidden Salchi of Milan. In 1980, they switched to using paint by Glasurit. I think the original color was Rosso Chiaro (Glidden Salchi 20.3.90 or 20-R-190) but I have no idea if an attempt was made to match this color when the car was repainted. Clearly, it is not Glasurit Rosso Corsa. This was obvious when I applied the FER 300/9 paint. It's close, but definitely NOT the same color as what's on the car.

Anyhow, I need to take a paint sample to an auto body supply place to get a paint match. The smallest removable body panel is a headlight cover, so I'll take one off and get it to a shop soon.

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

ZV3EPFSUTTAB

Plan brewing

After consulting the experts on F-Chat and lots of thinking, I've got a plan of attack. Since the clutch is slipping pretty badly, I'm going to go ahead and replace it. There is a clutch linkage adjustment, but I have my doubts anyway that any amount of adjustment is going to make a difference. Even if it does, it'll be a temporary fix as this slipping clutch is going to get worse, not better. Unlike other cars where clutch replacement is a major life-changing event, the job on this car is supposed to be a piece of cake. It can be done almost completely from the driver's side wheelwell with the engine in the car. You really only need to get under the car to disconnect the clutch linkage.

To do the job, there is a one special nut that requires the use of a special tool. Birdman (of Birdman Ferrari and replacement 308 fusebox fame) has kindly agreed to loan me his Baum ring nut tool to do the job. In return, I will take lots of photos of the process and document the entire thing. Surprisingly, a clutch kit for this car is in line with what you'd expect to pay for any car. I placed an order today and it should be here in about a week.

After the new clutch is in, I'll try a different gearbox oil to see how much of a difference that makes in my 2nd gear shifting issue. Difference or no, I'll work on my double clutch technique for smoother shifts. If it does turn out to be a bad syncro...well, I'll deal with that down the road. I've had an idea in the back of my mind that I would be pulling the engine and transmission for a major service sometime in the next two years. The syncro will just be one other thing to replace when this happens.

On the road again

Today, we raced the sun home to try and get some pictures while there was still daylight. The insurance company needed photos of all sides of the car. The weather is clear now but it will start raining soon. If I didn't do this now, I wouldn't get another opportunity until this weekend. I wanted to get the insurance thing settled sooner than later. We got home just in the nick of time and I was able to get some photos shot.



The car was pretty much ready to go, so TK and I decided to take a drive and get some dinner. It was dark by now, and I didn't have a chance to adjust the headlights. Oh well, we weren't going far and I could see if I use the high beams. First stop was the gas station. On the pavement, it drives about as well as can be expected for a 30+ year old Italian car. The gas station was pretty empty when we showed up, and TK noticed the station attendant inside raised an eyebrow as we pulled next to a pump. A few people drove by as we fueled up and no one seemed to care. Good. I really don't like drawing attention so this was a good first showing. I did notice a state trooper pull in at the opposite end of the station and he didn't seem to care either.

After fueling up, I got back in and we headed 3 miles down to road to our favorite sushi restaurant. I must admit I was pretty nervous. It's a rural road that's poorly lit and I could barely see the road. Thankfully, a helpful traveller decided to tailgate me and illuminate the road ahead.



After dinner, I was feeling less nervous about driving this thing so I opened it up a little more on the way home. Rather than shifting early, I left it in a lower gear to let the engine stretch out. Wow, what a great feeling and sound. People in SUVs were passing me, but I didn't care. I was humming along at 6000 rpm just enjoying the sound.

Ok, that was the good. There are two bad things that are pretty major. First is that the clutch is slipping. It seems to be ok when starting, but it's really noticeable going up a hill. I can accelerate and watch the rpms go up while the car does not pick up speed. A few seconds later, the clutch will catch and then the car speeds up. The second bad thing is second gear. These cars are notorious for having a second gear that is hard to shift into. Usually, the problem go away when the tranny is warm. This is not my problem. I can shift up through all the gears just fine. The problem is I can't seem to downshift from third to second without a horrific crunch. I'm really hoping this is an adjustment issue, or perhaps because the clutch is worn. I'm going to ask the experts on F-chat to try and figure this out.

Wait, why are you taking things apart again?

Well, I spent part of the day taking the interior apart again. TK noticed (the hard way) that the passenger's seat does not lock on it's tracks. This was a bit of a safety concern so I pulled the seat out to see what was going on underneath. The slide release is a bent shaft with a knob on the end. To release the slide, you rotate the knob downward toward the floor. It looked like someone in the past pulled up on the entire shaft -- hard enough to bend the entire locking mechanism. Also, it the shaft was binding in the holes so it wouldn't rotate. It took some WD40, some re-alignment and coaxing with a hammer, but now the slide locks as it should.



I found something interesting underneath the seat. Each one of these cars is stamped with a chassis number and something called an assembly number. My car is assembly number 451a ('a' for US spec and 451 for number built in 1978). On various parts of the car, this number can be found written or stamped. Since different parts of these cars are made in different parts of the factory, they marked the assemblies with the assembly number so they would all make it back onto the right car. On the bottom of the seat foam, it is written "AS 451 USA". Good to know these are the original seats!



Since I passenger's seat was out, I decided to pull the driver's seat as well. I wanted to do more cleaning, especially in the center console area. The job was much easier with the seats out. It was also a good time to track down the last remaining electric gremlin -- the back up lights. When I unscrewed the panel with the console switches, I immediately saw the problem. For some strange reason, the wires for the back up switch were disconnected. I keep finding electric stuff unplugged or disabled. Why would someone do such a thing? I hooked the wires back up and the lights now work.



Having the console partially disassembled also allowed me to have a look at the parking brake handle. Since I got new cables, I was hoping to get the brake working again. However, the handle does not seem to stay up. I can hear the mechanism click as I pull the handle, but the ratchet does not hold the handle. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to live with this for a while. I was not able to get enough access to really get at the handle. To remove the switch panel, I would need to remove all the switch wiring as well as disconnect all the heater control cables. I already had to disconnect the choke cable to swing the panel out of the way and I wasn't prepared for full disassembly. It feels like the ratchet mechanism is stripped out so I'll probably need to find a new parking brake handle. Seems like a job for another day.



Moving right along, I put the console back together. Before I put the gated shift plate back on, I wanted to tend to one small detail. This car has reverse in the upper left and there is a small tab on the underside of the gate to prevent accidentally hitting reverse. Normally, you push the shifter knob down to slip past the tab. The tab was worn and there was nothing preventing a reverse shift. I fired up the welder and built up the tab and a bit of grinding made it the right shape.



I put the shift gate back on and the newly shaped reverse lockout tab works perfectly.



The last for today after putting the interior back together was the addition of a one-way check valve into the return line on the cooling system. On these older carb cars, there are two hoses on the coolant expansion tank. One is on the bottom of the tank and supplies additional coolant as needed to the engine. The other line goes to the top of the tank. No one knows for absolute certainty, but various people in the 308 community suspect that this line is the cause for air getting into the cooling system. It was suggested that a check valve installed in this smaller return line would allow coolant to flow back into the tank, but would not allow air to get sucked back into the engine. I have been noticing that the cooling system is indeed pulling air from somewhere. Hopefully this will solve the problem.

Lots of updates

Even though I've not had a chance to post, I have been making steady progress on the car. The first thing was to clean up the license plate light lenses and get new bulbs. The lenses are held into the housings with rivets, and I had to remove them (which basically destroyed them). I used pop rivets to put them back together. Not original, but who's going to care?



Next was to to try out the Colortune system. I pulled out one of the plugs on the rear bank and as you can see, it's pretty dark indicating running rich.



I put in the glass-top Colortune plug and started the engine. It's amazing to be able to look into the plug tunnel and see the actual ignition flame. Please excuse the bad photos as I wasn't able to hold the camera still. It seems I was pretty close in my initial tuning as there is a nice bluish flame indicating a correct mixture.



As an experiment, I adjusted the mixture to see what would happen. As I made the mixture more rich, I could see the flame go from blue to orange. I then adjusted the mixture back down to my starting point at blue. As another experiment, I slowly revved the engine, and it really was amazing to see the color change through the RPMs. In the end, I basically left the mixture where it was when I started. I think it's still a little rich, but the engine seems to run well that way. I think the plugs are so dark because all I've really done so far is idle the engine. When I'm able to drive the car, I'll plug the plugs to re-assess.



Next were the mirrors. The car originally had a single Vitaloni Californian mirror on the driver's side. At some point, the previous owner installed Vitaloni Baby Turbos on both sides. These are smaller more "euro" looking mirrors, but I didn't like them. I decided to return to the Californians for both sides. I think they look a lot better on the car than the Baby Turbos.



I'm really close to being done on the interior. All the remaining pieces have been recovered and installed, and I also installed the door thresholds. It's looking really sharp now. I still need to do more cleaning inside and re-install some of the carpet. I also need to have a look a the underside of the passenger's seat as the sliding mechanism doesn't latch correctly.



Next in line is to fix the rear license plate attachment points so I can reattach the plate. I also need to re-attach the carpet in the "trunk" (if you can call it that). After that's done, I'm going to clean the car, touch up some chips and buff out the paint.

The weather seems to finally be getting nicer. I think tomorrow I'm going to call my insurance company and have the car removed from "lay up" status to full coverage. My maiden voyage is approaching fast!

Cables

After considering all the options for fixing my parking brake cable, I decided to just bite the bullet and buy a new cable set. This came with the two side cables, turnbuckle coupler and right and left handed locking nuts. Installation was pretty straightforward and I think the parking brake is adjusted as well as it can be.



While the car was up the air, I realized I had not changed out the gear oil in the transaxle. I had 5 quarts of Redline gear oil that I bought months ago and it was time to use it. I removed the drain plug and the oil that came out was reasonably clean. It must have been changed not too long before the car was parked. The drain plug had a magnet on it to catch any metal particles from inside the transmission. Luckily, my drain plug was pretty clean. The magnet had a little sludge around it, but no metal shavings.



As the oil was draining, I went to loosen the filler bolt. Hmmm...22mm. Hmmm...I don't have a 22mm box wrench and there isn't enough room for a 22mm socket and ratchet handle. Guess I'll be stopping by the store to pick up some more tools.

Color me Rosso Corsa

Even though I tuned my carbs a few weeks back, I've known that there's more fine tuning to be done. It seems to be running a little rich still, as evidenced by the stinky exhaust smell. To properly set the air/fuel mixture, one really needs to use an exhaust gas analyzer. However, I can't justify spending the $500+ for one, so I opted for the next best thing. It's called the Colortune.



The system is based on the premise that different air/fuel ratios will produce different flame colors. A lean a/f will have a white flame, a rich mixture has an orange flame and the "optimal" stoichiometric ratio of 14.7:1 is a blue flame. The Colortune has a special spark plug with a glass top so you can see the color of the flame. You basically adjust the a/f mixture until the flame is the right color. Sound easy? I'll find out just how well it works soon.

While I'm in there...

Since the back of the car is up on jack stands again, now was a good time to find a wire I've been looking for. When I put the engine cover back on, I couldn't find the wire connector for the license plate light. The wire is there on the engine cover side, but I could not find the other end. I figured it was there somewhere, and I needed to remove the passenger side inner wheel liner. After digging around for a while, I found the wire dangling from the top of the wheel well. I fished it back up through a slot and connected it to the engine cover connector. I flipped on the lights and now the license plate lights work...mostly.



There are two license plate lights. One didn't work at all and the other was very dim. I took a closer look and the lenses were really dirty. I removed both light housings had a closer look. Sure enough, one bulb is burnt out. The only way to really clean the inside of the lenses is to grind off these little rivets and take the housings apart.



On another note, I'm still trying to track down a way to fix my parking brake cable problem. I've seen a few places that sell these cables for almost $100 -- EACH! Ouch, let go of my arm!

I hate broken stuff

When I was putting the wheels back on, I noticed that there was something wrong with the parking brake cable. One side had somehow popped out of a keeper, which is why the brake did not work. I had briefly futzed with this, but decided to fix it later. Today was later, and I again raised the rear of the car on stands to get to the brake mechanism. First I tried to loosen the adjuster to add slack to the cable. This didn't work because the adjuster was locked up tight. There were only two bolts holding the pivot to the frame, so I decided to just pull the whole thing off so I can work on it on the bench.

This thing sure was stuck. I sprayed it with PB Blaster and waited. Still wouldn't budge. I heated it with a torch. Still no dice. Eventually, the threaded end of the adjuster broke off and that's all she wrote. Oh well, more to fix.



Now that I got the "break something all the time" out of the way, I focused on recovering the remainder of the interior pieces. There were only four more pieces, and I was able to get them all done. The black pieces fit right behind the rear door jamb and the white pieces go on the inside of the B pillars.