Little chrome pieces came back from the plater that I could install on the Green Ferrari 330 GTC that’s headed to Cavallino. This little emblem goes on the gas cap and the chrome was polished away from careless paint polishers. The new plating will look so much nicer mounted on the gas cap lid!

You can see the shifter and gated shifter plate installed in the lower right of the picture, but I still had to take to take some things apart before the interior could go back together. The speedo and tachometer had a haze on the lenses, and was on the inside of the gauge. Getting them out so I could disassemble the gauge for cleaning required removing more than one gauge so I could access the clamps, electrical connections, and drive cables.

With the gauge out of the car, I carefully pried the little tabs back just enough to release the body of the gauge. These have a tendency to break off, so moving them as little as possible to get the job done is paramount.

Cleaning the back side of the glass was the easy part, but they look a lot better, and may keep a judge from deducting points because we had cloudy gauges!

I stripped and refurbished the steering wheel so reinstalled all the restored pieces. The interior is really coming together!

I was honored to be asked to judge Ferraris again at the Audrain Concours in Newport Rhode Island. It’s one of the few shows I agree to judge, because it uses a different guideline than say a Ferrari Club of America show, or Cavallino. Those shows use IAC/PFA (International Advisory Council for the Preservation of Ferrari Automobiles) rules, which I often follow when preparing a Ferrari to compete at one of these shows, but when it comes to judging, I prefer shows like Audrain that use what we call “French Judging.” Cars are not only judged by condition, history, beauty, but more importantly the owner’s passion, story, and connection to the car. The Audrain Concours constantly reminds us to consider the passion and spirit of the ownership can be just as important as the car itself. Sometimes it may be easier to judge a car on condition alone because at this show we were tasked with finding out who loved their car more than another! We had our work cut out for us.

My judging team consisted of myself, Victoria Bruno, and Rex Nuegen. Rex was the chief class judge and we also had the honor of Luigi Chineti Jr. on our team. I’ve known Chinetti Jr for many years, having been first introduced to him by Francois, my mentor 20 years ago.

We had about 9 cars to judge in the Ferrari class, but one Ferrari owned by Michelle and Steve Wolf, was not on our judging sheets. Steve had decided not to have his beautiful 212 Barchetta judged because he was happy enough to share it with the spectators, and wanted to give someone else a chance to win an award.

We asked him to show us the car, and he gladly obliged but I wondered if he knew his car was easily one of my top three in this class that day. I think owners like Michelle and Steve Wolf deserve recognition for their sportsmanship and generosity. I can tell you their decision to withdraw from having their car judged made another owner very happy! Thanks guys!

One of the changes I wanted to make on the green GTC that we’re taking to Cavallino is the exhaust. It’s become well documented that 330GTC did not come originally with ANSA exhausts with the familar red tape, and one piece chrome tips, but this car came with something even further from being correct.

Although the differences are subtle, the correct tips Cereto tips are pretty easy to spot sticking out of the back of the car, so getting these details right is pretty important. I had a set custom made in the correct diameter ready to accept a separate chrome sleeve just like the original and concours correct exhaust.

A little bit of cutting, stretching, and welding was required to get things to line up correctly, but it’ll bring this car that much closer to concours correct!

You can really see the difference in diameter of the exhaust tips between the correct ones I had made compared to the aftermarket replacements.

Here’s video on getting the tips welded in place. If you don’t know, I have a bunch more videos on the cars that work on at my shop. Don’t forget to check them out!

I got a batch of plating back so I had plenty of little jobs to address as I reinstalled all the parts back on the several cars that these parts belonged to!

One part was the shift lever that I talked about a few months back when I welded the reverse tab back onto the gated shifter plate. My plater knows not to chrome plate this ball socket because it needs to fit back in the socket of the shifter tower.

I’ve had owners mistakenly send out their shift lever out for plating and had the whole rod plated, only to find out the few thousandths of thickness the copper, nickel, and chrome from the plating made the ball too thick to go back into the socket!

My plater only put a layer of copper on the shift rod before masking off the ball so none of the other layers of plating would affect the dimensions of the shift lever. When a part gets stripped for plating, it can lose a little bit of the base metal as the acid strips the old plating off. Adding a layer of copper back on the piece helped return the old part back to the original size, but I had to remove a little bit of it for it to fit the socket perfectly. Using machinist blue helped me see where the socket was touching the ball, and sanding off a little bit of the soft copper was easy. Had this been plated with nickel or chrome, sanding and fitting would have been a lot harder if not nearly impossible. When it was done, lubricated, and installed, the shifter felt like butter!

Speaking of sockets, I recently had a hip replacement done to one of my hips! I’ve been suffering from arthritis in my hip(s) for a few years now, and my left hip got exponentially worse this year. My Orthopedist and I looked at the x-rays over the last 4 years and we could see the degeneration, and I decided the timing was never good, but a hip replacement was inevitable. I missed attending Monterey for the first time in decades, and even the FCA National Event in September, but I am glad to report 4 weeks post op, I am moving around better than I’ve been in years! I’m been able to get back to work and do 75% of the work I could do before, and the improvement can be felt on a daily basis. I’m already planning on attending the show in Newport Rhode Island next week without a hint of a limp! See you there!

The Machine Shop getting the engine to the Blue 330GT is getting close to finishing up so the engine can go back together. I needed to address some of the engine parts before all the parts converge. This engine showed signs of some dirty oil inside the engine for extended periods of time due to the staining found on many of the internal surfaces.

I needed to remove the oil pump, inspect it for wear, and clean up all the gunk and old residue.

The oil pan was no better, showing years of old oil sitting inside the pan.

I took all the internal piece off the aluminum parts like the windage pan and oil pump so I could send the pan and timing chest out for cleaning.

The process I’m going to use is called “Vapor Blasting” and it’s a technique that combines media blasting and power washing using the combination of water and an abrasive media during cleaning. Dry blasting is often too abrasive and can take too much of the base material away if the operator is not careful, and power washing with water and detergent is often not strong enough to remove embedded dirt and oils. Vapor blasting seems to combine the advantages of both methods and leaves a very nice surface finish on Aluminum. The process happens in a waterproof blast cabinet that recirculates a slurry of abrasives and fluid that is blasted at the parts at high velocity. The professional cabinets can cost thousands of dollars, and I’ve seen some home made cabinets that people have made for hundreds of dollars, but I have not been able to justify the expense and the shop space to make a vapor blasting cabinet of my own, but definitely see the benefit of sending the parts out to someone who can provide this service.

Pieces like this oil pan should come back with a uniform finish with all the dirt and grime removed, but unlike media blasting where the surface has a dull “open grain” look to the aluminum, vapor blasted aluminum tends to look smoother, almost like it was “shot peened.” I’ll show you the results when I get this part back!

Several weeks ago, I found my shop filled with four Ferrari 330GTCs! It happens every now and again when the same model shows up from different owners all at the same time.

My friend Chris Thompson delivered the latest GTC from an owner that kept this car only about 10 miles from my shop! Most of my customers are from all over the country with some of them overseas, but it’s so rare and surprising when one turns up so close to Hudson NY!

I was told by the owner that this car was recently restored and returned to its original color combination of white with a red interior.

The work was done pretty well, but a lot of the little details were just slightly off. I guess with three other cars in the shop, with one of them going through concours preparations, I needed to stop being so critical and see a very handsome car!

The red interior really looked great in contrast to the white exterior.

When I posted pictures of the white car on instagram, an old customer of mine chimed in to tell me the white car was a car I had worked on when he owned it several years ago, and when I looked up the serial number, he was right! I didn’t recognize the car because of the color change, but I had worked on this car over 14 years ago back in 2010!

With 4 Ferrari 330GTCs, I had a chance to compare and contrast these cars and show the production differences even in the short three year run of these cars. Here’s the video I posted this week of the 4 GTCs, and don’t forget the check out the other videos I’ve been producing on YouTube!

Looking over the minute details on the Green GTC that I’m prepping for Cavallino, I took a closer look at the horns and they were looking a little rough. There were several different finishes for horns on GTCs, and I could see the original finish on these horns was hammertone. Hidden behind the grille, it’s not readily seen, but if I wanted this car to look its best, now was the time to freshen things up.

After disassembly and masking, I applied fresh paint. The black background I chose to photograph these horns overexposed the bodies making them lighter than they actually are.

This photograph shows the hammertone finish I was going for.

I’m involved with several Vintage Ferrari projects and not all of them are currently at my shop! I am assembling one SII 330, but a second one is coming out of paint and is being partially assembled at another shop. The stainless steel brightwork was about to be installed, so I decided to grab the pieces and polish them back here. The trim was in good shape, but now was the time to give these a little bit of polish so they would look their best reinstalled on a freshly painted car.

Unfortunately, cleaning the work of the previous shop is always in the way of simply polishing parts. It looks like a previous shop had used silicone glue to seal some of the trim pieces, so they needed to be carefully scraped off before polishing.

Some of these glues have gotten really strong through the years, and sometimes there isn’t a good solvent to remove the stuff when only manually scraping will work!

I even used a heat lamp to soften some of the glues to help with removal, but it takes all sort of techniques and patience to take it all off!

Every time I look at the green GTC that I’m preparing for a Concours, I find a little detail that could use correcting. I noticed the side view mirror was secured with a slotted head screws.

I don’t think there is an official ruling on which screws were used to secure the side view mirror, but I have always seen oval Phillips head screws. I rarely see slotted screws anywhere on a Ferrari assembled by Pininfarina, so when in doubt, I feel it’s safer to use what commonly accepted.

Oval head screws also look better, but these are the little details that can make or break a Platinum win.

It may seem we’re being too anal about the details on this car, but I am also trying to make sure it works well mechanically. I noticed the parking brakes weren’t working on this car and suggested we fix them for the owner.

It was pretty obvious the old pads needed replacing.

I rarely judge at car shows despite the offers, but I was asked back for the second time to judge the Hamptons Concours organized by Rand Luxury in Bridgehampton Long Island this summer. It’s a Porsche and Ferrari show that is run by some good friends, Bradford, Andrew, and Glen, the Chief Judge.

The setting is in the famous beach town in Eastern Long Island, and I am lucky to have good friends to stay with for the weekend, so it’s a nice excuse to head out to the east end of Long Island.

photo J Sweeney

As with any car show, the entries were all spectacular, and choosing a winner is not as easy as it may seem. This show used what we call “French Judging” where judges are not necessarily judging a car on correct details, originality, or cleanliness, but more on an overall presentation of a car and ownership. From one perspective, this can seem easy by just awarding the judge’s favorite, but subjectivity can bring judges into conflict. After looking over about 9 Ferraris in our class, my team of three Judges conferred about our decision. We all agreed we could easily pick the top two or three cars in our class, but what could separate one from the crowd? The two cars left standing were a Platinum level Daytona, and this 550 Barchetta. You would think for someone who works on Vintage Ferraris, I would simply pick the Daytona, but I championed the Barchetta. Here were my reasons. The Barchetta was owned for about 7 years, and the owner drove the car to the show with his teenage son in the passenger seat. He seemed very knowledgeable about the car, and did some tasteful modifications to the car to make the driving experience more enjoyable. The car looked great, and I could really sense a pride of ownership. The Daytona belonged to the Glen, the chief judge, and although beautiful and deserving of another award, I asked myself would Glen appreciate another trophy as much as the owner of the Barchetta? I respectfully presented my thoughts to my fellow judges and also to Glen our boss, and luckily they all agreed.

I had a great time at the Concours, and know that at least one owner of a particular Barchetta went home happy and proud!