11/19/99 Old Projects, and New Projects

I found a Krylon red paint that seems to be the right color for the coils, so after a month, they’re finally painted. The next step is to clean up the coil bracket and another project will be complete.

Working on the headlights got me thinking about the grille, and how I should start working on restoring it. The grille is made up of many interlocking flat pieces of aluminum all bolted together with tiny nuts and screws. It took me two hours just to take the whole thing apart! Each grille piece is numbered. 

Every piece has a common number (this grill was 43) so the Ferrari plant could keep track which piece went with a specific grille. The vertical pieces were numbered from 1 to 13 from left to right when looking at the front of the grille, and the four horizontal piece was numbered 1 to 4 from bottom to top. I drew diagrams so I could put this thing all back together when it’s all buffed.

The prancing horse is a chromed piece, and unfortunately a little dull. I’m going to try and polish it up as best as I can, and hopefully will look better than it does now. It actually looks better than it does in the picture I have here.

The aluminum pieces that make up the egg crate grille are pretty corroded, so I’m going to have to sand each piece before I start buffing. I’m probably going to have to get some kind of sanding wheel from “Eastwood Co,” because if I did this all by hand, it would take me forever. I’ll just have ot be extremely careful not to warp the soft aluminum.

Moving along with the windshield wiper switch I began connecting the wires that go to it hanging down below the dash. The previous owner did not label anything before disconnecting it so I had to clean the wires up to look at the color coding. Luckily, I have a 250 GTE owner’s manual and it has wiring diagram. Unluckily, my Italian is not so good, so I had to call my girlfriend from the shop to translate the colors! 

Italian Lesson in colors: Verde: Green, Bianco: White, Arancia: Orange, Marrone: Brown, Rosso: Red. Bleu is a little confusing because Blue in Italian is azzuro, but the only color left was a light blue, so maybe Bleu is light blue? I guess I’ll know when I go to turn the windshield wiper on!

Now that the headlights are in, it’s time to work on the fog lights. The buckets are painted, and ready to go in, but it seems the reflectors have corroded a little bit, and the rust is showing through the glass lenses. I had to take the lights apart to clean the inside of the glass. I was very nervous about handling the fog light assemblies because I knew they are rare, and very expensive to replace. François, my Ferrari Expert, showed me how to pop the spring clips off. After the first one I tried to pop off, hit me on the cheek, I put my safety goggles on! I wiped some rust preventative paint on the rusty parts, and will paint it with some neutral color paint, but the luckily most of the reflector is still shiny. I also masked off the stainless trim ring to paint the mounting screw area. It seems that this is regular steel, and needed some paint to keep it from rusting. Soon, another set of lights will be re-assembled, and attached to the car!

Previous Restoration Day
Next Restoration Day
Ferrari Home Page
www.tomyang.net