10/13/00 More Painting, and Sway Bar Bushings

The transmission is basically done with its painting. I peeled off the masking tape from all the nuts and tags, and attached the parts I removed when I was painting the unit. It’s now ready to be installed. The clutch and pressure plate were sent out to be balanced with the flywheel, and it returned this week. They were bolted onto the engine which is now basically ready to be installed. In fact, François has removed my motor from his engine stand to make room for his next rebuild, a 250 GTE engine.

I continued painting the air cleaners this week, and they received three coats of semi gloss black paint. I know it’s not the most exciting thing to read, or see, but even Ferrari restoration can get kind of boring!

Since I was poking around the engine compartment making sure I didn’t forget to do something before the engine gets installed, I noticed the sway bar bushings, and the brackets that hold them. They’re kind of bent and rusty, so I bent them back into their original shape, and started bringing them back to life with a coat of primer. The bushings should also be replaced, so I put them all in a zip-loc bag and brought them home to find replacements.

Since the front suspension has king-pins and bronze bushings, I’d imagine the only weak link to the whole suspension would be the sway bar bushings. Finding polyurethane replacements would probably give the car even more road feel, and responsiveness. I’m going to try and find not only the sway bar bracket bushings in “poly,” but also the end link bushing pictured above.

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