3/16/01 Found the elusive part!

Actually François found the elusive part. A local Ferrari supplier had one in his stash of parts and it was MUCH cheaper than a quote from another supplier, about 1/10 cheaper! It needed to be cleaned up before installing on the car, so I spent the better part of the day working on the blower assembly.

After cracking open the case, I found a lot of rust. It wasn’t rusted through thankfully, so I headed over to François’ shop to use his sand blasting cabinet to get the loose paint and rust off. From the looks of the rust marks, the corrosion was probably due to trapped water inside the blower housing. When everything goes back together, I’ll make sure I make some provision for water to escape.

After sand blasting, I coated the inside of the blower housing with POR-15. It will stop the rust, and give a real hard finish for the primer and paint to go on top.

While I was at François’ shop, I was happy to see my transmission on his bench. Since I took all the exterior pieces off, it was easy for him to take it over to his shop and get started on it. Unfortunately, he’s at an impasse because one of the gear sets won’t slide out, keeping the rest of the gears from coming out. He’s going to try soaking the whole gear box to see if it’s not just gummed up gear oil, and try another day. The good news is the internal bearings all look good, and the only thing I need to replace so far is another oil seal deep within the transmission.

The right window frame has been installed, and all the mechanisms adjusted. It took just as long as the left one to adjust, but the slow and methodical installation rewarded me with a smooth operating window mechanism. If you remember, the right window was the one with problematic winder cable where I had to remove the cable and take the kinks out. Luckily, the cable is no longer jumping out of its rollers, and the window seems to be behaving. Before moving on, I’ll give everything a good coat of grease, and move on to the door handles, and lock mechanisms. I also think I can start removing all the greasy fingerprints all over the windows!