11/30/01
Not My Day!

I started my day by stopping by my nuts and bolts supplier to pick up boxes of stainless steel nuts, bolts, and washers for the exhaust hangers. Since they didn’t have my phone number, they couldn’t call me to tell me they hadn’t arrived by mail and save me the twenty minute trip to pick them up this morning! It’ll be another week before I can get back to pick this hardware up!

I continued on to the shop to find a box from Stebro which I thought were my front y-pipes. Excitedly, I tore into the box only to find a bunch of short straight pipes and a few header flanges?!? I immediately called to ask what was the deal. When Stebro left me a message they said were unable to get an actual 330 y-pipe to copy, and if I were able to find one, they would be able to complete the exhaust. Now I’m left with a incomplete exhaust, and in order to redeem the full value of what they are selling, I have to find a left and right front y-pipe! Pretty  frustrating stuff.

Can anybody help? I’m looking for a set of left and right front y-pipes for a 330GT 2+2 with a four motor mount engine. If your pipes are in good condition, and off of your car, can I borrow them? The plan is to mount them on my car to see if everything lines up with the exhaust Stebro made. If everything works (who knows with a 330 America?), I’ll send them to Stebro so they can copy the pipes exactly, and I’ll get your pipes back to you ASAP!

Totally bummed about the exhaust, I tried to make the best of my day by making some exhaust spacers. These aluminum spacers sandwich between the hangers that I bought a few weeks ago. In the pile of parts I got with my car, a string of original spacers were found, but I’ll need about 40 of these things, so more were needed. I first looked to see if anyone was making these things for Ferraris, but didn’t find any, so decided to make them from scratch. The spacers measure 40 mm across, but since in the U.S. everything is in inch measurements, I bought the closest size which turns out to be 1/2 inch diameter 6061 aluminum rod.

There are probably a dozen ways to make this spacer, but after some discussion with a CBS machinist at work, cutting them on a lathe would give the best results. Since François does not have a cut off fixture on his lathe, we ground a bit to a thin cutting edge, and began work. The drill bit on the right is held stationary and bored a hole in the center of the rod. The bit is retracted, and the cutter is set to the correct diameter. I kept the drill bit partially inserted to catch the spacer as it was cut off the rod. For all you machinists out there, I know there are collets and other devices available to make this job easier and faster, but I’m just an audio technician playing a machinist on Fridays!

After a while, I had a nice pile of spacers cut from the rod. The next step was to change to a slightly larger drill bit, mount each of these spacer back in the lathe, and cut the extra flashing on the one side of the spacer.

After a few hours I had a nice stack of these spacers ready to install. I even made some extra for the next exhaust François needs to install.

At least I left the shop today feeling I accomplished something even though it feels like I’ll NEVER start that motor! Let’s hope for the best, next time at the shop!

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