8/2/02
Work Interferes with Work

I didn’t get to go up to the shop today because I actually had to work at my real job! It truly takes a good reason for me to show up at work on a Friday when I’d rather work on my Ferrari, but I understand that occasionally, I must concede!

Work on my car has stalled on my car because of the windshield, so until François and I can solve that problem, I can’t drive the car! I want to thank everyone who has e-mailed me advice and tips on getting the glass installed. As most of you have said, installing glass can sometimes be a real tricky thing. I personally feel it has something to with the gasket. One piece gaskets that are available from the Ferrari vendors are between $300-400 dollars, and I’m beginning to see the benefits! The gasket material we are using closely resembles the original profile, but something may be wrong with the cut, or the size of the gasket. Liberal amounts of grease and effort has been applied, but perhaps it just needs a bit more!

For those who wanted to know, the car does not show any damage to the windshield area, and there is no sign of crash repair. The original pinch weld is intact, and I can see original paint in areas around the window opening. When I carefully set the window in the opening without the gasket, there is an even gap all the way around, so I’m pretty sure this is the original glass from my car, so that is why I suspect the gasket to be in play of this misfit. Stay tuned on what happens!

There is always work to be done even though the windshield is stalling the driving of my car. I spent some time this week calling and ordering parts for the hood pad of the car. JC Whitney sells a heat resistant pad that seems perfect for my hoodpad, so I put an order in for a sheet. Luckily it’s currently on sale, so I got it for less than $30 Bucks delivered. Speaking to Frank, the upholsterer, he can sew this pad to the back of the vinyl instead of trying to replace the fiberglass and muslin it originally had. This new backing should hold together much better, and last a lot longer. Once the pad is delivered, I can drop the pieces off at Frank’s place, and he’ll quilt the parts together.

I also put an order in for a cleaner and protectant from Car Care Specialties to continue working on the vinyl hood pad. It’s pretty clean from last week, but a problem I had with acetone was that it had a tendency to evaporate too quickly before it had a chance to loosen the dirt trapped in the grain of the vinyl. I figured I would try “Meguiar’s Heavy Duty Vinyl Cleaner” to see if it would get the last bits of dirt out of the hoodpad. My suspicions are that this stuff is nothing more than “Fantastic” spray cleaner with good marketing, but for a couple bucks more, I figured it’s worth a try! I also got some “Vinylex” to protect the hoodpad after I clean it. It’s supposed to do a better job than other products that contain silicone. There are many opinions about silicone, the stuff found in Armor-all, and some of it says that it’s actually bad for rubber and vinyl in the long run. Not really having an opinion on this, I’m going to try this stuff without the silicone, and see what happens.

This time of year is a very bad time of year to work on my Ferrari. François, and many other shops are getting ready to go to Monterey California for the annual Concorso Italiano, Monterey Historic Races, and Pebble Beach Concours events. Getting them to focus on a small project like my windshield is near impossible because of the cars that need to be prepared and shipped to these events. I unfortunately will NOT be going this year, but will still be heading out of town for several days. A trip to China with some of my family falls on the Monterey weekend, so there was no way I could do both trips. I understand that there will be a dinner on Saturday the 17th of August for some Vintage Ferrari Enthusiasts that have met from this web site. I regret I will not be able to attend, but I hope someone at this dinner takes a picture so I can put some faces to names!

I hope to get one more day of work on the Ferrari in the middle of next week before I leave, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

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