12/21/09
Miscellaneous Update

After 7-1/2 days without power, I finally had electricity restored to my house. During that time, we were hit with a snow storm that dumped 8 inches of snow, and another one this weekend added 6 inches on top of that. Thanks to my generator and 4X4 pickup truck we survived the ordeal, and can now try to get things back to normal. I have not been to work for over a week, but have this partial post I was working on before the mayhem of last week. I’ll get to work for at least one day this week so perhaps I’ll get another Ferrari post up soon. I hope this will suffice for now!

There are a bunch of little details on the spark plug wires for a Vintage Ferrari. I covered the grommets in the previous post, but here’s a list of details:
1. Spark plug tubes are painted wrinkle black.
2. There are rubber grommets for each wire exiting the holes.
3. 7 mm wire is required because anything thicker will not pass through the holes in the distributor cap.
4. Any lettering on the wires should be removed. Acetone works great.
5. Rubber o-rings, about four of them a side, help bundle the wires together, and have to be installed before the wires are screwed into the distributor caps.
6. A stamped steel wire clamp (picture to follow) with a large rubber grommet gathers the 6 spark plug wires and is bolted to one of the distributor nuts. This also has to be installed before the wires are fed into the distributor cap.
7. The distributor cap hold down screws are white cad plated (nickel?)
8. There are small windows above each spark plug wire for number labels.
9. Did I miss anything?

Surprisingly, 3553 still has her belly pan! François admits that these belly pans were one of the first things they pulled off these cars and tossed aside when they came in for servicing at Chinetti’s shop in the 60s and 70s. I counted 14  bolts with 10 mm hex heads and washers that needed to be removed before any work on the transmission, clutch, or u-joint could be done. The belly pan on Gary’s car were held in place with phillips head screws, so I replaced them with the correct with a black oxide finish.

Just a reminder, I’m looking for a new Vintage Ferrari Project. If you have, or know of a restoration project, please let me know. It would be great to restore another car on this website! My E-mail.

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