7/7/12
Engine Prep, and Exhaust Repair

It’s been very hot the past several days in the Northeast, but it’s perfect weather for wrinkle painting valve covers! We have an oven set up inside the shop for when we paint these finishes in the winter, but there is nothing better than letting the heat from nature do its work. The paint has to be applied very thickly, almost to the point of running, but as the parts heat up in the sun, the paint magically wrinkles like the one seen on the right side of the picture.

I’ve seen several powder coat wrinkle finishes, and none of them seem to match the coarseness of Plasticote wrinkle paint found in a rattle can. The trick is to get good even heat on the parts.

With freshly painted valve covers placed on the heads, I was able to start fabricating the ignition wires on the 275 engine. There are a lot of little parts and pieces that need to be collected in order to complete a set of wires but I gathered them all before beginning.

The hardest thing is to keep the wires in order as you feed them through the spark plug wire tube. The firing order of a columbo engine is  1-7-5-11-3-9-6-12-2-8-4-10, but the trick is you only really have to memorize half of these numbers. A Ferrari engine is actually fired like two six cylinder engines, so if you remember 1-5-3-6-2-4, it repeats for 7-12. If this sounds confusing, just look at this pictured of the pretty wires!

Some of the details to follow on the ignition wires is to install grommets at the openings of the spark plug wire tubes, and to remove the lettering on the wires. Brake parts cleaner works well with the 7mm wires we use.

We managed to swap out a good center section to replace a rotted muffler on the 330GT we’re working on at the shop.

We mounted the replacement system with the old pipe and tacked it together. With the system off the car, Francois gas welded the pipes together.

The replacement system was a little different than the old system so some of the hangers had to be relocated. I cut through the welds of the old hanger and moved it into an appropriate location. This repair should hold the owner over for a while before resorting to replacing the whole system.

Quail Cocktail Party


I’ll be out in Monterey again this year, and I’d like to invite you to an informal gathering of Tomyang.netters at the Quail Lodge on Thursday August 16th, 5:30-8:00pm. The cocktail party will be held behind the Lodge by the pool overlooking the greens where the big Quail show will be setting up the next day. It’s a great chance to put faces to names that we hear on the Internet, and meet some of the restorers, parts suppliers, and owners of Vintage Ferraris. I hope to see you there!

Reminder: If you have a Ferrari related project, car, or idea you’d like to explore, I’d love to talk to you. I can also help if you’re thinking of buying or selling. This website represents what I love to do, and now it’s how I make a living, so if you’d like to do something together, let me know. It all begins with an e-mail!

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