The spark plug tubes on the PF Cabriolet we have at the shop are in pretty bad shape. The previous owner squeezed 8 mm spark plug wires into a space that normally accomodates 7 mm wire. I’m not sure of the benefits in using thicker wire was worth the butchering needed to get them to fit.

Getting the old wires was no easy task as they were really jammed in there, but the worst part was they cut the holes wider for the larger wire where it exitied the tube. The hole on the right was one of only a couple original sized holes that were left undamaged. Most of the holes were crudely cut open as you see on the left. I’d like to try and save this tube so we’ll see if our metal fabricators can work their magic and repair these holes. At some point, it may be cheaper to make new spark plug tubes, but saving original parts would one goal.

The fresh air tubes on this car will need replacing. A real eye sore in the engine compartment is a home made fresh air tube made from some kind of fire retardant material that was painted black. Not only did it look like a “shade tree mechanic” repair, if it was made from a carcinogenic material, I wouldn’t have used this stuff to deliver fresh air into the passenger compartment!

The passenger side of the engine compartment has a hose that is more correct for these cars, but it was showing its age with some holes and splits. For Pininfariana built cars, the fresh air hose should look like this cloth wrapped wire reinforced hose, while Scaglietti built cars have the gray ribbed paper hose you see on Lussos.

The third tube I had to handle this week was as fuel filler neck on the 275GTB/4. As I was going over the detailing on this car, I took a closer look at the filler neck to make sure the right hose clamps were installed. What I found was something that needed more attention than the details of the concours correct hose clamp.

The fuel filler neck was pretty rotted, and must have been leaking. The filler is located in the trunk of the car, and fumes if not fuel must have been getting into the trunk area.

You can see from the rot that the rubber in the fuel hose was disintergrating from the exposure to the fuel. I’m glad we caught this before this leak caused bigger problems.

The Pledge Drive continues and I want to thank all those who found the time and commitment to show their support for this site and the community.

One of the changes with the website is the sizing of the photos to work on all the various platforms like the i-pad and smart phones. I increased the size of the photos so they can be viewed with better resolutions on a computer, but still made this site easier to read on a mobile app. Larger pictures means more space on my server to host such a large amount of data and your donations help control the rising costs. Thanks again for your donations!