I’ve been pretty busy with my customer cars, so I’ve had very little time to work on my own car. I took my 330 America out for a spin earlier this summer, and found a small leak in the radiator core. This core had been replaced before, but there was a leak coming out of the header tank. On my car, there is a small scallop to clearance the cooling fan, and the previous core that was made for my radiator had a problem in this area. With only a few weeks to go before having to ship my car to Monterey, I had decide to have another core fabricated. The new radiator came in last week, and I’ve been trying to find time to install it on my car.

Along with repairing the radiator on my car, I decided to upgrade the starter on my car as well. Bringing my car to California is a big trip, and the last thing I needed to do is have it break down becasue of the starter. Just like the Lusso, I was getting an occasional dead spot on my starter. I’ve managed to nurse it along for the last few years, but I knew inevitabley I would have an broken starter.

What’s interesting is I has an small alignment problem with the starter on my 330 just like I did with the Lusso last week, but after I indexed the starter correctly for my engine I found another clearance issue with the adapter plate, so I took out my die grinder and removed some more material to clear the wave washers and nuts. After the quick repairs, the starter went in without a problem and gave me a little more confidence the enxt time I start my car!

Speaking of upgrades, I decided to also upgrade my fuel pump on my car. I’ve been running an extra electric fuel pump to help with vapor lock issues, but I wanted to upgrade the pump to a larger Facet pump for more reliability. I also wanted to try out a set of fuel fittings I made to make this conversion easy to do. These fuel fitting will replace the banjo bolts that go on the FIAMM electric pump allowing the original pump to work normally.

My fittings tap into the inlet and outlet port of the electric fuel pump, and as long as the check valve works on stock electric fuel pump, the extra fuel pump will assist the stock pump to move fuel to the carburetors. What’s neat is I wired the new fuel pump together with the old pump so you hear the click-click-click of the old pump, while the more efficient modern pump works in the background. As much as I like the sound of the old fuel pump, I know they’re not to be trusted. Ironically, when the weather gets hot, and demand for more cool fuel at the fuel rail is high, the stock fuel pump struggles to stay running. The contact points wear, and as things get hot, resistance rises too, causing the pump to stop working just when you need it the most! I hope this solution offers the best of both worlds. It will keep the Vintage sound and start up proceedure of an old Ferrari, but has the reliabilty of a modern solid state fuel pump!

With the mechanical work out of the way, I worked on cleaning up the car. I drive my car more than I clean it, so it has it’s fair share of grime. One of the jobs I hate doing it cleaning the wire wheels. There really isn’t an easy way to do it except to take them off and clean them by hand. Ugh!

I live on a dirt road, and I’m not afraid to take my car out when it’s a little damp, but mud can get splattered up in the wheel wells and stick to the tires. I’ll try my best to get this car clean, but she’s definitely a “driver!”

Monterey Car Shows

I’m all registered and ready to attend Concorso on Saturday 15th of August and the FCA event on Monday August 17th. Please contact Concorso, or the FCA to register for their respective events.

We’re planning a tailgate party after the show at Concorso to avoid the traffic leaving the show. There’s nothing worse that sitting in bumper to bumper traffic watching the car overheat trying to leave Concorso at the end of the day, so since all the GTEs and 330 Americas will already be parked together, we can stay a little later and leave when the traffic dies down. As always, everyone is invited!

If you want more information on the car shows contact:

David Wheeler, Editor of GTE Newsletter : David@Ferrari250GTE.com

Tom Wilson, Registrar of GTE Newsletter : tom@ferrari250gte.com

Tom Yang, Webmaster of tomyang.net : tom@tomyang.net

At last count, there will be 19 GTEs and 3 330 Americas! If you have one of these cars, don’t miss the opportunity to join us!

Here’s a rough schedule of events:

Thursday August 13th, Tomyang.net Cocktail Party at Quail Lodge 6-9 (I will confirm exact time as I book the venue)

Saturday August 15th, Concorso Italiano Gathering of the GTEs (and 330 Americas)

Monday August 17th, Ferrari Club National Show and Concours.

The Thursday early evening Tomyang.net event is open to all and begins roughly at 5:30 and goes until 8ish. There will be appetizers and a cash bar. It makes a great meeting place to connect with old and new friends and plan for the week ahead. See you there!

I also plan on trying out Twitter again to see if it will work for our group in Monterey. Follow me at tomyangnet on twitter, and you’ll be able to keep up with where we all are over the week. I’ll try to get it started in the next week or so.