The chrome plating on the 330 is starting to trickle in from the plater. The parts were disassembled for plating, so I had to reassemble the parts to make the door handle work. It was nice to have the pivots fit perfectly without having to file excessive material.  I’ve been working with this plater now for several years, and we have a good system. He not only knows how plate the pieces so there is not a lot of plating  that gets in the way to fit back together, but also knows how to fix the problem areas that I’ve pointed out to him. On 330 door handles, the tendency for other shops to over tighten the handles so they will bend. These were no different, and my plater straightened out the handles before chrome plating.

The other trick was to install washers behind the door handles to shim the handle so even if you tighten the handle down, it won’t bend the ends of the handle. The newly chromed locks were also assembled and refitted. There is always a little bit of fiddling to make everything work properly, but the results are worth it!

The rear bumper sections should be plated with chrome shortly, but I had to clean up the license plate light assemblies before installing the newly chromed caps. The original gaskets were white, and these were kind of dry rotted. I have black rubber gasket material, but I’ll have to source some white stuff!

The gas cap on this 330 was plated, but part of the door is painted body color. I needed to get the paint on this car color matched so I could have the gas door painted. I looked for a piece of the car that I could take to my painter so he could use as a sample that was not too large and I found the door jamb piece perfect for this job. It was certainly smaller than the hood or the trunk lid!

The reverse lights on this 330 were pretty corroded, but my plater soldered, and copper plated all the pits and holes away. A lot of material was removed and added to restore this piece, but we needed to check if the plastic lenses still fit to the lights! They’re a little tight, so we may have to remove some material from the fixture instead of simply filing down the lens. My concerns were if we filed down the lens, if it ever breaks, the new lens will have to filed to fit again!

These lights are made out of a die cast zinc that is very prone to corrosion, and everyone has problems when it comes to restoring them. These look a lot better than when I first took them off the car! Once we get the pieces to fit properly, we’ll chrome plate the part and we’ll be good to go!

With all the nice pieces of chrome going back on the car, I started to notice the small missing pieces like the jack hole plugs. Also, the bottom trim piece on this rocker should technically be painted semi-gloss black, but I’ll leave that detail to the owner if he wants the car to be 100% correct.

Several weeks ago, we noticed some corrosion on one of the throttle shafts on one of the carburetors, which we’re currently fixing, but noticed some debris in the float bowls. I decided to check the other carbs to make sure the other carbs weren’t as dirty, but I wasn’t so lucky.

Collecting at the bottom of the fuel bowls was a lot of rust and sediment. With the carbs being dry for the last couple of months, the sediment has become powdery but would have to removed before it dissolved back into the fuel and clogged up the works!

After cleaning out the carburetors, I decided to take a look at the fuel filter in the back of the car. It too was filled with rust and sediment. A new filter was installed, and the canister was cleaned out.

Save the Date!

10th Annual Tomyang.net/Radcliffe Motorcars Spring Car Show!

With our tenth year, I hope I don’t have to tell you how much fun this cars show has become.

Where: Radcliffe Motorcars Company

12340 Owings Mills Boulevard, Ste. 100 Reisterstown, MD 21136

When: May 6th, 2017

http://www.rmccar.com/vintageferrarievent.html

Contact Richard Garre about registering for the event. Space is limited to about 90 cars, so register early!
410-517-1681