We’re on the final push to get a Ferrari 275GTS to Cavallino in January. Before I left for London last week, I rechecked the lights to make sure everything was working. Lights are one of those things that can really burn you at a show especially at Cavallino. January in the Northeast is cold and snowy, but when a car gets shipped to sunny Florida, electrical contacts can get dodgy.

Without even considering the weather change, I was already confronted with problems. One of the special headlight bulbs for the Marchall headlight disintegrated. Luckily, we had a replacement.

Then there was the mysterious failure of this brake light bulb. New bulbs were installed when the lights were reassembled, but one bulb immediately burned out. They just don’t make bulbs like they used to!

This car has not been without headaches, and one of them is with the tires. A 275GTS, along with the rest of the 275 models, and 330GTC/S cars were all fitted with 205-14s. Practically the only option today for tires in this size is made by Coker tire which is a Michelin XWX reproduction, but these tires are a little large in circumference. Even though the tire is the correct 205-14, Francois said there was always a difference in circumference between the Michelins and the Dunlops that were available back in the day.

To prove his point, Francois managed to find a wheel and tire combination in his stash with an original Dunlop 205HR14 still mounted to the wheel.

Sure enough, the Dunlop had plenty of clearance between the tire and and the fender, where the reproduction Michelins were about an 1/8 of an inch from touching! The wheel wells were never touched during the body work, and it’s too late to fix it now! What to do?! I think we can get enough clearance by shaving the tire a little bit. These days when an AWD car gets a flat tire, because of the ABS and traction control systems, they recommend replacing all 4 tires so they are the same circumference. A cheaper alternative to buying four new $$$ tires, tire shaving has become popular to match one tire to size of the other three. We can have this service done to the over size XWX for that wheel well, and hopefully clear the wheel wells!

 
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