I had a few more things to go over this Ferrari 330GTS I had at my shop before sending it on its way.

New tires were mounted and balanced at a shop near me. I struggle with having my own tire machine at the shop, but it’s another piece of equipment that I would have to make pay for itself and would take up expensive real estate in my shop. I mount and balance maybe 4 sets of tires in a year, so if I were to get tire mounting and balancing machines, I would either have to sell more tires, or charge more for this service to justify the machine. I also take it to shops that know what they’re doing when mounting and balancing tires. I would have to pick up the skills to do this properly, while other good shops already have this experience. Wire wheels especially, take extra care.

Before sending new tires out for mounting, I needed to powder up the insides of the tires with talcum powder. This allows the tubes to slide freely inside the tires when they’re inflated. The rubbing between the two rubber surfaces would otherwise build up a lot of heat, causing a dangerous situation.

Talcum powder is getting banned as a “baby powder” in the States, and is getting harder to find. It’s being replaced with corn starch in these products. I’m told this will work just as well, but the starch with not work in the presences of moisture, so I’m concerned with its efficacy in the long run. For now, I’m going to guard my remaining supply of Talcum powder and hope it lasts the length of my career!

With the new tires mounted, I had to scrub off the rubber mold releasing compound on these tires before mounting them back on the car.

With the tires back on the car, I focused on finishing up the tune up on this car with a test drive, but was met with an intermittent start issue. The car’s start circuit would not kick over the starter every time, working only about 60% of the time. I was concerned there was a dead spot in the commutator of the starter, and it would need to be rebuilt or replaced. I checked all the easy fixes first, like a faulty starter switch, or a loose wire at the battery or ignition switch, but nothing helped. I had no choice but to remove the right side header to gain access to the starter.

The arrow shows what I found. The starter solenoid wire was not not secured to the starter because the grub screw had fallen out! The wire was making contact by simply laying in the hole of the connection. The repair was easy enough by making new grub screw, and securing it to the the wiring. Although I had to remove one of the exhaust headers in the engine compartment to access the starter, the repair didn’t require replacing or rebuilding the starter!