I’m sending a SI Ferrari 330GT 2+2 back home to its owner and I wanted to make sure everything was working properly and sorted before putting it on a truck. While I was under the car changing the oil, I noticed a bolt was missing on one of the bumper brackets.

These are M8 bolts, but when I went to screw it in place, I found the edge of the bracket was just interfering with the bolt’s threads.

Instead of grinding away the little bit of extra material, I found it easier to simply cut the opening with a M8 tap so the bolt woul fit.

With a new bolt threading into the bumper bracket, I still needed to cut the bolt down so it wouldn’t bottom out on the tube it was securing. It took a lot longer to install one little bolt than you would think!

On the test drive, I found the side view mirror was loose and constantly needed adjusting. The would drive anyone crazy, so I needed to tighten the mirror by first removing it. Sometimes, mirrors are attached with simple sheet metal screws, and although it makes it easier to remove, the sheet metal screws will loosen and may even pull through the sheet metal. Luckily, or unluckily depending on your perspective, this mirror was mounted with machine screws on the front fender.

Getting to the back side of the machine screws required jacking the car up, removing the inner fender shields, and holding the securing nuts to unscrew the mirror.

With the mirror off the car, I was able to tighten the two screws that affected the friction of the adjustment. It may have taken longer than anticipated, but it was worth not having a drooping mirror!

I took the car out for a couple of test drives to make sure everything was working and I found the overdrive stopped working! I drove this car several times this Fall and the overdrive engaged every time, but it chose three days before it was ready to go home to fail! Overdrives failures can be one of two things, electrical, or hydraulic. Depending on the location of the failure, I was concerned I would have to remove the transmission cover to reach some of the components. As always, I checked the easiest and most common failures. Here’s the order of my checklist. 1 check if safety switch on top of the transmission is getting power and switches when transmission is in 4th gear. Check. 2 check if power from safety switch is reaching switch on steering column. Check. 3 see if power from switch is getting to relay on fuse panel. Check. 4 see if power to relay is kicking over the relay-Nope! So the problem was electrical. I disassembled the relay to see if it could be repaired, but it looked like it burned out. I couldn’t source a proper Lucas relay in time for the car to be shipped, so I replaced it with a modern relay that will probably be more reliable. We can swap it out for the correct relay in the future, but only you, me, and the owner will know what’s hiding behind the fuse box cover!

I took the car out for a couple of test drives to make sure everything was working and finally felt it was ready to go home!

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