Ferrari 308GT/4 Front Bumpers, Lights, and Horns



After pulling in the rear bumpers on a Ferrari 308GT/4 I wanted to do the same with the front bumpers.

I posted a video of some of the process here.

After drilling out the pistons, and pulling the bumpers, I had to deal with a clearance issue with the turn signal assemblies.

With the bumper pulled in, the clearance of the back of the turn signal started to touch the bodywork. The driver’s side light was very tight, but was just clearing.

Unfortunately, the passenger light had even less clearance. For some reason the bodywork was tighter on the right side than the left side, but this is often the case with Ferraris. Even though by the 70s, these cars were pretty much assembly line cars, they still had a certain amount of irregularities.

The turn signal assembly has a plastic cover that could be removed, and allow the light to clear the bodywork, but I hate permanently removing parts on these car and will have to find a better way.

You can see the passenger side light is able to clear the bodywork on the car without the rear cover.

I thought about modifying the mounting bracket to move the turn signal assembly forward a little bit to allow more clearance in the back, but that would push the light too far proud of the bumper.

So far, I like the look of the bumpers tucked in on this car. The large 5mph DOT bumper don’t looks a large when half of its mass is pulled back inside the car.

While I was working on the front of the car, I wanted to upgrade the headlights. I replaced the original DOT seal beam units with European units.

I ran into a problem however when one of the headlight doors wouldn’t close all the way. I found a metal tab that was interfering with the new H4 headlight. The tab was slightly longer on the right side than the left light, so a little trimming was needed so the door was close properly.

A high speed cutoff wheel made quick work of the trimming, and I painted it to give it some rust protection.

With the front bumper off the car, I wanted to replace a section of hose for the horns that was not correct. Its not something that was easily seen, but It’s nice to make things right when given the chance.

Some previously replaced the horn hose with a section of black rubber hose but I had a stock of red hose that is closer to the original hose.

Although you may not easily see the hose, it will be correct in case someone looks a little closer!