A SII Ferrari 330 got dropped off at my shop a few weeks ago that I have not seen in about 8 years. It was sold to a customer of mine in Georgia and he’s been enjoying the car over the past several years without much worry, but he felt it was time to send it back to me for some repairs and upgrades.

The customer was tuning the carburetors after the car sat and things got a little clogged up. I coached him through the process of cleaning things out remotely, but he just couldn’t get the carburetors to idle correctly. Sometimes after all the emails, phone calls, and reading all the information available from the internet, the customer decided it was time to send the car to me so I could tend to the problems personally.

I got the car running better within a few minutes, but have to say the balancing wasn’t all due to the customer’s inexperience. I found there was some kind of vacuum leak that was preventing the engine from idling down to where I liked it. Eventually, we decided to send the carbs out to Mike Pierce for a full service and restoration.

I had a whole hit list of things we wanted to address on this car since it was going to be at my shop for a while, and one of them was to take the steering column out and have the turn signal stalks repaired. I’ve written about this a sent out a bunch of these stalks for repairs to ODD Parts. The plastic bases of the stalks get old, shrink, and crack, leaving the stalk in your hand when flicking the switches. No amount of glue, epoxy, or praying will keep these stalks from breaking, but Jim Simpson recasts the bases in a more durable plastic and makes a durable solution. The restoration is not cheap because of the time it takes to disassemble, recast, rechrome, and repaint the assembly, but the service is invaluable.

I simply put the whole assembly in a box and sent it out so I don’t have to release the electrical pins. If one of the pins breaks on removal, Jim has the connectors to repair these as well. I simply reinstall it on the car when it returns and we’re good to go!

Here’s a video I shot while test driving the car after initially getting the carbs tuned well enough to drive.