I had a familiar 250GTE come to the shop for some maintenance and repairs. The owner purchased this car a couple years ago and had driven it a bunch last year. He sent it to me for some things he would like to fix over the winter, so I got to it!

One complaint was a knocking noise coming from the back of the car. We knew the shocks on this car were not Konis, and it was time to take a closer look. One peek in the back showed the shock bushing had worn out and the knocking was the loose shock. I’ll be sourcing new Konis to replace these no-name brand shocks someone had installed years ago.

Another thing on my list to take a look at was the trunk lock. It had a tendency to stick and I found the cylinder was indeed sticking inside the barrel of the lock. I brushed some dye on the lock to show me where the parts were rubbing. A previous chrome plating left just a little too much material inside the lock, so the parts were sticking. It was also peeling off.

I had to remove some material from inside the barrel so everything would work properly and continued to remove some more to compensate for when the part gets re-plated. The plating process removes some material when the part is stripped, but also deposits more material, when the layers of copper, nickel, and chromium is re-applied. My job was to remove enough so when the part is re-done, the clearances are correct.

For more work on this car, here’s a video of how I fixed the play in the seat tracks.