I received a call a few weeks ago from an owner of a Ferrari 330GT 2+2 that I was very familiar with. It was a SI 330 that I showed at Cavallino last year and won a Platinum award for the previous owner. The current owner saw this car on the show field in 2022, loved what he saw, and made an offer the owner couldn’t refuse. The new owner, Rocco, lives in South Florida, and planned on showing the car again at Cavallino and asked if I would be interested in assisting his showing of this car. I explained that I had a primary client with a PF Coupe that I was showing, but would work with him to help show his car. Since buying the car, Rocco made some more improvements, but also wanted me to go over this car make sure everything was good to go. I made arrangements in my schedule to look over the car the day before the show. The car looked great, and was even better than last year, but needed to check the detailing under the hood.

The first thing I noticed was the numbers on the distributor cap was missing. These little numbers mark the positions of the distributor wires and I know they were there last year. Someone may have serviced the engine, and somehow removed the little labels.

Luck would have it that I brought my computer with me on this short trip to Florida, and on my hard-drive, I had a doc file with the correct font for the numbers. These days I end up buying ready made stickers from Kilimanjaro Designs, but no one I knew had any extras in Florida, and I only had about 18 hours to get this done. There were a lot of pieces to this puzzle, so I got to work as soon as I could. I ran back to my hotel to grab my laptop so I could get this file out of my computer to a printer. After a couple of failed attempts to email the Concierge to print it at the Breakers (firewall issues), I tried it at the Business Center. Their printers were scaling the file incorrectly because it was trying to print everything from a browser, so I finally gave up and drove to Staples. I picked up some packing tape, an X-Acto knife, some double stick tape, and went back to my hotel room for some arts and crafts.

I didn’t have a distributor to get the exact size of the circles I had to cut, but I went by the size of the numbers to cut them out free hand. I made a special tool on a lathe that cuts perfect circles in the exact size on my drill press, but alas I didn’t pack that in my bag! I used the packing tape to give the numbers a clear plastic window like the originals and used the double stick tape for the backing so I could install them easier in the morning.

I finished up the project in time to join some of the long time Vintage Ferrari crew for dinner. If you’ve been around Ferraris long enough some of these faces should be familiar, but with new organizers like Canossa, maybe we should give a who’s who!

From left to right, Parker Hall, formerly of Kilimanjaro Designs, the company that was created to supply stickers, labels and reproduction parts like tools and special clips for Vintage Ferraris. Motion Products purchased Kilimajaro, so Parker is now retired from his second job!

Clete Gardenhour, Ferrari 330GTC owner and creator of the 330GTC “As Built Manual,” now available from the FCA Website. Clete was disappointed with an inconsistent judging result for his GTC years ago and spearheaded a comprehensive manual covering almost every detail in a 330GTC. Through the contributions from other owners and restorers including myself, Clete politely harangued us all to submit, review, and update this PDF file. It’s an excellent guide to restore and show a Ferrari 330 GTC. Now all we need is a “Clete” for all the other manuals!

Larry Benson, another GTC Owner and judge. Larry reproduced several parts for GTC that were not available when he was prepping his car for Concours, including the special plastic ribbed trim piece that finishes off the bottom pinch weld below the trunk area. I’ve probably ordered half a dozen of these things!

Lynda is from Atlanta, and is often assisting Jim Weed sitting next to her. Jim has been with Ferraris all the way back to FAF days, the Ferrari dealer in Atlanta through the 70s and 80s. His work in the service department saw Vintage Ferraris when they were just new cars! Today he works for Ferrari Market Letter, the monthly newsletter that covers what’s for sale in printed form as well as an online version.

David Seielstad is standing behind Jim Weed and is a Vintage Ferrari Judge and has been and currently an owner of some pretty significant Ferraris. David’s seniority insures he will never be assigned to judge a 2+2 class or something as new as even a 1981 Boxer! His effort of leaving his home in Hawaii to attend any show is rewarded by being assigned all the top and most vintage class of Ferrari!

Next to David is Greg Jones from Stuart FL. Greg grew up around cars and was introduced to hand built European Sports cars when his father owned Bugattis and airplanes. Greg’s passions were with Ferraris and not only owned many of them, but also has a private shop that takes on only a few select customers at a time.

Next is Cathy Roush. The name should be familiar if you’ve been involved with Ferrari for any time longer than a few years. Cathy’s father Gerald Roush started Ferrari Market Letter in the mid 70s when he realized the information he gathered chasing Ferraris for sale could be published in a newsletter. I met Gerald shortly after I bought my car over 20 years ago, and continued a long time friendship with his daughter Cathy after his passing 2010. Cathy has done a great job keeping Gerald’s newsletter going, and bringing that familiar yellow covered newsletter onto the Internet!

Let’s not forget Claude, sitting on Cathy’s head. Claude is with Greg Jones, and is sometimes better known than Greg. I can be seen carefully leaning into the picture to avoid any sudden moves around Claude. Hawkhead parrots can draw blood with that beak!