Labor of Love

[Stephanm]

Can anyone explain why everything, I mean everything takes so long to fix on Ferraris?
Here is an example, I am trying to get a window regulator to work on a GTC, the cable is in terrible shape and the motor seems to turn with less speed than the passenger side.
I remove the motor to clean the dry and hard grease from the gear box and thread a new cable based on the length of the old one. 1 hour later I install the regulator all cleaned up with new grease, and hook up the electrical connections. I have done this job hundreds of times on Dino, 308, BB, 330, even on hand operated regulators such as 275's and 250's but Somehow I make the cable just a touch too short and there is no more room to slide the adjuster pulley. Out comes the assembly to fit a longer cable, my hands slippery with grease I re-install the unit.
The cable is perfect but I miss on a tricky detail, I cross the cables so when there is tension they rub together making noise. Slippery, dirty, greasy hands take the unit back out and I pay closer attention to the specific orientation of the cable and pullys and throw her back together.
Without hooking up the glass I can tell that the motor is spinning with much less resistance than before so I know that it is going to lift the glass with ease. Hooking up the glass to the cable I realize that the effort was futile, I have done nothing to improve the speed of the system.
After spending 6 hours on this, everything is adjusted and working with ease. Would this take as long on a Corvette, Porsche or Jaguar XKE? No. Is it because brand new parts are available for the Porsche, Vette, Jag cars? not really because I am not replacing of great complexity on the Ferrari, most of the time is just to make everything work together. I think that the reason Ferraris were and still are so expensive is because Pininfarina, Scaglietti, you know, "those guys" didn't know how to make these beautiful cars simple to assemble.
Was human labor so cheap back then that there was no need to streamline?
Does this all add to the charm of the car?
Does anyone else feel this way?
Has anyone tried to replace the A/C belts on a 330 GTC/GTS-365 GTC/GTS/2+2?
How about removing the bolts from the headers at the collectorson a GTE? Why didn't they just make the flange a little bigger so wrench or socket fit?
This is not the complaint department, just some thoughts to stimulate the message board!

[tyang]

I Feel you pain! A starter swap in a GTE requires removal of the spark plug wires, exhaust heat shields, rear headers (if you have a late GTE), y-pipe, and starter heat shield. It's actually been a great comparison when it takes me about 10 minutes to get the starter out of my Mustang! Many of the basic tools I use at Francois' shop have been specially ground away to fit the tight clearances of the nuts you mentioned!

Tom

[Rudy van Daalen Wetters]

"Difficulties mastered are opportunities won" - Churchill

Rudy van Daalen Wetters
1963 GTE s/n 4001
1966 330 GT s/n 8705

[Dr. Ian Levy]

Stephan
I have just replaced the window cable on my GTC 4. & I think 6 hours is pretty good.By the time I had sourced some wire rope & some suitable solderless nipples I had spent much time. I can also confirm the pain of replacing these cables by trial & error methods.
I do not feel it adds to the charm but is a fact about Ferrari that you are forced to accept.After 7 years rebuilding tehis car my only surprise is that I am still surprised at how long "little jobs" take to complete
Imagine my joy when the handbrake cable pulled out of teh squeeze bolt connection at the rear brake drum-another 10 minute job that took half a day
Regards
Ian L

[jsa330]

You gus are reminding me...

I need to lube the new heater valve control cable that was installed in late '05. Sounds easy, but I have to remove the speedo to get at the screws that hold the heater control backplate to the dash, then completely remove the cable, pull it apart, lube it, and put it all back together...an afternoon's work.

My radiator has developed a pinhole leak. It cannot be removed without removing the hood. Getting the hood off and the radiator out and back in are routine labor, not hard. I've got a permanent block-and tackle assembly installed on the garage ceiling to hoist the hood up with, but getting the latch realigned just right after the hood is replaced is a nightmare.

Grrrr...

[330GT]

...
Has anyone tried to replace the A/C belts on a 330 GTC/GTS-365 GTC/GTS/2+2?
...

Been there, done that. The first time I didn't know the correct length as the old belts were stretched. So I ended up doing it three times before getting the correct length. I also figured out that there is a specific order of where each belt has to start due to the clearances involved. All day task and afterwords I found that $250 worth of freon installed a couple of weeks before had leaked out.

For the long version, see http://www.parrotbyte.com/kbc/ferrari/A ... ioning.htm

[airsanford]

Jay Leno made a great statement some years back regarding one of his Dusenbergs. He said that back then, technology was expensive, and labor was cheap. Now, the technology is cheap, and the labor expensive.

FWIW, Alfas and Fiats have almost identical regulator assemblies. I was a professional auto mechanic for 25+ years, working on all these cars, and it still took me 5 hours to fix a manual regulator in a '74 Alfa spider recently.

If you fixed an electric one, and it works properly, I think you did real well.

Lee GTE 2811

[Jimmy Chen Shiba]

This all sounds like Love of Labor rather than Labor of Love to me. You ought to admit that you enjoy the labor. (Who am I to say, I am a total mechanic illiterate). Happy tinkering. Jimmy

[Rudy van Daalen Wetters]

The passenger side electric window regulator on my 330 GT was incredibly messed up as the cable had jumped the pulleys and wound itself around the spool. The whole mess had more tangles than a Shakespeare novel. Once removed I had no clue what was correct or how it should be routed. It took days of sorting bent cable, bent pulley supports, incorrect routing and studying the driver side mechanism to get it right. Once done, it worked beautifully and the reward outweighed all the nuisance of the job. It would have been easy to give up but I figured with persistance I would eventually get it right. I try to take a slow methodical approach to working on these cars and allow plenty of time before tackling any job no matter how small.

Rudy van Daalen Wetters
1963 GTE s/n 4001
1966 330 GT s/n 8705

[Stephanm]

The quote by Jay Leno is so true.
Tom compared pulling the starter on the GTE and Mustang, let me say that it only takes 10 minutes to pull a starter form an XKE Jag, and it takes me 20 minutes to pull a Porsche 356 engine!

Does it make sense that part of the "special" feeling of owning and driving these cars is all of the different hands, personalities, and crazyness that went into building it?
I am not spiritual but I know there are energies swirling around these cars. When I have a hard time selling a car I have a friend drive it or give it to another dealer to market and the car moves immediately.

[Art S.]

On a slightly different topic: JSA330, can't you jack up the car and drop the radiator? it's been a while but I thought that was correct.

Regards,

Art S.

PS. Stephan, I think anyone who's even tried to work on these things understands. However, knowing what's involved, there's a certain joy when it's all working!

[jsa330]

On a slightly different topic: JSA330, can't you jack up the car and drop the radiator? it's been a while but I thought that was correct.

Regards,

Art S.

...

I don't think so; the tank on top appears wider than the sheetmetal slots that the ends slide into. Worth another look, though...thanks.

[racertodd]

One reason is that Ferrari didn't need to pump out cars at the rate of 50 an hour like most production cars. If you're building cars at that rate you spend the engineering effort to find ways to reduce the time it takes to build each car.
On Ferrari's more leisurely assembly line (and the cars high price), they could afford to spend more time on assembly.
My beef with production cars is that the engineers are so focused on cutting assembly costs that they don't consider that some of their cost-cutting solutions make routine maintenace much more time-consuming that it could be. On my VW Golfs I can see many places where the design could have been slighty different and made my car repair effort much easier. But no, they just had to save that last 25 cents in labor costs...

Todd
Seattle,WA
'86 GTI, Red of course. (exciting racey car) 263,000 miles
'87 Golf, Polar Silver. (boring work car) 599,000 miles <- Yeah, baby!

[jsa330]

On a slightly different topic: JSA330, can't you jack up the car and drop the radiator? it's been a while but I thought that was correct.

Regards,

Art S.

...

I don't think so; the tank on top appears wider than the sheetmetal slots that the ends slide into. Worth another look, though...thanks.

Verified..the tank on top of the radiator is about 5" wide. In order to remove it from the bottom I'd have to take off the fan and pulleys. There is also a vertical sheet metal flange on each end, welded to the body structure, holding it in place from the front side.

Off comes the hood, out comes the radiator when warm weather comes around. I need to fine-tune the adjustment and securing of the hood pad anyway, and take the opp to do some more detail and cleanup jobs.