Hi All,

You may have noticed the website and forum has been slow or completely down in the last few weeks and days. I’ve been working on finding the issue and trying to keep things online. It looks like it was a bot that had found the website, and was accessing the site excessively that my web host shut down the site to control the traffic to their network. In layman’s terms, there are programs on the internet that access websites to map the information. These programs are called Bots, and search engines like Google or Bing, and other resources send these bots out to gather information and map the internet. Some can do it hundreds of times a minute and access all the websites on the Interent. Occasionally something can go wrong and a bot can access a website excessively. We think that’s what happened to my site, causing my server to temporarily shut my website down. We tried to install a script on my website to limit that particular bot from overloading the website, but we’ll see if it helps and happens again. What’s interesting in our research on who and what is accessing the website, we found Google has been downloading all the thousands of Ferrari images I have this website. I think this is part of the training these search engines are feeding their AI programs. I’m not sure how I feel about this, but there is nothing I think I can do about this if I keep this website open to the public.

Even though the traffic to this website has fallen through the years and migrated to Facebook, Youtube and other social media platforms, I still feel it is essential to keep this resource alive and accessible by the internet. Whether the data gets mined by bots or AI, it is still important to have a direct source to this rare information that we all gathered over the past 25 years. Even if AI plans of repackaging it and calling it it’s own, people will still be able to find a direct human source for this information.

I want to thanks everyone for their patience and their support through the years of this website, and understand I will try my best to keep this resource alive for as long as I possibly can!

Tom Yang

The owner of the silver SI 330GT told me he was losing brake fluid, so when I found a puddle of brake fluid below the left rear wheel, I at least had a place to start looking for a leak. I found some pretty crusty brake caliper pistons, and this one looked like it had seized and jammed.

Upon removing the piston, I found a gummed up mess. These brakes have not seen regular brake bleeds, and water had gotten into the system causing the fluid to fail and rust out the calipers. My concerns were if this was happening on this piston, the others were going to look the same.

After removing the old fluid and gunk, it wasn’t looking like these pistons were simply going to need new seals.

Bead blasting got the piston looking pretty good on the outside.

The insides, however, showed how the water had rusted and pitted the cast iron bores of the bores.

After I spoke to the owner, we decided to take all the brake calipers apart to see what else was wrong. The front calipers weren’t in any better shape, but these calipers had been previously sleeved in brass. I prefer sleeving these calipers in stainless steel, but brass sleeves are another option. I had my calipers sleeved in brass over 20 years ago, and they’re holding up fine, but I have found stainless more durable, When pistons don’t see regular fluid changes, brass can show corrosion, and form ridges that then need to sanded smooth changing the bore dimensions.

The front calipers cleaned up fine, and I was able to install new seal kits, but the rear pistons were sent out to my brake rebuilder for new stainless steel sleeves.

When I was taking the interior out of the 330GT so I could remove the transmission, I found broken mount on the passenger seat. These mounts secure the seat tracks to the car, and have four capture nuts for each corner of the seat. These nuts tend to seize and then start to turn freely in their cages. It looks like this happened with a previous shop, and they cut the seat mount apart to release the seized nut, but did nothing to replace the capture nut. What’s worse, is they secured the seat to this half cut seat mount with a washer and a nut. With any sort of force, this seat would have come loose, so not only was this sloppy work, but dangerous and irresponsible!

There was all sorts of damage made to this area to try first stop the old capture nut from spinning, and finally to cut the assembly out, but I wanted to fix the damage, and make this seat mount safe and secure.

I bought a weld in capture nut assembly from McMaster Carr and the plan was to plug weld the cage to the bottom of the seat mount so all the upward force of the seat bolts would be on the seat rail and not just the capture nut. The welds would simply be holding the cage from spinning when unbolting the seat. I’ll use anti-seize on the bolts to stop the bolt from seizing.

I rebuilt the missing parts of the seat mount and welded the parts to the capture nut assembly on the other side as well. Once I fixed the seat mount, I made a patch to repair the cuts made to the rest of the seat mount area.

I ground down the welds and got everything to the original level of the steel so the seat tracks will slide smoothly over this mounting area. I’ll paint this area, and eventually this area will be covered with carpeting so no one will see this repair, but the owner and I will know his seats are securely fastened to his Ferrari!

I posted the video of the engine removal and extent of the damage on YouTube, but I’ll go over some of the specific details here on this blog.

This engine was filthy with oil and dirt collecting on the outside surfaces for years, so the first thing was to get it power washed. I have an old fork lift at my shop that really comes in handy for jobs like this.

Since my driveway outside the shop is gravel, I can’t get my engine hoist’s wheels outside to set it by the power washer, but the fork lift can reach outside of the shop door just far enough so I don’t spray all this dirt back into my shop.

A clean(er) engine is much easier to work on and makes less of a mess in the shop!

Unfortunately, both my engine stands are occupied, so I had to start some of the disassembly on the ground. Hopefully in the next few weeks, I’ll be making progress on the other two engines so I can free up an engine stand, but for now, I’ll be taking ibuprofen in the evenings!

When I took the engine out of the car, I found one of the motor mounts had a cracked weld. Instead of putting this on the shelf, I went ahead and fixed the broken engine mount so I would save myself the trouble of doing it later. Trust me, my weld isn’t the sloppy part of this engine mount. The original weld is from the factory. It’s no wonder why it broke!

Not only was this engine leaking oil, but years of leaking gaskets also rusted some of the studs holding the accessories like the thermostat housing. The arrow shows the rusty stud that was fusing the housing to the engine block. I used penetrating oil, heat, and steady force to finally get this housing off. It probably took over an hour to remove this one part!

The water pump housing was no easier. What happens is through the years, the gasket weeps a little coolant, and it gets drawn up into the steel stud. The dissimilar metals causes the steel stud to corrode with the aluminum housing forming a powder that locks the parts together. It take patience, penetrating oil, heat, and careful force to get these parts apart. These parts are not available, so breaking them is not an option!

When I finally got the water pump off, I could see there were only two rusty studs that were causing most of the problem, but I managed to get the water pump off, and move onto the next issue.

When I took the valve covers off, I discovered one reason why this engine leaked so badly. The square cut seal between the chain cap and cam covers was missing and replaced with silicone sealant. Without this “o-ring” the sealant would have never stopped the flow of oil between these two parts. I’ll install all the proper seals to stop the leaking!

The only thing this much silicone will do is get into the sump and clog up the oil pick up.

The next step was to break out my head puller plate so I could remove the heads on this 330 engine. This plate used the rocker stand studs to attach to the head. Mild steel bolts are then held in place with nuts to push against the head studs once the head retaining nuts are removed.

The 1/6 bank came off with relative ease with only one stud showing the familiar corrosion from gasket weeping.

The 7/12 bank, however gave me a little more of a fight. With the head puller plate in tension, I carefully watched the gap widen between the head and the block, making sure I put tension on the puller to allow the head to slowly rise evenly front to back and side to side.

Generous application of penetrating oil, and steady even pressure allowed the head to slowly rise off the head studs. I’ve heard of heads cracking in half from heavy handed impatient hacks using brute force or the wrong tools to remove heads. These heads are getting harder and harder to find, or more expensive to buy, so taking a little bit more time and effort was worth saving these heads!

I eventually had both heads off the block and ready for the next step of the tear down.

Cylinder #9 had no compression, and it was obvious to see the problem. It looks like the valve seat fell out and broke apart in pieces. There were no signs of the seat, but the damage was found on not only the #9 head and piston, but parts of the seat were ejected into the intake runner and sucked into the #10 cylinder causing more damage in the adjacent cylinder. As bad as this looks, it’s all repairable with some welding and machining.

I started the progress of removing the engine out of the SI 330GT that had zero compression on one of the cylinders. Before the engine could come out, I had to disconnect a few things first. The hood had to come off, radiator, and exhaust headers. I could then disconnect the starter wires, and the engine wiring. I removed the carburetors and intakes to make hoisting the engine out easier.

The transmission needed to be disconnected, and that happens inside the passenger compartment after removing the seats, carpeting, center console, and transmission tunnel. The driveshaft had to be disconnected, along with the bell housing nuts and clutch linkage.

The car shows a lot of signs of previous repairs that were done in a strange manner. The reverse light switch on the transmission was taped together and filled with grease. I’m not exactly sure what this would have accomplished except for a mess for me to clean up!

The transmission was absolutely filthy, but it seemed everything else coming out of this car would be the same, including the engine. All the years of accumulated dirt and oil leaks would transfer to my hands any time I had to move this transmission, so I decided to clean it first before doing another thing.

I also made mental notes of things I would have to repair correctly like the taped up switches for the reverse light and overdrive safety switch.

With all the oil, grease, and dirt largely removed, I could allow this transmission back into my shop without the risk of getting it all over my hands and clothes!

I’ve been making good progress after shoulder surgery a few months ago, and feel that I am probably 80-90% recovered. I have been trying my best to walking the fine line between gaining strength back in my arm without re-injuring the repair. Regular physical therapy appointments have been helpful, but also getting in the way of getting back to work! At the 12 week mark post-op, by surgeon felt I was recovered enough to continue strength training without physical therapy appointments, so that freed me up to get to some of the projects that have been patiently waiting for me to more forward.

The blue 330GT that I’ve been restoring at my shop is one of those projects. The engine is down at Francois’ shop in CT waiting for me to return. When I first sent the parts down to my mentor’s shop, it was to spend more time with Francois, and build an engine there just like old times. Now that my schedule has freed up, I can return for my weekly visit. I’ve been getting parts together at my shop to bring down like water pump parts that needed rebuilding and modifying. I made the same modifications to this 330 water pump as I did with the 275GTS a few weeks ago, so it’s ready to be installed. I also needed to find a top plate for this water pump as the original one was so badly corroded and cracked. I was luck to find a used one, as I don’t believe this plate is currently being re-manufactured.

I currently have another car’s seats at my upholsterer’s shop getting refurbished, but I wanted to get these seats ready for the next one in the slot. It seems everyone in the auto restoration business is super busy, and I spend some much of my days checking on progress or pushing my vendors for time to do the work for my projects.

One issue was the condition of the recliner mechanisms on this 330. The car was probably stored in a damp conditions, so the recliner mechanisms on the original seats were rusting through the chrome plating. Trying to control the cost of this restoration, I found a good set of recliners from a set of seats I had in storage that looked in better condition than what we currently had. They were a little dirty, but I wanted to clean them up and check if they were salvageable.

After a little time of cleaning and polishing, the chrome came back very nicely. They weren’t perfect, but way better than the pitted and rusty units we had on the original seat. This is the reason why I save everything!

I reached out to Stephen Markowski to come up for a couple of days to my shop to lend me a hand on reassembling a 400GT engine I’m resealing from oil leaks. I’m still recovering from shoulder surgery, and although my recovery is going well, I’m still not quite 100% back up to speed, so having Stephen agree to visit was a big help. I’ve known Stephen for many years, and he began his career at his father’s shop RPM Vermont, and is now has his own garage space in the NYC area.

Not only did Stephen help me with moving things around my shop and wrench on things that I haven’t yet built up the strength to do, it was also good to have a second set of eyes watching the reassembly to make sure we didn’t miss something.

Like most Ferraris, they can leak oil and it’s no wonder when you see how much surface area relies on a good seal from a gasket or o-ring. As Stephen and I assembled the engine, we both carefully looked and checked the proper sealing was happening. Even with all this care, we crossed our fingers we did it right!

The o-rings on some of these sealing surfaces can’t be accessed without removing the head, or engine block, and with them approaching 50 years old, they have usually lost their elasticity, so leaks are inevitable. I installed new o-rings everywhere, along with new gaskets, sealing them with a gasket dressing Stephen likes.

Every mechanic has his or her favorite gasket dressing, while the factory often used none. When these cars were new, and the machined surfaces were fresh, flat, and not corroded, not using any sealant was fine but I don’t know anyone in this business today that doesn’t use some kind of sealant. I normally us a Hylomar product, and some RTV, but Stephen wanted me to try a Loctite product he uses and likes. Its always good to get an unbiased endorsement from a mechanic that has real world experience that I trust than a manufacturer’s sales pitch, or even a paid endorsement from an unknown mechanic!

These particular engines found on 365GT/4, 365GTC/4, 400GT, 400i, and 412 engines, all have this layout where the oil pump and water pump are driven off the crankshaft with a separate chain assembly. There are a number of sealing surfaces in this area that are submerged in oil, hence the propensity for leaks!

As we tightened the bolts, and watched the gasket sealant squeeze out, we again crossed our fingers we sealed it all!

While the engine was being assembled, I worked on cleaning a lot of the little pieces that needed attention. I ultrasonically cleaned the carburetor velocity stacks so I could soften the gasket material so new gaskets could be installed.

The submersion in soapy water helped soften the old gaskets but they still needed to be scraped.

A new coat of wrinkle paint was needed for the valve covers, so stripping and masking the covers were the first steps.

Everything gets painted black wrinkle, and don’t even think about polishing the Ferrari letters shiny!

My first attempt was a failure as a brand new can of VHT Wrinkle Paint had a faulty nozzle. It dripped more than it sprayed, but with wrinkle paint, once you start, you can’t stop, so I soldiered on.

Hoping if I applied enough paint, the drips would not show up, but I was wrong. The wrinkling process requires a specific temperature, and a very thick even coat of paint applied almost to the extent of running, but the uneven drips from the faulty nozzle showed up despite my best efforts.

I stripped all the paint off the valve covers and started again, with the second attempt with a new can of paint a success.

I had a few things left to sort out on this Ferrari 275GTS I have at my shop before sending it to the owner.

I had a new parking brake boot made to replace the old one that was torn.

The fuel filler is located in the trunk of this car and has a seal around the filler compartment, and even though it has a small vent at the top of the cap, I wanted to make sure all the other sources of vapor are not causing the smell of fuel to enter the trunk area.

Often times the rubber gasket at the fuel filler cap is brittle and crumbling, and the cap on the GTS was no exception. Not only was this gasket 60 years old, but has been exposed to all sorts of fuel formulations that break down the rubber.

The cap is silver soldered together, so taking it apart is not a good idea, but I have found I can remove the old gasket by cutting, chipping, and breaking it apart. Once the old gasket it removed, I cut a new one, with a slightly smaller ID to slide under the center of the cap, capturing it in place.

I use fuel safe cork gasket material which should stand up to anything found in modern fuels without dissolving.

While I was looking at the fuel filler neck, I found the wrong clamps holding the filler neck hose in place. It wasn’t even a matter of concours correctness, but these little strap hoses may not provide the clamping force needed to hold the hose in place. The correct hose clamp would have a been a “Cheny” type hose clamp, but since this area was hidden behind a panel, there was no reason not to use a wider worm screw type hose clamp to insure no leaks.

The next step was to change the oil. I was alarmed when I saw this green stuff coming out of the oil pan when all the oil drained.

I took the lower pan off the car to investigate further, and found the green stuff was engine paint that was peeling off the inside of the oil pan! I’ve never seen this green stuff, but have seen dark red coatings like gliptol. As you can see, some of the paint was peeling off in sheets, while most of it was stuck pretty well and was not coming off even with vigorous scrubbing.

There was a collection of chips near where the oil pick up was, so this amount was probably blocking the screen before I had drained the oil out of the sump.

The question is what to do? Here are my thoughts: To remove all the paint would require removing the engine, because the upper pan does not come off without the engine out of the car. I did not see oil pressure fluctuations when I drove the car, so the screen was not completely obstructed by this debris. If smaller paint chips make it past the oil pick up screen, they should be caught by the oil filters, provided they don’t clog the filters! I looked at the history of this car and it looks like the engine was rebuilt in the 80s! Looking at the amount of flaking, it’s hard to tell how long this has been happening. The safest thing would be to pull the engine and take the paint off, but I don’t know how bad or how fast this chipping is happening, and don’t want to send this newly purchased car into a engine out service. Speaking to the owner we decided to watch how this progresses after the next oil change. If more debris if found in the sump, we may have to do the inevitable, if non shows up, we’ll know the rate of paint failure. We’ll see.

A car came into my shop a several months ago that needed some tuning. The owner had the carburetors restored, but could not get them to work properly on the car and sent the car to me to investigate further. Unfortunately, I found low compression on a few cylinders and more alarmingly, no compression on cylinder #9.

When I performed a leak down test, I could hear air pressure leaking past the exhaust valve. Unfortunately, further testing using cameras is only going to tell us that the exhaust valve on cylinder #9 is bad. It could be a bad valve seat, it could be burned valve, or it could even be a dislodged valve seat inside the head to cause all the air to leak out of the cylinder. Although I have pulled one head leaving the engine in the car, I found this car had low compression on cylinder #6 on the opposite bank, along a whole slew of weak numbers. Fixing one bad valve on one head was a band-aid fix to an engine needing a complete engine rebuild.

After speaking to the customer and giving him the bad news, I had to wrap my head around embarking on another engine rebuild. I’m currently putting another 330 engine together, and it is currently occupying one of my engine stands. I built a second one to accommodate a 400GT engine I’m sealing some oil leaks, and I refuse to take a third one apart until I put at least one of these two engines together! I’m not complaining about the work, but it seems lately, all I’ve been getting is difficult repairs on old Ferraris!

To move this project forward, however, I could at least remove the engine from the car and that started with disconnecting it from the chassis. On SI 330s, I recalled the angle drives to the distributors would get hung up on the coils mounted diagonally on the fire wall. The best way to avoid damaging something was to either remove the coils, or remove the angle drives.

Always looking for the easiest solution first, I decided to remove the angle drives, but I was met with my first problem. The previous person who worked on this engine replaced the original shouldered bolts with plain M6 bolts to secure the angle drives to the back of the engine. They also managed to round off the edges to the head of the bolt making it very difficult to get purchase of the bolt head with a wrench. The position of this particular bolt is hard to reach, so getting a 6 point socket on the head is nearly impossible and I didn’t have a shallow socket with a hex head to get this job done. It’s a good thing this engine is coming out to fix issues like this easily, because it could have made getting the valve covers off this side a real problem!

Here’s a picture of what the shouldered bolt should look like, and you can see how easy it would have been if these were correctly installed on the car I was working on.

There were a lot of rubber parts on this car that were on their last legs of service. Trying to disconnect the upper radiator hose made the old rubber crack and crumble. This hose was not long away from failing completely.

I made mental notes to ask the customer what he would like to do about some of the components around the engine. The fuel rail was pretty rusty and missing most of its original industrial chrome finish, and some of the yellow hose looked original.

Once section of yellow hose looks like it was replaced, and replaced poorly. I was surprised it wasn’t leaking!

I got the water pump housing back from a local machinist with the modification to accept the more modern water pump seals found on the 365GTB/4s. The base of the seal is a little wider than the original seal so I needed it machined wider. This is one of those basic machining operations I would love to learn with more confidence so I could do them at my shop. I’ve been slowly teaching myself how to use my Bridgeport Vertical Mill, but wish I had someone local to me that can give me the confidence to do this simple procedure correctly. These days, it seems you can learn anything on YouTube, but I believe there is nothing better than hands on teaching. There just doesn’t seem to be those kind of teachers nearby!

The water pump housing was cut to accept the wider ceramic face of the new water pump seal.

There was one more step I needed to do which was to cut down the new sleeve to accept the new seal that came with the water pump upgrade kit.

The new sleeve needs to be cut down to the length of the original shaft once the old backing plate to the impeller is removed. This procedure was done on my lathe. At least my lathe skills are good enough for this job!