Today I am at a juncture. I need to decide on 26359’s future. After 11 years together I have to decide if there will be 11 more. I always knew my 308 would need a ground up restoration eventually. Yes, I completely restored the interior in 2013 and yes, I renewed the suspension… twice, once in 2015 and then again in 2017… but now I feel the time has come to go big or go Read more…
OK, the exclamation point is probably overkill and the title a little clickbaity… Guilty as charged. It was not really a surprise that the car started without too much drama. Overall, this car has been very reliable and has never failed to start in the 11 years I have owned it. I definitely should have filled the tanks to the top though and added Stabil before storing it last year. That would have definitely reduced Read more…
I have started rebuilding the articles from backups of the old site I had. In one way, it is satisfying to read all these articles again. It’s easy to forget all the blood, sweat and tears we enthusiasts expel restoring these old Ferraris. Yesterday, I watched Scott (ratarossa) explain he had taken two days to remove a hub from its carrier, something I can definitely sympathize with. My personal record for a seized bolt was Read more…
Some of you may have noticed over the past 8 months that the site has been very unreliable. In September the previous 308restoration.com website was hacked. My hosting company at the time failed to both inform me of the hack and then, when I informed them, they were useless in tackling their infrastructure’s vulnerabilities. After that, the site was again again in December and most recently in April so I have decided enough is enough. Read more…
I have devised a new 5 step production process for the replica Glidden Salchi and Salchi paint labels I produce. The labels were used on Ferraris throughout the 1970s. The new production process results in labels that are much more durable and importantly waterproof. Please feel free to leave a comment below or use the form at the bottom of the page to subscribe so you don’t miss future updates. Your email will not be Read more…
Today was a rare day. Actually it was rarer than rare. Not only was it the first January day I can ever remember that was a sunny and warm 17C with salt-free roads. It was also a winters day when my Ferrari was not in pieces. Hell, it was not even on the lift. Winter is traditionally when I do the maintenance and restoration the old girl needs. So it is normal for the car Read more…
With the airbox off the car, I’d be remiss if I didn’t do some detailing on the engine. There are a couple of things to be concerned about when detailing the engine of an early 308. The first is moisture. While moisture is essential to actually clean the engine, there are plenty of places you don’t want moisture to get… the spark plugs and extenders, the distributer caps, the coils and the alternator to mention a few. Read more…
I was going to title this post “Even pros make mistakes” since this is not a story of something I did, but rather a tale of something my old mechanic did not do. Every time I ran my 308, the garage always had a heady smell of fuel after. I dismissed this as a side-effect of the Webers. I mean… each of the eight bowls is filled with fuel and its not unreasonable to expect Read more…
After cleaning out the inside of the airbox and removing all the restrictions, the outside was looking quite sad. Time for a new coat of wrinkle-finish paint. Wrinkle-finish paint is remarkable stuff… you spray it on, it looks like gloss paint and then if you bake it while it dries, it wrinkles up to a satin finish that looks totally different. I use VHT High Temp Wrinkle Plus as it is readily available and it Read more…
With the airbox off the car, I was able to remove the airflow restriction that Ferrari had saddled my car with at the factory as a US-spec carburettor car. The US airboxes have a lot of sound deadening stuffed behind a perforated steel liner in the neck of the airbox. Not only does this restriction attenuate the sound of the Weber carburetors (bad), it also restricts the amount of air getting to the carburetors and Read more…