GTB QV 49461 refurb

Finally I live in Vegas in the same house where the Ferrari is stored. It sure is easier to work on when I don't have to fly across the country to get to it. And, I can start driving it to work on 'Ferrari Fridays'.

Time to start installing some of the mountain of parts I've been collecting.
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I've painted 10 or 12 cars in my life. They've always come out better than I expected and no one could believe I painted them myself. It isn't really all that difficult. The secrets are prep work before and colorsanding after. It probably takes $1000 or so in special tools/ equipment, but I don't understand why more people don't paint their own cars. Lots of guys will build an entire car bolt by bolt, but then have someone else paint it.

 

At some point in the past, the window tint exceeded its usable life. Time for it to go. The car's really never going to see much sunlight so I think I'll leave it off.

If you've never removed tint before, it's really easy. All you need is masking tape, a black trash bag, sunlight, and some ammonia.

Tape the bag to the bottom of the inside of the window, spray it with ammonia, and then put the bag over it. This keeps the ammonia from evaporating. Let it sit out in the sun for a while. Then, the tint just pulls right off. Easy.
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I finally got around to changing the oil. This was my first chance to really touch anything on the motor, sure was fun.

The Redline 75W90NS is the single best thing I've done to the car so far. It feels like I got a new transmission. Before I really couldn't use 2nd gear for about the first 15 minutes. Now I can use it right away...nice.

Here's a comparison photo of the Ferrari filter vs my wife's 3.0L Accord OEM filter. They cost the same and protect the same sized motor. Why so big?

9 qts of Mobil 1, 5 qts Redline 75W90NS, and a Baldwin B253...easy.
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The bushings on the front suspension look like they were used up at least a decade ago. So, this week's project is to replace them. I'm also replacing the shock bushings, sway bar fittings, and the tie rod ends.

I'm impressed by all the engineering up front except the design of the top brake caliper bolt. The S shaped hard brake line interferes with it. It seems like you'd either have to remove the brake line or take the top ball joint loose in order to get the caliper off. Not a big deal this time, but in the future I might change something here....weird. What if I just wanted to take the rotor off? It would be much more difficult than it needs to be, right?

So far I have everything removed and cleaned; took about 3 hours to remove the entire front suspension. Surprisingly, no bolts were rusted frozen. No problems so far.

The plan now is to press the new bushings in and paint everything with POR15 black.
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This weekend I cut the spot welds and pushed out the old bushings. Then, I pressed the new bushings in and TIG welded them in. I also spent some time trying to clean up the old bolts, they look pretty good after a bath in Gunk parts cleaner.

This picture is after they've got step 2 of the POR15 system, the rust remover/ primer. Last step is to paint them black and then I can put everything back together.
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I got a local graphic designer to make me a window sticker. I'm amazed how good it turned out.

I can pass along his contact info if anyone's interested. Here's two photos of my 'fake' and the third is an authentic.
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Finally got the suspension back together. I had some minor and some major setbacks and it took forever. A couple times I thought I'd have to break my streak and let a shop work on it. In the end though, I was able to do everything myself.

Sure looks better than before--the last pic shows how it started a month ago.

Rebuilt front and rear calipers, new brake pads all around, new suspension and shock bushings, sway bar rubber, ball joints, new tie rod ends. Painted everything with POR15.

I'm hoping to go cruise this afternoon and see how it all works. I still have the rear bushings to do at some point, I'm going to enjoy the ride for a while though first.
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The engine cover louvers looked bad. No amount of detailing products could bring them back. So, I removed them to get replated. I figure while I'm at it I'll redo the grille, 3 front louvered QV pieces, wiper arms, and rear louvers by the back tires.

Removing the engine cover louvers is pretty straight forward, just drill out a million rivets and pop it out. The part underneath the mesh looked really nice, but once I got it off I noticed that huge chunks of paint were flaking off the top and there was rust underneath. So, I'll have that plated as well.
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The 'major' setbacks were the brakes. The calipers turned out to be a problem, each corner had a problem all its own. Initially I planned to let those go until later. But, some 'minor' setbacks involving the suspension control arms caused me to tackle the brakes now. The car actually drove fine and I never would have suspected the brakes were as messed up as they turned out to be.

I found some of the caliper pistons were totally frozen. Getting them unfrozed was challenging. And, I eventually decided that I wanted the Ebrake to actually do something other than act as an armrest.

The minor setback with the control arms was that I reinstalled the bushings without the spacers. So, I had to cut all the welds and push them all back out, only to be reinstalled 10 minutes later.

The bushings actually aren't all that tough. It's all the 'while I'm in there' that takes forever.

Good luck.

 

I installed some pedal covers from Ricambi today. My gas pedal looked really bad so I had to do something....very easy to install.
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I finally got time to repaint the mirrors. Here's a shot of what they looked like before and after. I used SEM trim black, available here:

http://www.amazon.com/SEM-Paints-SEM39143-TRIM-BLACK/dp/B000EM019O

for about $10 a can. If I'm just doing small stuff, it's much easier than using the gun and spraying Honda black.

The mirrors are really simple to remove. You don't need to remove the inner door panel. All you do is pop off the front and rear plastic covers and remove 3 phillips head screws. Then there's a plug for the motors and it's detached.

I'm still waiting for the newly powdercoated louvers. They had to be sent out to a different shop for media blasting so it's taking a while....should have them back this week.
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