My Story - 46567

Having owned a few older cars over the years, one of the most expensive repairs that any of us can face is changing the A/C evaporator on your car. It can take upwards of 14 hours in labor since, depending on the car, the whole dash needs to be removed.

For my car, being that everything within the interior was already off, I decided to replace the OEM evaporator for no other reason than to avoid re-doing all of the work being undertaken. Besides talented, Michel is also very resourceful and was able to locate a sensibly-priced, brand new replacement within more or less the same size specifications for a fraction of what a Ferrari OEM would have cost. However, this replacement evaporator didn't fit exactly as we would have expected and hence, some additional modifications were warranted. I can live with the finished product given that a fiberglass cover will take care of any protruding fittings and will appear as OEM as possible, directly underneath the area of the glove box by the passenger side foot well.

If anyone is interested in my car's OEM evaporator, email me and I'll send you some pictures. I don't know what the going rate is price-wise but I'll eventually list it for sale along with many other parts, including all exterior lenses, fog lamps, wheels, rear seatbelts, etc.
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Prior to purchasing 46567, I had never really been inside of one. As a matter of fact, I am not too certain that I had ever even seen all that many in person. But at this point in my life, I pretty much know what I like and what I don't like. I never took to the sloppy look of the rear seatbelts being pretty much all over the rear seats, covering the better half of them or more. Its as is if Ferrari didn't know how to make properly retractable belts or something? I also know I cannot be the only one who feels this way either?

I googled images and saw that that's how many 400's came straight from the factory. So, I ask Michel to do something about it and he did, but you may not really like what went down, so read at your own risk.

Michel took off to the local salvage yard and grabbed the actual rear pair of cloth belts off a mid 1990's Cadillac STS, along with the locking mechanism. He then obtained the retracting/rolling mechanism out of a donor Chevrolet Cavalier... To top all of this off, Michel then borrowed some seatbelt release plastic sleeve off an Audi A4 and began making a boxed enclosure to hide the retraction part of the seatbelt. He fancied one out of cardboard, and then went to town making one out of hand formed aluminum.

Because the rear shelf of the car was warped due to heat, age, and humidity, Michel grabbed some more Plaskolite to shape a replacement one which will never corrode nor lose its shape. It took many hours to get it just right before being ready to be padded and covered with material. The shiny side you see is one of the sides for this polycarbonate, as the other side is white. The piece that borders this rear shelf into the rear glass is the factory metal part, actually, which surprisingly was not warped nor bent, so it was re-used.
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The A/C blows so cold now that all the windows fog up - even more so than on a close friend of mine's 2015 six figure Mercedes... I could not believe it when I saw it in person and not sure if Michel has video of it, but yes - my vehicle's A/C cannot be any colder. The fact that 46567 sports black paint and we are here in Florida, then a good A/C is a must. I want to say that there's either a video somewhere with a thermometer reading some ridiculously low temperature and/or a picture, neither which I can locate at the moment.

When I speak to him next, I will ask what else was done besides replacing the evaporator because I believe we did more than that besides new hoses/fittings.

 

I thank my lucky stars every single day - just wait until you all get to see some of the most incredible transformations I have ever seen from an aesthetic, mechanical, and functional point of view. I am truly honored and fortunate to have him restore my car after he did such a magnificent job on my 911 Turbo - we will probably be friends for life...

 

I spoke to Michel and he gave me the low down - I had bought a compressor while the car had been at the crap shop for its first 6 months, and then Michel replaced the expansion valve, dryer, and evaporator along with new lines and that was enough to significantly increase the overall A/C's capacity to almost obscenely cold. I don't know how to upload a video of the glass within the car frosting because its so cold, but its beyond ridiculous as to how freezing it is.

Oh and by the way, I've spoke enough about the guy, so here's his picture:
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As you may have noticed already, we got the the seats and door panels/cards back from the interior shop in splendid vinyl beige... If perhaps you may not have concluded by now, I think I am somewhat opinionated. The pictures below show how nice everything came about...

BUT, having owned a very wickedly customized bada** '92 MB 500E which was a 4 door car, but only 4 passenger because the center arm rest area had wood separating both seats instead of leather (which meant it was uncomfortable for 5 people), I had issue with the fact that 46567 had such a protruding rear seat armrest which made things unnecessarily tight back there... I mean, I am single now and what if - for a quick jaunt on a good night with a full moon and lots of divine intervention, a whole lotta drinks, and an unsurmountable amount of luck - I had the opportunity to fit 3 lovelies in the back versus only 2? Where I come from, if 2 is good, then 3 is absolutely betta! If you have to ask or have doubts, its called the law of averages, my good man and may have been the real reason I bought this thing!

So, I asked the Magician McGuyver understudy, all too dang fearless and talented - " Heh, can you build me a rocketship out of household utensils?" He politely said "Not right now, but I can instead shave down that silly and tall armrest so that it can be flush with the rest of the rear seat area." I then said, "Cool, let's make it happen - but wait, what will the rest of the Ferrari crowd think when I customize the rear seat of my car in order to give it more spacious room to lay down my dryclean and/or fit more lovelies/or be able to recline the seat more/or be able to lay down for a nice rest while I'm camping at a racetrack/or ???" To then him responding - "Who gives a sh*t - its your car, man!"
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I never quite was able to get stereos in previous cars to my liking, partly due to limited resources and being content with a loud sound, but not necessarily a good/clear one.

As of the recent few years, that has changed drastically in order to make up for lost ground. When it came time to pick a suitable sound system, I opted to call in the experts at Crutchfield, as I had done with my other cars, in order to hopefully attain something nicely balanced.

I ended up purchasing an Alpine head unit that has bluetooth and a host of cool/useful extras which I have also installed in 2-3 other cars of mine (so as to have consistency). Michel, having worked a stint in stereo install in a previous lifetime, assured me that the speakers could be however large I wanted - within reason - because the speaker openings would still remain true to the factory sizing. So, I opted for a JL Audio set of 5 1/4 front speakers, a pair of matching JL Audio 6x9's for the rear, an 8 inch matching subwoofer for a decent base sound, and all of this topped off by perhaps a too large of an amplifier.

Once everything arrived, I never had imagined how difficult it would prove to have everything be installed inconspicuously away from eyesight, my goodness!

 

Michel is a humble, very hard working individual who tackles the challenges on this car mercilessly and it wasn't until I saw it with my own eyes how it would be impossible to install both the subwoofer and the amplifier in the trunk of the car "the old fashioned" way - which is to bolt them to something already there. These cars have limited space out back and I found it to be a bit shallow and not too deep either, despite the vehicle's size.

Unbeknowingly, I tacked on one giant obstacle on his to-do list just so that I could have a kick butt stereo system, but look at the results below. The first picture shows how the subwoofer arrives in its own enclosure. We decided that the only true place for it would be in the area behind the rear seats and in front of the actual trunk, so Michel began mocking up out of cardboard a custom enclosure that would house the subwoofer, having enough space for its sound to resonate, and still be sandwiched in place around the rear A/C evaporator since 46567 came equipped with a dual system.

Michel then continued on the actual enclosure made out of MDF material, commonly used for stereo applications such as this one. He glued the pieces together, then screwed them in place for good measure. Afterwards, he filled the screw holes with bondo and ensured that the entire box was smooth and level throughout.

Because there was a possibility that the A/C would create condensation in that area and/or drip into the box, Michel gave it 2 coats of polyester resin to make the enclosure waterproof, after which he sanded it to ensure a flat and smooth surface. After he was satisfied with the results, he then applied a coat of rubberized underbody black to give it a robust, textured finish.

I will describe the rest of the amazing stereo as we progress through the order in which he decided to tackle the restoration, but its nothing short of outstanding - you wait!
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As to the amplifier, it too could only go in 1 spot out of the entire car - in between the rear tail lights on the inside of the trunk, and covered by the carpeting!!! Michel knowing me better than to spend $1,000's of hard earned dollars (and not much left after the divorce anyway) to get an OEM tool kit and jack, spent maybe $20 to get a perfectly suitable universal jack and accompanying tools out of the local junkyard. So, this was also fitted in the same area while building brackets out of aluminum to hold it in place. I will go into detail as to the masterpiece that is the trunk later in the build process, but at this stage where there's measuring and some more measuring, the amplifier is simply covered in tape in order to ensure minimal scratching...
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Now that we had the interior more or less under control, as well as some of the mechanics (the car actually had no drivetrain issues) which I will document later, it was time to focus on the bodywork. Of particular concern, despite the paint bubbling throughout, was the areas immediately below the front windshield, on the corners where the hood portion of the car meets the front side panels... We didn't know if there would be rust there or elsewhere in the car, but suffice it to say that 46567 does not appear to have sustained any previous accident damage.

As the pictures below will show, Michel began sanding the paint off the car until reaching bare metal. The spots you see were minor surface rust only, which were sanded off to reveal a clean metal finish. In attempting to do an "all glass out" repaint, we unfortunately lost the very first glass attempted to be removed, the rear one. Therefore, the remaining ones stayed as replacing these with new OEM ones do not come easily nor on the cheap!

Both headlight buckets had seen better years, so he took to them in order to smooth out the ends and make them once again symmetrical. Bondo was necessary to repair several paint imperfections throughout 4657's body. The car was then ready for its first coat of primer after many hours of prep work!
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Michel then applied a sanding guide to determine those spots within 46567's body that were considered too low, which would then require additional bondo. And conversely, those areas within the body that were too high, which would require additional sanding (unprime) and re-sand. When it came time to remove the paint/sand the deep groove contour running the length of the side of the car, Michel used a sanding block to mimic the very same groove, thus ensuring as straight of a finish as possible without any undulations.
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I am SO annoyed right now... I have somehow wasted over 1.5 hours in simply trying to re-size the pics from today (I have to re-size every single picture I have ever posted) to only be stumped by the Preview application from both my desktop and laptop... Something that should have taken me less than half the time to post twice the amount of pictures has frustrated me enough to vent in this post!!!

God knows I am far from being computer savvy, but jeez - I would have been very discouraged a long time ago if this happened every time I had to post pics. I am unwillingly out for today, but have tons more pics to go and wish I could have posted 30-50 more. Next time.

 

After going through Apple upgrades in both my laptop and desktop, the process as to how I had posted all of the pics in this post all of a sudden changed somehow where its virtually impossible to do, irrespective of how many failed attempts I have tried. Not done anything different, have 100's of pics to go, and then out of nowhere, this weird stuff happens... I tried making an appointment at the Apple store for tomorrow this past Friday, and the soonest available one was thursday. Because of work (I commute a ways every day) and I take care of my young son from my ex wife, time is not on my side to get the computers looked at. Its so incredibly frustrating but I will get this sorted at some point as the car is nearing completion and looking like a real car again.