'The Ratarossa': The Testarossa Spider Rebuild Project

Certainly a fun car to drive

I notice rather a lot of "WTF" mouthed as it drives by

 

Needed

This is where the Testarossa Spider dream started at a young age
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Not had the Ratarossa out much this last couple of weeks as busy with other Fezza's but had a great print of the car that Classic and Sportcar commissioned for the September edition of the mag. I won't post it just yet as not allowed ....but im super chuffed with it.

 

A few of the pics that didn't get used from last shoot
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The Ratarossa should now be in 'Classic and Sportscar' September 2018 edition. Looking forward to reading that, I wrote the article but no idea if its been changed.

Then its in Practical Classics October 2018

 

The coolest thing though this week is I have been talking with Matt Farah from 'The Smoking Tyre' and 'The.Drive', he is trying to fly over here to the U.K to do a piece on the Ratarossa for them.

Super exciting stuff..... watch this space.

 

That was a bit of fun, when I was respraying the valve covers on my 355 I had a little practice on an old Dino cover.

I now call it garage wall art

 

Guys im still looking for another door pocket if anyone knows a good source ?
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I quite like it in its current form, I might just clear coat it and leave it as is

 

The Ratarossa build features in Classic & Sportscar Car this month (sept 2018)
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The magazine had this characature conmmisioned of me in the car. Pretty cool for the office wall.
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Tackling the suspension once again.

I was finding when driving the suspension would bottom out. Upon inspection and a bit of testing the culprit is the springs were to small.
Where I had wound them right up the coil overs to get the right height this left the gap between the doing coils to close together, fine on a smooth road but as soon as I hit a pot hole or even a large dip in the road the car would bottom out.

So I’m now fitting the next spring size up. I had wound the spring up 90mm on the collar so this give me plenty of adjustment down and if my calculation is correct with the next size spring the coil gaps will be much larger and fingers crossed stop it bottoming out

 

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All reassembled and just got the ride height back to where is was on the previous springs so all good there.

Took the car out for a long test drive and very happy to say the springs have totally cured the car bottoming out, so the suspension now rides real nice.

 

But .....Theres always a but !!

Now when I brake I'm getting major pull to the left. The problem is, I am not 100% sure if there was a problem prior to changing the springs because previously with the suspension bottoming out I have never driven the car hard, today when trying to give the suspension a really good full test I drove it much harder than previous and really hammered on the brakes, then started to notice the big left pull.

I just checked the two front calipers to see if there was anything obvious, no pistons stuck or anything, I also bleed them for trapped air. It certainly feels like the issue is from the front of the car. The Brakes defiantly bite and lock up when I stamp on the pedal. Its hard to tell if there is a bias left to right though.

Obviously nothing geometry wise has been setup correctly for the suspension and i'm looking to find somewhere local now to do this after final resolving the spring issue. But the pull is quite severe toward the left under braking and my gut is saying the geometry although will play a part to this is not actually the root cause.

Any ideas ?