'The Ratarossa': The Testarossa Spider Rebuild Project

Hi Guys

Ive had a few PM's from you regarding the 'Ratarossa' and requesting updates.

So the car had to go away for a while and I've not had any chance to work on it. However today I got the TR back and have had a few hours to tinker around with it.

will post some updates

 

Some pics of the car back at mine today after pulling it out of storage for almost a year. Happy to report it drove pretty good.
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Had a couple of hours on the car this evening and picked up a load of parts that I now need to fit to the car to continue building the project.

Previously I always had a few electrical gremlins with the car in various areas. I spent most of my time today rectifying those and really happy with the progress. It was one of those days where everything just went right and worked.

1. Wired in the rear engine lid extra stop/brake light. Personally I think this looks much better having the three brake lights as the rear of the car is now so wide and flat with the roof missing, it detracts from this and theres something else to look at at the back (when braking).
2. Rear lights, these were wired incorrectly so would come on in the wrong light chambers for the cluster- now rectified
3. Rear fog light. - now wired in correctly for UK/Euro regulations.
4. Front pop up lights: Had a major issue here where my main beam was not working only full beam would light up the two lamps in the pop up headlights. I traced this back to a back connection in the steering column - now all working correctly.
5. Pop up headlight adjustment - Ongoing: I cannot get the right side headlight to come up to the same height as the left. If I make the adjustment on the bar I can get it to come up to the same height but then when the pod closes down its to high i.e not flush with the bonnet ???? .....suggestions ???
6. US Side markers- I literally hate these ghastly things and always try to delete them from any of the US cars I import, the Euro lines on the cars without them are so much cleaner and nicer to look at. Have started to fill the 4 holes (two in front side bumper & two in rear fender). I had already drilled the holes and fitted euro indicators on the front wings (again required for UK road regs)
7. Steering column - somehow I managed to break this and the whole column is now loose and wobbly. I have a replacement and started looking at how to fit it. I need to remove the steering wheel which is no easy task on a TR and remember it was a pig of a job before. need to find the tools i used to pull it from the core bolt.

Ready do enjoy working on this project and it always suprises me when things start to work. Amazingly all of the heater centre console controls work despite being sat around in dust for years and years.

I still have a starting issue which feels like the car is not getting enough fuel to fire when cold, my work around is to keep turning it over, leave it then repeat several times and eventually the car chugs into life. Then leave it chugging over and eventually when its warm the engine is totally fine ?

 

Major jobs to do:
1. Replace top broken steering column
2. Fit my adjustable suspension and slightly lower the stance of the Testarossa
3. Cold start warmup issue.
4. Brakes: currently the pedal is rather hard and I don't have half the braking I had on my 1990 TR.
5. Body parts to refit: Front & Rear wheel arches, Rear deck panel, various parts all over the car.

 

lots of work still to do
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Its a bit of a mystery why the car is in this state, the guy I bought it from many years before purchased the car in even worse shape and spent quite a lot of money getting it to the point where i acquired the car.
i was told that the car was actually used to make the moulds for a company that manufactured Testarossa Kit Cars, then they removed the roof to make to mould for the Spider version kit. This company then became heavily involved with a famous law suit from Ferrari and were ordered to destroy the moulds.

How true this the story is is anyones guess. Either way I just liked the look of the car and I'm a sucker for a 'massive' project. I purchased the car for a very good price and always had a worse case scenario of breaking the car and parting out the bits .... but I never wanted to go that route and always intended if possible to make the car roadworthy again .

 

Today I started to replace the upper steering column. Unfortunately sometime during the rebuild the original has become cracked this gives quite a bit of movement and vibration to the steering wheel. I have acquired a replacement from a 1990 car, however nothing is easy and the shafts are totally different, I'm hoping to be able to make a good one out of the two units.

 

Absolute pig of a job ...so far

Ive had to loosen and slack off the lower dash
remove the cluster
unplug everything
remove several hard to access bolts
remove the ignition and rewire it back into the new upper column
I took many pictures to help put this all back together correctly including the wiring plug


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Here is the broken upper housing and new 1990 version.

The end of the shaft is different one being splined the other being held in place with a bolt ...... of which I'm currently unable to remove.

 

if possible I'm planning to carefully remove the bearing, not sure if its at all feasible. to then switch over the two shafts and use the new housing which looks identical
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The second option I'm thinking of if plan A doesn't work being able to safely remove the bearings is to simply and carefully drill a hole through the shaft as per the original and just the same bolt system to hold it in place ?

 

beautiful !!

 

Thanks, its a lot of fun doing this project.

 

Steering shaft and house support update:

So did a bit more research and looked at part numbers comparing the various versions ferrari produced for the testarossa. Ferrari changed the design 3 times between 85-91. My car had the very early version from 85 and the replacement i acquired was the 3rd version from the late cars.

I then looked at parts and availability and some of the horrendous prices involved. Long story short the two housing are different part numbers, they do look identical from what i can see, however getting hold of the parts (bearings etc) that I would need to convert the 85 model shaft to fit the 90 model could prove difficult and costly.

My Plan B was to simply drill a hole through the shaft as per the 85 model shaft and just fit as it. This again is ruled out as the shafts are different diameters, the earlier version being the bigger of the two.

So final option which is the one I'm going for is to strip everything off the original 85 broken version and have it professionally welded. Which is what Ive done and taken it off to get sorted hoping to have it back next week. The bonus of it is its original and I don't have to make a Frankenstein out of the two. I guess I can also resell he 90 version I have as its complete.

Took some photos in order to help me reassemble when its all back.

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Side Markers:

As mentioned I'm deleting the US markers and have started to fill these for the nicer Euro look clean lines.


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A bit of Grinding:

Fancied a bit of power tool usage this afternoon so got the angle grinder out to tackle the weld marks of the engine lid. No intention of making this perfect just yet but intention is to just clean it up a little and detract from the very obvious weld seems.


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Pininfarina:

New side original badges being fitted.

My current plan with the car is to keep it 'Rat' Look. So in its current unpainted state in primer for the most part, except the red bits I've subsequently acquired and bolted on. However Im keen on keeping the original look of the car when it comes to badges, interior and parts with a few 'tasteful' modifications such as dropping the stance very slightly and the sports exhaust system ready to go on.
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