F40 LM Restoration

Those lucky so and sos. Is that sort of thing common place in the circles you're revolving in? Seems incredibly benevolent and trusting given the caliber of car involved. Obviously they must well qualified for the job.

 

Ascari is superb and absolutely the right place to enjoy your car.

I don't know that local race team but if Klaas Zwart (the owner of Ascari) trusts them it must be good. A few years ago they also had an old F1 car from Schumacher, amazing to see.

 

Just 1 word Tim -AWESOME!!!!!!!!! This and your casa F12TDF delivery extravaganza have really set another benchmark - so grateful for you sharing .....

 

Tim - not sure I whether I have misunderstood but the rear brake light assembly (#60170305) is shared across 308, 208 turbo etc, and widely available and cheap. I am sure I can dig some out from my 308 parts bin but Maranello Classic Parts has them in stock. Just let me know.

 

Spain is good Life

 

If you enjoyed reading this thread, you'll love listening to my interview with Tim for the Podcast. Enjoy!

Latest Episode just gone live:
EPISODE 12 – THE FOUR YEAR FERRARI F40 LM RESTORATION

Our guest in this episode is Tim, the owner of a Ferrari F40 LM, which he meticulously restored over 4 years! He tells us about how he came to buy the car, a car he was not even looking for when he stumbled across it. What initially seemed like a cheap purchase eventually became a complete strip down of the car, and he shares with us the challenges and triumphs he had while sourcing the parts.

As you can see from the images below, the result is absolutely beautiful. This is an epic car, and an epic interview.
iTunes: www.ferrarihub.com/itunes
All others: www.ferrarihub.com/ep12

Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Tim and Andy, thanks for sharing this 4 year journey on the restoration on the podcast. I just finished it on my commute home and thoroughly enjoyed every minute. Andy keep up the great podcasts for us tifosi!

 

I just listened to it too and it is a pleasure to hear Tim speak to the process, the detail and the pursuit of excellence this project became. A master class in the perseverance and resourcefulness it takes to do a restoration/ rebuild correctly. This podcast plus Tims restoration thread are my definition of entertainment. Thank you Tim for sharing this adventure with us and thank you Andy for condensing 4 years into a one hour podcast.

 

+1

 

That picture was the first comment on the social media where those pictures were posted. That's a strong compliment. ahah

 

Fantastic photos all worthy of framing- except that last one!

 

Just spent far too much time going through most of this thread, fantastic info and photos! Well done!

Noticed a couple of photos about half way through and some talk about removing Kevin's reflection, quickly did these two versions in Photoshop.
Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

After listening to the recent podcast, I read this thread from beginning to end. What an epic, with the challenge of dealing with all the things discovered when you started peeling the onion! Amazing.

One thing I didn't manage to follow was the history of the various upgrades throughout its life. On page 2 of the thread, (post #37, https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/f40-lm-restoration.396915/page-2#post-142088340 ) there is a picture of the car advertised in Classic & Sports Car Magazine UK in 2002 which shows it in the more or less Hamann F40 configuration when it raced in 1996 with Hartmann. Three crops from the ad below.
Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login

The first pictures you posted of the car after purchasing it and before you started the restoration (post #43, https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/f40-lm-restoration.396915/page-2#post-142096044 ) show that it had had a major upgrade with LM-style parts:

LM style front hood
LM style rear hood
OZ wheels
LM style spoiler (vs custom red painted one)
LM style sill panel with the NACA duct along bottom edge ahead of rear wheel
Front nose
Front spoiler
Momo Steering Wheel
LM style white gear knob
lightweight doors with no window winders
sliding windows
larger intercoolers
central exhaust (vs bespoke splayed twin exhaust of the Hamann/Sauber set up)

I have reattached some of those you posted for comparison.



Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login

You've said in post #26 that the car had been in a damp barn for 8 years, so it sounds like a previous owner did the LM-style upgrade around 2003-4 after the car retired from racing. Is that right?

 

From post #1 back in early 2013,

Following on from my post immediately above, it turns out that the car had two previous owners (F40 Pilot and FREECAT) while it sitting in the barn, and during those 8 years, between them had an engine rebuild done, and a fairly major LM-style mod described in the above post. Both were aware of the Hartmann and racing history:

from https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/posts/135106377/

from https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/posts/135903954/

Interestingly neither owner calls it an LM (offical or privateer conversion) - just Hartmann F40. When the car was sold to the current owner, it was advertised on p*stonheads (27 Nov 2012) as "LM LOOK". The seller, being in the legal profession, seems to have been careful with the description.

Image Unavailable, Please Login
The photos in the previous post confirm that the car was still largely the Hartmann F40 racer in advertised 2002 and by 2012 had acquired LM-style parts, prior to the start of this restoration. Also interesting is that despite sitting in a barn for much of that time, it had managed to do almost another 8000 miles.

I'll post some information on the one-off Hartmann F40, the donor car for this restoration, next to help understand the history a little more.

 

That's a pretty awesome price in 2012...

 

No doubt - a good standard road car was nearly £400k and a low miler was knocking on £450k

There was a thread on this transaction at that time:

https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/good-value-lm-updated-f40.390355/

Which then makes you wonder why there was a steep discount for a car claimed to be

especially as the seller was aware of the BPR racing history.

 

@BarryK , I don’t understand the point in posting all this information now. Surely, @Traveller made these facts clear at the beginning of his thread. Indeed, the thread is dedicated to the restoration of the car. I wonder if this posting is intended to pull our attention to the car’s early history?

It’s often difficult to discern intention through text based exchange, such as we have here, but to my mind, your posts come off as possibly “throwing shade” on @Traveller 's thread. I would hope not.

As far as I can tell, @Traveller has been completely straightforward, and shared his marvelous adventure. I think the community benefits from such threads and I would not want to discourage others from posting such threads in the future. I throughly enjoyed the thread. I hope I have simply misread your intentions.