My 60k-Mile Track Rental BAT Scud Project!

Holy cow. My wife sometimes jokes that inscribed on my headstone will be the words: "Don't worry, this won't take long." Well, true to form I colossally underestimated the amount of time this project would require. Between sanding down the calipers, rebuilding them with new pistons and seals, refinishing them (still not done), changing out all 16 control arm bushings and all the lower ball joints, and cleaning every, single part I remove or can access with everything off the car, I literally have probably spent 30 hours in the garage! Good thing my time ain't worth much!

Truth be told, if I wasn't so OCD about the cleaning part, I'd probably be done with the project by now. But my car was a track car for 50k miles rocking iron brakes and track pads, and you would not believe how much dusted coated and baked onto every single surface of the wheel well, hub, brakes, brake lines, control arms, struts, etc.... And since everything was apart and I am converting back to the CCM brakes, I couldn't leave all that grime and filth in place. Each corner literally took hours with brake dust wheel cleaner, wire brushes, scotch brite pads, and my trusty steam cleaner. With the carbon brakes I'm hoping it stay clean! Just take a look at some of the before and after photos below. The control arms were basically black in comparison to the original color! With the black surfaces clean I also took the opportunity to shoot some black paint in there to restore some of the showroom shine (in one pic you can even tell there is a Cavalino stamped into the wheel well metal just aft of the strut...I had never noticed that before as it was almost obscured by layers of baked-on brake dust).

Getting all the brake fluid seals and dust seals in was a little fiddly, but once I got in the groove (pun intended) I was able to pick up the pace. The hill stainless steel pistons are nice. I'm going to wait a week before I clear the calipers as I want the paint totally cured before I place the CCM/Ferrari decals. Gluing in the ball joints was kind of stressful. Highly recommend masking off the joints because the epoxy tends to "splooge" out everywhere, and you don't want that stuff in the joints when you start baking. Glad my wife was out of town while I was doing all this! Still have to tackle the clean up of the rear wheel wells and install a few more control arm bushings, but getting closer. The goal is to have everything done around the time the bumper and hood come back from paint. Love this car.
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few more pics
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yes, the old part number (with the black plastic "sleeve" that wears out) was 68308800. If you google that number it shows it has been superseded by pn 85321500 (which is sleeveless and is the one I installed). good luck!

 

The work continues. Still can't believe how long all this is taking me! Applied the decals to the calipers and will clear them in a few days. Kind of stressful as I wanted everything centered and straight, or my OCD just kills me. Really happy with the finish of the calipers on the visible surfaces (not perfect, but you'd have to get in the wheels with a flashlight to see the imperfections).

By far the most irritating part of the project thus far was pressing the rear lower control arm studs into the new bushings (unlike the upper and front control arm bushings, the studs are pressed into the bushing "arms" of the rear lower control arm bushings instead of into the body) (see pic below). This is not an easy job without a hydraulic press. They pressed out ok (albeit with substantial force) with a 6" bench vise, but man was it tough getting the studs pressed back into the superformance bushing holes. I don't know if the metal was harder or the holes just a tad smaller, but it was so tough I nearly gave up after I snapped my bench vise in half while using a cheater bar. So I bought a new vice, lubed up the screw mechanism, and got the job done but it literally took hours, and would have been impossible without a way to keep the vise solid and in place so it didn't move when putting several hundred pounds of force (i.e., all my body weight magnified by a 2-foot cheater bar) on the vise handle (I had to get creative and ended up bolting my vise down to my kid's backyard half-pipe ramp) Highly recommend a hydraulic press here, but I finally got it done.

And then cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning. I'd be done with this job weeks ago if it were not for all the cleaning with brake dust cleaner, degreaser, an industrial steam cleaner, and an assortment of wire brushes. Check out the before and after of the rear wheel wells (still have to do the left side...so dirty). Once it is all clean, I'll change out the rear sway bar bushings (after scribing the location of the splined shaft...thanks for the tip @collegeboy), re-install the rear upper and lower control arms, and install the newly refinished/rebuilt ccm calipers, new pads and hardware, and new to me rotors to me ccm brakes/pads.

One note. The design of the front calipers features a central pad retaining pin or bolt that is held in place on the outboard end by a groove machined into the caliper. When changing pads if one is not careful, one can round off this groove, making it very hard to remove the bolt on the other end of the pin because the whole pin will just spin in the now-rounded off caliper groove. Luckily I happened upon an aftermarket solution for this problem. The same caliper design is found on the 996/997 generation 911 gt3's, and this is a common problem as folks track those cars so much, thereby increasing the risk and frequency of causing this type of damage on the caliper. A company called Demonspeed motorsports makes a replacement pin with a hex head so you can put a wrench on the pin to counter the bolt on the other end when removing the pin to change pads. On a hunch I removed my gt3 pad retaining pin to see if it was the same size as the Ferrari caliper (also Brembo) pin, and it was exactly the same. The Demonspeed bolts had a slightly shiny finish that did not look very "oem" so they blasted the heads for me free of charge and the appearance is great, and best of all, pad changes in the future will now be possible! (my old pins had nuts welded onto them I kid you not). You can see these pins in the pic of the caliper below...great solution if you have this issue.

Hood and bumper respray should be done soon and then I'll be back in business!
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Yessir. Follow that one rule and you’ll get it right!!

 

Alright...just need to add in the brake fluid, do a bleed, and this job will be done! Painter is taking longer than expected for the bumper and hood though, which is a bummer as I want to get this car back on the road! I said it before but I'll say it again, very satisfying project, but very time consuming. Most of the time was just cleaning and more cleaning, literally every single nut, bolt, washer and clip. Feels good though! There was literally 15 years of track brake dust caked over every surface, but not anymore! Had to snap a pic of the suspension work remnants. Don't know why I keep all the old stuff. Perhaps I'll upgrade the flanblocs to derlin at some point in the future and I'll want to re-use the old bushing pins and hardware! Also had to get a shot of the car in "hovercraft mode." So hot in the garage in Phoenix over the summer, but having a fan blow straight on you from point blank range helps a bit. Getting closer to "presentable." Not looking forward to the dash r&r to do the defroster vents, but after this job that is going to be a cake walk!
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Here you go: Ferrari 236430 Cromo Grigio Corsa Diamont (see pic below). I had my paint mixed at an automotive paint supply store and its very close. But because it features some sort of fine metallic flake (I think?), I don't believe it will ever be an "exact" match to existing surfaces due the metal flake size/composition, so your best bet is painting the entirety of the part you are addressing instead of trying to blend it with surrounding surfaces.

In fact, just yesterday I refinished my bumper grills, the lower bumper panel, and, at long last, the interior door handles! The finish on the door handles had been coming off the inside of the handles so It felt good to remove those suckers and spray them. I finished those off with a 2k (two part catalyzed) clear coat for extra durability given that they are a surface that gets touched. I used a "matte" 2k clear for the exterior parts as I did not want them shiny since the stock parts are "matte" (I could have left them un-cleared, but wanted the extra durability and chip resistance offered by a super hard 2k clear coat). For the lower scoop I ended up wet sanding and polishing the matte clear to shine it up just a tad and I'm extremely satisfied with the results. Basically a perfect match and I'm confident not even the most informed Ferrari aficionado would realize the scoop or grills had been re-finished. The inner door handles are glossier than oem, but I don't care (you can see how the uncoated factory handles faired over time!).
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Also, just in case anyone comes upon this thread in the future, I made an interesting find a few days ago. I had noticed that the temperature displayed on my gauge cluster was frequently "implausible." Like showing 80 deg when it was 110F! So I figured my external temperature sensor wasn't working right, and wasn't sure if this sensor sends data back to the ecu for engine management or to the HVAC system, but wanted it to work right so I ordered a new sensor (super cheap). When I removed my door cards to refinish the handles I figured I'd remove this driver's side mirror and tackle this job at the same time. What I found was surprising. See below pic. Seems the sensor wire abraded on a bolt or nut and both wires were nearly severed (it went right through the protective black sheath too). Pretty sure this wasn't helping things. Kind of a hassle to replace as I had to disassemble the entire mirror to fish the old sensor out, and had to buy a cheap "de-pinning" or terminal removal tool (can be seen in one of the pics) to effect the replacement as the connector would not fit into the wire holes into the mirror, but got it all buttoned up with a bit of extra "padding" so this doesn't happen again. Will be interesting to see if the temperature now displays correctly and if there are any other improvements in engine or HVAC perfromance (not that I detected any, other than the fan speed seeming a little slow when the AC was on).

Happy motoring (really can't wait to get the bumper and hood back from paint so I can get her back on the road!
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Ok, update time! Car is back on the road! The repainted hood and bumper (along with all accessories) turned out amazing with great paint match! Spent a lot of time making sure we got a proper color match. Super stoked. Still need to repaint the front "fender assembly" which I haven't addressed yet because the painter would need the car and I was doing so much maintenance I didn't want to give it up. I'll probably give him the car in the next couple months so he can do that piece and the rockers, then paint work to address chips and defects will basically be done!

Also finished cutting and buffing the door panels (3 step with a dual action polisher), and they look new! Also happy to report that the car feels great with the CCM's and new pads. Stops great, low dust, and the car feels more nimble without the heavy steel boat anchor rotors. But best of all, the suspension feels so much smoother with all the dang bushings replaced (and I mean all of them). No weird noises, and very smooth action over bumps and undulations! Still firm, but not "crashy" and feels new!
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Embarrassing? Not sure I follow, but it did take me a while to figure out how everything came apart! Put several hundred miles on the car this weekend. Such a fun car. Only issue is that now I'm noticing my window switch lights are not going off after I shut down the car (ctek plus antigravity battery will keep is healthy for now). From research on F-Chat looks like I may have a door handle micro switch issue. I'll need to investigate and see if I screwed something up when I was messing with the door panels. But if that's the only hiccup after everything I had torn apart, I'll take it!