Rebuilding my '87 328 GTB

Excellent work so far. I can't wait to see the finished project!

 

@jjh925
"My current struggle is with the insulation materials around the luggage compartment."

To my point of view, you have to take care at the insulation between the engine bay and the passager compartment. That is a problem on GTB : the heat in the cabin with the engine just behind

 

Much progress ...

Since the last post, I've dug a bunch into the motor to get it resealed. Among other items, I've now replaced all the valve stem seals; the various seals related to the cams (with some help from folks here), cam sprockets and distributors; differential output shaft seals; shift shaft seals (wow - not so difficult if the motor is out!); block-to-transmission is resealed; differential housing is resealed; timing gear bearings & shaft seals are replaced; timing gear cover gasket replaced; all the various gaskets in the "V" (cooling manifolds, oil stand, intakes, etc) have been replaced; all new Bosch injectors have been installed with new inner & outer O-tings; etc, etc, etc.

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The timing system was refreshed ... new belts & idler pulleys were installed and timing was confirmed / adjusted for each of the four cams.

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Front & rear hubs were rebuilt. The bearings in the rear were great (so not replaced) and the bearings in the front were repacked. Parking brake is now fully re-assembled & functional.

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To be continued ...

 

All four calipers were rebuilt with fresh seals & boots. The calipers themselves were replaced in yellow zinc.

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Intake plenum was stripped & repainted.

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The "belly pan" has been stripped, cleaned, straightened, repaired, repainted & reinstalled with new gray caulk. It looks like there were a couple of times that stuff hit or scraped underneath, and there was an odd cut all the way through the aluminum right under the parking brake lever. I can't quite figure that one out ... the p-brake handle mechanism seems to sit nearly an inch above the belly pan. Regardless, the hole has been welded shut and it's all straight again.

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New QA1 coil-overs with Eibach springs have been installed. I used Verrel's "Unobtainium" mounting eyes for the front coils. A still have the original Koni units, and I'm looking into getting them refurbished just to keep this modification fully reversible, but these sure seem lighter and I love the idea of being able to adjust the ride hight. Also, like a dumb-ass, I torqued down the inner A-arm busing mounts, so those will need to be loosened & retightened after the car us under load (or more likely I'll just lift each corner one at a time with a jack and torque stuff down at that point).

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My wife and I working together managed to get the rear glass in with no drama. After all the stories I'd read about these breaking, plus Lou Trottier's video where his 308 rear glass was shattered - I was pretty stressed about this step, but in the end it went in relatively easily. The rubber seal is new from Eurospares.

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Drip rails are glued & riveted back in.

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I also spent a few days recovering all the headliner & rear parcel shelf bits in the correct black-and-gray wool cloth. The main issue here was that the glue (the good high-solvent stuff from DAP) tended to soak through & stain the front of the material if you sprayed or brushed it onto the back. This wasn't an issue for most of the parts ... other than the headliner shell itself, all the cloth is just stretched over the part and glued only on the borders that wrap around the back. But the headliner shell is concave and "upside down" when installed, so after a lot of experimenting with other glues, I hit on the idea of sealing the backside before spraying on the contact cement. The "sealer" that worked really well was water-based PVA glue that I cut down 4-to-1 with distilled water. Worked like charm and I was able to spray the contact cement on the headliner with zero issues. And it's adhering really well.

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Also, for the headliner, I've redone everything except the visors. I have enough left-over cloth to do them, but the visors were in perfect condition, so I've left them for now.

Also, for the headliner, I've redone everything except the visors. I have enough left-over cloth to do them, but the visors were in perfect condition, so I've left them for now.

I've installed 1" of new ceramic wool into the passenger side of the rear bulkhead.

That makes sense. I now have a total of 1.5 inches of new ceramic wool, plus aramid fiber at a few strategic points where there are larger holes in the bulkhead (throttle cable, lower corners, holes where the frame members go thru), so I'm hoping this will be good.

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I've now also finally gotten everything under the front cowl installed. The hangup here was that for some *$&#$!* reason I'd neglected to put the zinc-plated "T" that connects the heater return lines into my first plating batch, so I had to do a second batch and wait for all that to come back. It's in there now - packed away way in the back, and everything else there is now torqued down & adjusted. The MC is a new unit from Superformance. The reservoir is also installed (not shown here), and I'm leaving the brake hardlines off for now so I can bench-bleed the MC later.

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For the brake booster & linkage, I was greatly aided by the YT videos by "BENZINA," who I'm pretty sure is "Nuvolari" here at FC? After using the methods he described, I double checked my work by putting a dab of clay on the end of the booster rod, attaching the MC, pulling it apart, cutting the dab of clay in half & measuring the gap - basically just like checking for valve-to-piston clearance. I adjusted the booster rod to give me just under 1.0mm of play.

Lastly, I also finally got my front windshield glued in! I'd planned on doing this myself, but having spent nearly a grand on new glass, I figured I'd just checkbook-wrench this one. These guys from a local business were great to deal with; they understood the amount of work I had into this and worked with me to get the clips & lower trim glued into place before putting the glass in. Very pleased with the results so far - though I still have to install & seal up the trim.

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Next up:

- Install all the headliner bits, parcel shelf padding, etc., then glue in the side windows.
- Lace in the AC lines that run through the right rocker and up behind the right fuel tank.
- After that's done, I'll turn back to the engine compartment (re-paint gas tanks, install the heat shields & fuel lines at rear-top-front, etc), then I should be able to take the car off the dolly and think about dropping the motor back in!

Hours spent to date: 1,412

 

Outstanding work. Really nicely done. Complimenti!

 

I can't say better myself. I wish I had courage to try to do the same.

 

Amazing work, well done! I would love to go through a 308 or 328 like this someday -- just not mine though, it's in "leave well enough alone" condition and I frequently have to restrain myself.

If you need any fuel hose for the tank crossover pipe sleeves, fuel pump inlet, or filler neck and can't find it locally, let me know and I think I have some extra I can share. If you replace the fuel pump and/or accumulator, note they are off-the-shelf Bosch items, so no need to buy Ferrari-boxed items and pay the upcharge. Same for the fuel filter too.

 

Forgot to add, kudos for getting rid of the Dinitrol. While it's authentic to the car and period, it really does not age well and it accumulates dirt and grime, which makes working on the car a dirty job. Good riddance I say! We cannot import it into the USA anymore. I had some wash off the frame after a fuel leak, and worked hard to patch it up with a similar product from Fertan USA. I found myself questioning my sanity on that one.

I had to do a little fiberglass repair work on my wheel well liners, as the screw holes were wallowed out and cracked. They are originally chopper gun glass formed in a mold. Easy to do patch jobs with fiberglass cloth and resin then you can nitpick on the black paint color like everything else you're fixing up.

 

Thank you! Every time I'd researched this in the past, there's an old F-chat post about these undercoatings where the concensus seems to be "that's what's original, you *must* put it back on," but I couldn't see the logic. So hearing the opposite ("get rid of it") from at least one other person is comforting.

 

Thank you for the kind words.

On the Bosch stuff, yeah, I'd wised up to this on my previous BMW projects. Searching by the Bosch PN usually cuts the pice in half at least!

On the fuel lines, thanks for the offer. I need to lace the long AC lines in, but after that item, the fuel tanks and fuel lines are next. I think I've gotten what I need (mostly from Superformance, but AW Italian also has a kit for the X-pipe), but I'll keep this in mind - thanks!

 

Curious your opinion about the superformance booster/master cylinder. I realize you haven't used it in operation yet but does it seem like a quality part? It looks like you were able to re-use the reservoir, and it seems you had to adjust the rod (i.e. did it arrive ready to bolt-on?). I may need to go that route because I'm just about out of patience with the person who has been rebuilding mine since November. Thank you

 

Since November?!? Something is amiss. The actual time to disassemble/reassemble is probably about a day. (I've done Brit car booster rebuilds, and it takes a couple of hours). There of course will be delays waiting on parts and for any plating or powder coating, but 6 months seems about 4 months too long, to me.

I went the Superformance route for the MC and it was a simple bolt on, once I figured out how to adjust the pushrod correctly (found a nice writeup on this forum). My car had a non standard MC and the pushrod needed about a 2mm change (shorter) to make it right. One odd thing was I needed an inordinate amount of pumping to do a proper 'bench bleed' before I could get pressure on the front circuit. Normally I find a few pumps of cycling fluid from the MC back into the reservoir does it.

 

Yes, the SP part seems very high quality, and at least as solid as the original part that was in my car. After fully bleeding the system, the pedal is rock hard. The total booster rod adjustment I had to make was minimal (1-2 turns IIRC), but obviously critical.

A few thoughts on replacing the MC:

• "Bench" bleeding (whether you actually do it on the bench or after the MC is in the car) is critical. I did mine literally on the bench, and it took a handful of pumps (and maybe 10-ish minutes of just letting it rest before pumping again) to get the bubbles out. But having done so, the actual bleeding of the system was almost trivially easy.
• SP sells two different MCs for our cars. The difference between the two is a sizing issue. I'd encourage anyone who's going to buy from them to contact them by email to make sure you order the right one.
• One caution: there's a rubber bumper under the rod that you need to adjust. It's located down inside the brake booster under the end of the rod. That bumper is just a slip fit in there. If it rotates out of place while you're reassembling things, it will mess up your fitment. AMHIK.

 

Very happy with recent progress.

I tried to figure out how to get all-new material for the rear bulkhead covering, but I finally gave up. Instead, I wire-brushed all the old foam off and glued new 1/2 inch foam onto the back of the main pad. I used the same 1/2 inch foam on the small pieces that go under the rear window and up along the inside of the C-pillars, then ground that foam down to about 1/4 inch.

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Headliner and rear parcel shelf pieces are all installed. First pic is a test fit before the windows went in ... I figured it would be way easier & cleaner to put the rear side windows in without that parcel shelf in place. I'm really happy with how this work turned out.

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Rear windows went in next (thanks for the help!):

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Next I refurbished the gas tanks. The silver reflective paint was pretty worn out and some of the coating had to be redone:

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New felt pads for the tanks. I used 1/2 inch felt and cut the pieces with new utility blades.

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Before installing the re-painted tanks I took a few pics of the insides of the tanks just to check the conditions. I was pleasantly surprised how clean they are!

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Gas tanks are now installed and most of the various vent & fill hoses (all new) are also installed:

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Next, I'm hoping to turn back to the motor for a valve adjust and final check before dropping it back in.

Total hours to-date: 1,482.