Dallas Dino: ****pile

That's the problem.

There's a reality gap on a lot of these cars right now.

I bought mine for $40K two years ago, and it didn't need paint, but did need a lot of other work $30K+ at this point.

I don't think these guys are gonna take $50K for a car they think is worth $70K+, but the market doesn't support the price they want, if the car has many of the issues I listed above.

So, as it has for a little while now, it will sit until someone comes along who wants the car regardless of price, or is ignorant of some of the costs associated with their repair.

DM

 

The dealer's other option would be to let their own mechanics work on it when they're not busy with "customer pay" work. Work they can't do themselves they can get done wholesale, as they can parts.

So they have the option of fixing the car up to increase it's value.

IF this car's engine responds to driving it, the new owner could also save ton of money by pulling the suspension off himself and getting new bushings installed, etc. Same for the brakes. Anyone can do brake and a-arm work.

Jim Oddie

 

You did very well at that price !
I think that a person who expects a vintage car to be perfect and run like a perfect Camry appliance is going to be a crappy custodian, anyway. These things are about reverence for the history and adjusting your modern sensibilities and expectations to the classic car. I bought my vintage V12 for stupid money 3 years ago. I have also put nearly stupic money into it. But that is because I enjoyed having it "just so", or that it was safer than spending it on drugs, shrinks, airplanes, or mistresses.
I was not really expecting to get the car for $50K. I think that even with the current issues, it will fetch more. (if it does not, I will be visiting my folks in Bedford, TX from August 20th to the 27th, and I will take the said home equity checks with me)

 

Check out the one that sold at Autosportdesigns. Is this the new baseline price for a near perfect restored car?

 

Euro chairs and flares car? Clean, fixed, nearly perfect, $140K is probably in the neighborhood.

Although I have to say the red Daytona seats don't look all that nice in the siver car IMHO.

DM

 

I posted a question as to what could cause a self-correcting compression problem to the Technical Questions board:

__________________

This is part of a post relating to a 1971 Dino:

"After speaking with Norwood Autocraft, we have been told that the #5 cylinder showed a compression of 115 and the remaining 5 cylinders showed compression between 140-155. That, as told by Norwood's to yourself and us, could very easily be due to the fact that the car has been sitting and driven very little over the past few years. Just a note, in driving the car to and from Norwood's the car actually drove quite well."

Can anyone explain to me what problem the engine could have developed from not being driven much that would not go away in driving from the dealership to the mechanic's but will go away with more use?

Back when I had Alfas people would talk about debris from the spark plug (as you remove it) falling onto the valve sealing surface, causing an erroneous low value if a compression test was done while the debris was still there. But I can't think of any valve or ring problems that will go away with more use.

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#2 Yesterday, 10:52 PM
mikeyr
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I am sure I will be told I am wrong on this but it happens because a piston ring has some "gunk" on it or some fuel leaks down from the carb into the cylinder when the car first sits, either the gunk gets sticky and gooey or the gas turns to varnish (I am sure there are other reasons) and causes the piston rings to get sticky so it no longer seals properly.

When you start driving the car, fresh fuel and fresh oil gets on the rings and breaks it loose and it starts having compression again. I suppose it could also damage cylinder walls and hurt the motor but the theory is that it will loosen up and be fine.

When I purchased my Dino, it had 150-155 lbs. compression in 5 cylinders and 90 lbs. in the number 6 cylinder and smoked and burned oil. I followed several recommendations from here and elsewhere and used some Marvel Mistery Oil both in the fuel and directly injected into the proper carb while running (Of course AFTER changing all fuel hoses, cleaning tank and doing brakes, etc. since the car had sat 12 years) and over time and miles of Italian tune-ups, I have 145 lbs. in number 6 cylinder and it no longer smokes and runs great, so I am living proof that it can happen and can be fixed.

Of course bad compression could be broken rings, damaged cylinders, etc. and in this case I don't know of any way to tell except driving it hard for a while.

Oh yeah, one more item, I suppose some valves could gummed up and not fully seating causing low compression. I would be worried that you might burn a valve before it "cleaned" itself if that is the case since without fully seating it will get hotter. But the driving it hard is fun so its a great way to try and fix it

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Last edited by mikeyr : Yesterday at 11:02 PM.

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#3 Today, 05:31 AM
Sean F.
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Also if a car sits for a long time the valve seats can get some corrosive build up on them as one cyclinder will be "open" while the others may be closed. When you test the compression, the valve will not seat properly and there's your leak. As you run it more, the corrossion will losen up and the valve will seat better (although it's always going to be a little off).

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#4 Today, 09:29 AM
Verell
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Small flakes of carbon from the top of the piston or the head can get squished onto the valve seat & will reduce compression until they are either burned off, or pounded off by the valve seating.

If a car sits a long time, the carbon will tend to dry out & flake off, ending up lying on the piston until the car is started. Most gets blown out, but it's not uncomon for some to get stuck on a valve sealing area.

On rotary engines, especially on the carb'd ones, so much carbon can come off that it literally would lock up the engine. If you were lucky you could work it loose/dissolve it out, but if not, you were in for an engine rebuild!

 

Another possibility depending on the engine design ( I know nothing about dino engine ) a valve spring compressed in one position for a long period could be weak. I doubt that this could be remidied by driving the car, but it is definately an inexpensive fix.

 

Restoring an old 246 sure seems to be way more expensive than I'd have thought! How much is labor and how much is parts? $10k on brakes and suspension??? Is that like $7K in labor and $3k in parts?

I'd love to buy a beater 246 for $35k and do the restoration myself; I'd prep the car myself for paint but have it done, and I'd have a pro do the engine, but I'd do all the rest myself. What's the breakdown of parts vs. labor?

Ken

 

I think the numbers in that list are "done by an excellent shop to concourse standards with owner not lifting a finger."

I bought my Dino in '87 and shortly thereafter one rear brake caliper was dragging, overheated on a long freeway drive, and warped the barrel. A new one was $600 because it's a very special part with internal parking brake mechanism. I replaced the rotor, too, even though it wasn't really necessary, for $300. All the other calipers have been fine.

A few years ago my brake booster went out. I pulled it myself and mailed it off to a specialty company for a rebuild, maybe $500. I'm sure that if I had just had it flatbedded to a Ferrari dealer it would have been far more than that.

A few years ago my rear suspension bushings were bad. I pulled the A-arms myself, had them powder coated, and had my mechanic just press in new bushings. The bushings were more than they'd be for a Taurus, but not crazy.

15 $20K for paint? Only if you want to win trophies.

I think offering $50K for this car would not be unreasonable, unless the engine needs a complete overhaul, which you can't do yourself. Dealers can't keep cars in stock forever, although they are loathe to sell them for less than they paid for them.

 

Check out the restoration photos on a dino in "ferrariforum.com".Beautiful photos and a link to a wonderful shop that did the work.

 

Lot's of us can't fix major problems with our cars, or don't want to. I think it's reasonable on a potential $100K car to expect a future owner to have the repair work done professionally, and price the car accordingly.

Now about paint. Even bad paint is gonna cost you $5K+ right?

And, any Dino getting paint is going to have some rust issues that need addressing. So, that's a couple grand in body work.

You're going to want to replace the windshield rubber, door and trunk gaskets and the window felts. That's about $2k just in parts by the time you're done. You should take the windshield (and back window) out when you paint it, don't you think?

Hand beat panels are going to need smoothing out to make them right on a bare metal repaint, unless you're just spraying paint on top of the old finish.

30+ year old car, that's appreciating in value should not get a MAACO special paint job. You should do it right, once. It will make the car worth more, too.

So, to say that $10-15K is concours, I'm not so sure. It's probably more like $20K+ for major concours winning quality.

 

Sheehan has a pretty good article in this month's Velostrada which gives clues as to why things are pricy. There's a lot of "while we're here" mentality going on that we all suffer from. I budget $2500 to $5000 a corner for brake and suspension work, because I know that I might as well have everything done while the car is in pieces. I do do some work myself (mostly because I enjoy it) but for some reason it never seems to save too much money!

 

I bet I can find the rubber bits for the windows for less than $2k. That's going to be a standard size I would think; I got the rubber for my Lotus doors for $35 TOTAL. Came in a roll and fit perfectly.

I bet there's a ton of Fiat parts in a 246, especially since it's a Fiat. May take some hunting of course.

I can imagine that not that many people with a 246 are handy with a wrench, but this isn't a 512 Boxer we're talking about either for complexity. I do appriciate that parts for a limited production 35 year old car may not be exactly cheap but I also know a lot of "special" parts for old cars frequently don't turn out to be all that special when you ask around.

Ken

 

Now......that would be something I would pay $$$ for, a master cross reference for vintage Ferraris. I have an outdated and incomplete one in one of the original Ferrari maintenance books. Most mechanics and marque experts are not entirely eager to share this info, and understandably so....
Of course, it is possible to find out, thanks to this forum, tomyang.net, and any friendly local conncections...

 

Lukek, Matt Jones at Reoriginals in Houston is the man!

He has a warehouse of the stuff, it's where I pick up my wear and tear items, weatherstrips and stuff like that...carpet and leather....plug wires.....

 

Call them they'll send you the Ferrari catalog....they do Alfas as well.......

 

Front and rear window rubber isn't standard. It's a seal to keep the window in, custom to the windshield design. (How many of those do you think are sold a year?) Taking out the back window and putting it back in is a delicate operation, and not one for amateurs.

There's a ton of rubber on the car. I priced it with Ferrari, and two other sources. You can get the corect window felt several places. You can't get some of this rubber anywhere but from Ferrari guys, and none of them are in it for the fun.

Labor from my Ferrari mechanic is about $100 an hour. Sure, you can pay some other guy less, and hope he has lots of experience with Dinos, or you can pay a guy the $100 an hour and know that he's skilled at what he does, and won't do more harm than good. There's tons of labor in every job associated with these cars, and yes, some of it is "while we're there costs."

Do you go to your GP if you have a broken leg? Nope, off to the orthopaedist. I think the same applies here.

Parts are also very expensive. Source a set of pistons. Or four koni's, or all the bushings required to refresh the suspension. Then remember, those bushings are WELDED IN PLACE. Bent "A" arm? Gonna cost a pretty penny to replace it.

When there are less than 4,000 cars that came from the factory 30+ years ago, there's going to be a finite supply of sources for parts, and a finite number of those parts. Not a lot of demand, but also a very limited supply.

Sure, some of the parts are straight up Fiat parts, and if you can figure it out, then do the swap, but owning a classic car, and trying to do it on the cheap, just doesn't make sense to me.

IF you can prep the car, have the time, and make it ready for paint, then that's cool, and congrats. I don't have that skill, or the time. I'd rather let someone who knows what he's doing, do what HE does best.

I tinker, I patch, I don't overhaul.

Hey, and at this point if you can find a beater 246 at $35K, jump on it. If you can do the work yourself, you'll come out on top.

Dave

 

I haven't come to grips with the speculative estimates of suspension rebuilds quoted on Ferrari Chat. Wheel bearings and seals are dirt cheap. Energy suspension or original rubber bushings are $20-$30 each so roughly $100 a corner for those. Konis around $150 each. Say $150 for bearings and seals. Toss in a new spring (rarely needed) for say $300 and you are looking at $700 per corner. Without the spring $400. Some have quoted as much as $2500 per corner. Am I missing something? Over a decade ago one dealer quoted a 206 owner $20,000 for full suspension rebuild and an independent quoted $10,000 for the same job. What gives?

 

Sorry, I left out caliper and disc on my estimate. Disc could be reground (hopefully) and a rebuilt caliper is about $400 or do it yourself for about $60.

 

Parts at Superformance are about $3900 including all bushes, shocks, and springs to do all four corners. Ferrari dealer is going to charge PROBABLY TWICE THAT FOR PARTS. That makes roughly $8K for parts. 206 parts are different in some instances, and cost more than 246 parts.

Ferrari UK probably wants about $6K for the parts. They are usually, BUT NOT ALWAYS, 50% more than Superformance, so that's just my wild ass guess.

Labor at $100 an hour doesn't take long to get to another $5K or more.

I bought all my own parts to re-do my suspension, and had a bill for under $5k in labor all told, as I recall, last year. I did have a couple other things done at the time.

SO, why is it hard to figure $15K for this again?


DM

 

I've seen and experienced it before, my friend - the 4 stages of "New Owner Vintage Ferrari Maintenance":

Stage 1: Denial - "There's no way I'm going to pay that much for a #%$&^! part! I know I can find it cheaper!"

Stage 2: Depression - "My car is langusihing in the corner of my garage, gathering dust . . . will I ever be able to make it run again?"

Stage 3: Anger - "GOD D*****IT!!!!!! THIS CAR IS TOO ^%$&$#% EXPENSIVE TO FIX!!! I CURSE THE DAY I BOUGHT IT!!!!!!"

Stage 4: Acceptance - "OK, who do I make the check out to? And how many zeroes is that?"

 

I got my first goods from him about 6 years ago, for an Alfa !
His prices are up there, but for some things, he is the only game in town. Which is why a cross reference to a fiat/gm/generic part would be a gold mine...

 

I found my receipt for my 246 rear suspension work:

My mechanic, who has worked on these cars (at a Ferrari dealership) since they were new, pressed out the old bushings (they're NOT welded in), sent the 4 A-arms and 2 springs out for powder coating, and purchased and installed the new bushings.

Total cost $845 in 2000.

Few of these cars have more than 50M on them and are extremely unlikely to need springs or Konis.

I will agree that if you don't want to or can't do the labor yourself it will cost a bunch more. But for me it's recreation, and with a shop manual it's not brain surgery.

 

I should have broken down that rear suspension bill:

Labor (to disassemble the coilover unit and R+R the bushings) 225, sublet for powder coating 200, parts 388.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with letting a great shop do the work. I'm just saying that for the owner who is willing and able to and wants the satisfaction of doing it himself many things can be done much more economically. When my 6000 mile valve clearance check came up I pulled the cam covers and checked the clearances myself. As they were all OK, I hired my mechanic to drive over to my house and check their appearance as well as the cam chain tensions. All was OK. Total cost= 45 minutes of his time.

However, some things, like major engine and gearbox work, upholstery, and windshield removal I do leave to the professionals.

 

33 yr old shocks need replacing, just like 33 year old tires would. It's not just the miles that makes stuff get tired. It's ozone, the simple weight of the car, time, etc. Just because they are Koni's, doesn't mean they last forever. Otherwise, Koni would have gone out of business long ago.

My Dino had two shocks that were leaking, and a spring that had given up the ghost. It was sagging by about an inch on the left rear. New springs made a huge difference, along with the shocks.

It's not always a situation of "while you were in there." Sometimes it's just common sense.

Do you still have the original 33 year old air conditioner for your house? How about that 33 year old refrigerator? 33 year old pair of pants? 33 year old shoes?

Stuff wears out.

And, I don't know what kind of suspension your car has, but mine sure had the bushings welded into place. I know, I stripped and repainted every suspension arm the car has.

DM.