1958 Pontoon Fender TR hairpin springs or coil?

The highly detailed Inomoto cutaway drawing of the pontoon-bodied Testa Rossa shows hairpin valve springs. I don't know when they changed to coil springs, but I'm sure someone here will know.

 

After looking through some old material, my "guess" would be that only the prototype Testa Rossa had a 250GT engine (hairpin springs) and that all other Testa Rossas had the 250TR engine (coil springs).

 

Iam pretty sure 0754 has (or had prior to conv) hairpins.

john

 

According to the article on 0754 in "Road & Track Exotic Cars #7", David Love bought the car in 1964. At that time:

"The engine was a real mess. I was able to drive the car about six feet in the first year or so I had it." The first job thus became one of getting the car into running condition. The original TR block was so used up that restoration at that point was beyond Love's resources, so the old-boy network went into action to come up with a substitute. This was ultimately supplied by Otto Zipper, who located a 250GT block from a cabriolet that would serve as a stopgap. Love later located a 250GT block that would take the Testa Rossa heads, and he ran the car with this setup for 14 years before finally having restoration of the original block completed by Messrs Ross cummings and Phil Ritter of Griswold Company in Berkeley.

So if 0754 had a 250GT engine in it, at least for a time, then it did indeed have hairpin springs in it at that time. If it has a fully correct 250TR engine in it now, then it should have coil springs.

 

From what I have read the coil springs came first with the TR59 model, there is a nice article in Ultimatatecarpage about the changes from TR58 to TR59.
branko

 

A period Inomoto drawing shows hairpins, but let's see what DL says. I just sent him an email.

john

 

I got this back from DL and thought I would share:

+++++++++++++

My heads were fitted with coil springs in the early 70’s after David Clarke spent a season unsuccessfully having several sets of springs made to order.

The1957-1958 run of 19 (21 ?) cars for special customers used heads unlike any others. I remember seeing a cylinder head in the Chinetti stock bought by Will Haible some time ago.. It was painted dark red,had hairpin springs and a four stud head pattern – a combination I have seen nowhere else.. Beginning in 1959 the 250 GT engines used coil springs and 6 port heads- -Lusso e Competetzione. Since the 4 bolt /hairpin spring combination appears during one season only, a good guess would be it was a test piece. But consider the source: a leaky memory operating over 5 decades.

The one thing you ou can count on from Ferrari is wjhen you are sure, publically and in print, that they "never/always" fit that piece at the works, evidence will appear r to the contrary . It is Italian, iasn’t it?

DL