Seeing I went to a lot of trouble with the disaerator I couldn't leave the dipstick cap in it's current conditon: Image Unavailable, Please Login The original plan was to paint the logo in with a small brush. Image Unavailable, Please Login But I soon found that I was wiping off excess after each stroke so I just went for it. Image Unavailable, Please Login And after the excess was wiped away it's all looking good. Image Unavailable, Please Login
My new braided hoses turned up looking fantastic. I bought Goodridge hoses, a snip at £77 including taxes and delivery. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Here are a couple of shots of the disaerator after the masking was removed and the paint left to harden. The camera flash has made the wrinkles look more pronounced than they do in regular light... Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Just a quick update for today: I needed to trim off the excess fibreglass on the under tray with the dremel. Intially I was very pleased with the way it turned out but the fibreglass is a lot more rigid than the plastic tray. If I were to do this again I would use a different, more flexible, product such as the 3M bumper repair kit. Before: Image Unavailable, Please Login After: Image Unavailable, Please Login And the bad bit, before: Image Unavailable, Please Login After: Image Unavailable, Please Login
Very informative work you've done, I appreciate reading through this thread. What is it in particular that you used to spray the disaerator? Is it the same stuff used to coat the front end frame parts? It looks like it is the same texture. Thank you
Thank you. I used this paint as it is very close to the OEM wrinkle finish that was originally applied to the part. I don't think it is the same as the paint on the front end frame but I may be mistaken.
To be honest this was a job I wasn't looking forward to. I had postponed it as Hill Engineering didn't have any skid plates in stock but now they've been delivered it was a time to get cracking. Where they were fitted, the screws holding the bumper to the undertray were of mixed origin... Image Unavailable, Please Login The front undertray had silver overspray on the leading edge - this was visible from the front. Image Unavailable, Please Login So I quickly sprayed some satin black to take the eye away from it. Image Unavailable, Please Login
This is very poor in my book. A few posts back I had the front bumper off and noticed that one bracket was badly bent out of shape. If you look at this picture of the drivers side mounting bolts you'll see one is about an inch longer than the other: Image Unavailable, Please Login Now look at the passenger side bolts - both are of equal length. The bracket that sits inside the bumper is bent out of shape. What this means is that there isn't enough length in the lower bolt the reach the front compartment so that side of the bumper was only held on with one bolt. Who would fit this and think it was acceptable?! Image Unavailable, Please Login I had been pondering on how I was going to fix this for quite a few weeks. It is impossible to bend the bracket by hand as it's inside the bumper and it can't be removed without cutting it out. Here's what I came up with... The spacers have holes in them the correct distance apart so I used them to make some wooden templates. Image Unavailable, Please Login I then offered these up to the bracket and secured the upper bolt (which is in good order). You can see there is hardly any thread on the other bolt. Image Unavailable, Please Login I then gradually tightened up the other bolt until it was sticking out the correct length. It didn't need much force (I turned a deep socket on its own by hand) and seemed to move quite easily. Image Unavailable, Please Login I left the wooden spacers in place and will do until I come to fit the bumper back on. With any luck the bracket will hold the correct shape when I take it all off. Image Unavailable, Please Login
One of the tabs was broken off - not a major issue but it only took 30 mins to fix up. Image Unavailable, Please Login I put some masking tape on a bit of wood with some car wax on so the fibreglass had something to rest on which it wouldn't stick to. Image Unavailable, Please Login Several layers of matting impregnated with resin. Image Unavailable, Please Login After it had hardened I trimmed it down to the correct shape and drilled a hole. Image Unavailable, Please Login I also filled in most of the holes for the grills as they were damaged. One grill was only held on with one screw. I will drill them when I come to fit them back on. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Now I turned my attention to the damage underneath, which was considerable. Fortunately none of it is visible from above so I'll attempt a local repair plus most of it will be covered by the new skid plates. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login I clean up the worst of it and put a small skim of filler into the deepest gashes. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I tackled the white painted part first. I bought a tin of touch up paint from paints4u - I specified the paint to have laquer pre mixed in. Image Unavailable, Please Login I then brushed on about 5 thick coats of paint onto the affected areas. It looks a little odd at the moment due to the uneven surface and brush strokes but once it has hardened I'll carefully sand it back with 1200 wet and dry and then polish with G3 compound. The colour match is very good. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
The white touch up paint sanded OK - it was never going to be a showroom finish but as it will be out of sight and most of it will be covered by the skid plates I went ahead and painted the black (I stuffed up the masking in one area but it'll be covered by the plate). It's highly likely that I'll catch this area on the ground in the future so I may have to have a professional repair at some point (I was touching the floor with the front of my Modena on some Alpine passes and that car is an inch higher than this one). Hopefully the skid plates will take the brunt of the damage but I'll be monitoring the situation carefully. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
You truly have skillz....I'm envious. The most technical stunt I've pulled off on my 430 was to fit the led angel eyes...that's about it for me. Nothing more than that. Have scars on knuckles to prove.
Amazing progress, I love the way your Oil-Catch-Tank turned out A question: Are you "only" correcting flaws made by the ex-owner or flaws made by Ferrari themselves too? Greetz, Joseph
Thank you. To be honest, these cars are so easy to work on that if you take your time and are considerate most jobs can be tackled at home. Thank you - I'm pleased with the disaerator too. I'm only bringing the car up to a standard that I'm comfortable with. Also, it's not fair to blame the previous owner. There are jobs that need doing that only a very keen eye will spot and many that only become apparent once things start being dismantled. Add these to the many things that just accumualte over the ten years of the cars life and you're left with quite list. None of which are that detrimental to actually using the car... unless you have OCD like me! Believe it or not but the car has a very extensive history file with loads of receipts!
You have to keep this car for life when it is finished, regarding the endless working hours you are spending to get it back on its "shiny" feet I have two favorite threads here on F-Chat, yours is one Greetz, Joseph
The grills weren't in too bad shape but they were a little tired. Rubbed down with a wire brush: Image Unavailable, Please Login and then coated with hammerite.. Image Unavailable, Please Login The plastic inners that sit behind the grills had gone grey and were really letting the look down! So I sanded them back... Image Unavailable, Please Login ...and gave them a coat of satin black. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Why these weren't fitted in the first place I'll never know, it would have saved me a lot of grief! I bought the Hill Engineering items, mainly as their workshop is only a mile from my house. I started by taping the skid plates in place to ensure they were equally placed on both sides. Image Unavailable, Please Login The fitting kit. Image Unavailable, Please Login Holes drilled and plates bolted up. Image Unavailable, Please Login In the past I have had contact between the bolts and the radiator frames. The CS bumper does stick out further forward but I did trim the bolt that was the furthest rearwards and thus most likely to foul. Image Unavailable, Please Login Plates fitted: Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
You must love your Hammerite Those Skid Plates are perfect, especially that they do not cost as much as a Lift System, did you make those reinforcing brackets that fit from the inside? By the way, do they sell them in black or did you "hammerite"* them? Greetz, Joseph *New Verb
I've used a lot of Hammerite as I had a couple of cans on the shelf and it's a fairly hard wearing paint. When they've gone I'll be trying some PJ1 Satin Black Engine and Case paint - it's said to be a very tough finish. The Skid Plates are Polyethylene and are black all the way through - that way when they're scuffed they stay black. All the brackets and the bolts came with the plates. Cheers!
First I thought they were aluminum and it would not make sense to anodize a product that is destined to scratch Greetz, Joseph
Indeed - Hill Engineering do make them in bare Alu but they are quite weighty (twice as heavy as the PE ones). If the budget allows they will make them in Titanium for you...
