Early vs. Late F40 Paint

mine is a 91 and you can see weave all over the place!

 

F40s do not consistently show the weave on all panels like the F50s do, whereas in the latter it is very defined over the whole car, however, I have heard the same, and to underscore this, I have come across multiple 1992s with original paint with no weave showing at all.

 

Can you share some photos showing the weave?

 

in 2015 i went to inspect otis chandler's f40 in maranello being classiched. i was in the classiche section all day talking to the techs there (which was every bit as great as you are now imagining ), and i noticed that there was not much weave apparent on the car, vs my own. i have a 90 and i think the chandler car is a 92. so i mentioned to one of the guys there that this must be due to the later build date, and his reply was that the year meant nothing, their build rate and quality were inconsistent- it was made by hand (italian hands !). the thickness of the paint varied by the day and the car, and that the whole weave visibility story was just a cover for haphazard workmanship.

your choice to believe this or not, but thats the story from classiche.

 

Another fallacy is that the weave is carbon when its not, its actually fibreglass. The weave of such is only visible where the thin coat of resin above it has sunk as it dried, where the panel is thinner. In areas where the mat is thicker, the resin is thicker, or where filler was applied then the resin does not sink so the mat underlayer cannot then be seen.

An owner a while back posted up photos of such, I think it may have been redsled, and it's also been confirmed by Kevin from mototechnique who actually replicates weave in F40 resto's when requested, he also posted up pics of the fibreglass being applied to replicate the Ferrari flaw!

My understanding is that different suppliers actually made the panels over time which is also a factor as to the quality of certain panels during the build run.

This only applies to the painted outer body panels, the inner bare structural panels are fully carbon and were clearly produced in a much more stringent process such as an autoclave, rather than the hand lay of the cosmetic outer body panels

 

Perhaps the guys at Classiche were not aware of it but Otis Chandler's F40 92017 should not be used as any benchmark for original paint because he crashed that car early in it's life and subsequently had it repaired & repainted at a cost of "between $100,000 & $200,000".

That said, I can tell you that as they were delivered from Maranello, Tipo USA F40s have more paint on them than Eu/ROW cars.

According to my Ferrari SpA factory source involved with F40 production, the body was made of composite materials consisting of a combination of Nomex, Kevlar, and Carbon-fiber weave.

 

I owned the otis F40 92017 for a very short time. Yeah, don't use that for a benchmark on [anything]. Esp paint. Its been repainted.

My 2nd and current F40 is also a 92. For the most part paint is fairly consistent but in some places you really see the weave, some not so much. Theres a youtube video of the factory painting of F40s and if you watch that it all makes sense.

 

I happened to see your current 92 and it is, well, spectacular! I can see it is properly taken care of.

 

Quite correct Joe, the outer skin though is fibreglass woven material, then a nomex honeycomb with more fibreglass, both woven and strand then the inner skin is carbon kevlar, the use of the kevlar skin is mainly to keep it all together in the event of damage. Kevlar is normally used though as an outer scuffing skin for the same reason.

I believe in the 80s Ferrari were still using old school resins which shrank during the drying process hence the weave becoming visible in places. The use of epoxy resins these days does not cause that issue.

 

Here are a couple of photos of the cross-section taken from a broken rear hood.which I took in Maranello many years ago, showing the glassfibre/nomex honeycomb/carbon-kevlar construction clearly even if my photos are poor, along when plenty of resin shaken out by the impact.

As for paint, I am not sure there is consistency of presence of weave depending on early vs late cars. The 92 I had showed visible weave than the 91 I own now, and neither had been repainted. The F50, which is a much later car, seem to show more consistent weave throughout the production run. I think it is just a function of the amount of paint used on the day.

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If those panels were made these days, even if just by the simple process of resin infusion and not in an autoclave, and using an epoxy resin I bet they would probably weigh just a third of an original panel, so much wasted resin which adds no strength when it is just in a pool as shown above.

 

In the 90's when the cars came out and people where paying way over sale price, Ferrari was getting sued to get the paint redone. That's is why when the f50's came out you could only lease it with a buyout
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The paint quality story is something I have not heard.
At the time people at Ferrari saw the premiums that buyers would pay to get an F40. To have greater control over who got an F50 the cars were only offered as a lease and not to buy new. There was only one customer in the USA who bought an F50 and that was from an arrangement with Piero Ferrari.

 

That's correct.