365 GT4 2+2 Suspension Pictures Request | FerrariChat

365 GT4 2+2 Suspension Pictures Request

Discussion in '365 GT4 2+2/400/412' started by samsaprunoff, Jun 16, 2019.

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  1. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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    Jun 8, 2004
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    Sam Saprunoff
    Good day All,

    I finally have a bit of time over the Summer to work on my 365 (18775) and want/need to refresh the suspension, brakes, etc. With that said, I would like to replicate the colors, etc of the various suspension bits and so I am in need of any 365 or perhaps 400GT restored or factory suspension pictures...I am hoping that perhaps someone here may have such pics that they would be willing to share. I have already taken apart one corner and I can see bits of the original colors and process used, but it would be great to see other cars and if the colors/processes were the same.

    Also, I will create a thread on my suspension refresh process (before and after) for all to see... Given my past resto schedule I may even be done before I retire :)

    Cheers,

    Sam
     
  2. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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  3. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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  4. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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    Good day All,

    I just finished removing the front suspension on 18775 on both corners. I will post up pictures shortly, but overall it was not that bad of a job. I started on the Front Left side and it took me about 2.5 hours and the right took just over 1.5 hours... so about 4 to 4.5 hours total for the front.. and this is with using floor stands. It would have been easier and perhaps faster on my hoist, but I did not wish to have it occupied with my car for the next several weeks. So, I elected to go with floor stands, etc and it was rather painless.

    I was planning to rebuild my calipers given the number of years 18775 sat. The brakes did work, but I really could not tell how well, as I only drove it on and off a trailer, etc. Once I removed the calipers I found one piston was frozen and I am sure the other calipers will have issues too.

    Cheers,

    Sam

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  5. Tojo

    Tojo Formula Junior

    Apr 12, 2002
    481
    Sydney
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    Tim
    Hi Sam good luck with your rebuild! It's a big job. Those C4 pics look fantastic. It's hard to know what the right plating finish for replicating colours is. I had my wishbone arms all done in silver on the advice of one supposed expert here, to find out from Bill at GT Carparts it should have been yellow. He showed me an un-restored Daytona on a hoist, and sure enough everything was yellow passivated. As a result I went back to the yellow, and the only silver parts I now have are new nuts and washers. Unfortunately time and surface corrosion ravaged my car too hard for me to know or guess what the original finishes were. Also, you're probably gonn do it anyway but let me highly recommend swapping out your bearings and hub seals too whilst everything is in pieces. I'll try to upload some of my pics later. Cheers
     
  6. SouthJersey400i

    SouthJersey400i Formula 3

    Mar 14, 2007
    1,591
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    Ken Battle
    I found some good info on the Koni orange / red:
    http://www.virginiaclassicmustang.com/KONI-SHOCK-ORANGE-PAINT-17690-P3394.aspx

    http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/313210-painting-koni-shocks.html

    By the way, I did end up powder coating my Koni strut housings (thanks Jamie). The color I used is RAL 2002 from Tiger Drylac:
    http://www.tigerdrylac.com/index.php?id=378&L=1&C=1
    See this thread for details:
    Help with koni color for powder coat?

    From: info [mailto:[email protected]]
    Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 4:12 PM
    To: Fournier, Ronald F MVR
    Subject: RE: Koni Strut Painting
    We can paint your strut housings for you but the paint is simply Plasticote #200 Chevrolet Engine Orange Enamel if you wish to do them yourself.
    Thank You, Phil
    Hope this helps. I never got around to checking the color match since I haven't made it to my strut rehab yet.
    Ron

    It looks like three choices:
    Chevy Engine orange - even Koni says it is good.
    Tiger Drylac RAL 2002
    VHT 17690

    There seems to be some indication Koni has shifted to a more redidsh color in the '80's but our cars should be the older more orange color.
    Ken
     
  7. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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    Good day Tim,

    Thanks for your post and the info!

    My car has relatively low mileage at 15000 Kms and so a lot of the pieces still show bits of the original colors and processes used! My car spent the majority of its life in Desert climates and as a result accelerated the "patina" on the surfaces... as can be seen by my pictures. The positive to this is that none of the fasteners, etc were seized and so the removal was straightforward and faster than I was expecting (less than 4.5 hours for the front... I have not taken the rear off yet). The wheel bearings have no wear, but I have fresh ones already and so they will be replaced.. along with all the rubber bits including seals and anything else that even looks suspicious. Also, I am mindful/careful of some parts, as finding replacements can be difficult and so if these parts are fine then they will be reused after being refreshed. Case in point are my front rotors, as these are hard to find and are very expensive if one can find them. Thankfully mine have little wear and have lots of thickness and so they will be cleaned and "turned" so they are fresh.

    Besides the shock bushings that are cracked/heat damaged, the only item that "needed" repair was my calipers. Here I found one where one piston was frozen. Given the age of the car and how long it sat I was anticipating this and so a full caliper rebuild/refresh will be done. I will keep track of my time and take pics so that others can have a reference point on these items.

    Indeed, please post up some pics of your suspension, etc as it would be great to see the colors and/or any differences between the cars. Given the pics I have seen of various models (C4, 400, 365/512BB, etc) the various suspension bit colors and processes tend to vary... and sometimes during a model production run!

    Cheers,

    Sam
     
  8. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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    Good day Ken,

    Excellent, thank you so much for the info!

    I spent the last few months researching the Koni colors, etc and so your post nicely details a lot of this info! Did you replace the logos as well? Koni sells their "triangle" style logo directly for low $$$... I think something like $10 or so. Mine have the Koni "wings" decals, which Koni does not offer. However, I did find a few vendors that offer these as well:

    These are claimed to be the "wet" set type and look good:
    https://www.ebay.com/itm/KONI-CROWN-VINTAGE-CREST-DECAL-The-REAL-Wet-Set-Type/261530199645

    These are vinyl stickers and are inexpensive:
    https://www.ebay.com/itm/KONI-Classic-Retro-Race-Rally-Car-Stickers-Decals-75mm-2-off/401482669268

    I am going to order both to see which looks the closest and best.

    As for my front shocks... so far they look fine. I will see if I can have them tested locally to ensure all is in order. I have not removed the rears (2 per side) yet, but there are no visible leaks. One of these shocks is the infamous "load levelers" and so I am hoping these are fine, as these are NLA and from what I read Koni does not rebuild them. I did see some threads on some places being able to rebuild Koni's but whether they can do the load levelers is unknown. I did find a a thread where some replaced the load leveler with an adjustable setup and so this might be an option if I need.

    Thanks again for your post!

    Cheers,

    Sam
     
  9. Tojo

    Tojo Formula Junior

    Apr 12, 2002
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    Tim
  10. SouthJersey400i

    SouthJersey400i Formula 3

    Mar 14, 2007
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    Sam
    The front shocks on my '84 400i are adjustable by the usual Koni technique when shock is bare of springs and perches. Check that both sides are about same resistance. A shock dyno would be great since manual gives some specs,
    Ken
     
  11. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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  12. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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    Good day Ken,

    Gotcha. I found a shop close by that has a proper spring compressor to remove the shocks and so I will ask them if they know of anyone locally who can check my shocks.

    Thanks again for your posts!

    Cheers,

    Sam
     
  13. Newman

    Newman F1 World Champ
    Consultant Owner Professional Ferrari Technician

    Dec 26, 2001
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    Newman
    Im surprised the front brake splash shields are black and not robin egg green. The boxers from 74 to 78 were green and Ive seen 400's with green ones as well.
     
  14. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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    Good day Paul,

    Indeed, these are black.... and my 77 Boxer's are not black... although I think they are robin egg blue and not green... I am going to have to check.

    Cheers,

    Sam
     
  15. Newman

    Newman F1 World Champ
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    Dec 26, 2001
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    blue /green, whatever. They look like a robin's egg :)
     
  16. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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    Good day All,

    Since it is a long weekend this weekend in Canada (Canada Day Tomorrow!), I snaggled some time to work on my car. I worked on removing the rear suspension yesterday and today and overall it went well. The rear suspension takes longer to disassemble, as there are more ancillary items to remove. The first wheel (Right Rear) took about 3.5 hours, as it was my first... and the remaining wheel about 3 hours. As a recap of the process I did the following:
    1. Remove the half shaft...start with the side closest to the differential.
    - My boots looked ok, but I suspect they are dry and I would prefer to replace them since I am here

    2. Unbolt the rear sway bar
    3. Unbolt and remove both shocks.
    4. Although not necessary, I removed the centre lock nut now, as I will be replacing the hub bearings
    5. Remove Brake lines to be able to remove the calipers
    6. Remove the 8 brake disk to hub mounting nuts
    7. Ensure the hand brake is off and the hand brake shoes are adjusted to be contracted
    8. Using an 8" tri-grip puller I pulled the brake disk from the hub. The Right rear was a bit tight, but slowly tightening the puller and tapping with a hammer freed it
    9. Remove the hand brake shoes, etc
    10. Although not 100% needed, I decided to remove my exhaust, as it needs to be replaced and the the pipes were in the way of the lower a-arm
    11. Remove lower a-arm bushing bolts and lower frame mounts. Be mindful of any shims that might be
    present.
    I could have done this as an assembly, but I have to replace the bushings anyway.
    12. The Upper a-arm is interesting. Because of how the upper bushing bolts are inserted the only way to
    remove them is to remove the upper mount nuts and remove the entire assembly. Be mindful of any shims
    that might be present.

    As in the front I found one caliper piston that was frozen and so I am again thankful I took the longer and more painful approach of sorting all of this now... as opposed to to just getting the car driving.

    As I group the bits and pieces I will add pictures of these items for all to see... and later refreshed versions of these pics as they go back on the car.

    Cheers,

    Sam
     

    Attached Files:

  17. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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    Good day All,

    Here are some pictures of my rear suspension rubber items. On the rear suspension only the outboard pivot points use the more sophisticated metal-bushing assemblies. All of the in-board pivot pivot points are bushing encased in rubber like the 308 series. On my car the metal bushing assemblies are actually not too bad. Only the sealing rubber o-rings and a few inner bushings are needing replacement. However, all of the rubber bushings are knackered as can be seen in the pics... Age and lack of use (about 20 years the car has not been driven), and having spent the majority of its life in Desert climates really took its toll...

    Cheers,

    Sam


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  18. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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    Good day All,

    On a very positive note... Both my front and rear brake disks are in excellent condition and are no where near the minimum thickness limit. This is a relief, as finding disks can be a problem. Also, my original rear load levelers look to be in excellent working condition!... which is also a relief.

    Cheers,

    Sam
     
  19. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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    Good day All,

    Just a few pictures of my progress....

    As mentioned in my suspension bushing thread, I have been slowly working on my suspension refresh and things are starting to come together. I received a number of suspension and other parts from the powder coaters and they look great. I am especially pleased with the coil springs, as they simply look like new. Some of the other parts (the trapezoid rear suspension plates) look very good, but over time the surfaces became quite pitted on the lower plates. The powder coating makes them look very respectable, however, if I was going for a full resto I would have fully restored these (metal filler, sanding, then auto painting them). I still might do this, but only if my OCD takes over and if I have nothing else to do :).

    As for colors... All of the pieces looked to have been black originally and so I decided on a Satin black coat in order to have a bit of shine without it being too glossy. I also opted to powder coat the rear hubs too, as they appeared to have been black as well, although on some cars they were silver.

    Below are some before and after pics.

    This week the remainder of the parts will be off to the platers and once they return I will post some pics of these too.

    Cheers,

    Sam

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  20. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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    Good day All,

    Just an update that I received all of my hardware back from the platers... well, all except the black plated parts. For some reason I am having a hard time finding a local shop that will black oxide a bunch of bolts (some suspension, half shaft, etc). I have tried some cold black oxide processes from Caswell, etc... and although these are OK, I really cannot see them holding up to the areas where the hardware is exposed. I researched the black oxide process and found some chemical suppliers that will supply the "salts" used, but it is still a bit of work to do. For example the process involves some pretty nasty acids (sulphuric, etc) as prep and "pickling" of the items, and then heating and "cooking" the salt solution for a period of time. The byproduct is the emission of some pretty nasty and dangerous fumes and also that I will need to go through the process to dispose of the used solutions.... so I would much prefer to find a shop to do this for me.

    My plating shop I use is excellent (2 day turn around service), but they do not do a black oxide process, as the processes the use and the markets they serve is the old and gas industry... and so they only offer yellow chromate/zinc and clear zinc. However, the shop does do a black-silver-zinc specialty process for a specialty customer and since he just ran a batch for this customer he can run my small amount as well. So, this upcoming week I will be taking my black hardware and see how it turns out.

    As for my yellow and clear parts... they look great (see pics). I found it funny that it took hour and hours to document, measure, taking pictures, etc of these hardware pieces and that the actual plating effort was much less effort...

    The last bit of parts I wanted to refinish were the splined wheel hubs. My originals were fine, but simply had age related metal staining, etc. I spoke with a few of the top notch Ferrari restorers (Newman on here) and he gave me some ideas and pictures. Again, I was unable to find a shop that could perform the process I wanted (parkerizing), but I did find some shops that did a very, very similar process (phosphatization) that is used to treat industrial pipe. The results were fantastic. It turns out that the phosphatization process will "tint" the metal either a dull grey (like Parkerizing) or a flat black and is dependent upon the base material of the metal. In my case I was fine with either color, as I already seen what both colors looked after the respective finishes (Paul/Newmain sent me pics of both). Mine turned a nice and even flat black and I am very pleased at both the results, but also the speed with which they did this (1 day turn around).

    Now that I have a lot of various pieces back I can soon start the assembly process. However, this will wait a bit until I clean, prep, and repaint the car's frame and underneathy bits... It would be a shame an.or criminal to place such great looking refinished parts on a weathered looking frame.

    Cheers,

    Sam

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  21. raemin

    raemin Formula 3

    Jan 16, 2007
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    Really nice to see all these shiny parts. How have they managed to plate the bushings without damaging the rubber?
     
  22. SouthJersey400i

    SouthJersey400i Formula 3

    Mar 14, 2007
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    I did not see any shims to do the wheel alignment. Will you just use new ones?
    For nuts and washers is this cost effective versus buying new? Yellow zinc/Cd are readily available. Maybe you want the color to all be exactly the same.
    Ken
     
  23. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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    Good day Raemin,

    I had already removed the old bushings prior to plating and so it was a non issue. I have new bushings and I chose not to install them before plating, as they are teflon coated and I was concerned that the plating process could affect this coating. I have a "special" tool (a 20mm diameter shoulder bolt :) )that I will be using to install the bushings before installation.

    Rubber bushings (e.g. the FlamBlock style), etc are not affected by the plating process, at least not the platers I use anyway.

    Cheers,

    Sam
     
  24. samsaprunoff

    samsaprunoff F1 Rookie
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    Good day Ken,

    I have all of the original shims bagged and cataloged. I did not want to plate them, as the process will add a bit of material and so the shim thicknesses will be slightly different. The plating processes used do not alter the dimensions a lot, but I felt it best to leave the shims out for now. The original shims look excellent and their surface finish look pretty much like new. Most likely this was because the shims were not directly exposed to air (except the edges perhaps).. and that they benefited from the Italian car self lubrication system (e.g. random leaks :) ). I will be reinstalling all the pieces as it was originally and so the setup will be very, very close to the way the car was when I got it. That being said I am unsure how well the car's alignment was, but the car will be fully aligned once I am done. This was already a given, as an alignment is mandatory for vehicle licensing in my area (they use the alignment process as a check to verify that the frame is not bent from a prior accident, etc).

    As for cost effectiveness... Yes and No. For originality, there is no substitute and you are right that plating everything at once maintains color consistency. You can buy (from SuperFormance, Bel-Metric, etc) metric hardware that is already plated, but the style, size, and printing is not the same (e..g. the nutes used on the Steering arms, the specialty chamfered washers used in various places, etc). I always try and use the original hardware if possible. If the item is damaged, etc then I try to find a close or accurate replacement and if not then I simply buy off the shelf. As for cost effectiveness... in my case it was given how much I had done. All of the above plating (hardware, suspension, etc) cost less than a bunch of metric nuts and bolts I ordered from bel-metric. To be fair the bel-metric hardware plating is actually of better quality, as the pieces were never used and so the metal was "pure"... but the nuts, etc are not the same height or have the correct tapering on their edges (not that anyone except sticklers like me would notice). However, it is pretty cool to have bolts that are stamped Fiat, Lobo, etc... or castle compression nuts that have unique features. The real cost of getting the hardware plating is the time and effort to remove, clean, document, picture taking, etc of each and every piece. Since I am detailed oriented I do not mind doing this work and in a way allows me to understand the mechanical bits of the car better.

    Cheers,

    Sam
     
  25. SouthJersey400i

    SouthJersey400i Formula 3

    Mar 14, 2007
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    Sam
    Carry on, doing great. I would classify you as a fanatic. Some people think I am thorough and don't wait for things to break before fixing, but I am a little less fanatical about originality when original is not always 'best available'. I will be thinking of you while I am out DRIVING this weekend!
    Ken
     

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