Sorry to hear, but the bright side is that you'll not feel rushed and the car will be finished properly. That's little consolation, I'm sure, but there is always next year and you'll have a fully sorted car by then with lots of shakedown miles behind the wheel.
0454 arrived at FastCars for summer prep. Lots to do including going through the car for its summer rally driving up to Monterey as well as Colorado Grand then FCA event in the fall. Looking forward to getting it dialed in and correcting some of the cosmetics such as the diamond going back to its correct imperial blue color. Can’t wait to drive the coastline in it next month. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Care to share what, if any, de-tuning/modifications has been or will be done to make the car more(?) user-friendly for leisure/non-racing type driving ? Different cams, compression, clutch, ... ? Just curious.
Short answer is a series ii 5 speed gearbox, carbon clutch, radial tires, and generally tuned and adjusted more towards street driving than near redline track use. The more nuanced answer is I bought it because it’s a race car and not in spite of it. I’m fortunate to own a number of Ferrari (and other) vintage race cars and that type of driving experience is what I want. It’s coarse, noisy, purely analog, requires driver engagement, and is rewarding for its experience. I’ve already driven the car a few hundred miles and it’s exactly what I expected. The Ferrari sports racer is where it’s at. Plus, Admiral Phillips drove his 500 Mondial cross country and I’m only using it 1/3 of that for any one event so I’m sure I’ll be fine.
Thanks for sharing AND ENJOY THE DRIVE(S) WITH HER. As a lifelong proponent of “all vintage cars, regardless of make or model, should be driven/used as intended and as much/often as possible” along with my own over ½ million miles behind the wheels of hundreds of them in past +/-45 years, I truly appreciate & respect anyone actually driving/using theirs extensively. I also understand some de-tuning & modifications, especially compliance & safety related, are often necessary to make “racing” cars practical for road use. And older I’ve gotten, my appreciation & interest in driving something with any amount of comfort & convenience features has waned significantly, hence my ’32 Plymouth Roadster with ’52 DeSoto V8, manual trans and absolutely no convenience or creature comforts has become my de facto favorite ride (100K miles & counting) in past 10-15 years, especially for long distance road trips, including numerous to-from Monterey Car Weeks, our ’17 honeymoon to/from Yellowstone, etc or few hour spirited Sunday morning jaunts up’n’down numerous nearby, scenic mountain roads around here every couple of weeks or so. P.S. When I acquired & built my aforementioned Hot Rod Plymouth over 35 years, one of my childish/youthful "wet dreams", if you will, was to find and install a 4-cylinder Ferrari or prewar 6-cylinder Alfa-Romeo engine in to it.
