1973 Ferrari 365gt4 2+2 Chassis 17635

Thanks for that, the local NAPA auto parts has a universal fit vdo 0-180 ohm sender for $50 I'm going to modify to fit. It's a 5 hole so I'm going to try to use the 6 hole top from the original, then it'll also look correct.

 

Are it's a universal sender, it's actually two pieces so mating it to the original top will just be a matter of drilling a couple of holes. I'll post pictures when I do it.

 

Big update as I just spent the whole week wrenching on the 365. At the start of the week, the car would (theoretically) start, the brakes didn't work at all, it had no fuel tanks, and I had no idea the condition of the clutch or transmission and at least a few of the electrical systems weren't working or not working properly.

First step was to get the brakes working well enough to roll it out of the garage so it wouldn't stink it up and cover everything in carbon and rust running it in there. When I say the brakes were locked up, my friends had to chisel the (new looking) pads out to get it to roll when it was in Houston, though one of the rears unstuck enough to roll. So we started by removing (what was left of) the front pads and calipers. The hoses and rotors surprisingly looked new, so I think the car had a full brake job right before it was parked. After we got the rest of the pads out, we chipped the remaining lining off until we had just the backing plates and put them back in and started trying to push the pistons out. They broke free one at a time and the last one took both feet pushing as hard as I could to pop it out. We then pulled the calipers back out and popped out each piston, cleaned and reinstalled. This took around a gallon of fluid as some got stuck before popping out and we'd have to re-bleed, clamp the remaining pistons in the caliper to keep the other pistons in, and then pump the pedal to pop it out. We got all 8 pistons freed up, reinstalled and bled with new pads and we had non stuck brakes with good pedal! The rear was still sticking but had pads in and I figured it was good enough to push out and try running it again.
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That moves us to step 2, trying to get it fired up and running well enough to drive. It didn't even want to fire up (I hadn't tried it again since I first ran it) so I did the old carb rodeo, pulled all 24 jets, soaked them in carb cleaner and then checked them all to make sure nothing was clogged. I also drained all the bowls, refilled them and drained them again until the gas looked reasonably clear. A that point I reinstalled all the jets and it fired up! It was only running on one bank so wiggled the coil wire and the other bank came alive! Let it warm up a bit and tried to rev it and it just bogged out. After a bit of poking around, I pulled all 12 accelerator pump jets and they were very gummed up and only 5 actually had enough fuel to pump. So I cleaned the jets, sprayed carb cleaner in the passages and tried again. This time it would actually try to rev, so progress! At this point I decided to hop in and see if it'd move. Pushed the clutch in and it wouldn't go into gear. Clutch was rusted to the flywheel.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/46C6u4b9qFYwdsGN7

So now things took a bit of a turn. I was running it off of a fuel jug in the trunk and decided it would be better to have the fuel tanks in. I had put off reinstalling them as the trunk was pretty dirty, had rust from the fuel fill drain coming disconnected and water getting in at some point, so it was time to tackle that. I wire brushed it, painted it with satin black Rust-Oleum, and then seam sealed where the old seam sealer had come up and a few pin holes I found. There was one area that needed a patch, so I cut out the rusty metal and riveted in a patch and then seam sealed that. Once it dried for a bit, I painted the seam sealer and let it dry some more before reinstalling the tanks with new rubber lines. Now I had a fully functioning fuel system (minus the sender which I tackled later) and went back to trying to figure out the clutch.

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Here's a short list of what we tried, compounded by the sticking rear brakes. Starting it in gear with the clutch pushed in, starting it in 1st, driving it around and getting it to buck back and forth with the clutch pushed in, jacking it up, starting it in 4th gear and dropping it off the jack with the clutch pushed in, soaking it in brake cleaner and trying all of that again and a few other things I'm forgetting. Worryingly, it popped out of 4th, so I used 3rd for later attempts. This whole time it wasn't charging so we were draining the battery. Luckily I had another so we started swapping and charging the battery we weren't using while also using a jump box for some of the more difficult attempts. After a solid 6 hours of this song and dance, I decided we needed to fix the rear brakes so they weren't fighting the attempts.

Of course now I couldn't get the car back in the garage so had to go on a side quest to install a d-ring anchor in the garage floor so I could winch it in with my Jeep. That killed 3 or 4 hours.

While doing this we started to look into the charging system so we wouldn't have to keep swapping and charging batteries. The alternator looked ok but it had an aftermarket voltage regulator on the fender and when we checked the wiring it didn't match the manual. We pulled the alternator and dropped it off at a local shop for testing and then started investigating the wiring. Turns out they had plugged the aftermarket regulator into the output if the factory regulator, which was still mounted under the dash.

So now back in the garage to do the rear brakes, onto the same process as the fronts, though this time instead of popping each piston out, we pushed them back in and then pushed them out with the pedal 3 or 4 times until they were all moving freely like the fronts and saved a bunch of time (and brake fluid). New pads in and now had properly functioning brakes all the way around!

Time for round 2 of the clutch. I talked to my buddy who owns sportscar workshops in Richmond and asked him what he did in Instagram like this. He said get it good and hot, then drop it off the jack in gear. "That has never not worked." So we set about warming it up and all of a sudden the car shut off. Popped the hood and the alternator wire had shorted, killing the ignition. So we cleaned that up, reinstalled the (tested good) alternator and found the factory regulator was bad. Replaced it with a generic 2 post regulator and from advance auto and success! Now we had charging and it didn't look like anything got burned up with the mishap.

Time to actually warm the car up, so we did that, started it in gear and tried the bucking bronco again (hey it was fun at least and the partially gummed up carbs made it want to anyway). My neighbors were getting quite the show with me rolling a smoking, barely running one headlight up Ferrari around the neighborhood (with a blown header to make it extra loud to boot). Then when it was good and hot we did the drop in 3rd gear at 3500rpm. On the second try it finally broke free! So now we had, nominally, a running, driving and stopping car, even if the stopping part was all it did well at this point. Took it around the block and started seeing smoke come out from the dash, so shut it down and it stopped. We pulled the gauges and it was the ammeter. I'll save to the hour of troubleshooting, but apparently when we shorted the alternator we burned up the 60A shunt resistor which was now putting all of the current feeding the car through the ammeter. The ammeter never worked, so I decided to install a volt meter instead, so replaced the shunt resistor with a large wire and bought a 20 dollar volt meter from advance, put it into the original pod and other then the red needle instead of white, it looks fairly stock. I also fixed the non working brake light switch and figured out the fuel sender making it work the gauge properly, though need to do some final fab work to fit it in the tank.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ShQEveytPz2ET9Ce7

Took it for a final drive and it's popping out of 4th and 5th, though feels like a linkage issue as they didn't feel like they're properly engaging. Clutch works, no chatter, though high. Brakes are good, power steering is good. One window works, brake lights work, rear blinkers work, all gauges except speedometer works. Headlights work but one stuck up and the other down. Cooling fans inop but it's holding 90-100C. Very few leaks (shockingly). Smoking like a chimney. Doesn't want to rev in gear except it did once and broke the rear tires free from a roll in 1st, so the horses are in there somewhere. Can now at least drive in and out of the garage by itself.

I treated it to 20 quarts of 20w50 vr1. Next up is carb work, though the more I drive it the better they're getting!
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