Bottom left of my 308….[ATTACH]
Sending a 45 years + old Italian (Or English) vintage car to a paint shop for a full quality repaint is in nine out of ten times asking for serious troubles. Painters are painters and not mechanics. The quote they give is often way below the actual price it cost to do a high quality re-assemble job on a sub quality car. That's why the car is returned with quick fixes and bad craftsmanship's and that's why nearly no paint shops are taking in vintage cars from privates for re-paint - They can't earn their money, and it often ends with jobs that's dragging out for ever and non-satisfied customers. A Ferrari of that era is a nice engine dumped into a perfect aesthetic designed chassis. The assemble quality and assemble methods are questionable at best and requires really detailed, time consuming and competent re-assemble work (Ask Newman). If one don't want to invest what it cost to have the car dismantled at a proper mechanical shop (Do you due diligence!), painted at the paint shop and re-assembled in the mechanical shop, then I would recommend either not to paint the car or to paint it without dismantling it (Wrap maybe?) and save the money until they can afford to do it right. The other alternative is to do the mechanical part of a paint job yourself. It's highly recommended if you master it and it's very rewarding. Also you can only blame yourself if something goes wrong The 308 is increasing in value and deserves properly executed maintenance / repair work. Best, Peter
yeah I get it. You get what you pay for. And if I had lots of money to spend, I might send it back to maranello and have Classiche just do it. But, alas, I don’t . as I stated early on, I am very happy with the quality of the paint. And in the grand scheme of things, I don’t really mind going back through and bringing it back up to snuff. Would I have appreciated a call when they ran into something that was questionable? Absolutely. That would have avoided me re doing a lot of what they did with the doors. The point of this thread was to let people know that there are some talented paint shops out there but to be fore warned about the ability of some of these shops really knowing the ins and outs of a 45 year old hand built car. And when they have the car for so long, it’s difficult to know when they might be in the middle of something that would require a little more attention from the owner to help “guide” them. I contemplated having the car painted at a well known local Ferrari shop, but they proved to me over the years, after bringing some smaller maintenance jobs to them, that I couldn’t trust them to know what the hell they were doing either. Their cost was quoted at over double what I paid but based on my experience, I am sure I would have had more problems with them than I had with my local paint shop. JMHO YMMV here is a pic from this weekend at our local car show. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Mine was the only Ferrari, so it got lots of questions and positive comments. I’m sure if I was at a Ferrari event, I probably would have lots of people rolling their eyes about my 328 wheels and non-original desert red powder coat on my valve covers or my Alacntara dash, or QA-1s, or electromotive…. well you get the idea. yes I believe there are not many of these around anymore and we need to take care of them, and while some People love the NCRS level of anal retentiveness about things, I treat mine more like a gentlemen racer from back in the 60s. If it makes it better, or faster or more user friendly or reliable, put it on.
Which is why I'm not too excited about Ferrari Events. Like you, I'm perfectly happy building my own personal "1 of 1". Beautiful car btw....I think you got a great result at what sounds like a helluva price. - Dave
The trim retaining clips are riveted along the perimeter of the opening. Your trim is not mounted in those clips, if the clips are even there. The gap they filled between the trim and A-pillar is massive which is why I say the trim isn't installed correctly. That isn't the fault of the glass.
Love that color! I can only imagine the time involved in completely disassembling for paint. I take video, photos, and try to document EVERY bolt and nut that I take off of this car. But even with that, it's a very very time consuming process to do things correctly especially if you've never taken things apart. After removing my plenum to have it powdercoated I removed every fastener and metal piece on the car that was hiding underneath it. I re-plated all the hardware and cleaned everything. Took photos, videos... when I was re-assembling I put the plenum back on, bolted it down and was just about to bolt up the throttle body when I noticed two small screws sitting in my magnetic tray. "What the hell do those go to??" Well, they went to the return spring that was hanging to dry after plating... the same spring that goes UNDER the plenum. So... I had to... yes... remove the plenum again just so I could put that return spring back on the bracket. And taking the plenum off is NOT fun. So... yeah doing the whole car for paint... how many of those "gotchas" must there be. OH And then... there's just people who either don't listen or don't remember or don't care? When I took the plenum to have it powdercoated. I specifically told them to not blast ANY mating surfaces (anything that was bare since the paint was still in-tact on the plenum just ratty looking). What did they do? Didn't friggin listen and I wound up having to sand down the grit from the blaster on the surfaces... good times.
I'd be more concerned about the abrasive media embedded in the inner surfaces of the plenum that will vibrate loose over time.
I agree! Or they riveted the clips in 180 degrees from the way they are supposed to be. The trim "clip" goes "outside" the rivet.
by the way...It took me getting 3 different windshields to finally find one that had the right curve! I had 2 Pilkington's that didn't fit. Finally found a Euro Sigla (marking on the right side) that fit! Image Unavailable, Please Login
They plugged the holes they weren't completely inept. Besides there was probably more grit and carbon in there that I cleaned out that was larger than any soda media you would ever find.
Sounds like the conversation I had with my painters about my rims. I told them multiple times NOT to chemical strip them because they had magnesium in them, but to just hand sand them. What did they do? Sent them out to be chemically stripped. Ugh! Then after they painted them, they started to bubble. We had a hell of a time sanding them down, neutralizing the chemical, and refinishing.
Never tried it with wheels, but i had the door jambs and inside of trunk lid on my 1961Corvette walnut shell blasted to get 3-4 layers of old paint off when i had the car painted. Walnut shell media doesn't hurt the fiberglass. The media blasting company has plastic pellets, walnut shells, and of course, sand and glass beads fro blasting. I would assume that would work very well for mag wheels. Most medium size larger cities have that service available Doug
good tip. I just had the upholstery trim off from the a-pillars and along the roof (where the sunvisors are), so I saw the rivets. And I have the glass guy a bunch of new clips to use. But the idea that he has them backwards may have some merit. Either way it’s coming back off again to try and straighten it out. Had the upholstery out you ask? But why? Well when I did the alcantara last year, I didn’t have the a-pillars or behind the sunvisors done. It just didn’t look right so…. Now it’s better! Image Unavailable, Please Login
Also had them do the center console tray and I traded out the radio for one with Apple CarPlay. I don’t really listen to music much but having moving maps is pretty nice. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Down side of having the car parked so long, one of my rear calipers developed a leak… so pulled those off and their off to PMB Performance for restoration. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Still on the fence about pulling the front calipers tomorrow. Have an RFI out to the folks at GiroDisc about potential options. I really like their bbk but I want the option to put back on my original 14” wheels. Especially since I have one of those as my spare. The girodisc rear rotors aren’t the issue. The fronts won’t work with the 14s, obviously.
