18767 hits the streets running!

Well as Brett has mentioned in this thread:

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=227776

I picked up 18767 from his shop on the 25th of September.

I would like to tell my Ferrari story from the beginning. It guess it all started when I was a little kid, my Dad worked on the family cars and I was always there helping and learning. I remember we had a 1966 Thunderbird with the 428 engine. It was a great car and here is the deal, we had the factory shop manual for the car and I would spend hours and hours reading that manual from cover to cover. I truly understood how that car worked from the ground up (this is when I was 10 years old). When I was in the third grade we pulled the head off of our 55 Chevy because the head gasket blew. One day when I was in the 8th grade we had planned to go fishing on Saturday but the family car was in desperate need of a complete tune up. When my Dad left for work I got out the tools and changed the plugs, wires, cap, rotor and points! I then loaded up the fishing gear into the car. When Dad got home from work he said we couldn’t go fishing because he needed to fix the car first, I calmly pointed out that I took care of it. We also built a VW based kit car together that had a killer VW engine with a big cam and 2 Weber 44 carbs. So while we didn’t have super fancy cars we were always working on them and of course would have to find some back roads to make sure they were “running as well as they should”.

As a family we didn’t watch a lot of TV but one night (this is where the Ferrari part gets started) there was a movie that had just started, it was a coast to coast race that pitted a 427 Cobra against a Daytona Spider, of course the movie was Gumball Rally. I was forever changed! If you haven’t seen the movie please do it. It really is a pretty good show. Right then and there I thought, some day I need to get Ferrari Daytona.

As time passed I had other hot rodded VWs, Fords with big engines, and even a Fiat X1/9 but I always had the Ferrari Daytona in the back of my mind. When I met my wife we had several conversations about things like kids, religion, finance, and V-12 Ferraris. I pointed out that she had to understand that one day I would have a Ferrari with a V-12. She said ok not really knowing what she had agreed to!

Well, I was getting to a point in my life where a Daytona (non spider) was becoming a possibility and then the prices really took off and there was no way I could afford one. I put the idea of the Daytona on the back burner. A few years latter I believe it was Road and Track had an article on the 365 GTC4 as a great buy at 50k so my thoughts of a Ferrari V-12 didn’t seem so far away.

The internet is an amazing thing. The information available on just about every subject is incredible. I was looking for a nice high performance car with a manual transmission and I heard about the Cadillac CTS-V and joined the Cadillac Forum to learn all about it. I also started looking on EBay to find a CTS-V and after looking for about 15 months I found a great deal and picked one up from a dealer in Boston. While I was looking for Caddy’s on EBay I would also look at the Ferraris. Well the Daytona and GTC4s had gotten really pricey but I noticed there was this one model of Ferrari that was not really very expensive at all, this was the 365/400/412.

About a week latter I started looking at all of the Ferrari forums and joined FChat to learn about these cars. I also started to look for cars for sale and found Peter Sweeny’s web sight and he had just listed a 400GT. I called him and it had sold, I just missed it! Latter that summer we took a family vacation to the “East Coast” and we took a day to drive over to Forza motors to meet Peter. He had a nice black 400i 5 speed for sale that we looked at, this was the first time I had ever even sat in a Ferrari. It was a nice car but my previous experience with Weber carbs really made me want to find a Weber car. It was on this trip that Aidan contacted me through FChat and invited my to his house to go for a ride in his car, after the ride I really knew I wanted to try to get one of these cars (Aiden it’s all your fault).

As the summer progressed I bid on a 365 GT4 but I was out bid at the last moment. I was some what cautious with that car because I was not able to get a PPI done. It was frustrating having a couple of cars slip through my fingers and missing both of them. One day I was at the Minneapolis Airport and looking at Ferrari stuff on my Iphone and looked to see what Peter had for sale. Sure enough he had a 365 GT4 that was partially dissembled and in primer. I thought, heck yes I can put it together and called him on the spot. Once again I just missed the car; he literally sold it a couple of hours before I called. To say I felt the train had once again left the station with out me was an understatement.

In August another 365 GT4 showed up on EBay. It was a 1974 and was at Gentry Lane in Toronto (this car is now for sale at motorexotica, see EBay add). I really wanted to do this one right. I called the dealer and they were firm on the price and insisted that the car was in near perfect condition. I knew I had to get a PPI, but who should I have do it?

Well from reading FChat I knew there was this guy Brettski who posted under the 365/400/412 section and his customers had good things to say about him, so I called him up and arraigned a PPI. He did the PPI and called me with the results, the news was ok but the price was too high for the condition. Brett then said, “You know, I have a 365 GT4 that I’m going to be doing a restoration on why don’t we work out a deal”. This 365 is the one I had called in response to Peter’s add! This Brett guy was the one who had bought the car a couple of hours before I called on it.

Brett and I worked out a deal and the project was started. Over the next year the guys at GT Auto did their stuff and the 365 slowly came back to life. I spent a week at GT Auto in April. While I was there the engine was assembled and the car came back from the painter, it was really great to see and help with part of the work on the car. Brett was always great to work with. I wanted some things to be replaced just because it was already apart and I also wanted a few modifications done, Brett was always willing to listen to my ideas and work with me as much as possible.

During the first week in September I went back to GT Auto to check out the car and take it for some test drives. Brett and I came up with a small list of final items to finish before I picked the car up. The final plan was to pick the car up on September 25th. It just happened to work out that my parents were on a road trip from Boston to Iowa and the timing worked out for them to meet me at GT Auto and we would do a mini caravan to Iowa where I was planning to keep the car for the winter (we figured it would be a good idea to have a support vehicle incase there were any problems).

I left Alaska on the afternoon of September 24th and arrived in Toronto at around noon on the 25th. My parents met me at the airport and we drove up to Alliston to get the Ferrari. When we got to the shop the guys had it up on the lift so they could show us the underside of the car and some of the work that had been done on it.

To say it looked good would be an understatement. With out going in to too much detail the year long project included, rebuilt engine, rebuilt transmission, ceramic coated headers, custom stainless exhaust center section, new Ansa rear exhaust section, gear reduction starter, rebuilt carbs, Pertronics ignition modules, new plug wires, new heater and power steering hoses, rebuilt alternator, rebuilt radiator, all new front suspension bushings, and of course great new paint. The car was incredible! My Mom and I hopped in to the 365 and my Dad and Brett hopped into a 400 and we were off for a test drive to make sure every thing was good to go. The car checked out and we left Brett’s shop around 1700 on the 25th.

The plan was to drive the 230 miles so we could make it through customs at the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron Michigan that night. Since it was Friday night Brett showed us a route to avoid going thru Toronto. Since the car had basically a new engine and transmission I followed good break-in practices on the trip. I would vary the speed etc and avoid more than 4000 rpm. It was quite an experience to be on a road trip in my own Ferrari! Most people did not really notice the car but every once in a while I would get a thumbs up and smile from other motorists.

We arrived at the Blue Water Bridge customs around 2215 and at this point of time I had been awake for about 35 hours and was getting pretty tired, my Mom did a geed job of keeping me awake. Well I was a little concerned about bringing the car into the US. This 365 was never imported into the US but it was over 25 years old so there should be no issues with the EPA or DOT but, you never know. The car created quite a bit of interest with the customs guys and I took a bunch of them out so they could check it out. Every thing went ok going thru customs. All the forms were completed, I paid the duty, and I walked out the door with all the required paper work to register the car in Alaska. The only hiccup was when the customs process was about half done there was a shift change and we had to start all over (don’t start the process unless you have at least two hours prior to shift change!).

After spending the night in Port Huron we traveled along the St Clair River and eventually joined the interstate highway by Marine City MI and headed thru Detroit. As we drove I could tell the car was starting to run better and better. The engine was starting to loosen up a little and the transmission was shifting better. On issue I had heard about was the lean condition that some of these cars had because of modern fuels. I brought along a set of 130 mains to swap out with the 125s. As we were going thru Jackson MI we spotted a Sears store. I got a set of screwdrivers and swapped the jets out in the parking lot. One of the mechanics came over to see what was going on. Once he came over and saw the engine and was speechless! If you haven’t seen one of these carbed engines it really is an incredible sight, especially since GT Auto had it looking so good.

We continued on the trip and approached Chicago around 1800 and decided to continue all the way to Des Moines that night. We arrived at my parents’ house around 1 in the morning. The car ran great on the trip and it averaged just under 14 mpg. As the engine got more miles on it I would occasionally run it up to around 5500 rpm the car just pulls like mad. I can’t wait for a couple thousand more miles to wind it up 7000 rpm. When blipping the throttle on down shifting my Mom said it sounded like a dog barking!

So far the Ferrari experience has been simply incredible. I was fortunate to find FChat and stumble into the deal with Brett. Next summer I plan on driving the ALCAN with the wife and two kids. It should be a great trip!

 

Picking it up from GT Auto, one final oil change before hitting the road.
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The car in Port Huron at the Thomas Edison motel and with the Blue Water Bridge.
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Red neck auto repair in the Sears parking lot!
Instruments in Kilometers.
Chicago at 6:30 and 360 miles to go, no problem!
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Well Brett, thanks for all the hard work you guys did on the car. You took the car from a non-running state to a fully functional beast! I wonder how many cars that started out like this one are never finished and scrapped or parted out? I think you guys really did justice to not only the 365/400 series but Ferrari in general. My Dad has been having blast with the car. I think he is going to post about some of his experiences with the car.