Definitely sounds like you're off to a fantastic start!!! This has been a great thread for you... FChat definitely is a great place! Aaron
Yes Aaron, I'm having a blast! So long as I avoid talking about water mixed with 50/50, <sheepish grin> I should be okay!
David, Congrats on your new ride! GT4's are WAY cool. (If only the wife would let me get another Fcar...) About the water hose, you will find that a lot of these 308s are getting to the age when they need all their hoses replaced. Speakin of hoses....one of the best pieces of advice I got when I bought my 308 was to replace all the fuel lines. They are old and cracked and they are the number 1 cause of engine fires. You can do it in an afternoon, the hose is cheap as dirt, and it will give you piece of mind. Do a search in the Tech Q&A section and there are lots of threads with good info and hose sizes, etc. Now I must ask. WHERE on EARTH did you get all that fantastic detailed info on the previous owners of your car? I would really love to get that info on mine. Thanks and congrats again! Birdman
Birdman, Well, I could tell you. But then I'd have to ask for a discount on your already rediculously low priced fuse block, that we've all been cautiously warned NOT to buy!!! Within two days of one another I saw: 1) a video of a yellow 308 GTx catching fire at a gas station. 2) a new Rover HSE on fire coming down HWY5 (while bring the car back here to LA). I thought to myself, "Is God saying something to me?". I'm am definatley going to change those hoses. I've been keeping the engine lid open while filling, "just because". A fire.... Gawd that's an awful thought! I finished reading your wonderful article on tuning the carbs too. Mine idles okay, but is rough on taking off. And it backfires like crazy on decelration. So I'm thinking it may be a little lean, and perhaps a little off on the synchronization. In any case, following your procedure will be a good exercise and I'll certainly feel better about it, once it's been done correctly. Put another GT4 fuse block on your backorder list. I can pay for it next month, which might give you the needed time to fabricate another one. As for the information, I got it off of the internet. I primarily used the following keyword (but tried a bunch of others too): "Ferrari" "308" "GT4" "10314" Once I'd get a hit, I'd try to be more specific. I got the name of Michael Fallow from the guy I bought it from. Some came from the 308 Dino Registry. Some came from looking the serial number (10314) up with "GT4" and Barrett Jackson... Then I found some other registry that had the original owner and those who bought it from him and tried to make a few bucks on it after Enzo died. They bought it for $48,000 as a previous concours winner, and then, refurbished the interior, tried to sell it for $68,000. But it never sold. After 10years of ownership, I think they finally decided it was a loss, and sold it for nearly half what they originally bought it for. They lost. I win. Lucky me...
Oh yeah, and the electronic ignition! That looks like a pretty big project. But probably very worthwhile... Great work. Great posts!
David, Thanks for the info. I guess you are like a regular Magnum P.I.!! If you are going to pull the airbox to sync the carbs, what the hey, might as well do the fuel lines from there. There was an interesting article in a back issue of Forza talking about doing the fuel lines and they strongly recommended just using standard rubber fuel line like you would buy at NAPA. Apparently the exotic European neoprene line with the braided cloth jacket on it (i.e. the OEM stuff) is crap because it cracks and seeps and you can't see it through the weave. My car stunk of gas when I got it, but had no apparent fuel leaks. After I changed out the fuel lines, gas smell gone. Made me feel much better. Birdman
No KIDDING! Man... I think nearly all of my hoses have been replaced at one point or another during my car's life (you'd hope so, huh!?), but I might just start rippin' sh*t out and replacing myself anyway... I'm always into something with this car - it's like, if I'm not tinkering, I'm not happy. The fuseblocks were a perfect addition for this month, but they were almost *too* easy! I need to break a sweat...cut a few knuckles...LOL...what I probably *really* need is a shrink! I gotta be nuts. Speaking of reading your carb tutorial, Birdman - how difficult is it to raise the idle on these cars? Mine idles (warm or cold) right around 500, and that's just too low. I'd love to adjust it myself, but I'm scurred that I might screw something up... Aaron
Yo Aaron, Raising the idle is very easy. Getting at the screws to do it is not quite so easy. You have to pull off the airbox to do it right. Once you have done it once and know where everything is, it is *possible* to do it with the airbox in place using a long screwdriver, a flashlight and a mirror to see. But the normal way to do it is to pull the airbox. Then there is a screw on each bank of carbs (one in front and one on the rear bank) that sets the idle speed by simply adjusting where the throttle stops when you let off the gas pedal and the throttle cable goes slack. Adjusting either one will change the engine speed, but they have to be adjusted together. The best way to do that is to do it with a syncrometer to get the flow equal between the front and rear sets of carbs. Of course, if the carbs aren't well synced to begin with, it will not be ideal. The best thing to do is sync the carbs, then set the idle. Once you have gone to the trouble of pulling the airbox, you might as well just do the whole carb synch. It's really not a big deal. A very small adjustment on the throttle stop screws (idle speed screws) makes a BIG difference. Tweak with small tweaks and do it with the engine FULLY warmed up, not just a quick run around the block otherwise you will be doing it again later. Ask me how I know! Birdman
Thanks very much for the prompt reply! Sounds like something I can do, but not something I want to tackle a couple hours before heading off to Concorso Italiano (i.e., definitely some room for errors). Perhaps some week this summer, I'll plan to take the car off the road, do a bunch of stuff over a couple week timespan, and then get back at it. I just love driving this car so damn much that I can't *stand* to leave a project unfinished. That said, I once owned a nitro-methane powered, 1/10-scale, R/C Monster Truck... That was my first experience with any sort of carb, and I'm still a little scarred from the frustrating experience of trying to tune that b@stard... I can't imagine that *4* DCNFs present less of a challenge! Best regards, Aaron
Definately pays to check and replace your fuel hoses: http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7332 Dom
Great looking car! I did a major restoration on everything (do a search to see pics #10636) and I will second the advice to replace all hoses (fuel and coolant), most people don't replace these especially the coolant hoses that run through the drivers side up to the rad. You can do that yourself but it does take some time and the D/S fuel tank has to come out, attach new hose to the old one and pull it through. I wish I had as much history on my car as you do for yours! Enjoy it!
Jay, Thank you! And thanks for the tip on the D/S water hose. One of the first things I'm going to do, is change all of the hoses. Second thing, is find out why the oil pressure is so low on idle. The temp is okay, and there's plenty of oil and it's not chattering. So it's probably just the gauge, or a weak sensor. I had a similar problem on my Alfa, that I looked at for quite awhile before fixing. Luckily, the Ferrari has the oil temp guage. Otherwise, I would simply park the car until I sorted it out. As for the history; I talked to what I 'thought' was the first owner. Turns out, he was the 2nd owner. He lost track of the car after he sold it, and had always wondered what had happened to the car. "I loved that car", he said. I could tell he was very eager to get re-connected with it. We talked for about an hour on the phone last night. His current hobby is making trophy car models. He took great pride in telling me how the car took 2nd-in-class at a concours in Redding, PA., back in the mid-80's. He had a mechanic named Dusan Newman who he talked up as being a great mechanic, and former Ferrari racecar driver from somewhere in Eastern Europe. And it was as I suspected, when Enzo died and prices got silly, he decided to sell it. He put it in FML, and it sold immediatly to a dealer he recalled had been from the NYC area. He's sending me some old pictures of the car, and a picture of the award it won. I sent him a bunch of recent (last 5yrs) pictures. The original (1st) owner was a Doctor in Ohio, who sold it to him though a Mercedes dealership in Erie, PA., in the early 80's. He's the one who trashed the 3rd gear. So the syncro problem I'm experiencing has been there for a very long time. Learning more and more all the time. The only one who has been uncooperative in this whole thing, is the one who bought the car for resale, and was never able to sell it. I asked if he could "illuminate" some of it's history. He replied, "NO NEVER CALL ME". And he's a BIG dealer (several dealerships) in NYC and (one) Florida too. At first he denied ever even having had, or bought or sold the car! Which is comical really. I have a picture of the car in front of his dealership! (Chuckle) I sent the picture of the car to him, along with another picture of his dealership that's on his website with the caption, "Couldn't help but notice the striking similarity!". No response of course. Doesn't really matter. After lying (with no real reason to) to me, I wouldn't belive anything he told me anyway! Stereotypical "car dealer".
What an ******! I think it is so cool that you found all these other owners of your car! Man, I would love to do that, but I have almost nothing to go on. Birdman
Thanks again Jay. That's a great post. What a great reference too! Attached are a couple of pictures of my bumper. They're really a mess. I saw a blue 308GT/4 at some place in florida. It was blue and had bumpers just like yours. That's what I want to do. I found a 308GTB bumper that "looks" right on eBay for about a hundred bucks. But I don't know if it'll work. Any thoughts? Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Here's a picture of the blue one in Florida. I really like the color too. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
GTB/S bumpers won't work on a GT4. There is a pair of correct bumpers on ebay made out of fiberglass but the price is a bit high. The bumpers on the US cars weigh a ton! The GT4 looks great in blue. I've also seen silver and Elvis' GT4 is black with the Borani wire wheels.
Yowzas....that bumper is...well...I can see why you want to replace it. That sounds better. I like the look of the Euro front bumper, but it's pretty far down my list of "things to do". If it were a simple, no muss/no fuss, bolt-on job (with cheap donor parts, of course), I'd be all over it. Since it's not, I'll do other things first.
Thanks for the tip Jay. Only problem is: Those are euro bumpers on eBay. The US car has a notch cut out in the front and rear panels (you can see it on the blue car) that the euro model doesn't have. The bumpers fit into that notch, instead of being mounted to the face of the front/rear clip. Mine has that notch too. So the bigger (bigger than euro that is) bumper would fit. I just have to find out what bumper that is. It sure "looks" likes like the GTS/B bumper though...
I'm sure you can find better looking US bumpers (for cheap) and do the "push in" fix. Basically that clunky looking molding is taken off the sides (like mine)and the bumper is actually pushed in several inches to make it not as intrusive. This way you get smaller looking bumpers and you don't have to do any body work. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
welcome to gt4 ownership. I have had my75 since 1994 and am the un-official gt4 cheerleader! I would get a tubi when you get a chance. It is nice to see a gt4 engine go 80K I knoiw of one in FL that had 100k on it. There is an informal gt4 group that meets at Calabasas, check on the S.CA section! Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Thank you Robert! Nice ride! Oh man, I want those bumpers! Okay; 20-questions... Is there a common title I can look for in the S.Ca forum? How often do you guys get together? How many? Is Eric Sanders (black GT4) part of that group?
Well, since we're all sharing photos, here's mine: http://www.exoticcarsite.com/g1/view_album.php?set_albumName=album418&page=1 Photos taken by Lucas Scarfone (Titanboy_24 on FChat).
