1983 Ferrari 512BBi Chassis 46325

Strange exhaust, what is that?

 

could be an ANSA?

 

Nice org car. I wonder if interior had some redo. Suspension redone which is nice, not sure that gold plating is how they came.
Overall a very nice looking car, and a very good price.
What do the best and brightest here think. Id say a solid result, on a well presented car.

 

Avg price of recent sales $262K, high sale $500K. So above average price, probably better bought than sold. At 11K mileage, could have gone higher, no in-depth detail around service history though other than belts and fluids.

 

actually 322.5+5k, so $327.50 all in

 

I said this on BAT, I believe the exhaust is a modified Borla. I have had this exhaust and now have an Ansa Sport.

 

The suspension was plated originally in a combination of yellow and clear zinc. Most get incorrectly redone in gold cadmium and finished in far too intense a color as seen here. Many of the gold pieces seen on this car should be silver. Very common mistake and a very distracting look.
Much of the engine hardware is the same. For the same work and less money it could have been done correctly. The platers don't know any better and just want to give someone restoring a Ferrari what they consider beautiful parts when a knowledgeable restorer should be guiding them to do it correctly and have them dial it back.
Don't know how original they tried to be but several of the finished are a miss.

 

Thank you fir the knowledgeable feedback, makes a lot of sense and we have no idea how it drives/sorted.
Shiney car. low indiacted miles, high price

 

Considering how little research was done during the "restoration"......

 

agreed, but then I’ve also seen many cosmetically perfectly restored cars that drive like utter crap. I guess it’s a function of priorities and whether the owner doing the resto has the knowledge to post resto sort the car.

if I remember correctly this car had a long term owner prior to sale so presumably they k ew how it shoukd drive, on the other hand if the mileage is correct they drove it very little so maybe it was always a movable show piece.

hard to know. We’ve seen cars with low mileage where when the heads came off had terrible bores so it’s anyone’s guess.

as you know better than most, very few people know how a properly running g boxer should drive let alone how to get it there. For that matter that’s not a priority for many owners, although given that boxers are relatively inexpensive they have a higher driver owner quotient than say miuras.

one of the reasons I admire Mondial owners is the value of the car means most buy them just to drive, one of the last redoubts of the classic Ferrari driver owner era, boxers are still reasonably represented here too.

a few years back saw a spectacular looking miura in a shop that someone had bought at auction. I was told that for the car to be safely driven it pretty much had to be mechanicaly redone

do think that because the boxer in question had things like the interesting exhaust and suspension Redone odds are it drove better than most, but who knows.

as always better to drive a car before buying, auctions are a crap shoot. Still the bones here look very good to have or make a great driving boxer

 

A different exhaust is easily changed. Exact replicas are now available too. Besides, original exhausts often disappeared or were destroyed by the federalization process. As far as the finishes I mentioned. BBs are rare cars and we have always known where they were headed value wise. I can never understand on a car like that when the expense is to be borne anyway unless modification is the desired result why not do it correctly? It costs no more. And adds to the cars value. The typical reason is it was placed in the hands of those that know no better. To me not a good sign for the overall quality of care. Signs like that are to me clues to the quality of service and ownership.

 

I think the gold paint on the bolts and lines tells the story of the "plating" on the suspension.

82 was a combo of clear and yellow zinc, a lot of each. 83 seems to be a crap shoot with plating colors from what I've seen, some have clear zinc rod bolt access plates and others are yellow zinc, same goes for the spark plug tubes. In 84 pretty much everything was yellow zinc such as the control arm forks vs 83 that were clear zinc. I dont like the all yellow zinc look but its how 84's were and no doubt late 83's.
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BBi exhausts like tires are an interesting question/debate. The stock headers are supposed to be decent? The stock 4 can exhaust sounds little more than gasses escaping, mine is in the attic. Installed a quicksilver exhaust which is supposed to be a copy od the Ansa sporet system but in stainless. The stainless prob sounds different to mild steel of Amsa, but on a BBI the big drawback is you don't get intake sound and the headers and mufflers are behind the cockpit. It sounds awesome to thos eoutside the car, and fantastic ina tunnel, but still not all the way there.

the best tonala quality i heard on a BBi was the single can bell exhaust, plus its not too loud.
Many modern cars have exhaust that once the baffles open are simply way too loud, hard to be somewhat stealthy in the early am with trumpets blaring.

there is omo a vast difference between an exhaust with great sound/tone and one that's simply loud. That's true on motorcycle's esp harleys and its true on cars, pretty much every Italian modern is a fail in that regard. The aftermarket could improve things markedly, but seems to be mostly for the volume obsessed.

 

I have a late 82 or early 83, its not yellow.
The yellow look is pretty good but imo its often overdone and too yellow.

 

I was interested in this car. There appeared to be at least one shill bidder as he only bid on the sellers cars- about 8 different times. There may have been other shill bidders too- I did not check. Certainly this car did not need shilling and I lost confidence and dropped out. The seller is considered reliable and really documented the car well. And if he is using shills for his no reserve auction- what else is questionable? Buying used cars is a risky game for the novice. Maybe I’ll stick to new ones?

 

I never bothered to look at the details. Thats a mess.

As far as Clear/Yellow goes Ferrari left all that to the contractors. Yellow is a 2 stage process and many parts were just rushed too much and came out looking clear because of it. Many parts from some of the contractors we know were supposed to be yellow and were not. A good example of this is the emblems on the rear of 328's. Many are silver. You'll see a yellow 328 and a silver GTS. It was never supposed to be that way yet many are and people incorrectly believe yellow, silver and black were all intentionally made then mixed and matched when installed on the cars. In reality it was just shoddy work on the part of subcontractors and non existent QA on the part of Ferrari.

Also something I find amusing. Parts were made by many contractors. Suspension from one, engine brackets and linkages from another, fuel injection parts from another and brake parts from yet another. When the cars were new all those different classes of parts were different colors reflecting different plating facilities. When cars are restored typically it is all boxed up and sent to a single plater. It all comes back looking the same. They were never that way and it all looks so wrong to someone who knows them.

 

the pictures of this car on the BAT site are splendid. and since it looks exactly like my car, i love looking at them

 

i have regular header version on mine. Its ok, does sound great under a bridge or from behind. I suspect a lot of what peopel hear in a BB is intake noise complemented by exhaust, on a BBI were missing that intake sound. Imo the Bell is simply more tuneful.