308 coffee table

I finally got around to making a table out of my old 308engine block check it out Image Unavailable, Please Login


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The nice thing was I did not have to buy anything else to make this happen...

I had the block from an engine rebuild back in 98, and the glass from a side table my folks had. and I used a plinth that came from a model as the base - its nice as it's covered in felt on the bottom and leather on top... just clean the block, and sprayed it with hi-temp Aluminum silver... voila. I have it next to my Sim rig, so its kind of a whole theme!

 

no, that was a belt breaking.... so the story on the block:

this was from my first Ferrari - 1985 308gtsiQV. black metallic crema with black piping interior. I bought the car about 33K miles from Auto Place in Pittsburgh PA. in 1994, 1 week before my 26th birthday. literally just making the promise I made myself.

so fast forward to Roebling Road 1997, I was doing a track meet with the FCA ( I had moved from PA to Atlanta ) - Wade Williams ( mechanic from Ferrari of Atlanta - now at Merlin AutoGroup ), and I were doing some laps in the car - Wade was driving - and he says - "oh, your oil pressure gauge is not reading right it's probably just a wire or sender I'll check it when we get the car back at the dealer. I used to store it at the dealer as I did not have a garage. So I drive back to Atlanta - drop the car off, and kind of forget about it. that was on a Monday. fast forward to the following Thursday... my assistant says Ron Rineke ( Service manager at FOA ) on line 3. I pick up the phone and Ron says - "Hey, don't get mad at me"... I'm like quit F'n around. what's up? ( thinking he's joking) he says, "no seriously don't get mad, I have some bad news about the car? " what? The oil pressure unit is fine - the car does not have any oil pressure!!!.

what can cause that? I don't know I'd have to tear down the engine!. So I'm like staggard... I say I'll call you back. Later that night I call my dad and talk it over with him what do you think? etc... finally He says - "go ahead and have them tear it apart I'll cover you." So call Ron and say ok let's fix it. so long story short. when they tore it apart they found the #5 main bearing cap laying on the windage tray... and the bolts literally glued to the corners. at some point, the engine was overheated ( before me) and the heads re-torqued. so the engine block got so hot it literally got warped. so the answer was to get a new block... we even looked at a new engine... rather than line bore - new crank, etc... at first it was thought the block was too brittle, but then they thought we can rebuild it but it's going to be much more expensive with all the machining, etc... eventually we found a new block. and they rebuilt ( Wade did ) the engine. along with replacing 2nd gear and some other things "while you are in there"

the grand total was about $18K for a car that was probably only worth $25K max. ... so I ended up with a block ... that I stored at my folk's place for years as my wife was Never are we going to have an engine block in the house.... but now she's like - it kind of looks good ... for your office!

that's the saga of the engine rebuild. about 6 years later I had a belt let go that bent all the valves on the rear head... that was it - no more 308 - when I bought the car I did not do anywhere near enough research - but given how hard it was to do that. No Fchat - no internet etc... but there was not much service history on the car - which I know today is far more important than miles etc... I was disappointed in the previous owner - Kurt Buchwald - who was a challenge driver for a while... he knew the overheating issue ... and just wanted to dump the car... I could have done the same but I just had to end the madness. I think the guy who bought the car was from TX... by the time I had the new head put on ... I had also sorted the cooling ( it always wanted to run hot ) and fixed the AC.... but that car always had issues ... it was always something. however, I covered 60K miles in it and it only left me stranded twice...