308 FACTOIDS

Confirm? Deny. There are way more than 2 ways to distinguish between QVs, but in fact the O2 sensors and electronics is not one of them - I have a very late 84 QV (My June production date was the last week of production for the 84, but my car is the same as the 85s that started down the line the next week) - no O2 sensor or electronics besides ignition system - it's a Euro version, and it was only the US (and Swiss?) QVs which got the O2 sensors, catalytic converters. Right through to the end of 85, the Euro QVs did not have O2 sensors or catalytic converters.

Better QV differentiating factoids would be Zincrox (zinc-coating) body panels, a changeover in January 84 iirc; or the 2 accessory belt vs. 3 accessory belt engines (I don't recall when that changeover happened), which applied to all market QVs.

Gordon

 

I have always wondered if mine made the cut for that

 

Nice book but its a dealer network book. Good one to have. Has no relevance to year of car.

 

More interesting factoids!

This table is definitely wrong in some ways, with regards to the dates and chassis numbers for early steel and late vetroresina cars. I have seen similar incorrect information elsewhere, I believe in a few books and websites.

For example, my car is a steel bodied GTB. It is chassis 20717 and was produced January 1977. If you look at https://308gtb.de/ you'll find several other steel-bodied GTB's prior to mine and several vetroresina GTB's after mine. At a certain point in late 1976, Ferrari began shipping steel bodied cars to the US and kept sending vetroresina cars elsewhere, and that strategy continued for some time. There is no hard cut off.

 

As another reference point near to your car:

Chassis #21277 Steel.

Ordered 7/13/76
Production began March 77. Ended sometime between 4/20/77 and 4/28/77 because the car was not finished on 4/20 and was at the airport in Italy on 4/29/77
Shipped to Yonge Steeles Motors Ltd, Toronto Ontario Canada on 5/13/77

As far as I can tell, this is the FIRST steel 308 shipped to Canada.

 

Here we go...

Chassis #21561 Steel
Engine assembled by "Peter" (I think) 12-2-1977 (Feb. 12 1977 for us US folk)
Mfg. Date May 1977
Delivered 25 November 1977 in Miami Fl.
Has "Model Year 1977" Noted in the Warranty Book
Also have the 1977 Dealer Network book
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And there is nothing confusing about that at all for anyone with a brain in the Ferrari business back then. Its just the way they were.

 

Cannot believe engine was built in February and car built in May.

The way it worked back then was engine was built on Monday, dyno'd on Tuesday, installed in car on Wednesday.

If something went wrong in the engine room, heads would roll. One engine short and that meant in 2 days they fell behind quota on the production line.

Never seen a name and build date scratched into an engine.

 

I don't know Brian if it was the build date or not...I just assumed

All I know is the cam covers were originally black crinkle and when I stripped it off...that etching was there

 

I didn't know that. Over the years I have seen pictures in books of dozens of engines all sitting around in a room by themselves. I always thought they were built and stored away until taken to a chassis which could be weeks or months away. Didn't know it was only a 24 hr wait for them.

 

You were probably looking at a picture of the dyno area. Its crowded with engines coming off the dyno waiting to be rolled over to production or waiting to be dyno'd. When I needed a warranty motor for a 360 they put us off for 2 months because there were no spares.

 

apparently my 1977 Gtb has assembly number 1
chasis 21819
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That cannot be correct.

 

from 308gtb.de:
* The assembly number (or build number) is stamped on the oil cooler support (dry sump cars) or on the bracket the ignition coils attach to (wet sump cars). This number can also be found on various parts of the car, e.g. handwritten on the seat foam underneath the seat or on the backside of the dashboard. It is also stamped into the frame of the front hood (left top corner).


I don’t think the assembly number has much, if any, correlation to the number of 308s built

 

I did not publish this registry
Somehow whether by fact or fiction, it’s there

 

Well you can also go physically check your car for yourself. The information on 308gtb.de is mostly submitted by owners, previous owners, and interested parties, as far as I know, and Robert, the gentleman who runs it, is open to corrections.

 

The next time my car and I are together I will take photos of the numbers.

 

Mine..#21561 (as detailed above) has an assembly number of 295. You can find the assembly number on pieces all over the place. This happens to be the inside of the drivers side wheel well.

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Aside from seemingly random dates for model year changes there were all sorts of little modifications going on in the middle of MY runs for unknown reasons. My JUL 83 QV is one of the last 308's that had body colored rocker panels. Then a few months later they switched the A pillars and targa frames on GTS's from satin black to body color, It's like every car has some sort of easter egg that makes it different. My car also has column switches that came from - I don't know where? They are the same style as a 328 but with white lettering. Maybe they were changed after production but I have what seems to be every maintenance receipt with no mention of column switches. At least when I go to Concorso there's little chance of me accidentally climbing into the wrong car.

 

https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/308-assembly-sequence-numbers.61994/

I started this thread nearly 20 years ago

 

Your dealer network book has alignment specs?

I don't think so. Look again. R E A D the cover.

That is a list of Ferrari franchises, importers and authorized service centers world wide and they did a really terrible job of keeping them current.