In Memoriam

A fellow FChat member by the name of Ray Castelhano passed away yesterday after a long illness. I was notified by his son and my good friend David (a/k/a Bertocchi). Below is an FChat post from Feb 2006. I felt it appropriate to have his voice shared one more time.
May he rest in peace.

Subject: Really nice Ferrari chat article- Feb 2006

Hello Chatters
My name is Ray Castelhano. I have been in love with Italian cars and Ferrari in particular since I was 15 years old and Ferrari (the company) was 3. PF Coupe 1415GT was in my care for a while during the 80s and 90s. Restoring the car was a fantastic experience and selling it was the downright dumbest thing I ever did or will do. During the restoration I met a lot of great people and had the satisfaction of seeing the car return to it’s original glory before my eyes. My son David (Bertocchi) restored the drive train and was of enormous amount of help. Willow Grove Auto Tops in PA put the interior together (I installed it myself) and the final body work and paint were done by Holbert’s Porsche Audi also in PA. I did just about everything else with Dave’s help and input.

Things were different to a large degree back then in the pre-internet era. Things that Dave and I searched and searched for are now for sale once a month on ebay. The car was, from the start, meant to be a driver and once done, it was driven. I traveled all over Virginia, to Hershey, to Baltimore to Summit Point WV and so on. It is an absolute joy to drive a 12 cylinder Ferrari and doing so becomes an addiction very rapidly. That doesn’t mean the car was not entered in shows it was and it won a bunch of best in class awards. I had put about 3000 miles on it between the restoration and showing it at Cavallino. It still did fine and being involved in the event was above all the AACA events. I met Brenda Verna who is a wonderful woman and a great helper and researcher. Also met Sicard, Iori, Steve Tillack the brilliant Chris Leydon and many many others. I also met the late Bill Lester of California who was the greatest most helpful true gentleman in the country. Poor bill passed away shortly after finishing the restoration of PF Coupe 1151. That car is now for sale at Heritage Classics in CA for about twice what Bill’s widow sold it for after his leaving us. At the time he owned the PF Coupe, a 275 GTB, a 400 stick shift and a 308. Bill did not paint the brake drums on his PF red. The car also does not have PF Coupe seats in it now but it is a good car unless it has been really mistreated since Mrs. Lester sold it.

The mirrors on 1415 were not factory installed. They were needed on the Washington Beltway so I put them on. They worked well. As far as I know all PF Coupe dashboards were done in leather by PF. It is my understanding that the designation of “pelle e plastico” meant that the headliner was done in naugahyde. Some were done in leather. I came to that conclusion through correspondence with pininfarina factory when trying to determine what the headliner material was. I found that parts for the brakes were very scarce. I am not a fan of my neighbor White Post Restorations but they were able to find a lot of what was needed. The drum brakes work very well for a guy who learned to drive in drum brake cars they are fantastic. Lots of different size copper sealing rings are needed to assemble them. I had two sizes made and found that copper sheets in metric thicknesses are not common around here. It is not hard at all to change the “inside” plugs. As you must have discussed, the plugs were moved to allow the breathing improvements seen in the early 1960s. The rear springs MUST have the polyethylene spring liners in them or the car will not handle worth a damn. I had that stuff made also and Partsource now owns the tooling. That is about it. If you want to see pictures of any part of the car let me know.

 

Nice idea. David, do you have any idea where the car is?