Serie Speciale tail light help needed...

New to the forum but not to Ferraris..(cut my professional technician teeth on 348s when they were new).....in any event, I picked up a nice 348 and looking to do a Serie Speciale tail light retrofit. We know the parts are hard to get so ideally I would be able to do one for my car and then build kind of a kit for anyone else interested. The light spacers, the end caps, and a grille(probably just modifying a stock grill) would be what I would produce. I employ some talented guys that can build me anything so I'm not too worried about making it happen. I'd like it to be somewhat legit looking though.

If anyone has a very clear pic or even a description of the spacer for the lights that would be great. I have one pic of them but it's not very clear. I think building the side pieces would be rather easy once we build a mocked up one....maybe even 3D print them. Wouldn't be exactly stock but it would be very close.

So if anyone has a good pick of the spacer or a spare or anything, I'd be grateful....and hopefully be able to contribute to the community if the interest is there.

 

I understand the details and things that most people don't care about. For some reason the end caps don't really bother me....I think they will be easy to make.

I'm assuming the end caps hold the grill on to the sides of the body thru the original holes where the grille mounted(mounted with screws originally). Maybe with studs instead of screws. I'm sure it's nothing too fancy. Once I build them to my satisfaction, I could have them machined in quantity....who knows.

Spacer pics would be a great start! Thanks!

 

I'll make it work. Hopefully there will be some interest in producing more of these things once we get everything measured and ready to go. With any luck, I hope to be cutting up my grill this week to start figuring out spacing of the lights, etc. I want to try to keep OEM looking as much as possible but it may not end up working that way.

If anyone has a spacer or knows of a spacer or can lend a spacer for measuring, that would be a huge help.

 

So I got impatient and started cutting....it's the only way I can figure out how far to space out the tail lights. From Desmomini's OEM SS grille, we know that the top slat is the same witch front to back as mine. So I'm going to run with that and build spacers to get the lights to sit out a tad more than flush. We know his spacers are 1" thick....I spaced my lights out 1" and that wasn't enough. So something else is going on there...if any SS owners have had their lights off, maybe they could elaborate. Any pics would be much appreciated.

Next up, the other side of the grille gets cut and then I start making spacers to flush the lights out. Then the end caps.
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I am trying to make this as a kit so I have to design things with ease of production in mind which will help keep the cost reasonable. My goal is absolutely to have a kit for those of us that want to go to the SS look. I'd be happy if I could sell 5 kits and obviously I can make some spare parts for those who need certain pieces. If you're interested, PM so I can have your contact info....I'll put together a list.

I hope to get back on this project this week or next. I thought I had a line on some OEM spacers but it fell thru. So now I'll just machine some which is fine. Mine will be a little different on how they attach to the car but it will all work just fine.

I made a quick end caps to give my guys who will be fabbing the end caps a visual idea of what I need....those, along with all the pics I have of OEM ones, will give them everything they need to make some nearly exact replicas.
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So today I got to speak to my CNC guy. He looked at pics of your spacers(jeff), took a look at the car(everything is apart) and said it shouldn't be a problem to machine some spacers for me....which of course means spacers for anyone. He will scan/measure the tail light's backside and use that for his reference point. Kind of cool.

Spoke to my carbon fabricator today as well....he took my little mockup end cap so he could start cutting down some foam. Once I build the grill, he can take it and basically start making the part. Then we can make mold of it, scan it, print it...whatever we want.

Realized something important....the SS grill as 6 total blades....the regular ones are 5...so I have to add a blade to the center section of the grill....that will add some work.

 

Added the extra louver today...not an easy undertaking....I'll probably just end up having all the new uprights done on a water jet so I can recreate this grill should I need to for anyone. It will still be a bit of a job to modify a stock one and make it look like this. The first one is obviously the hardest though.

I had to cut the additional louver out of a section of one of the original louvers that covered the light...fortunately the curvature(very slight) matched up to the other 3.
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It won't be too bad...today was a lot of work though. Kind of had to do my center piece a couple of times to get things right. All kinds of angles, spacing, things going on.

It's a giant puzzle though and has a certain order.....need to finish the grille so we can do the spacers so we can do the end caps. I would really like to get the grille done this week so I'm prepared when we cut the first spacer....we'll leave it a little big so we can trim it down to get those lights to sit just right.

 

Some progress this week. I came up with a different approach for the center section...I built it off the grill. These grills are interesting...they're crimped together. No welds or solder...just crimps. Must have been easy to produce. Mine will retain some crimps but also some welds. Building the center section on the table was much easier...

Tomorrow I will get the spacing right and get it in the car...then I'm going to do a quick spacing out of the tail lights and take a step back to see how it all looks. The car has been tucked away in the back of my shop...I'm anxious to get it out in the open so I can see it from all angles. Once this is done...that's a big step. Then we start machining some spacers....
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