The (one and only) '0846' Debate Thread

i thought they were made from plastic

 

More related stuff in this Atlas thread..

http://forums.autosport.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34057

 

interesting pics of a topless 0844 at bottom of this thread ;

http://www.virhistory.com/vir/marques/ferr-gallery-01.htm

 

Great pictures in that thread.

 

Only the doors.

Pete

 

But I thought that one of the key points in this entire debate was the fact that the body on 0846 at LeMans was actually fiberglass? Only during its alleged resurrection did it receive a supposedly NOS aluminum body, which therefore was never installed on the car during its racing heyday. Is this not correct?

 

Arlie,

Can you PLEASE give it a rest?

Agree to disagree and move on.

I changed the carpet in my car, does that make it incorrect? Added a radio, Incorrect?

How many Vintage Ferrari's have had the body changed in it's life? Breadvan? 002C?
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No, I can't give it a rest. That's what this discussion thread is about. PSK made the statement that only the doors were plastic. I don't think that is true. The entire racing body at LeMans was fiberglass, is that not true?
(Those who wish to take a "rest" can please move on to other threads. Nobody is forcing you to be here.)

 

Regardless if the doors were plastic, Steel, fiberglass or craypaper. They are not now. They may have at one point but now they are not.

 

Er, Arlie ... where did you get this idea from?

I've never heard this before? ... why would #0846 have been fibreglass?, and all other's alloy?

If it was fibreglass there would have been nothing left of the body by Amon's account of the fire.

I could be wrong, but I always was under the understanding that #0846 was alloy (except for doors).
Pete

 

Doors are still fibreglass ... ask Jim.

The rest is alloy, as I always thought it originally was.
Pete
ps: Guys this is actually relevant ... come on this is a good discussion point. Well I think it is anyway.

 

I was referring to the body, which he brought up. I think it is a good discussion too but if Arlie can drop his bias, I would like to hear his thoughts too.

 

Pete, my memory may be incorrect since this discussion has been ongoing across so many different threads. Some of the original photos were destroyed in the great database crash. But YES, the doors as shown in the photos posted by Jim ARE fiberglass. And I believe that was because they came from Piper who had access to some of the original fiberglass parts. Why would Jim go to the trouble of restoring the car with an ALUMINUM body and then keep some FIBERGLASS doors that could have been made by anybody?
(Unless we are now to understand that the BODY was ALUMINUM but the DOORS were FIBERGLASS.) If this is true, then obviously not everybody is aware of this.

I will have to access the old archives to see what I can find.

And as Pete indicated, the doors are NOW fiberglass.
(But Jim may have changed that in the ongoing spyder conversion.)
I don't know.

 

Arh ... you guys are refering to the P3 body that #0003/0846 wore when Jim bought the car.

That body ofcourse has absolutely nothing to do with what #0846 wore at Le Mans in 67' ... other than maybe the doors (?).
Pete

 

True (ie. they could have been made by anybody) ... but fibreglass doors are correct, thus why change them.

Pete

 

Are you saying that all the original body parts (other than doors) as raced by Ferrari, were aluminum?

As a somewhat interesting point, Paul, P4Replica told me that the fiberglass racing body of a 917 Porsche was so thin that you could see light clearly shining through it before it was painted.

 

Well that is what I always thought. After all Jim is now installing #0858's (I think) original tail on #0846 and it's alloy.

Yeah, scary cars. My club race car (now sold) was like this too ... I had the body specially made nice and thin, and thus light

Pete

 

I did indeed find something. Go to page 58 of Jim's document:
http://www.glickenhaus.com/jim/project.pdf
Look at the photo of the Ferrari back room on the right hand side of the page. The caption is VERY small but I can make it out: "A FIBERGLASS nose section of an unidentified sports racer reared on top of the buck. (referring to a wooden body buck of some other model Ferrari.)

Sure looks like a P3/4 nose. Otherwise, why would Jim have included it in his document?????????

I'm sure there were other references to a FIBERGLASS body among other threads. And wasn't there a fiberglass SPYDER body on the car when Jim bought it? (It may have been aluminum, but I thought sure it was fiberglass. You could even see it sitting in the back of the garage in some of Jim's pictures.)

Of course this doesn't REALLY have any bearing on whether the chassis is real or not, but I thought everybody was on the same page regarding the body. WAS the 1967 LeMans body made of ALUMINUM or FIBERGLASS? According to Jim's picture on 58, the factory had a backroom with a lot of stuff including fiberglass P3/4 body parts.

 

Jim was trying to show how Ferrari operated at that time, ie. bits of cars everywhere, discounted, etc.

See above.

Yes it was wearing a P3 fibreglass body ... but that does not mean the originals were fibreglass. We also know they weren't cause the OTHER P3's, P412's and P4's are alloy (except for doors).

Good question. I always thought it was alloy like the rest ... Can anybody confirm (Jim?).

I'm not sure that that is a P3, P3/4 or P4 body part (nose). There are no brake ducts for a start, and again Jim did not include the photo for that reason, but to show the shambles that was the "Ferrari works", and thus how easy it would have been to loose something, etc.

Pete

 

Oh come on now Pete. You're trying to dance with 2 partners AGAIN. We have NO photographic proof whatsoever to back up the theory that the remains of 0846 were retreived from the Modena scrap yard. Yet you believe that it happened.

But when shown GENUINE PHOTOGRAPHIC PROOF in Jim's OWN DOCUMENT that the factory had fiberglass P3/4 body parts in their OWN back room, you don't believe that any of the cars used fiberglass body parts.

What were those parts used for, Halloween costumes?????!!!!!

But as I say, it doesn't concern the originality of the chassis. But funny that nobody has been quick to anty up a conclusive answer to the question of whether 0846 wore an ALUMINUM or FIBERGLASS body at LeMans in 1967.

What got me to thinking about the matter was a photo of the interior of one of the P3/4 cars; or it might have even been a replica. I can't remember exactly which photo I was looking at. The point was: the interior aluminum panels were riveted with "pop rivets", which didn't exist in the 1950s and I don't remember seeing them on anything produced in the 1960s either. Wondering whether "pop rivets" would be period correct for a mid 60s race car got me to wondering if the bodies were actually aluminum at all.

And apparently I'm not the first to wonder about those "pop rivets". I found this online article about the restoration of a Stranguellini and it started with a derogatory comment about the presence of "pop rivets" in the car.
http://www.velocetoday.com/cars/cars_61.php

 

P3 featured fiberglass doors.
It's predecessor, the P2, did not.
Likewise, the 412P - for example, 'Napolis's 0854 - original doors are aluminum. 0854's spyders doors, however, are fiberglass.

 

Well it is a possibility. Actually I don't think it got anywhere near a scrap yard, but moved out with all the other disused parts ... somebody then took it.

Never said that Arlie. I also do not believe that nose is from a P3, P3/4 or P4. There are many Ferraris of that period that look like that or similar, like the Dino's, etc.

Yes this is an interesting question ... and only relevant one

Jaguar C-types were pop-riveted together were they not, and they are from the 50's. So were many old race cars ... I guess the early Ferrari/Maserati single seaters, while rivetted may not actually be 'pop' rivetted together.

I would have thought that pop-rivets would have been invented around the time of Howard Hughes searching for airspeed records ... was that not the late 30's (I know he set the record in 1935 and another in 37)??

It also does not matter what the body is made out of ... even if fibreglass it is still common to rivet them on (as well as fibreglassing them on). Rivets are cheap and quick.

Pete

 

But wait a minute now. I was told that 0854 was wrecked and burned in South Africa and the hulk was tossed on the open deck of a cargo ship for its trip back to Europe. The bodyless, unprotected, rusting chassis members were slopped with motor oil in a half baked attempt to protect the fire scarred frame from rusting in the moist salty air during the trip back to Europe.

So how do we know for sure what the body and/or doors of 0854 were made of? And how do we know for certain what the body and/or doors of 0846 were made of?

From the old board:

So how do we know exactly when and where that Ferrari started using the fiberglass body parts? If Piper raced the "alleged" 0846 with a fiberglass body starting in 1967, where did he get those body parts? The factory???

Does any of the above rule out 0846 having a fiberglass body at LeMans in 1967? I've always wondered about the entire right rear portion of the body burning completely away with a flat tire fire. Aluminum doesn't "burn" itself. It melts. But fiberglass would burn readily which might account for the entire right rear of the car being missing. I would all depend upon how fiercely the "burning tire" was really burning .

 

I have asked Jim this, and apparently it was wearing a spare body ... to look after the original. Piper does this currently with his LM, so plausible.

Piper DID NOT OWN #0846 is 1967, and nobody has ever said he did. Thus where did the blue comment come from Arlie? Piper owned #0003/0846 from 1971 and raced it from 1974. I'd say he made the fibreglass body Arlie, maybe even the doors.

[EDIT:]Okay I can see where you got this from. Jim made a mistake. Should have said Piper raced this car from 74-2000. We know that he owned it(er, parts) from 71 (I think) ...[/EDIT]

Now you are making sense ... yes again good question. I guess Amon could tell us. I would have thought Jim would have already researched this ... otherwise surely he would have simply made fibreglass parts to restore #0846.

Pete

 

Tom
P3's were alloy with alloy doors.
412P's were alloy with alloy doors
P4's were alloy with fiberglass doors.
P3/P4 0846 was alloy with fiberglass doors.
All you need to do is look at this photo.
The Le Mans code is Yellow alloy Red fiberglass.
But you'll say the yellow dots are on the door!! Doesen't that mean they're alloy and the body's fiberglass (Red). No it means the Ferrari team painted the yellow dots on the wrong place. They should be on the fender. They did get it right at Brands Hatch.
Note the crude opening on the inside of 0846's door.
That is where extra cooling ducts were punched through the fiberglass for the 67 Targa Race. You can see remnants of that damage in the fiberglass doors that are currently on 0846. I posted those photo's a while ago. The original alloy doors of 0854 still have the repaired holes where the Le Mans lights were mounted and later removed. The Fiberglass doors that were on 0854 like the alloy tail that was on 0854 when I bought her were the P4 doors and tail of P4 0858.

Pete
The unidentified fiberglass nose section of a sports racer on Page 58 isn't P3 or P4.
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