The (one and only) '0846' Debate Thread

Thanks, 'Napolis!

 

As I thought also

Pete

 

BTW Arlie, I did a little searching and pop rivets were invented BEFORE WWI, and by 1939 the first American patent was issued.

Thus whoever made the derogatory comments about the Stanguellini should be made to appologise , and yes ofcourse they DID exist in the 1950's ... ... and thus would have been used on many race cars.
Pete
ps: I've posted a comment to the Veloce Today magazine. I can just imagine the 'experts' incorrectly using this to rubbish otherwise correct cars ...

 

I was refering to the Noble/Foreman replicas as plastic.I thought the originals were alloy.

 

Pete, don't get TOO carried away concerning the pop rivets. Just because they were invented decades earlier, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are period correct. Carbon fiber has been around for years, but does that mean it is correct for any car built since carbon fiber technology was invented? Hardly.

And as for the fiberglass sports racer on page 58 of the document, what is it?
(Amazing that up until my postings, everybody probably naturally assumed that it was a P3/4 body part because it was included in Jim's P3/4 document! How strange. When I see a picture of a duck included in a book about ducks, I tend to think it's a duck!!!! Silly me.)
And keep in mind that the presence or absence of auxilliary holes doesn't really mean anything in a fiberglass body part. Many times, the parts come out of the mold completely intact and the assorted holes are drilled later.

If it is NOT a P3/4 body part, then it must be something else. Therefore, what exactly was Ferrari making fiberglass body parts for? Sounds like a legitimate mystery to me.

Oh, and thanks to Tom for following Jims instructions from 1/23/2006 at 5:33pm in post #1131.

We learned something from Jim in post #1300 because I dared to ask questions instead of taking everything as gospel.

 

So how did they indicate a fiberglass body (Ferrari or otherwise) if the car was painted red? A RED dot on a RED fender would be pretty much unnoticeable.

 

Fair enough Arlie, but that person in that article caused the owner to think is car was incorrect and STARTED an expensive restoration on INCORRECT facts. I'd be rightly pissed off if it was me ... actually I would have done more research myself. As I said before many racing cars were rivetted together in the 50's ... and you would hardly use sold rivets if you could do the job in seconds with pop rivets would you. Remember also that racing car design does follow aircraft design and Malcom Sayer that designed the C-Type was trained in the aircraft industry ... thus he would have been up to date on the pop rivet. Now most car builders DO look at the opposition so it would not have taken long (even if it was not Jaguar first) for the pop rivet to have made its way in to the car racing world.

I never did.

The brake ducts are not just holes Arlie, but shaped pieces on the front air intake ... can't just drill them. Research is all in the details Arlie ... even with Corvettes and my humble Alfas

Ofcourse they made fibreglass bodies, cheaper and quicker than alloy (but not always lighter). Ferrari while a bit slow on the uptake did slowly move forward with technology. Notice though Arlie the much moderner car buck that that fibreglass piece sits on ... thus that fibreglass nose could have been made after the P3's and P4's period. The only legitimate question is was #0846 wearing a fibreglass rear at the fateful Le Mans. The considerable damage in the post fire photos leads me to think ... possibly.

Even a saint eventually gets sick of the squeaky wheel

Pete

 

Have a look for yourself here,Arlie:
http://www.nvsaac.com/gallery/gt40_1967season.htm

That unidentified nose section in GRP is a 206S Dino from 1966-7. Nobody ever said it was a P3 or P4, only that Ferrari used to junk stuff that we think now is valuable.

Paul M

 

I'm confused. You posted a link to a Ford GT40 photo site. What does that have to do with a potential fiberglass Ferrari part?

Actually Pete, my other question was also quite legitimate:

 

Arlie and others, an interesting FYI....

In the Fall of 1937 a U.S. Patent application regarding blind (pop) rivets was filed for by Carl Cherry an MIT Grad. In 1939, the original U.S. Patent for the Cherry Rivet was issued. The Cherry Rivet Company was founded in Los Angeles in 1940. Continued product refinement and tooling development followed, and finally the first Cherry designs were introduced to the aerospace market.

The new Cherry rivets could easily be installed into blind holes (i.e. accessible from one side only). Aircraft manufacturers quickly adopted the new system. The advent of World War II promoted the demand for Cherry rivets at an even greater pace.

http://www.textronfasteningsystems.com/aerospace/html/about/history.html

Regards,
Bill

 

Thanks for the info Bill. I tried to locate it myself, but Google pulled up too many links. Sure, pop rivets COULD have been used in a 1960s car, but WERE they actually used? Does anybody have any period pictures of any Ferraris that show pop rivets being used on the body or interior work? Modern day pop rivets is sort of counter to the old world technique of hand hammered aluminum bodies.
(Of course this is all not specifically 0846 related; just an interesting side issue when discussing alloy bodied race cars from the 60s in general.)

 

yes, we call them "Cherry Max" rivets and we use them on Gulfstreams where deemed by the blueprint or engineering repair drawings. there are also blind rivets made by the "Huck" factory. the difference is the head design, alloy, and countersink depth , ie 100 degree "1097" ( small) head or a deeper "426" shear head. typical part number from vendor looks like " GAR501BB05-7 " . then there are the first and second oversize repair blind fastners, "OSMLS100M06" for "bad" hole. hole sizes are cleaned up to 4 decimal places and inspected before and after install.

i have often wondered how much of the sheetmetal work i do on aircraft would translate to the vintage race cars.


cool post !

 

So you can look at the #1 red Ford at LM 1967.

;-)

About rivets; the Spitfire and Me109 of the mid-1930s were all-metal and rivetted. The Spitfire's builders found countersinking rivets was expensive and time-consuming, so they did flight tests to determine how much additional drag would be created if some or all of the rivets were dome-head..............by glueing half a lentil to each flush rivet!

Paul M

 

And if I remember correctly: The Spitfire (I think) used rivets made of magnesium which, after 40 or 50 years, were badly susceptable to corrosion. I was reading about one Spitfire that was being restored. The FAA required all the rivets to be replaced because of the corrosion. Please correct me if I'm wrong on the above facts because it's been a long time since I've read the old copies of "FLY PAST" magazine that I've got in storage. Old aircraft archeology is also one of my interests. I don't remember the serial number of the Spitfire!!!!)

 

By the way Arlie,

The reason the alloy body melted in '67 was not because the tire burned (low temp fire) but because the mag wheel burned (high temp fire). Fiberglas would likely have burned completely.

Regards,

Art S.

 

When the subject of the pop rivets came up, I just got curious and started searching. As you said, not that it had anything to do directly with the discussion at hand, just another useless bit of trivia.

 

You could have saved yourself the trouble and just read my earlier reply ... been there done that

But we do like going round in circles in this thread don't we
Pete

 

Go to the 250GTO restoration thread and even go to Moto Techniques site ... they discuss rivetting the body back on to the chassis.

Last time I looked that model GTO was made in 1962!, so the answer is very much YES.

And like I said earlier, have a good look at a C and D-Type Jaguar, absolutely covered in rivets.

I suggest you remove me from your ignore list as we are going around in circles, because either you are not reading my replies or simply choosing to ignore 'parts' of them.

Pete
ps: Your perception that 'pop rivets' are modern day is incorrect. Something that was invented before the great depression is NOT modern day to most

 

Pete,
My mistake. Obviously, I must have somehow missed your post covering much the same info.

Regards,
Bill

 

No worries Bill ... you were obviously off doing research .

Best
Pete

 

Doh! I finally figured out what Napolis' big secret announcement re: the car formerly known as 0846 is. Reading my recently received Ferrari Classiche packet during lunch today it says essentially, that for $ a team of Ferrari experts will certify old Ferrari authenticity based upon the originality of the items. This will either be done at the factory or by officially certified inspectors.

If items on the car are found NOT to be original, Ferrari will "assist" the owner by manufacturing new bits (claiming to use the same foundry and some of the machines as used originally) for the cars, thus ensuring that they are FERRARI original and can be officially blessed as such.

Thus, since "0846" DOES have quite a few real bits of P3/4 in it, all Ferrari will need to do is to run up a new tube frame for the car as a factory replacement stamped 0846 and presto-changeo, "0846" will become 0846 with the changing hands of mucho dinero.

Actually, no one should have a problem with this solution. Clever.

 

Clever as it may be, that's not it.

 

Erik, I assume that your posting was more sarcastic than realistic. But here's what I've been pondering:
In JG's document, he describes the repair work that was done to the original 0846. Chassis tubes replaced, etc. Theoretically speaking, if we located one of the guys who was working at the shop the day back in 1967 that the car was repaired, and one of those guys just happened to have saved even ONE chassis tube as a souvenir and had it sitting in his attic for all these years, then theoretically, that guy could sign a written affadavit attesting to the fact that his frame tube came from the original 0846. Anybody could then buy that ONE frame tube from him, along with a copy of his signed affadavit, and then they could claim ownership of 0846 and back it up with a signed legal trail of provenance!!!!! All by merely possessing ONE frame tube and a signed piece of paper!

How many people would really accept a car built around that ONE frame tube as THE CAR that circled around the LeMans race track in 1967?

Extrapolate that theoretical ONE frame tube into a repaired frame that was sold as a replica without any trail of provenance or identification numbers.

Now how many people would really accept a car built around THAT frame as THE CAR that circled around the LeMans race track in 1967?

 

If this website is to be believed, lots of people do.

 

Can't be since Jim got a letter from the factory stating that 0846 is gone and nobody should be dumpster diving (which can be interpreted as an affirmation of what he has is indeed original).