The (one and only) '0846' Debate Thread

Oh and as well as the additional engine mounts, Piper and his mechanics wouldn't have noticed the replaced tubing OF DIFFERENT DIAMETER on the rear RHS and different welds from the fire at LM 67, replaced P3 bulkhead tubes, the alleged Sparling weld on the LHS from the TF 67, the kink in the frame from the TF 66 accident that's still present today, plus this would be by then have been an 8 year old frame that although may have had new paint was previously languishing in the open elements of numerous scrap yards? As I have said previously, nobody has accused David of being blind.

 

I am no professional mechanic, just am amatuar but I spotted the differences in the bracing between Jims P3 and his version of 0846 just from his photos, and I asked how the suspension was brought in the same 12mm as the engine, and the answer seems a very crude way of doing it just by shimming and then losing all future fore and aft adjustability as a result as I very much doubt there would have been more than 12mm slack in the mounting positions, and all Steve is doing is analysing pics as well as an amatuar, exactly the same as you Vincent. None of us have seen these cars in the flesh, we are learning as we go, and changing our viewpoint as fresh info becomes available.

Very different scenario from Pipers seasoned mechanics/engineers working hands on daily on these cars during the 60s and 70s, if 003s frame turned up at Pipers workshop from Italy ready to be built up as a P4 such guys, who then need to start bolting in components to that frame would have been onto the differences in a heartbeat, you are kidding yourself if you think otherwise.

They would have been forced as a result to come up with engineering work arounds due to the obvious differences, do you really think they would just shrug their shoulders and not ask why this frame was so different from the other copies that had been supplied.

Sure they could do it, but no doubt would have reported it back to Piper which would then have raised questions itself to him, if he then suspected it was an old, modified frame I imagine he would be less than impressed, yes at the time he wanted a race car built so would have got it built up anyway, but later on when the value of original cars sky rocketed do you not think he would have capitalised on the chance it was an original frame when trying to sell it at auction, rather than give a more realistic description of its birth.

Jims theory of the origins of 003 is very different to the actual story presented in the auction description, which remember was way before Jim bought the car and came up with his own theory of the chassis's history.

You have asked a number of times for alternative ways in which 003 chassis was built which conflicts with the version of events presented by Jim, the auction description gives you the answer you are seeking, and from a period well before Jim owned the car so can no way be considered a cover up of Jims version of events, as at that time no one at all was claiming 003 had anything to do with an original ferrari.

Yes it would be great if Jim was proved right and the chassis had some link to 0846, but even then what about all the other components, none have been directly linked to 0846 have they? its way way more of a bitsa than 0858 which has a vast number of original engineering components from its days as a p4 still in place.

I actually hate the term "bitsa" but thats the common description for cars built up from original components but of unknown origin, all my projects have been hit with that label in the past including my current ones.

 

Who's to say that any of 0858's P4 parts ended up in 0858 when it was re-built to Can Am?

The motor Didn't. Many parts could have been switched out for freshly rebuilt units as they were doing the conversion. The body isn't on the car. What's more Bitsa, 0858 or 0846?, would need a time machine.

It may have come before Jim had the car but what does that matter? There is no real info on the building of the chassis from the auction description.. Just the assembly of the car.

If they noticed it either they didn't care or the frame is 0003.

If it is 0003 where is the story of who built it, how, when, and why. Absolutely zero of that appears in the auction description.

Like I said, I appreciate Miura coming up with his best idea of how 0003 could have come to be but there is nothing in that article that describes any part of the chassis building process. The closest it gets to any sort of definition is mentioning Allegretti, but he is a panel beater not a chassis builder.

If it is 0003 where is there any info or proof that Piper caused the oh so obvious damage?

 

Dont you think that its very telling in itself, Piper was auctioning two cars, if key companies were involved in their construction then they are clearly mentioned in the catalogue description, which was put together by a notable ferrari specialist, and the content no doubt sanctioned by Piper. 003 is obviously the lesser car of the two cars as its the least notable, it clearly says its a built up mongrel to put it at a basic level.

Its wishful thinking to believe it has some hidden noble pedigree, Piper has never claimed such and he should know being the man who commissioned its initial construction.

0858 was a rushed conversion of an original P4, ferrari had little time to be swapping out standard components that did the job for both specs, quick bit of re engineering, swap bodies then out the door to go racing again.

 

A timely reminder. It is hard the believe David Piper did not see the difference or recognise the opportunity to claim he had part of 0846. This point was made very early on is this tread by people who are very familiar with both Piper and the car

 

FYI

 

What a bizarre statement....any part of 0858 P4 in CanAm config??? How about the frame (minus chopped tail for spare tire) for instance?! 0858 is definately not a bitsa, but has continuous history, undisputed identity, it never burned to the ground and has more genuine Ferrari content than most other surviving vintage racers.

Besides one of the more interesting infos from the actual 0858 thread was that the P4s had already run with the enlarged engines at the end....so a Ferrari 350 P4 did actually exist and does today.

Back to 0846.

 

All of this assumes that Piper and his mechanics wanted to know and disclose the history of the chassis.

Maybe they didn't want to know and didn't want to say.....

A chassis identified as 0846 in carnet documents is seen my Marcel in Switzerland and the company on the documents is owned by David... The chassis shows up in England where Piper is going to have to pay import duties on it. If the chassis is that of a new race car the import duties are based on what David can show he paid his supplier for the chassis. If it is Ferrari 0846, the car that won the 24 hrs of Daytona the value of the chassis is suddenly much much higher (and by that time the value of old race cars had skyrocketed). Upon importation, David has to state a value of the car for tax purposes, and cough up money accordingly. For whatever reason he didn't declare the chassis to be 0846 at the time, knowledge or not. And why ship it to Switzerland in the first place. He could have just shipped it to England, unless, he wanted to "wash" the documents and not pay as much tax on the importation of the chassis. If the chassis has been repaired, and the cost of the work is not large, you could present the bill for that work and then pay even less.

If you go way back in this thread I posed the question that David surely would have know that this was not a P4 chassis. Jim countered that he believed that David really didn't know, but David has always been mum about the subject, perhaps because he doesn't want to pay a big tax penalty or doesn't think he would look good in stripes. If he later sells the car to Jim, not as 0846, but has a car that he has built from parts and a chassis he has had constructed, he has "plausible deniability" that he never knew that chassis was more valuable and if he didn't claim it to be 0846 he isn't liable for any additional tax. Was he giving up a lot of money, sure, but perhaps he put himself into a situation where that was the best outcome he could get without going to jail.

As Sargent Shultz used to say on Hogan's Hero's... "I know NOTHING!!!"

Again, this is all speculation, but there could be literally thousands of reasons (as in pounds sterling) for not wanting to know or state the history of this car. Something like this is a lot more plausible than making a new bastard chassis that just happens to be a clone of 0846, including historical crash damage and a mixed P3/P4 configuration.

 

Pretty sure VAT was only payable on cars newer than 12 months old at that time.

 

El Wayn'e post clarifies Marcel position including a quote from Marcel himself. Too much is made of this alleged sighting. He didn't know what the chassis was and saw no numbers on it. Could Marcel have been mistaken and saw the numbers 0836, a car that he does own?

El Wayne's full post here: http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/143032772-post7498.html
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The added triangle for the P4 forward side engine mount isn't even welded on to the chassis. It's just bolted. What has Ing. Solofast got to say about that?
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So the forward side left and forward side right engine mounts have NOT actually been modded or had additional mounts added at all. Just adaptor triangle brackets have been bolted on to accept the P4 (more probably 312 F1) engine and are not part of the chassis as in my post above. The right rear mounting has had a bushing added with no modification. The only place Jim's chassis seems to have had any permanent work done to it is on the right rear mounting. These bolt on adaptors do not match the "SCHEDA TECNICA" as cited in Jim's pdf: "(TECHNICAL DATA SHEET) 330 P3/P4 (1967) Chassis n. 0846 64 Transformation of a P3 model according to the characteristics of the P4 model. Chassis Type 593/603. Transformation of the tubular part at the rear of the chassis for new Type 237 [P4] engine mountings."

I'm even less convinced now that this is the work of Ing. Forghieri. I'm sure Ing. Solofast will have a full explanation.
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Ifs, buts and maybes, the value differential between Piper 003 and Ferrari 0846 is huge, far more than any ancient potential tax liability caused by later disclosure.

Carnet fiddling was rife in the race car world before the EU borders dropped, trust me the UK tax men have far easier targets to catch than chase up potential old debts from the 70s.

What is concrete is the description from the auction as to how the car came to be, Its as if Piper is now being accused of being too honest!

A few pages back I to was putting 2 and 2 together and making 4 as well, up until I read the details from the auction which make far more plausible sense.

It would seem the only thing related to 0846 on Jims car are the stampings he himself had applied, which is a pity.

The story reminds me of all those old spitfires about to be unearthed in Burma, it so looked like it was going to happen despite the fancifulness of the claims, when you look back in hindsight though it was never really on the cards, 2 and 2 dont always make 4.

Its a fantastic car, but the evidence stacks up more to is being a replica of 0846 than anything to do with the original.

 

I agree with the frame is definitely original as I called the car 0858 and it is pretty universally accepted that a frame is a cars identity.

But to say that all or any of the other parts ran in the P4 is not proven. I am guessing that a lot of them did but no one knows what happened to what parts when the car was converted.

Parts were swapped around from car to car in the heat of battle and in building new versions of the original frame. It is what it is. None of these cars have all of the original parts that they were built with.

Where is the continous history of how the conversion was built and what parts were used? Where is the continuos history that the Can Am motor ever ran in 0858 P4?

Please describe the building of the chassis from the auction description in some sort of detail, even if speculation? How did this sway you as
the auction description in now way describes the building of the chassis.

Like I said. If Piper built 0900 there has to be a story of how, who, where, when for the build and the race damage. But there isn't....Hmmmm...???

There is absolutely no 2+2 of how Piper built the chassis and where the damage came from.

 

You answered those questions right there. The frame identifies the car and it does have continuous history, the rest is just add-on on a race car....

Today it does have a period built 4.2l engine and P4s apparently ran with those at least once in 1967. Thats as good as it gets for these type of cars. Any "matching numbers" race car is highly suspect....theres simply no such thing in the sense that we use for street cars.

 

Yes. My point exactly.

I would read the post that I was responding to initially and then you'll get your answer as to why I said that.

As far as the 4.2l, is that fact or fiction?.....

 

Does anyone know the earliest, circa 1974, Piper configuration of this car?

P4 style motor? P3 Style motor?

Is there any knowledge or documentation pertaining to if and when either style of motor was used in the car?

There must be some proof of how the car was built initially and changed throughout its lifetime with Piper?

 

Then owner Hajime Tanaka with 0854 on the front left with 0003 next to it. David Piper? is seen at the rear with 0900 liveried in Piper Green.

Please could somebody post some pictures of the car as bought by Jim in 2000 as the Spyder with Glass Fibre front and rear panels, not as the Allegretti aluminium bodied Berlinetta P4. The forum would benefit from seeing how the car was configured then with pictures of the cylinder heads, induction system, chassis plate, the transaxle and a clear picture of the sills or any other pics at all. It would be good to see the engine number stampings too.
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Once the engine is bolted in the front side mount doesn't do much. Torsional loads come out in the front bulkhead mounts The side mounts help the engine improve the beam strength of the chassis, but torsional stiffness drives handling so it's not as big a deal The mount is triangulated so it's a lot better the P3 mount which was just a beam sticking out from the side of the engine.

Properly bolted chassis structural joints are fine.

 

Thank you for your reply. As well as being a mechanical engineer and experienced chassis expert you seem to write and understand English very well. The way these additional mountings have been executed seem to me like temporary bolt on adaptors. Do you think these mountings match the description of the Scheda Tecnica? "Transformation of the tubular part at the rear of the chassis for new Type 237 [P4] engine mountings."

 

I don't think there is sufficient information in the Scheda Tecnica to absolutely say one way or the other.

There are really only two sentences that apply and the last one is the most important.

The second sentence... "Transformation of the tubular part at the rear of the chassis for new Type 237 [P4] engine mountings." is consistent in that this chassis is modified to accept a P4 engine by drilling a hole and welding in a new boss on the RR side, and making a mount to support the engine on the RF side of the engine. These are relatively straightforward adaptations and are fully consistent with the way it might be done to get an engineering mule on the track. By triangulating the RF mount, even with a "bolt on" setup allows the engine to stiffen the chassis (by applying forces at the points where the tubes were already triangulated) and that is what was supposed to be one of the substantial improvements of the P4 version. The area of the bulkhead had to be modified to clear the water outlet and that would be considered as part of the "Transformation" to P4 specification.

The left side mounts are more of a "bolt on" fix. But the reality is that the LR mount is tough in that the new bolt location on the block is very close to the old mount and it is difficult to offset any mount a very small distance without hacking things up. The offset bracket on the LR mount is OK, but how well it works depends on details that aren't really visible, but if it's restrained so that it can't rotate it will work just fine. It comes down to a money and time thing. If you are trying to do a quick and dirty mule you would do it the way this car is done, it will work, not take as much time and money and if it didn't work that well you could always go back and redo it. The reality is that the change in location of the bolted joint is so small that if the bracket is stiff it will work.

I really can't see enough of the front left mount to understand how it works. It also is a "bolt on" feature, but if it is stiff in the vertical direction it can do the job. The job of the front mount is to transmit vertical forces to the intersection of the front tubes (where the old front mount meets the triangulated chassis tubes). If the LF plate mount is also bolted to something further forward it could be fine too.

Lastly, we really don't know who made these bolt on mounts. They were on the car when Jim bought it. I have no reason to believe that they were or weren't made in 1967, but they just as well could have been made later when David's mechanics put the car together.

For that reason I do not believe Piper would make his last chassis any differently than the other two that he had made. If he had to compromise on the mounts it would be better to do that on the P4 chassis.

One post theorized that this chassis was made to fit at P3 engine by Piper. I don't think you can say that without equivocation. I think that that the only thing you can say is that this chassis was undoubtedly built from the start to mount a P3 engine, whenever it was made. All of the mounts and the triangulation in the back of the chassis are set up to mount a P3 engine. If you were going to build a chassis to mount either engine you would build it to the P4 configuration since that layout uses the engine to stiffen the chassis to a greater extent than the P3.

Some believe that the P4 pedal box means that the car was first built that way, but I would disagree. They had trouble with 0846 the year before in the Targa and they jacked open the air inlet to try to keep the car cool. The changes to the pedal area were specifically made to help get more air out from behind the radiator and since that is an important thing to demonstrate I would expect that this modification would be tested on 0846 to prove that it provided the improved cooling. Remember that the first race was at Daytona, and while the nights are usually pretty cool, the day's can get quite hot so making sure cooling improvements were effective was important. Consequently it is perfectly logical to expect 0846 to have incorporated this modification.

I believe that this is actually the chassis 0846. There are just too many things that are specific to 0846 that are present on this chassis (built as a P3, tubing in the bulkhead to P4 configuration, mods to the mounts to fit the P4 engine, damage to the tubes that Wayne Sparling fixed in period, and different diameter tubing used in the LR area to repair fire damage) to think that it is anything else. The mounts aren't optimum, but they would work well enough that you most likely wouldn't see any lap time difference and they let you have one additional updated car for very little outlay. Moreover, Ferrari needed a mule to test the new engine and 0846 was used to good effect.

While 0846 was a "mule" it worked well enough to win at Daytona. Combined with the 3 new P4's and the P3's freshened to 412P spec that provided as many as 7 Ferrari's, 4 of which were to flight cars to do battle with the Fords.

 

WOW! Very beautiful photo!

Thanks for sharing.

 

solofast provides lots of useful insight regarding the 'how and the why' of Ferrari engineering. Thanks for taking the time to explain it!
CH

 

+1

 

solofast's posts are great and I really appreciate the time he takes to share his knowledge. It's too bad that some people will disregard his words because they don't someone's preconceived definition of what it means to "transform" a frame or what it means to build a race car with "no compromises" (as if this were even possible). In short, it's sad that some people solicit the expert input of others only in order to shoot it down if it does not fit their preconceived conclusions. Sadder still that some of these people might consider themselves to be objective searchers of truth.