M. Riganti Jack

When I was assembling the toolkit for the 330, I got a blue Riganti jack from Shaughnessy.  It didn't work as some teeth were broken out, but since I would never use a Ferrari jack on the car, that didn't matter.  After getting the PF coupe, I started assembling a toolkit for it.  Among other things, the Riganti jack went into it.

Recently, I saw an eBay auction for someone with a Riganti jack cap.  In the auction, it was mentioned that the seller had the gears for sale too.  The gears in his jack had broken and he had a couple of sets cast in bronze.  The original gears were pot metal, easily broken.  I contacted him and got back this picture of the new gears.

I had tried to disassemble this jack quite a while ago, but got stymied getting the large gear out.

To start, you pry or tap off the cap.  Then the gear mechanism is visible.

The crank is held in with a flap of metal chiseled up from the shaft.  You have to file or grind this flat.  Then the crank will just slide out leaving the top gear.  The top gear has a D-shaped cutout that matches a flat on the handle, but as you can see, my D-shaped hole is now almost round.

Once the handle and top gear are out of the way, the bottom gear just lifts off the shaft.  When I had tried to take this apart a few years ago, I couldn't get that gear out.  I thought that the shaft looked like it was peened over, holding the gear in place.  I spent some time with a Dremel trying to grind away the peening, but was unsuccessful.  The seller of the gears told me that the gear should just lift out, or up end the jack and shake to get it out.  I did the latter and a few raps on the floor had the gear off the jack.  As you can see, it is in sad shape.  You can also see the chisel mark on the handle.

Now that I have it apart, I'll get the new gears and should have a working jack in a couple of weeks.

Other reproduction parts are the cap and rubber bumper available as reproductions from Mike Dunn.  The red Riganti sticker is available from Kilimanjaro Designs.

The gears arrived.  I had to use the Dremel to clean up the D-shaped hole for the crank to fit through the upper gear and did a little work to make them work smoother.  But the jack is together and working now.

   

The paint isn't in too bad of shape, but it could stand a repaint.  So far, I haven't found anybody who can tell me the correct paint color.  I may end up going to a auto paint store and getting a match there as I think that this is original paint.  When the jack was painted previously, it is clear that it wasn't fully extended at the time as some of the leg didn't get painted.