Festa Italiana 2007

Festa Italiana is an annual event at the Seattle Center, usually in October to commemorate Christopher Columbus's birthday.  However, this year it was held on the September 29th weekend, probably to celebrate my 60th birthday the day before.  The organizers always invite Italian automobiles, motorbikes and bicycles to participate.  Bringing a Ferrari is an excellent way to attend as you have free reserved parking right in the middle of Seattle Center.

The parking wasn't quite as good in previous years as there was a Gallo Sausage promotional vehicle parked right where the cars usually are placed.  Admittedly it was convenient to stop by every so often and sample their wares.  The first pass at parking had us on a 45° angle, but then security came by and said that there wasn't enough room for a fire lane.  So back to the cars to re-park at a flatter angle.  The only good point was that we ended up driving on the pavers near the international fountain.

This lead to a couple of good photo ops.  Here's a 512BBi and my 330 GT.

You may notice the water seemingly spurting out of my car.  In truth, I did spring a leak in a radiator hose, but it wasn't nearly as spectacular.  After we had parked the first time, the event organizer, Gary Galeotti, mentioned that I had a water leak.  At first I thought it just might be a little overflow, but on further inspection, a hose had a small leak.  Once I had loosened the radiator cap and released the pressure, it stopped leaking.  I looked at fixing it with either duct tape or sliding the hose farther on the nipple so the leak point would be under the clamp, but in the end, I decided that it was unlikely to cause any problems on the 20 minute drive home.

Only six Ferraris showed up, along with a Maserati, a couple of Lambos from the local dealer and a smattering of Alfas and Fiats.  A whole bunch of Vespa motorcycles came in a single group.  Of the six Ferraris, the models ranged from my 330 to a F430 Spyder, including a 308 GTB, BB512i, Mondial Cabriolet and a F360 Spyder.

Of course, there are numerous events going on all day, including grape stomping, Italian cooking demonstrations, singing, etc., but the highlight for me is always the variety of Italian food available.  This year lunch was an Italian meatball sub along with both cannoli and a cappuccino brownie for dessert.

Usually, or perhaps unusually given the usual Seattle fall weather, we have had good weather for this event.  However, this year it was overcast with the forecast of rain by early evening.  That forecast proved in error as it started sprinkling by two PM, so several of us left not long after that.

I was watching the water temperature gauge closely as we wound our way through Seattle traffic to the freeway.  It was gradually creeping up, first 70°C and then 80°C as we were being stopped in traffic.  Then I looked down and the gauge was reading below the left marker.  Earlier in the day, I had had a discussion where someone mentioned that the time to worry about overheating is when the gauge suddenly shows cold as it can mean that the sender is no longer in the coolant flow, i.e. very low water.  Then I noticed that the oil temperature and gas gauges were also reading zero, so I figured that it was an electric problem.  The electric radiator fans are on the same circuit, but by then we were almost on the freeway so I knew that they wouldn't be needed once we got up to speed.  The drive home, though disconcerting, was uneventful.  After the car cooled down the gauges mysteriously began working again.  Probably the ceramic fuse just had some corrosion, so I cleaned it just in case.

I had been meaning to replace a cobbled together section of lower radiator hose.  My car always has had two rubber sections along with a brass part that had two nipples for the heater hoses brazed to it.  A couple of years ago, I noticed that Lowell Brown's 330 GT had a one piece part for that section.  Since then, I found the proper part but was waiting until I had to drain the radiator before replacing it.  I guess that now is the time.  Here you can see the fancy correct part.

Of course this means putting on the correct Cheney and Copiglia clamps, so I'll have to spend some time looking at the parts book to see exactly what clamp is used where.