Musical Cars

I got the 330 back from Dennison last fall and drove it to a couple of events before the winter set in.  Then last Saturday, Griot's Garage was have a Ferrari Day at their flagship store in Tacoma, about 40 miles from my house.  Since I hadn't driven it for a few months, I went out Friday and got it started.  It wasn't too happy, but it did start and run OK.

On Saturday AM, I went out to drive to Griot's and the car would not start.  Not a single hint of a cylinder firing.  I eventually gave up after 20 minutes or so.  On Monday, I call Butch Dennison and told him that I wanted to drop off the 330 once he resolved the 250 coupe issues when I took it home a couple of weeks ago.  He thought that the 250 would be ready in a couple of days.

In the meantime, I did some trouble shooting on the 330.  First I stuck a screwdriver in a spark plug end and couldn't see any spark when the screwdriver was near a ground.  So I got out the timing light and tried a couple of spark plug wires on each bank.  Nothing.  Since both banks were dead, the last common point was the ignition fuse.  I checked for 12V at one of the coils and saw .01V.

Then I removed the washer bag followed by the fuse panel cover.  These cars have the VW style ceramic fuses that are known to corrode on the ends, so I expected to find a questionable fuse.  I checked the voltage at both ends of the fuse and still had the same .01V.  This fuse (and three others) are supplied by the ignition relay using a single 12 gauge wire going to a single fuse block terminal which has a buss to power all four.  When I looked at the wire end on the fuse block, I saw a lot of corrosion.

Clearly the problem.  I didn't have a female spade connector for 12 gauge wire, so I opened up a smaller one and soldered it onto the wire.  I also cleaned the male spade lugs on the fuse panel.

The car then started.  The following day, I stopped by an auto parts store and got the larger wire size spade connector to replace my quick fix.  A final piece of shrink wrap over the connecter and wire end finished everything.  The Ferrari wiring diagram has the wire going to the bottom of the 4 male terminals.  I moved it the one of the middle two, figuring that supplying power to the center of the buss was better than at one end.

I also noticed that some of the rivets holding the fuse information plates to the fuse block covers were missing.  One of the rivets was setting under the fuse area where it had fallen. I looked high and low, but could not find my spares, so I put the loose one on the plate where there was just one left.  I don't peen these over to avoid splitting the cover, but put epoxy on the rivet end sticking through.  Since I had the epoxy mixed, I also put a dab under each plate.

Today was nice weather, i.e. not raining in the Pacific Northwest, so I drove the 330 down to Dennison and swapped cars.  They had the 250 ready to go.

I gave them a short list of issues to fix on the 330, mainly getting it starting easier when it's cold.

The drive home in the 250 was without any of the drama that occurred a couple of weeks ago.