Tools & Techniques: What's Worked, What's Not
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These are the tools, techniques, chemicals, etc which have worked during the restoration. Your mileage may vary, of course. I've also put some misc. pictures here for now too.
Cleaning The Horns
Cleaning The Tool Bag
Cleaning Engine Parts
Painting Engine Parts
Cleaning The Horns
Return To TopTom Yang has an excellent page showing some of the different horn types used by Ferrari. This car has the same Fiamm horns as Tom's 330 America, but with most of the original clear red paint.
This red paint is a one part colored clear (not red under a clearcoat), as the following cleaners removed traces of red:
Denatured Alcohol, Acetone, Lacquer Thinner, and MEK.What DID work well to remove the overspray (silver, bronze, and black!) without touching the original red was NAPTHA, and to a lesser extent POR-15 Marine Clean. Simple Green didn't remove any of the original red, but it also didn't touch the overspray at all.
Here are a couple of pictures to show the colors in this horn assembly. The trumpet seems to have a slightly deeper red than both the Mag-Lite and the Starbucks Coffee mug (I figure these may be available near you, like it or not). This paint has great depth over the machine brush marks on the trumpet, and the close-up shows 'factory' scratches in the brushmarks - these are not in the paint!
Cleaning The Tool Bag
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Miraculously, 7537 came with the majority of its original tools. The bag is in great shape, but had some of that omnipresent grease on it. The tools cleaned up well in just soapy water, with Leatherique helping the leather seal in the grease gun.
What worked to clean the tool bag was first to vacuum, then wipe with very slightly soapy water. Not wanting to risk melting the vinyl with a petroleum product or harsh solvent, I started with denatured alcohol to clean the grease off. This worked well enough, I didn't need to use anything else.
Next I used Leatherique Rejuvenator Oil on the jack bag section, and two heavy applications of Meguiars 'Natural Shine Vinyl + Rubber Protectant' on the rest. Both worked well, with the Leatherique leaving a shinier finish. The Leatherique Rejuvenator Oil followed by their cleaner (Prestine Clean) was fantastic on the leather straps and handle, taking the straps from super stiff (and ready to break) to completely soft.
Cleaning Engine Parts
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During the prepurchase inspection, it was obvious the engine had a good coating of baked on oil on the outside. Worse, the initial assessment found the oil inside had also dried to tar over a nice thick coat of varnish. All great stuff for protecting everything during her 20 year slumber, but it was clogging up those vital oil passages so all had to go. [Pictures 1 + 2]
First I hit it with a general purpose degreaser and an old toothbrush (Gunk General Purpose Degreaser & a Johnson & Johnson firm 'Reach', slightly used). This degreaser is available at all the big hardware stores locally. This removed most of the surface grease, but left the most tenacious of the tar balls, and all of the varnish. [Pictures 3 + 4]
To remove the varnish I tried the following with NO luck: Gunk Degreaser, Carb Cleaner, Brake Cleaner, WD-40, MEK, Acetone, Naptha, Denatured Alcohol, Laquer Thinner, Mequiers Wheel Cleaner, Meguiers Metal Polish, Windex, 'Orange' household cleaner, and aviation Metal Prep.
On the suggestion of several folks, I tried Simple Green. This was available at the supermarket, and in bulk at 'Target' and 'Wal-Mart', both large local general stores. It is now also available through Eastwood who will be happy to sell you up to a 55 gallon drum of the stuff if you need it. The pH was around 9.5, so made my hands tingle, but no damage. Simple Green was great at cleaning the tarballs, and almost all of the varnish, although it took a lot of time and scrubbing. [Picture 5]
Finally, impatient for something faster, I looked through my cabinet of solvents/cleaners etc, and came across the POR-15 Marine Clean I had bought for the undercoating project. It's listed as an alkaline cleaner and safe for metals (apparently). Use gloves, as the pH was 10 plus - this stuff is really really harsh on your hands. But boy it works well with only minimal scrubbing, pulling more brown varnish out even after Simple Green could remove no more. [Picture 6]
Painting Engine Parts
Return To TopDuring cleaning, it was pretty obvious Ferrari painted much of the engine castings inside and out prior to machining. Inside the major castings there is a light tan (tinged with green) coating put there, I'm told, strictly to seal the porous castings. This serves to keep the oil from the coolant, and perhaps to not ooze patina on the garage floor. I'll post pictures of the bits which have this, as I uncover them from the grease and oil.
The exterior also has light green primer (presumably Zinc Chromate or something similar) under the silver paint. I have used the Stits Polyfiber EP-420/EP-430 2 part green epoxy primer (it is a chromate primer, they just don't CALL it that), and it sticks well to clean and etched parts and dries to a hard impervious surface. This is recommended over the spray can type because 1) It's possible the spray type can be dissolved by other solvents, and 2) it isn't an aerosol, so it isn't in the air to breath. The Stits and Randolph Chromate primers are both available at Aircraft Spruce. Also, I have a few tips on prepping and using the stuff on-line here, courtesy of the Kitfox builders list.
The primer was then given a coat of silver aluminum paint. There seem to be many replacement options today, but fwiw, my local restorer uses the Bill Hirsch Auto Aluminum Enamel Paint. It looks like an excellent match to me, and will post some pictures once I get to this point.
http://www.JB330GT.com/WhatWorks.htm
Revised: June 9, 2002 Copyright © 2002 Jonathon Brent
