Ferrari 360 Spider

  To change the timing belts on the Ferrari 360, the cams have to be locked in place when the belt comes off. Failure to adequately secure the cams can result in major engine damage.  The Work Shop Manual for this car uses a pair of vice grips to lock the cam sprockets during the belt change. Unless the Vice Grips are really clamped hard, they can easily pop off. Too much clamping force might also damage the bearings at the end of the cam. I thought I could do something more secure and less damaging.  My thought was to create a locking mechanism that wouldn't put pressure on the bearing. To do that, the space between the sprockets would need to be filled with the clamp. I started with a picture and the measurements of the inner diameter of the sprockets and the space between them. This picture shows the areas the can be used to secure the sprockets.  Since this is a plastic clamp, the material bends easily under pressure so I had to come up with a way to move the for...

  One of the important jobs that need to be done periodically on the Ferrari 360 is a "belt service". The timing belts and the rest need to be changed every three to five years.  Once the crankshaft pulley is removed, a spacer needs to be inserted, and the bolt replaced so that the engine can be hand turned to move it to top dead center, and also, after the belts are installed, the engine needs to be turned over several times to seat the belts and checked for tension. Here's the bare crankshaft after the pulley has been removed. I found it cumbersome to turn the crankshaft using the large 36mm socket required as the crankshaft pulley bolt has a short head. With the large socket and heavy ratchet, it's really a two handed job to turn over the engine. Instead of using a short piece of pipe or washers to fill in the pulley space, I decided to make an adjustment that would allow the spacer to fit snugly over the crankshaft and lock into place using the key. To turn the cr...

  The Ferrari 360 is one of the first of that brand where changing the timing belts can be performed in the car, without having to remove the engine. This opens up this important task to the DIY owner and makes maintaining the car simpler. One of the tools required to perform the belt change is the Crankshaft Locking Tool (AV 3207), which allows taking off and torquing the crankshaft pulley nut.  The tool is available for purchase from several outlets with the Hill Engineering (HE) label, and it's a beautiful tool. Cost is considerable for a tool that's used exactly twice every three to five years. I'm certainly not one who scrimps on tools and I typically would buy such a thing. However, it looked like a part that could be 3D printed. Here's AV 3207. This tool protrudes into a gap in the clutch housing.  The first consideration is strength. The Ferrari style tool has a single protrusion that interferes with a single point on the clutch housing. That point has to take a...

The rear glove box in my Ferrari 360 Spider was destroyed by a previous owner who converted it into a tweeter. I received none of the removed parts when I purchased the car. There are two kinds of car owners in the world of classics and exotics. The first kind personalizes their car by doing custom modifications. The second kind buys these cars and brings them back to stock. I'm sure someone after me will undo what I've done. The rear "B" pillars had also been modified into a base speaker. I already found "B" pillars in Crema to replace that mess. To restore my rear glove box to original, I had to buy a complete unit from a breaker (on eBay of course). Finding a Crema colored unit proved to be impossible so after two years of looking, I bought the lightest color unit I could find, which was tan, and somehow turn it into Crema to match my car. Here's the starting point of this project. My rear glove box which had no guts at all, and the cover of the glove...

  I decided to change out the front grills on my Ferrari 360 Spider from the stock to Challenge grills. The Challenge grills have a steel mesh to keep FOD out of the radiator cooling area, vs. the stock grills which just have some fins.  I managed to find both left and right grills on eBay for about $150 each and thought that would be the end of it. After installing them, it seemed like there was a part missing.  Checking the parts list, I found there's supposed to be a frame behind the grills (part #'s 66307300 and 66307400) to channel the airflow into the cooling duct for the radiators. Without the frame, air can spill around the duct and cause a loss of cooling flow. It's a large part with a maximum dimension about 15". I had a choice. Spend over $1000 and purchase new frames, if I could even find them, or make my own. I found a beat up frame on eBay for $80 and used that as a template. The eBay unit had most of the attachment tabs broken or missing but the frame it...

My 360 Spider had scrape pads under the front bumper when I purchased the car. They appeared to be pretty standard, made of HDPE or some other soft plastic, and had suffered some abuse over the years. I wanted to replace them but I didn't want to just buy new ones. Instead, I chose to manufacture my own using Fusion 360 and a Prusa MK3S+. Digitizing an existing part can be tricky, even with a 3D scanner. If the item is relatively flat, a simple method of digitizing uses finely lined (1/10") graph paper and a camera. Line the object up on the graph paper so it starts at an even measurement, and the take a picture directly from above, at a fair distance away from the object to reduce spherical aberration. In this case, the old scrape pad fit easily on one sheet, Fusion 360 has a very nice feature for importing images to use in their system. Once imported, a simple scaling operation gives the height and width. Tracing the outline and holes is quite easily The original scrape pad,...

I was having a problem losing coolant and thought it could be somewhere in the front, like a radiator connection or something like that, so I put the car on the lift and took off the front pan. I found four of the tabs where the front pan attaches to the bumper had broken off. Bad news there! Upon closer examination, it looks like sometime in the past a former owner hit a parking wheel stop hard and crushed the left side of the lower front bumper, luckily, an area painted black. The repair had failed and the material that had been added popped off the bumper and was just hanging on by the bolts used to secure the scrape pads on the bottom of the bumper. After removing the scrape pads, I found the entire area had fractured into pieces as the material that was used in the repair just didn't stick to the bumper. The bumper had to come off and this repair had to be redone properly with better materials and surface preparation. To repair this issue, I'm going to go way beyond what a...