Cam belt service and detailing of a 348

[Nosevi]

Hi all. Having finally bought my first Ferrari, a '93 348 TS (started a short thread called '348 buyer' asking the odd pertinant and well thought out question) I decided to get a bit of work done to bring her up to scratch. I've looked at a few specialists roughly near me and decided to use Shiltech in Loughborough, leicestershire. Geoff Shilton, the owner, had a lot of time for me when I was looking, showing me over cars, chatting through what to look for etc and has a long background working on Ferraris including on quite a few race going machines. His particular expertise is in race engines having rebuilt and worked on everything from classic F1 engines to Le Mans racers and he's worked with drivers such as Stirling Moss and John Surtees. A brief resume is at this link:

http://www.shiltech-ferrari.com/content/company-history

Anyway my car didn't need anything so grand as an engine rebuild (luckily), just an engine out cam belt service so while that was being done I decided to get the engine and engine bay detailed. The interior of the car could also do with a bit of a tidy up so I'm getting all the leather reconnolised as it's not too bad and a few other cosmetic bits and pieces done by D2Detail who operate along side Shiltech (Link if your interested http://www.d2detail.com/ )

Externally she's not in bad shape with the only real problem being some marks on the roof where it's been stored against a garage wall. This is basically because the previous owner never took the car out when it might rain and left the roof at home. Anyway, that left me with a bit of a dilema. I'm actually a fan of the origional black sills, know they're not everyone's cup of tea but I think they make the car look a bit sleeker and wider when seen in the flesh. I also think they go well with the age of the car. I may change my mind and colour code them but for now they're staying black. The snag is with the plastic roof I need to do something to get rid of the marks which are too deep to easily remove given the textured finish. As a solution I'm going a slightly unconventional route. I like the look of the origional TB so I'm leaving the sills black but colour coding the roof. The hope is that with the roof on she'll retain the lines of the origional TB which I prefer to the black silled TS with black roof on, but obviously I'll have the option of taking the roof off. I've seen completely origional cars, cars with fully colour coded roof and sills or cars with just colour coded sills, never just colour coded roof. I'll see how it looks when done. I guess I can always whimp out and get the sills done.

Anyway, Shiltech have agreed to send pictures as they do the work so I'll post them as I get them. Only words of warning are:

a. Some of them aren't that clear.
b. I'm a bit of a novice as yet so can't tell you a lot about what you're looking at. Any aficionados out there wishing to point stuff out, crack on.

Pics to follow.......

 

[Nosevi]

First stage was dropping the engine out.

 

[Nosevi]

A few shots in the empty engine bay prior to detailing and looking a little lost without her rear end....

 

[cgt]

Looks like a very tidy car :thumbsup:

 

[Nosevi]

Work's progressing on the engine. It's not yet detailed but the cam covers have been repainted and they've started work tidying it up. Also had the fuel lines replaced as one of them was a little worn.

 

[Nosevi]

Looks like a very tidy car :thumbsup:

Thanks mate. As you know I did look around a bit before I found the right one for me. I wanted a car that was mechanically sound but that wouldn't take too much to really bring up to scratch. That pretty much meant finding one that had been looked after as I would, and to be honest it took a bit to find one. These shots are obviously prior to any of the work that D2Detail will be doing apart from the cam covers, so I'm hoping that the end results will be pretty impressive.

 

[Nosevi]

Work on the engine and engine bay is progressing and the detailing really makes a difference. Glad I decided to go the whole hog and get it done.

 

[Nosevi]

Engine bay's getting there. Work now starting on the bodywork. The car was in pretty good nick but there were some areas that were less than perfect. She was the best I saw but as I'm getting the rest done thought I might as well do it properly....

 

[ferrari-nut]

Looking good:thumbsup:

 

[Nosevi]

Looking good:thumbsup:

The engine and engine bay certainly is. The body work was actually the best I saw, though you wouldn't have thought so looking at the pictures. I decided to get any bits I could find seen to so even really minor blemishes are getting sorted. On the engine bay the guys went down to the detail of changing nuts/bolts/clips etc for stainless items which shows up pretty well on the pictures. The bodywork in general was pretty good but I decided to get everything as near to perfect as I can (within reason) which means quite a bit of cosmetic work. There'll be a short delay on the repaint as the paint's being specially ordered to ensure a perfect match but will post pics of the results when they come through.

One area that needed a little more work than the rest was the interior. Again it wasn't bad, better than most, but as I've decided to do this properly (have this done properly if I'm being honest with myself) I'm getting the guys to go to town a bit inside. The leather seems ok and just needs tidying up rather than a retrim which would have been overkill but some of the other surfaces could do with some attention. Again I'll post pics as the guys send them in.

Nos

 

[Michael_360_Modena]

Great looking car, I like the level of detail you are going to.

 

[Nosevi]

Great looking car, I like the level of detail you are going to.

Thanks. She does scrub up well, doesn't she? I have pretty high hopes for the interior but not sure if I want to look when they take bits out. I'll post picks but be hiding behind the sofa myself.

 

[Brendan]

Looking forward to the final pics. Bet you can't wait until you get her back:thumbsup:

 

[cgt]

It certainly looks like you found an example worthy of the 4500 posts in the 348 thread, glad it was not wasted energy

 

[candellara]

Great looking car. It maybe the camera angle, but the toe-in on the rear wheels looks quite excessive. Maybe worth getting the car aligned afterwards:thumbsup:

 

[Nosevi]

Looking forward to the final pics. Bet you can't wait until you get her back:thumbsup:

You're not wrong, quite a bit left to do, though...

 

[Nosevi]

It certainly looks like you found an example worthy of the 4500 posts in the 348 thread, glad it was not wasted energy

Never wasted energy, mate. The trick was finding one that I could get up to 'scratch' without going into silly money. And doing it without driving you all mad, though not sure if I acheived that bit.

 

[Nosevi]

Great looking car. It maybe the camera angle, but the toe-in on the rear wheels looks quite excessive. Maybe worth getting the car aligned afterwards:thumbsup:

Cheers. Re the wheels, they're all being refurbed so need to come off again and wheel arches getting returned to former glory. After all that is done an alignment would be the last step, I'd guess.

 

[cgt]

Never wasted energy, mate. The trick was finding one that I could get up to 'scratch' without going into silly money. And doing it without driving you all mad, though not sure if I acheived that bit.

I wasn't referring to your energy, mine in wading through the posts :laugh:

 

[cgt]

Cheers. Re the wheels, they're all being refurbed so need to come off again and wheel arches getting returned to former glory. After all that is done an alignment would be the last step, I'd guess.

348's respond very well to having alignment set up carefully (ideally on a Hunter machine). The car seems much more sensitive to settings than others but is very rewarding when set up right and I suspect some of the negative things we hear about 348's relate to wrongly set up cars. Evo Magazine this month seem to have no issue with the 348's handling.