[wintech]

Been a while since my last post regarding the Testarossa, however it has arrived, cleared customs and domiciled at home where I am prepping it for registration.

At first inspection since I bought the car it presents as advertised on eBay, paint and body are straight, the motor, engine bay and wheel arches have normal road grime. It is very loud due to the Tubi comp exhaust fitted by the prev owner. The seat belts work, all guages work, doors open and close nicely, no body outer trim broken bent or damaged. The leather had not been cared for much unfortunately, in need of a good clean as ingrained grim in the pores have darkened the cream. A little wear on the edge of the d/s back support from entry and exit over the years. Car drives extremely well(it would wouldn't it) clutch, shift, brakes, steering all smooth, quiet and responsive.

Underside is as it should be, no leaks, weeps or sign of disguising same. Motor starts first time, settles into a smooth idle after a few minutes (it does now as I have just replaced the Tubi with the original for registration)
A consulting Auto Engineer spent 3.5hrs last week doing tick-a-box for compliance with ADR's and found that it will require anti intrusion bars in the doors and flexi brakelines with DOT or similar visible markings on them.

The fascinating thing about introducing a new car to the resident tool trolley, is the car begins to give up its secrets(sometimes reluctantly) on the application of the correct spanners in the right place....ala Spanish Inquisition!!! heh heh.

All in all, the car is not showroom cond as described in the listing,but that is subjective to the individual.There is no evidence of abuse or damage so far. Apart from the front panels having a paint refresh it does appear that the rest of the car is original paint. The main focus for now is to rectify compliance issues and get the car sorted for drives longer than 25Km (restrictive moving permit)

I am documenting the before condition presently as a point of reference for the 'after' shots.

To Be Continued.......

Pete.

[tazandjan]

Pete- She sounds beautiful. Always wanted a TR, but never quite pulled it off. Please post some photos.

The compliance Nazis in Australia are even worse than they are in the US, and ours are pretty bad, so glad to hear you survived with so few changes required.

25 km restrictive permit? Holy cow, they are serious. Looking forward to hearing and seeing how much progress you have made.

Taz
Terry Phillips

[Jimmy Chen Shiba DDS]

Congrats, Paul. Great to hear that the car is what was expected to be. Your phrase, showroom condition, brought back memories of the time when I bought my Dino 246 GT L from a small shop in New York. I was looking for a 206 or 246 L and found one at this place in upstate NY. He claimed the car to be in showroom condition. After several mails back and forth, I decided to buy it. When it arrived, it was no where near the claim, but it was just about what I expected it to be. There were several things that needed to be attended to, but I still own it.

Looking forward to the pics and your stories, Paul. w/ smiles Jimmy

[tazandjan]

Jimmy- Almost sounds like the Romanos from Poughkeepsie. I bought my Dino from them and drove it from NY to Clovis, NM, where I was flying F-111Ds.

Taz
Terry Phillips

[Jimmy Chen Shiba DDS]

Originally Posted by tazandjan

Jimmy- Almost sounds like the Romanos from Poughkeepsie. I bought my Dino from them and drove it from NY to Clovis, NM, where I was flying F-111Ds.

Taz
Terry Phillips

From NY to NM ??? My, my ...what a great way to get familiar with a new Dino !!! Sounds fantastic, assuming that the trip went well. People would enjoy your story. As mentioned earlier, I bought mine online, no visual, no PPI, sent the money in first, trusting the seller. Go ahead, call me stupid, call me naive. Sorry to hijack the thread, back on course.
w/ smiles Jimmy

[wintech]

Jimmy, I wasn't aware that your Dino was originally located stateside! dang! you can relate to the late night calculations of Risk/Reward with sight unseen purchase(some folks would say Balls/Stupidity sight unseen)
Taz, well what can I say lets swap the TR for a G-force wrenching blast in an F111 any day( come over to the Dark Side Luke) I have a story on that one for later!!

The issues re ADR compliance are a pain, but a necessary minefield to navigate for the outcome one desires. Happily I can report a slap in the face for the wonderful faceless few who make these ludicrous laws!! My SAAB Conv had a door off panel repair recently and I looked at the 'Intrusion bar' inside the door. 45mm W x 1.2mm gauge pressed sheet metal sitting against the door skin. The attached pics show the attitude that Ferrari have regarding proper framework supportive structure which is 10x the torsional strength of any flimsy ADR compliant 'tested' case. The tubing would most probably be Chrome Moly and is approximately 22mm dia. with wall section of at least 2mm at a guess. These pics will be attached to the compliance report when it submit for examination.

Today I was removing the flexi brake lines and found the front suspension was showing a reasonable amount of surface corrosion lifting the paint on springs, lower suspension arms and surrounding areas, compound that with the susp bush rubbers all round showing age fatigue and this sucker would be failed!There is always an upside to this as Carguy would agree! a wonderful opportunity to bring the said components up to scratch.

I have attempted to attach some pics, buy i amy need some serious IT counselling on this i!! bugger it!!

[carguy]

Hello Pete - great to hear the car made the trip safely! I've been elbow-deep doing the major on my TR....almost done. With any luck I will be firing up the motor later this afternoon. Here's a before picture showing how much fun I'm having.....

[Boxer]

Originally Posted by tazandjan

The compliance Nazis in Australia are even worse than they are in the US, and ours are pretty bad, so glad to hear you survived with so few changes required.

They are really tough in Australia. I know of an F50 which sat in a bonded warehouse for 2 years before being shipped back out because it could not be modified to meet the regs.

[wintech]

need some suggestions why I am unable to post pics.

[tazandjan]

Pete- On this site, photos are pretty easy to post and Andrew has sizing software installed that will resize photos to fit on the site. First thing is to make sure your photos are jpegs and not tiffs (.tif) or PhotoShop (.PS), or they will not be processed. If they are tiffs or PS, save them as jpegs (.jpg).

Next go down to Manage Attachments and search for the file you want to use. Hit Open in one of the 10 possible slots, then hit Upload. May take a while, but that should do it.

Looking forward to seeing photos of your car.

Taz
Terry Phillips

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by wintech

need some suggestions why I am unable to post pics.

Terry just gave a great tutorial on how to post attachments. One thing I'll add. It should be under 10MB in total. So you can upload 5 x 2MB photos. Or 1 10MB photo.

Unlimited photos per thread. The limit I just mentioned is when uploading.

[wintech]

Thanks Terry/Andrew I only have files as jpeg. but they wouldn't load from manage files for some reason, but here we go again, give it another shot

[wintech]

Well, that was encouraging!! pics are up, more to come as
been up my elbows assessing a few of the quirks and issues that the car may have with registration. Had to have an automotive engineer inspect the car prior to the roadworthy examination.
Side intrusion (impact) bars were a worry however after popping the door trim and seeing the very significant tube running full length of the door inner it is 10x stronger than the flimsy pressed sheetmetal fitted as intrusion bars for the Oz market(and possibly others)

I removed the Tubi exhaust as it was 110Db and the engineer who examined it wrote it down to 95Db as he said, its a factory Ferrari exhaust what can you say....I said naught! Seatbelts! damn, thay have been a challenge the factory Klippan sash rectracables have no serial# listed on the ADR database so he could not comment. The Flexi brakelines have to show SAE or DOT markings and were looking a bit old and weatherworn so I have replaced them for the examination.

After assessing, the car just needs white park lites facing forwards, the RHD sealed beams were cheap as chips. The seat belts... they gave me a form to fill out for an ADR exemption as the car needs to remain as factory...waiting to hear back from the Technical section of main roads.

The park lites were a cinch, removed the bulbs from the side markers F/R, rewired the parklites to a pair of LED Narva's inside the grill and looks stock.Will be able switch it back to original quite simply.

So I am just waiting for the call to represent the car and she should be sweet.

[wintech]

some of the work I have had to do other than cosmetic as i have come across it.
The louvre support bar in the front of the engine cover was broken across the bolt holes, by the look of it, this would be a common issue as the design is very flimsy. I set it up in a jig and TIG'd the ends together and reinforced the load bearing section with more material and blended it in, very strong now.

The battery cover hinges were broken and looked like they had been ripped backwards too far...in the process of modifying a set of off the shelf hinges to suit.

The fuse compartment cover, broken in 3 places, mainly corners and the lip, set it back together with Devcon but it was a tad brittle so I will use a epoxy fixative as it needs to be more durable, nice clean breaks so that is a help.The carpet in the luggage comp had been replaced and the seamed edges catch on the lid, hence it broke.

The interior has taken up most of the detailing time, the leather has had tacit care taken over the years and a close inspection shows ingrained grime and dust in the pores it is coming along nicely but labor intensive.

[Barry]

Pete,
Sounds like a labour of love . They don't make it easy for you over there do they? The TR looks great, congrats and good luck in getting the registration process completed.

[Jimmy Chen Shiba DDS]

Who said life was easygoing down there !!?? Car looks great, by the way. w/ smiles Jimmy

[Sandy Eggo]

Lovely car but if that's Crema interior, you got some work to do!!

Here's a photo of mine. Every time I look at it...I wanna lick it!

[Boxer]

Originally Posted by Sandy Eggo

Here's a photo of mine. Every time I look at it...I wanna lick it!

I have eaten off plates that were not that clean.

[wetpet]

what a pain. you can put wheels on a bathtub around here and get it registered for the street as a hot rod. the tr would be historic and not even get an inspection at all!

[wintech]

Decided to be more proactive with getting the car registered as waiting for the response from Main Roads on the seatbelt exemption could take any length of time they decide on!
I assumed that the chassis fittings and anchor points for the belts would be generic for all markets as the UK cars have the 3 point retractable belts instead of the passive type setup on USA/CAN cars.
On removing the interior trim to test my assumption, I was encouraged to find the 3 required anchor points for the lap/sash retractable belts. A trip to the local auto supplies store and found a set of Klippan conversion belts for older cars with non retractable lap sash belts which are now in place for a repeat examination and a pass methinks!!

Nothing needed to be adapted or modified in the changeover, just a small channel left where the passive track resided. Bit of a shame really as the passive system works faultlessly, but I want my car approved to register...AND DRIVE!!

Being Fathers Day, my curiosity and discovery was a gift.