Scuderia Rampante

Posted on March 30, 2019 by dhill

Saturday, March 30

This month’s Lotus Colorado meeting was held in Erie at Scuderia Rampante, a high-end Ferrari restoration shop. Calling the place a high-end Ferrari restoration shop is a bit redundant, I guess, but I think I can get away with it. If you had a Ferrari and wanted some work done on it, how far would you be willing to send it? They’re working on a car that, when they’re done, will go back to Hong Kong. I’m not sure there is anywhere farther from Hong Kong than Erie, Colorado.

They called the event a “shop tour”. That probably overstates it. To me, a tour implies some sort of guide telling us what we’re seeing: what’s important or interesting. Nothing like that today, we just wandered around the place. Several employees were there to answer questions, so we weren’t completely on our own.

This was not our first visit. We were here a few years ago. Not much has changed, and for somebody not very interested in cars it might be fair to ask what there is to see a second time. For those of us quite interested in cars, there’s always something to see. I’m not particularly a Ferrari fan – I’ll never own one and probably never drive one – but I think they’re fascinating examples of engineering and technology.

And it’s not just Ferraris. There are a variety of other cars there as well. Most are stored in a giant rack but a number are in various states of disassembly. To do engine work on most of the Ferraris, they simply remove the entire engine, transmission, and rear suspension and put that assembly on a table or rack.

As I said, I’m not that into Ferraris. For the most part, I can’t look at one and say, “That one is a 430 and that one is a California.” I don’t know what any of them is worth (other than more than I’ll ever spend on a car) or how much it might cost to have one worked on. On many of them, I’d guess a clutch service would go for perhaps as much as I paid for the Elise. So I won’t go into any detail on any of the cars I saw.

On prominent display were an F40 and an F50 side by side. The F40 is the red one, the F50 is the black one. The F40 was built between 1987 and 1992. I have no idea how many of these they made. A quick look on the internet tells me if you want one today, you can expect to spend about $1.6 million. The F50 dates from 1995-1997. You’d need to sell two F-40’s and kick in an extra few hundred thousand dollars beside to pick one up. I’m guessing you don’t get to see these cars side by side very often.

I know even less about Lamborghinis than I do Ferraris. This one is an example of the first Lamborghini model made. It’s a 350GT. They hadn’t yet started naming their cars after bulls. There was a 350GT and a 400GT. If I understood correctly, this car was an interim car – a 350GT with the motor from a 400GT, which makes it quite rare. Even so, it probably could be had (were you to find one for sale) for somewhere in the neighborhood of a million.

I thought the Fleetwood was interesting. I don’t know what year it was, but it was a giant. I believe this one is a 1952 Fleetwood Seventy Five limousine. It’s about a mile long and has more chrome on one car than on all Cadillacs built in the last decade. Looking at it, I couldn’t help but wonder what the thing weighed. I was guessing it might be 6,000 pounds. That was way off. In fact, these cars were closer to 4,700. For comparison, my 1967 Imperial was 4,900. The Imperial had a giant 440cid engine, while this Fleetwood was motivated by an eight cylinder 331cid motor that cranked out 190hp. Again, for comparison, my Elise generates 190hp.

They don’t just work on cars here, they store them as well. I didn’t count them, but they can probably stack something like forty cars in this giant rack. I’m sure it’s quite the operation to get one off the top: move the bottom one out of the way, rotate the stack down, take the next one out, repeat. Every car in there looked to be hooked up to a battery tender, so you could just jump right in and drive them off, once you managed to get to the one that belongs to you. Not all of them are super-exotics. In this photo, the car on the other side of the Testarossa is a modern Ford Mustang. And there were a few examples of Detroit iron from the same era as the Fleetwood above.

Here’s one of the engines they had taken out of the car. It’s the engine, transmission, and suspension. This one was hooked up to a device that lets them run the thing. I wasn’t in the room when they fired it up, but it was much quieter than I expected. I guess you’ll get that, given the size of the muffler hanging off the back.

It wasn’t just cars. In the back corner they had a little sitting area with a couple of stuffed bears (including a polar bear smoking a cigar and holding a pool cue), a couple of cabinets filled with knick-knacks, and some vintage race posters on the walls. This portrait of Steve McQueen caught my eye. It’s made up of articles, photos, and advertisements from magazines.

Not a bad place to spend a Saturday morning.

Bugatti Type 35A

Posted on June 25, 2018 by dhill

Looks like I’ve made a significant error here. This is a Type 37A, not a 35A.

Sunday, June 24

We’re trying to mix things up a bit for our monthly LoCo meetings. Normally we meet on a Tuesday evening, alternating between north and south locations in metro Denver. Not everybody can make it on a Tuesday, though, so we’re mixing in the occasional weekend date. For our June meeting, Victor kindly hosted us at High Mountain Classics where we had pizza and a tour of his shop.

My last visit here was a year ago when I picked up my car (after the ordeal of the camshafts). I’m still missing the box of stuff I (used to) carry in the boot: my front license plate, some tools, a towel, the bag for my soft top, and so on. So when Victor kicked off the tour I offered to buy a beer for anybody who spotted my box. Sadly, I had no need to make good on that offer. The box is still missing and I need to start replacing those items.

In the shop today were an interesting variety of cars. There were two nice Cadillacs, an old Chevy, a Porsche, Jim’s X180R, and a few others. High Mountain Classic’s raison d’être, of course, is restoring pre-war Bugattis. There was only one resident in the shop so it garnered a lot of attention.

This example is a 1927 Type 35A. The Type 35A, nicknamed ‘Tecla’ was an ‘inexpensive’ version of the Type 35 and made its first appearance in May of 1925. Its nickname was given by the public after a maker of imitation jewelry. There’s a tenuous Lotus connection here. Tecla is an anagram of the French word for brilliant: eclat. And, of course, there’s a model of Lotus called the Eclat.

While we’re on the subject of names, the modern Bugatti Chiron is named for the oldest man to ever race in Formula 1. Louis Chiron was 55 when he took sixth place in the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix. But he made his name behind the wheel of various Type 35’s in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

The engine of the Type 35A was a reliable unit borrowed from the Type 30. It used three bearings, had smaller valves, coil ignition, and produced less horsepower than the 90 or so of its Type 35 sibling. Only 139 examples of the Type 35A were created.

It looks like quite the beast to drive. It’s not a big car, and the driver doesn’t so much sit in it as on it. The tires are skinny and look quite hard; and of course tire compounds have come a long way in the last 90 years. There are a number of brake levers and cables run along the outside of the bodywork. Even with the old brake technology, I’m sure it produces sufficient stopping power. Any more and it would be too easy to lock up the wheels.

I found a video of this particular car being driven at Laguna Seca for a reunion race back in 2010. He turns a lap of 2:09.6. For comparison, in my modern car on modern street tires, I managed a 1:55. In the video, when he is following another Bugatti, you can see the other driver leaning out of the car in the right-hand turns. I’m sure it was quite the thrilling car to drive fast, particularly with no racing harness or even three-point seat belts.

I love that the owners of these seven figure works of art aren’t shy about mounting their cameras to the cars. This is not the first time I’ve seen a GoPro adhesive mount on one of these cars. I particularly like the attention to detail of the period-correct wire reinforcement of the fastener, even for the anachronistic camera mount. It was seeing a GoPro mount on a car in this shop a few years ago that convinced me it was okay to put one on my car. If it’s okay to glue one to a multi-million dollar antique I shouldn’t feel bad about putting one on my car.

Update

I do all this research on this particular car, even finding a video of it in action. But I somehow miss on that page that the car is a Type 37A, not a Type 35A. If I’d have known much about Bugattis, my error would have been obvious: the 37A is a four cylinder and the 35A is an eight. You can’t take me anywhere.

The 37A is almost identical to the 35A: same body, same chassis, same wire wheels, same wheelbase. Bugatti produced 286 of the Type 37’s, 76 of them the supercharged Type 37A. In the supercharged version, performance was greatly improved over the naturally aspirated model, giving the car a top speed of 122 mph. The 37A models were raced in some of the world’s greatest endurance races at the time, including the Mille Miglia, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the Targa Florio.

The Ordeal of the Camshafts

Posted on June 7, 2017 by dhill

Last summer, you may recall, my check engine light came on when I was in Monterey. I spent a sleepless night in advance of my track day at Laguna Seca after reading horror stories about terminal misfire codes. When I got to the track I had a short discussion with Rob Dietsch, an expert on the Elise. I was able to run that day, with only minor difficulties presented by an open thermostat.

These cars have been known to have issues with the camshafts. The hardening sometimes fails, causing abnormal wear on the cams and resulting in serious problems. Rob said, “You should have your cams inspected every 30,000 miles. When’s the last time you did it?” Let’s just say I was overdue.

Months later, I finally got around to scheduling an appointment to have somebody do the cam inspection. I dropped the car off at High Mountain Classics on February 25. I won’t go into all the factors that led me to going there. I’ve toured the shop a few times over the years and seen a variety of interesting vehicles there, including eight figure Bugattis, a ’50’s era Formula 1 Ferrari, and other assorted museum pieces. The owner, Victor, is a Lotus aficionado and fellow Lotus Colorado member. Although the modern Elise isn’t exactly in their wheelhouse, I had no doubt they’d take good car of me.

In addition to the cam inspection, I’d have them replace the thermostat (which had given me no problems since that day at Laguna Seca), see if they could do anything with my failed left rear turn signal, and a couple of other minor, things.

They were quite busy with projects and it took a week or so before they got to my car. So it was approaching mid-March when Victor called. “You brought it in just in time. The hardening is beginning to fail.”

Notice the discoloration

We talked about whether I should consider upgrading the camshafts to performance parts. It didn’t take much research before I decided to stick to the stock Toyota camshafts. I briefly considered the Stage 2 camshafts from Monkeywrench Racing. Installing those would require replacing the valve springs and they recommend also upgrading to titanium retainers and replacing the valves as well. That’s quite a bit of extra expense, and the result would be a car that’s more fun on the track but less drivable on the street. I enjoy my track time but have no interest in making it harder to drive on the streets. It was an easy decision to stick with the stock parts.

So they picked up a camshaft from the local Toyota dealer and installed it. When they put it all back together, they idled the engine for about forty minutes then took it out for a test drive. Where it promptly died. We were on the phone for a while making sure it wasn’t something silly, like the alarm or the inertia switch. They got it back to the shop, took it apart, and went about diagnosing the problem.

… down the rabbit hole …

It quickly became obvious that something had gone seriously wrong. There were gouges in the cam journals. The head would have to be replaced. When the cams were machined, they left burrs inside. Some of these dislodged and tore through the motor. Victor took the part to the Toyota dealer. They inspected the brand new cams in dealer stock and they had the same issue. It looked like Toyota had a bad batch of cams and poor quality control.

Clam off, factory service manual open

Victor had no doubt that Toyota would reimburse him for the cost of rebuilding the top of my motor. They had him provide estimates from two other shops for the repair. Toyota sent a couple of engineers to Victor’s shop and inspected my car. They agreed that the damage was done by their bad cams. At one point it looked like the only obstruction in making us whole was that we couldn’t enter my Lotus VIN into their warranty software because it wasn’t a Toyota VIN.

Week after week went by with no progress. Finally they agreed to replace their bad parts with good ones but under no circumstances would they cover the cost of repairing the damage their bad part caused. In the end, the camshafts that were finally installed had same defect. Rather than wait for another (potentially bad) cam from Toyota, Victor’s machine shop cleaned them up.

Now things were a bit uncomfortable for Victor. His shop concentrates on old cars; they don’t do much with modern engines. Having his guys work on my car meant they couldn’t work on their bread and butter. And he had to carry the cost pending a trip to small claims court. He felt the best route was to subcontract the complicated repairs out to an expert. So he got a hold of Ryan Chapman, factory certified Lotus mechanic.

This turned into a potential scheduling problem for me as Ryan would do the work on the side. He did the work in Victor’s shop, lacking some of his specialized tools, working on weekends. I was getting pretty nervous about the calendar. See, I had already paid for a track day in Austin at Circuit of the Americas on June 11. It’s the most I’ve ever paid for a track day and it’s non-refundable.

Ryan came through like a champ and got it done on Saturday, June 3. I was ecstatic when Victor confirmed it would be ready for me to pick up at the end of the LoCo drive. Then I was crestfallen when he told me it couldn’t be ready before Tuesday. A sensor had failed and the fan wouldn’t turn on. He couldn’t get a replacement until Monday. But in the end, he got it working by disconnecting and cleaning it.

To recap, I took it in to have the thermostat replaced and the cams inspected. In the end, the final tally was a new thermostat, new cams, a brake flush, and new rear brake pads. The new cams came the hard way, with a complete rebuild, utilizing a new head and new cam caps, with the old valves, springs, retainers, and lifters. Everything cleaned up and flushed out. New fluids all around: oil (with upgraded filter), coolant, brake and clutch.

Victor will have his day in small claims court sometime in July. He showed me all the evidence he’s put together: the defective cam, with burrs, photos of the other defective cams, metal chips, and so on. I asked if I could have the cams as a souvenir after the case is over.

I had a nice chat with Ryan on Monday. He talked a bit about the data dump from my engine. I didn’t make notes, so I may have the numbers wrong. But he said my engine has been between 7,000 and 8,000 RPM for more than three hours. This is about three times longer than any other Elise he’s worked on. I’ve had a massive amount of wide open throttle as well. I’ve done somewhat less than double the typical miles he’s seen, so that’s a factor. But a bigger part is the thirty track days.

So now I’m trying to get everything ready for my trip to COTA with a pretty short lead time. My passenger headlight is out. My left rear turn signal has been out for years now. Ryan says he has a ballast I can put in that will likely fix the problem. And I haven’t been on the second cam yet. Victor recommended not wringing its neck in the first hundred miles. Ryan says I can, but that I shouldn’t run a steady RPM level on my way to Austin – modulate between fifth and sixth to vary my engine speed.

Oh, and the brakes squeal like mad. They’re fine except when braking at under 5 MPH. So it sounds like hell every time I come to a complete stop. I’m hoping this goes away soon. My previous set of pads only made that noise occasionally, and not nearly as loud.

Finally, it just so happened that Victor moved his shop from Greeley to Ft. Collins while my car was under his care. I had a box in the boot with some things I’d like to have with me on my trip, like a can of fix-a-flat, my front license plate, a tire gauge and some tools. And my volleyball knee pads. I wear them on track days so my left knee doesn’t get all bruised up. We went through his shop but didn’t see the box. I’m sure he’ll track it down, but I don’t expect I’ll have it before I leave.

Later…

Chad kindly picked up the ballast from Ryan and agreed to supervise my light bulb replacement. It took me an hour to do the job, because I’m software, not hardware. It’s the third time I’ve performed the operation and I’m still totally inept. But I needed to get it done because I’ll be violating Rule #2 by doing some night driving this weekend.

Unfortunately, the ballast was a no-go. It was as easy as Ryan said, took about two minutes but still no workie.

The car was in the shop for 100 days. Feels like forever.

The noise the brakes make is embarrassing.

Scuderia Rampante

Posted on May 9, 2016 by dhill

Saturday, May 7

Scuderia Rampante is a Ferrari restoration and repair shop in Erie, Colorado. They’ve been in business for something like forty years. Skip arranged a shop tour for the Miata and Lotus clubs. It turned out to be not so much a tour of the facility as the opportunity to wander freely about the place.

Life sized Matchbox collection

It’s loaded with interesting sights. In addition to all sorts of exotic Ferrari automobiles, there were cars of other marques, a helicopter and a half and two stuffed bears. Some of the cars are there in storage but most seemed to be undergoing some repair or other.

I seem to gravitate to the unusual. Certainly it could be said that wandering around a world class Ferrari shop is unusual in itself. For the most part, though, I’ve seen these cars on the road; out in the wild so to speak. But there were a couple of notable “which of these is not like the others” cars.

In the small show-room like entryway was a Ferrari I’d not only never seen before, but had never heard of. In the first couple years of the fifties, Ferrari produced eighty two copies of the 212 Inter. Powered by a three carburetor V-12 that pumped out as much as 165 HP it was capable of hitting 116 mph and going from 0 to 60 in just 10.5 seconds. My how automotive technology has advanced. Someone there told Michael this car is worth $18 million, but a quick search indicates it’s more likely in the $2 to $3 million range.

Ferrari 212 Inter

The 212 isn’t unusual because it’s a Ferrari, it’s unusual because of its vintage and rarity. There was at least one other unusual car of the same vintage, if not the same rarity. In the rack I couldn’t help but notice the Wolseley 16/60 with the Bahamas license plate. This is another car I’ve never even heard of. It’s not out of place here, though. Although the car was made by BMC it was styled by Pininfarina. About 63,000 of these were made.

Wolseley 16/60

Scattered throughout the shop floor were various Ferrari drivetrains under repair. Some where just the engine, others were both engine and transmission. I was quite interested in the flat 12. There was a red Testarossa in the giant car rack with a license plate “FLAT 12” but this engine probably belonged to the black Testarossa on the floor.

Flat 12

Scuderia Rampante wasn’t the only place we went on Saturday. We started at cars and coffee in Louisville and ended at a show put on my Hagarty’s and Auto Archives. Several weeks ago I had the pleasure of seeing a Porsche 918 on US-36 where I managed to get a crappy cell-phone picture. The same car was at Louisville. I hadn’t seen it there before.

We were planning on having hot dogs at the Hagarty event. By the time we got there the weather had deteriorated quite a bit. No longer just chilly and overcast, it was now raining lightly. We elected not to stand in line in the rain for hot dogs. After a quick tour of the new home of Auto Archives we made our way home. It turned out to be excellent timing, as we were hit by an intense hail storm. Most of the hail was BB sized or pea sized but some stones were more like marbles.

Porsche 918 Spyder

Delahaye Type 145

Posted on May 30, 2015 by dhill

Today Jerry and I went on a tour of the Bugatti restoration shop in Berthoud. This was my third time to the shop. Of course, it’s not the shop that’s the attraction, but the cars. Today there were a handful of Bugattis there, along with a fairly modern Ferrari and a couple of Lotus. The Bugattis are always interesting, but the draw today was the Delahaye Type 145.

Emile Delahaye started building cars in Tours, France in 1894. In 1896 he entered two cars in the Paris-Marseille-Paris race, finishing 8th and averaging 12.5 miles per hour. These nineteenth century cars weren’t very powerful – one model had a 2.2 liter engine pumping out four and a half horsepower.

The state of the art had improved somewhat by 1937, when this car was built. In those days, the racing scene was dominated by government sponsored Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union. In an effort to get French auto makers to develop race cars capable of beating the Nazis, the leftist alliance Front populaire (which included, among others, the French Communist Party and Radical and Socialist Party) sponsored the ‘Prix du Million’.

The race was held at the notorious Autodrome de Montlhéry, site of Alberto Ascari’s death a dozen years before. Actually a time trial, each car was required to drive 16 laps (120 miles) and average 91 mph from a standing start. The prize was a million francs, which was a bit over $40,000 at the time but would be close to a million US dollars today.

Delahaye’s answer was the Type 145, chassis 48771 specifically. The car had a 4.5 liter V-12 engine pumping out 220 horsepower. To make the engine as light as possible, the cylinder heads were made of an aluminum alloy and the block was cast in a magnesium alloy. Capable of 160mph, this car took the win driven by Rene Dreyfus.

In addition to winning that race, this car also finished 1st in 1938 Grand Prix de Cork Ireland and Grand Prix dePau, France, as well as 4th at the 1938 Mille Miglia.

This car is worth in the neighborhood of $20 million.

Thanks much to Victor for sharing his shop with us and to Skip for organizing the event.