1984 Ferrari Mondial QV coupe - a sensible vehicle for Alaska

I heard about a little VW car show in town today so me and the other Mondial owner swung by after meeting up to give him back service manuals I borrowed. We were just spectators but they encouraged us to park inside. The red headed Italian stepchildren section.
 

Lots of fun VW stuff out today:

The owner of the local high end Porsche/VW resto shop Culmination Motorsports brought his personal car. Magnesium torq thrusts from the 60s and amazing engine bay.

Meaty Scirocco

A couple from Argentina drove up to Alaska to hang out here for a bit.

We joked with all the VW guys about the VW parts on our cars and how we need to cross reference part numbers to buy the VW version of everything to not pay the yellow box tax. On the way home I noticed my fan didn't kick on. Checked the fuses and it was all good. Bypassed the fan switch and it came right on. 

Of course a VW part breaks right after stopping by the VW meet. 

New one on order and $10 later I'll be good to go next weekend.

My new fan switch came so I swapped it out this week.

Swapped quick and minimal coolant spilled. Afterwards I noticed my thermostat looked like it had never been touched. While I'm doing cooling system stuff, I'm swapping that out too.

Annnnd it's stuck.

After chopping up the right size tool, it gets taken behind the woodshed.

And after working a blade in and repeating for an hour we have success.

The original plastic plunger thermostat has had it. New all metal version ordered and all the parts I pulled off go in the ultrasonic cleaner in the meantime.

I also tore into the battery tray area and removed the bent brackets, por15'd the tray, and add an Oreillys tie down(not pictured because that's pretty boring).

I ran a new harness through the front slats so I could use another maintainer I had. The old Sears unit installed in the frunk was a pain in the ass and now I won't have to pop the hood each time to plug it in.

While I wait for my parts order, I take a crack at putting some paste shoe polish on the worn seat bolsters and head rest. 

After a couple of days of drying and buffing:

Not perfect but better. I got in and out multiple times wearing a white t shirt to see if it transferred. Nothing so far but the first few sunny drives I'll wear ratty clothes just in case. Hopefully by next weekend all will be buttoned up for some friends coming in to town July 4th weekend.

If the leather feels hard on the seats, this stuff is really good:

Slippery said:

If the leather feels hard on the seats, this stuff is really good:

 

Thanks for the recommendation. The seats aren't hard but they were very dry. Keeping them moist has helped a lot and a couple times a week I just added a little more Meguiars. Getting it out of the garage and parking it at work outside in the sun occasionally makes the interior feel better by probably heating up all the product I have added..

Parts came today and reassembly took 30 min. This view caught my eye.

That's how you do a cold air intake. ;)

Metal plunger assembly instead of plastic:

More 'Merican coolant hose and Eyetalian thermostat. OEM temp thermostat and the fan switch went from 180 to 167F. Just clicks on a little early but car goes to full temp and stays right there.
 

Pic of the aftermarket bleeder screw that makes getting the air out of this system a breeze:

This solid 180 is a welcome sight after a hard drive:

This should make the car much more consistent and reliable I hope. So far I feel like I've caught up on a few needed maintenance things for $200 ish bucks. Not terrible and the more I get familiar with it, the less intimidating it gets. I may even work myself up for timing belt replacement when it's time.

I've got some (7!) friends from GA coming up this next week for the holiday and I'm glad I don't have a broken POS in the garage and we can go for some rides.

I've got some (7!) friends from GA coming up this next week for the holiday and I'm glad I don't have a broken POS in the garage and we can go for some rides.

In for the pic of 8 guys in a Mondial!

This is awesome!

Well would ya look at that?! It's always fun to see my junk in print. 

 

Gearbox oil and fuel filter change coming up shortly and then more wheel time in peak summer driving season.

Slippery said:

I've got some (7!) friends from GA coming up this next week for the holiday and I'm glad I don't have a broken POS in the garage and we can go for some rides.

In for the pic of 8 guys in a Mondial!

We didn't all ride in the car at the same time BUT we did take the Prius about 700 miles last week. 75*F and no rain. They've been here in January before but never in summer. I think I've got them hooked.

This week though....it's just garage weather. 

I wanted to do another check of the plugs since I've put a few hundred miles on the car now and they look perfect. Fueling wise the Bosch K Jetronic has surprised me.

Many Ferrari 308/Mondial gear boxes have 2nd gears that lock you out until the car has some temp in the fluid then it works fine. They don't grind or become notchy then just don't want you in until they are ready. Virtually every one of these I've driven has done this but I found some well respected shops have started using Redline MTL in the last few years and many have reported the slow shifting into 2nd goes away. From what I understand, the passages are pretty small and until the oil is warmed up it just doesn't flow enough to move through quickly. Instead of the factory 80w90, the Redline MTL is 75w80. Pretty thin stuff but several bigger specialists have recommended it as they havent see any increased wear in years with people running it. 

Pull the fender liner and get to work:

Remove the fill plug, transfer case drain plug, overflow plug, gearbox drain plug. All clean of debris and the fluid looked clean and new but it was unknown what type it was or the age. New copper crush washers that I had in my gift box came in handy.

Once everything is drained, a funnel with a long hose is fished down and you fill from the top of the drop gear until it runs out of the overflow hole.

Everything is buttoned back up once the fluid is almost done dripping. While I'm under there, I notice a remanufacture sticker on the backside of my shocks (I couldn't get a good picture of it but the front looks like this):

From my records it looks like they were rebuilt in 2017 about 600 miles ago:

I don't know if Koni still rebuilds these but I guess you can't buy them new anymore, just NOS stuff. Either way the car handles really well and I have no clunks or signs they are worn out so maybe they really did get the internals refreshed.

Once the torrential downpours stop, I'm itching to get in some more miles a little furthur out of town.

This week I did a couple things. I picked up some of the Obenauf's leather conditioner per Slippery's recommendation since I found some on sale at Cabelas of all places. 

I got the HD preservative in a little jar like this:

I just applied it to the seats so far but it hasn't been sunny enough to get the interior hot and have it all work in.

I also deleted the cold start valve as detailed on the Birdman 308 page here.

I really hated cold starts revving this thing to 2500 with cold 15w50 oil for a few minutes just to heat up the cats. Only the U.S. cars got this and so I have no problem disabling it. This car will have such limited use and no starts outside of a heated garage that it won't matter anyway. Interestingly, it doesn't actually start harder in really cold weather with this done, it just doesn't rev way too high during warmup anymore.

I put about 80 miles on the car the last two days and it is running and shifting really well. The Redline MTL is noticeably better in a cold gearbox and the shift to 2nd can be done immediately now and warm it feels the same as before. While I was driving it this weekend, I took along the GoPro to record the current soundtrack with the Ansa exhaust. I wanted to have it on record in case to help decide if I should add a Tubi or Quicksilver exhaust later on. They are all original 40 year old pipes in pretty good shape but they will have to go eventually. 

Video:

There is a custom exhaust setup on a eBay right now that gives me an idea of something that could be made. The welding sucks on this thing so I won't be buying it for $500 shipped yet im not sure a local exhaust shop here could do a much better job quality or price wise. Something like that design with high flow cats is what I would be shooting for.

Next up is getting an actual detail to get rid of the years of cat scratches. I'm not going to take it to the same place that does my wife's Prius so I need to ask around to find somebody that actually knows what they are doing on old thin paint. 

Slippery said:

If the leather feels hard on the seats, this stuff is really good:

Working the second coat of Obenauf's into the seats by hand as the directions say when I notice "manure acid" is an ingredient. Cool! Glad I'm elbow deep in it. 

It starts super shiny then goes away after a few days. Each time the leather is keeping more moisture in it. 

In reply to crankwalk (Forum Supporter) :

Looks like it RESISTS manure acid. For when you haul natural fertilizer in your Ferrari!

In reply to Sunflowerbw :

Oh sweet Jesus you're right. I thought it didn't smell like E36 M3 but once I saw manure I finished up and washed my hands profusely 

If only Biff would've known about Obenauf. 

Weird delamination thing going on here in the corner of the windshield that I needed to fix. 
 

There, I fixed it.

So these are mechanically the same as a 308 of the same era?  Is there a Ferrari specialist up near you if you need them?  A cream puff is $80k?

I noticed that some of your hose clamps are rusty...hie thee to a marine store and buy some AWAB hose clamps and replace them all, in order to maintain control of your coolant and avoid those pesky highway-side stops. They also sell cheap plastic covers for the "tail" of the clamp so you don't get carved up when you work in there.

ANSA exhaust all the way! The aftermarket never sounds as good, there is almost always drone and the value of a non-stock car is less; unless you want to track it.

docwyte said:

So these are mechanically the same as a 308 of the same era?  Is there a Ferrari specialist up near you if you need them?  A cream puff is $80k?

Yes, basically a crew cab 308. Same engine and gearbox. Somehow, people think of those as fast and Mondials slow. 

No, there isn't a specialist near by. I guess I'm going to have to become special. 

Yes, some of these with very low miles and 3.4s are on the high end of the spectrum. Most people don't know the difference between a 2v Mondial 8, a 4v, a 3.2, or a 3.4. They just know they heard "Mondial slow, Mondial bad" once. Most people that say that are either high end collectors or have never even seen a Mondial in person. 

https://www.hagerty.com/media/market-trends/hagerty-insider/is-this-83000-mondial-the-death-of-cheap-ferraris/

Grunion said:

I noticed that some of your hose clamps are rusty...hie thee to a marine store and buy some AWAB hose clamps and replace them all, in order to maintain control of your coolant and avoid those pesky highway-side stops. They also sell cheap plastic covers for the "tail" of the clamp so you don't get carved up when you work in there.

Yeah, I'm getting around to it to making it prettier under the hood. I'm going to drive it while I can drive it and I'm going to work on it the other 8 months of the year.

In reply to crankwalk (Forum Supporter) :

Oddly enough there's a silver one with 83k miles on it near me for sale for $42k

The rust means that a clamp is on its way to failing, I'm not suggesting it's for looks! The car looks great by the way, I had a friend who had a (72?) 365 GTB 2 plus 2, kind of a family Ferrari. I found I could "hang the end out" with just throttle and for a neophyte like me that was magic. He had ANSA exhaust and Borranis on his. V12 magic and a stick.

Grunion said:

The rust means that a clamp is on its way to failing, I'm not suggesting it's for looks! The car looks great by the way, I had a friend who had a (72?) 365 GTB 2 plus 2, kind of a family Ferrari. I found I could "hang the end out" with just throttle and for a neophyte like me that was magic. He had ANSA exhaust and Borranis on his. V12 magic and a stick.

Yeah I guess I'm just saying I think rusty hose clamps don't equal imminent failure. This car was quite the ordeal to get/ship/get roadworthy so I'm just going to chill out with replacing everything that needs replacing immediately. As I go through the engine with more planned maintenance, it will get there. 

I waited til Napa had one of those "buy a bucket and get 20% off" sales to buy fuel lines and the filter.

I have so many buckets from them.

Most of the original braided line had been replaced already but there was some on the fuel accumulator and vent hoses so that was swapped out.

Not terrible but not the easiest fuel filter I've ever done either.

That should be all the fluids and filters on this thing.

Last little paint touch up I did for the weekend:

Crusty emblems with white paint gone.

Prius touch up paint pen worked well for this. I don't think anyone will notice the script is Toyota Blizzard white pearl. This was the most use this pen has gotten since our Prius is an unloved appliance.
 

The end of next month I'm booked for a paint correction detail to get rid of the swirl marks and cat scratches. Until then more miles are going on.

Random photo from a couple weeks ago that cracks me up. The big crew cab 4 seater Ferrari looks absolutely tiny next to a modern Lexus crossover.

I needed to move the car to put tires on the CBX this morning and of course when I hit the key, nothing. The battery stays on the maintainer but this thing had nothing left. I SHOULD have replaced it when I worked on the battery tray and added the charger harness but it was acting fine for a while. 

Luckily Batteries Plus had a good sale on Optima Red Tops if anybody needs one. Here are the codes I used and it let me double up.

With the $22 core it was $195ish total. Regular old Napa Gold are so expensive now I'll buy an Optima at that price.

More tweaking to make this size fit.

It's tighter but it fits. A quick check with the multimeter and the voltage when charging is good too.