Photography by Tim Suddard
Our Ferrari was leaking a fair bit of oil and, after a bit of investigation with Jessie Spiker at Spiker Motorsports, we found the source: the center of the front distributor.
There is a seal on the distributor shaft that is known to fail and allow oil to leak from below. The remedy is fairly simple–if you have the parts.
We asked a few friends in the Ferrari world for a good parts source, and the name AW Italian kept coming up. This is a family company owned by Stacey Giglio. The company was started by her dad in 1965. This is the kind of company we can get behind, so we gave them a call.
We talked to both Stacey and Brian, her main parts guy. Both were helpful and knew what they were talking about. They had the parts in stock at what seemed like reasonable prices. As we’re learning, that’s not always universal among Ferrari parts suppliers.
The parts arrived quickly, and our order included two new rotors. When Jessie pulled off the first rotor, it disintegrated in his hands–blame the oil bath for that.
While we are not planning to go into the second distributor at this point, we ordered two of everything as we are trying to build a spares kit for our upcoming tours. Plus, we have records of a recent ignition system rebuild.
This repair costs us less than $100 in parts and an hour or two of labor. So far, knock on wood, or Rosso Corsa paint, Ferrari ownership hasn’t proven to be any more expensive than most of the other project cars that we have tackled.
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