The main reason for my trip to Los Angeles started during a casual conversation with my friend Tom McIntyre during the Amelia Island weekend. We were talking about the Peter Mullin Collection of prewar french cars and how it was a shame how after his death about a year ago, his heirs had closed the museum in Oxnard, and were planning an auction to sell everything. McIntyre told me he had a special invitation through the Peterson Museum for one last tour of the Mullin Museum in a month or so. I felt this could be the last chance to see a collection of cars of this caliber in one place again, so at the risk of being too forward, I asked if there was a chance for me to join him on this tour.

Being a long time member of the Checkered Flag 200 group through the Peterson Museum in LA, Tom added me to his +2 which included his good friend Lynn Park. Mr. Park is known as “Mr Cobra” and has been friends with McIntyre for decades. Not only did I get a ticket to an exclusive viewing of the Mullin Collection, but I also got to tour it with these two interesting gentlemen!

The Museum was built with the inspiration of the Paris Auto Show back in 1937 and when I first saw this thoughtful design, I was immediately overwhelmed with a sense of sadness when I looked at the collection of cars, memorabilia, models, furniture, and curation that represented a lifetime of passion and work. All this was going to be dispersed by the end of the month through an auction and may never be seen in one place at the same time again. It became clear the Mullin Family was either not interested, or not capable of sustaining this collection into the future.

The cars were spectacular, but the the models of the same cars would have been an impressive collection!

The appreciation of pre-war cars was not the only thing Peter Mullin must have admired, as large collections of art deco furniture was also on display.

There was so much to see everywhere I looked, and things to learn about that I never had easy access too. Just like the Ferraris that I am passionate about, many pre-war French cars had racing history before they were known for their elegant street cars.

A few of the notable 1:1 scale cars had already been moved or acquired by other collections. I heard the Atlantic went to the midwest, and four cars were already obtained by the Peterson Museum.

I would have been very happy with some of these models! This one is especially captivating!

One car that I was glad to see was this Bugatti Brescia that was recovered from a Swiss lake over 20 years ago. Failing to pay the import duty at the Swiss Border after winning the car at a poker game, the playboy owner abandoned it and never came back to retrieve the car. Under law to destroy unclaimed property, the Swiss Duty officers sunk the car in a local fresh water lake hoping to someday recover the car. The plan was literally sunk when the chains broke, but the car recovered decades later. A charity auction eventually brought the car here to the Mullin Collection. Where this car ends up next is anyone’s guess, but I’m glad I had a chance to see such a notorious car!

There was so much to see and so little time that I recorded my visit. It’s just raw video of me wandering around the museum, but I wanted to document all this one last time.

I made a trip out to Los Angeles last weekend and in my usual form, I filled as much of my time as I could during my stay. My motto is “Sleep when I get home” and I tried my best to keep true to my word!

I got in on Friday afternoon and stayed with my friend Tom Wilson, a fellow Ferrari owner. Tom had arranged to see a collection of cars hidden away in Costa Mesa, so we headed out first thing Saturday morning to meet the collection manager. The first place housing one of four locations of this collection was Finish Line Auto Club a storage facility for collector cars.

This facility housed condos that car collectors could buy and store their collections. I heard there were monthly meetings where the owners would open their doors and visit each other’s collections. This place was either the coolest place for a car collector, or the worst place when you’re addicted to cars. Imagine the one-upmanship when guys see what the neighbor is doing with his cars!

Unfortunately, the owner of the collection wanted to remain private, so I couldn’t take pictures, but you’ll have to take my word for it, it was impressive with a mix of everything from pre-war to modern Ferraris. Ed, the collection manager, had the enviable job of curating, managing, driving, scheduling repairs, building facilities, designing interiors, and being all around confidant to the owner about everything to do with a multimillion dollar car collection. When I list all the hats this guy wore, it actually didn’t sound so much of a dream job anymore!

In a spill over warehouse there was one thing I could photograph, which was PF Cabriolet that was for sale. You can imagine the world of Vintage Ferraris is very small, and the conversations with Ed brought up all the names of people we both knew. When I saw this car being stored as a courtesy for Tom Shaughnessy, I remembered this car was offered to me to buy for one of my customers a few months ago.

All the bodywork and paint has been completed, but the mechanicals still need to be addressed and installed. I’m not sure why this car was not completed by the shop that originally started it for the owner, but as they say, there are three sides to every story!

The parts seemed to be all there, and many of them were ready to be installed, but there’s still lots of work to do. We ended passing on this car as I have two cars at my shop that I’m working very hard to complete, so I don’t need another jig-saw puzzle! Let me know if you’re interested, and I’ll put you in touch with Shaughnessy.

The next stop in Costa Mesa was Steve Beckman’s shop, Beckman Metalworks. I met Steve Beckman in 2005 (19 years ago!) at Laguna Seca during Car Week, and visited his shop with Shaughnessy back then. Steve continues to do outstanding metal work, but somehow found time to work on a personal project.

Through the years, Beckman collected the mechanical parts to make his own Ferrari race car. Copying a 1957 500 TRC, Beckman made the body from scratch, and plans on showing this car in Monterey for the Quail Motorsports gathering. It will be powered by a V-12 engine instead of the 4 cylinder engine found in original TRCs, but Steve’s car will still have Vintage Ferrari parts.

As I got the tour of the shop, I saw cars that belonged to owners I know. This car came in from the East Coast, so you can see Beckman’s skills are needed across the country!

Steve’s shop has also been commissioned to design and build a wall hanging made from shapes inspired from Ferrari bodies. The first collector we visited wanted something never seen before in full sized relief to display at his shop. We could see the parts and pieces making up this vision. I can’t wait to see the finished product!

Next stop was Francorchamps, owned by Rod Drew. I have to admit, Rod Drew has always been a little intimidating. He’s a man of few words, and he’s very similar to the old school craftsmen who don’t suffer fools lightly. I’ve been blogging and working on Ferraris for a couple of decades, but was surprised when Mr. Drew reached out to me a couple months ago to help him with a project he had at his shop. He needed a replacement center console for a SII 330, and I happened to have scanned and printed one a couple years ago. Delivering a printed center console and saving Rod Drew a lot of time fabricating one for his customer, and was my chance to ask if I could visit his shop the next time I was in California. The visit was short, but Rod was gracious enough to show me his shop and compare notes on the cars we work on. It was a hard won connection, but worth the effort!

The eighth stop of the day after lunch was to visit Ken Thomas and his 250GTE. Ken has been a long time Ferrari fan, and even owned a 250 LWB California Spyder back in the 80s. Ken sold the Cal Spyder but still owns the 250GTE. Tom Wilson and I visited with Ken and talked about what it was like to own a Cal Spyder before they were worth 10s of millions of dollars. He used to drive the car from the LA area to Monterey for car week and use it as a regular car. At one point, as the prices started to go up, Ken got uncomfortable using the car in public and decided it was time to sell. It’s a common problem with Vintage Ferraris, and can be a curse as much as a benefit. Ken sold the Spyder, and although didn’t time it to get 10s of millions, he still managed to buy a couple of houses in Southern California!

Ken still has the GTE and drives this car all the time. It may not be as pretty as a Cal Spyder, but doesn’t come with all the liabilities!

The last stop for Saturday was to visit my old friend Ron Karp in Upland. Ron retired from the brake rebuilding business about 7 years ago, but he advises me on brake related problems all the time. Ron taught me all the little tricks to fix and rebuild the braking systems on the Ferraris I work on, but his knowledge from working in the automotive trade for almost 60 years always amazes me. He’s forgotten more than what I need to learn. It was good to catch up, but every time I see Ron, I wish I lived closer to him!

Tom Wilson and I drove back to Culver City after a long day of visiting and talking cars. We had a short time to rest before a second full day of my LA trip!

Passport Transport dropped off a car off at my shop last week, and it belonged to new customer. I’m actually friends with the owner, but this is the first time I’m working on his car.

It was a recent purchase, but the owner said it wasn’t running very well, and I would have to agree. She would not start off the truck, and I was afraid I was going to have tow her into my shop. Luckily after shooting some starter fluid down the carb throats, she fired up and I managed to limp her inside.

The car was really clean, and tidy under the hood, but it soon became obvious there was something wrong with the carburetors. The accelerator pumps weren’t squirting, so that was the reason for the hard start. From the looks of the car, it was pretty obvious what was happening. Sitting for an extended period of time, the fuel inside the carburetors evaporated and clogged up some of the passages inside. Side draft DCOE Weber carburetors makes access to the accelerator pump jets easily accessible, but even after checking one or two, I found the problem was even deeper.

The real solution was to pull all the carburetors off and deep clean every one. On C/4s, this can be challenging with the removal of the air cleaner assemblies, but with the carbs off, I found the accelerator pump pistons themselves seized in the bores from the old residue.

After a good bath in my ultrasonic cleaner, the parts came out nice and clean. The parts looked like they were in good shape and the gaskets were relatively fresh, but however long this car sat without use managed to foul up the internals.

The old air filters were a little beat up from being removed several times before, and putting it back the filter housing with with exposed metal mesh was risking cutting the crap out of my hands when it came time to install each velocity stack inside. How much were new filters? about $250 bucks each! Welcome to Ferrari ownership.

The assembly of the 250GTE I have at my shop continues. I’m trying my best to make forward progress on a car that arrived at my shop missing a bunch of parts, and what slows things down, is every time I move forward, I’m thwarted by another missing part!

Moving onto the fuel system on this car, I noticed I was missing the fuel pressure regulator that normally mounts on the fender in these three holes.

I was very fortunate to have Tom Shaughnessy stop by my shop the other day when I asked if he had this part in his vast pile of parts. When I say “pile,” I’m not exaggerating. Tom has been collecting parts for over 30 years and has amassed a huge collection of parts for VIntage Ferraris, but sometimes locating these parts that he has stored across both coasts in the United States can be a challenge. Luck would have it, Shaughnessy knew exactly where one of these units were and could put his hands on it, put it in a pouch, and ship it the next time he was at his warehouse.

Unfortunately, I was still missing the bracket that held the regulator in place, but I had one at my shop that I could copy.

Sorry about the blurry picture, but I fabricated a new one for the GTE and got another small step in completing this car!

I got the new center section exhaust shipped to me so I could fit them to the 365GTC/4. I had the flanges tacked in place along with the hangers loose so I could weld them precisely in place to line up with the corresponding hangers on this particular car.

I have found all of the old Ferraris I’ve worked on are not exactly the same, so there can be slight variations where the exhaust hanger line up. Taking this extra step of welding the hangers help make the installation look much better.

The tricky part was marking the hanger for welding since I couldn’t get my welder tip close enough to the top of the muffler to make a tack.

I’ve been methodically servicing this low mileage Dino I have at the shop. It’s in great mechanical shape because of the low mileage, but there are still some parts on this car that are over 50 years old that need replacing.

One of these things was the rubber hoses that make up the cooling system. Although some of the hoses may have been changed through the years, I could see some original hoses still on the car, including these long rubber hoses that run along the length of the car from the engine to the radiators in the front. They looked good, but I could see some corrosion on the connections to the steel pipes so it was time to replace them and inspect the plumbing. HD HEATER HOSE NAPA Part #: NBH H134 Qty: 16

The messiest thing about this job was all the coolant from the system. Since these pipes were the lowest point, the final bit of coolant had to come out of these connections. I have found the best way for me was to pry open a space for the coolant to escape and leave the the car overnight to drain into a container large enough to catch all the coolant.

Some of the coolant connections showed signs of having never been disconnected from when this car was new!

With the coolant drained now was the time to address the control cables and heater valves for correct operation. I found a couple cables seized or broken in their sheathing along with a heater valve that was sticking from disuse.

I replaced almost all the internal control cables with new ones but left the original sheathing. Connecting the end in the front of the car was the easy part, but sticking my head under the dash to connect the other end to the slider levers in the dash was a whole other struggle!

I drove my Porsche 911 down to Amelia Island again this year. I book this trip every year not knowing what is in store for me, and some years I find myself showing a car for a client, and some years, it’s almost like a vacation. Either way, whether it’s work or play, I still manage to have a fun time. A group of us rent a house on the beach so it’s probably the most comfortable and convenient event I do on my calendar!

I arrived on Wednesday before the show weekend and try to attend all the previews from the auction houses on the island. This year, one auction house is missing from the line up as RM/Sothebys moved their auction Miami. Bonhams, Gooding, and Broad Arrow are the three competing for bidders so I still had a lot of ground to cover. All through the weeks leading up to the auctions, I get calls about my opinion about a particular car coming up for auction, and this was my chance to see and touch particular cars of interest for my clients.

Seeing cars in person also lets me gauge how good these cars actually are. Catalog pictures are supposed to make these cars look their best, often cropping out the bad issues, or omitting the blemishes and warts. Being at the preview in person also gives me a chance to see certain cars coming up for auction that I’ve known for years. An example is this GTE that was at the Gooding sale. I’ve corresponded with the long time owner of this car for many years, and although I don’t know if the family was auctioning this car, it was bittersweet see this car in person knowing it was moving onto a new owner!

This 330GT 2+2 looked very nice, and I heard sold for very strong money and may have set the high water mark for a restored 330GT 2+2. I’ve seen other cars sell for similar prices, and having inspected the car felt the bidder got carried away at the auction and overpaid, but this was was not the case. Even though I did not drive this car, I felt the details were largely correct and restoring a car at this level would have cost more than the winning bid. Being there in person allowed me to really get a feel for the Ferrari market and what is being bought, and for what reasons.

On the other end of the spectrum was this 250PF Cab restoration project. The purchase price did not include the cost of restoration, so the bidder had to be careful. We in the business have a rough idea what it would cost to restore this car, but there are always overages. The winning bid had to make sense to the buyer and not turn into a money pit. I believe the winning bid for this car was market correct. Maybe we’ll see this car in a couple years from now returned to her former glory!

Attending these premiere cars show attracts the who’s who in the car world, and I’m lucky to have friends that recognize them and introduce them to me. Bruce Canepa (pictured right) has a well known restoration shop in CA that is currently building hot rod Porsche 959s. I’ve had a couple cars in my shop that were restored by his company, but it was nice to meet the person behind the name.

Friday of the Amelia Island weekend started with Werks Reunion, a big Porsche show. There was a lot of interesting Porsches around, but I liked this outlaw 356.

The only problem was it was raining, and the carburetors didn’t have rain covers!

From the Porsche show, I headed over to Fernandina Beach to attend the Classic Motorsports magazine car show along with the Concours d’lemons on the same show field.

Here’s Alan Galbraith, the head Lemon preparing for the awards ceremony. He’s to blame for all the tongue in cheek Lemons slogans that makes a Concours d’Lemons so much fun!

Saturday was a Cars and Coffee event that attracted a ton of cars and spectators on the lawn next to the Ritz Carlton. There was great variety and something for everyone.

Intermixed among the crowds of cars and people were things like this nice four cam 275GTB.

Heavily modified cars like this Lancia with a turbo AND a supercharger!

Across the street was the Radwood show, celebrating the cars of the 80s and 90s. Extra points to the participants that came dressed in period clothing. Did we really dress like that back then?

There were plenty of joke cars, but mixed in were jems like this really clean VW pickup truck. If there were one car I would take home from this weekend, it would have been this. Forget about the Ferraris!

I was invited to attend another party being held at the Fernandina Beach airport called The Hanger Party. My friend Anzir and his son drove their Ferrari F40 from Orlando to attend. I helped find this car a couple years ago for them, and they’ve been driving the snot out of this car!

In a dumb current movement to celebrate low or no mileage super cars, I find Anzir and his son the heros in owning a supercar. All of these owners sitting at boardroom tables sharing photos of their cars that they never drive will never compare to the memories this kid is going to have about doing a road trip in an F40 popping flames on interstate 4 with his Dad!

This was the car that we reupholstered the seats and made a custom cushion in matching material so the kids could ride in the F40 and see out the front windshield.

I was surprised when two young girls ran up to the F40 and were so excited to see one in person at the Hanger Party. We couldn’t let that enthusiasm pass without offering them to sit in the car. Anzir was more than happy to share his car with whomever wanted a closer look. I would definitely say these pics were all over their Instagram!

They weren’t the only ones hamming it up for the camera. My friend Dane had the perfect look to tailgate in the back of the Rolls Royce Cullinan, their luxury SUV made for the polo fields and equestrian centers. I felt if I asked about the towing capacity of this Rolls Royce, the answer be “adequate.”

Back at the beach house every evening we usually had a big meal at the dinner with cars being the dominant topic. The history, experience, and enthusiasm for the automobile is pretty impressive at this table, so you can imagine the conversation!

Speaking of a long history around cars, Roger Morrison is member of this group that stays at the house, but this year he left a little early to attend the RM/Sotheby’s event Moda Miami further south in Florida. Rob Myer, the RM of RM/Sotheby’s took his auction to Miami after a falling out with the Hagerty organization that purchased the Amelia Island Event a few years ago. Hagerty was building their own brand of show, along with an auction house called Broad Arrow, so there was no room for RM. Mr. Myer created a new show on the same weekend in Miami to compete. Many of us in Collector Car world, were torn which event to attend. The Miami event sounded like a nice event, but we had a pretty good thing going on in Amelia Island. Roger decided to try both by leaving a day early. I’m sure we’ll get full report!

When the gates opened to allow the hoi polloi in, we only had about an hour to look at the cars before the rain started.

I managed to see an old friend that was featured on this website when I first found this car for the curent owner 16 years ago! She’s looking better than me and David after another 16 years of aging!

The rain finally let up towards the afternoon of the show, but one benefit was showing off this wonderful purple color that was part of the original color pallet from Ferrari!

I was having a conversation with a fellow Ferrari Mechanic, Eric Sanders, who works for GTO in Los Angeles. We were talking about Dinos and how I noticed some funny oil pressure readings when I was a only a quart low on oil as I was filling up the sump after an oil change. I was surprised how simply being a quart low caused the oil pump to pull up some air in the oil pan, and Eric said it was a good idea to drop the bottom of the oil pan to make sure the sump pick up and baffles were not interfering with the oil flow. In Eric’s experience, he’s seen oil pick ups on DInos and 308s bent out of position, and baffle doors stuck shut.

Always taking Eric’s sage advice, I dropped the oil pan to take a look and was happy I listened. Despite the low mileage (perhpas due to the low mileage) I found a lot of sludge at the bottom of the oil pan. This sludge was left behind even after recent oil changes, and because of the design of the baffling of the oil pan, it was trapped inside the oil pan. I found one sticking trap door, and the oil pickup slightly bent out of position. I don’t know if it made a lot of difference to the was the oil was sucked up by the pickup, but every little bit helped. It’s also good to know to make sure the oil levels on the Dino are spot on, to avoid cavitation.

After a trip to the parts washer, I removed all the old sludge out of the oil pan and reinstalled the pan with a new gasket.

On top of the big projects, I have a bunch of little projects to push ahead to complete cars that are at my shop. The aqua colored GTE still offers me challenges trying to source missing parts, and the work has been to complete the brake system. After finding an elusive banjo bolt for the brake booster, I turned my attention to the master cylinder. New ones are available, but they’re not exactly “plug and play!” The inlet and outlet fittings have different thread pitches than the original one on the car, so I had to transfer the old fittings onto the new master cylinder.

Keeping the original fittings was important so the brake light switch was fit all the lines that were already plumbed.

The Blue Scuro 330GT continues to make good progress, but there are always little pieces that need preparation for installation. The steering wheel parts needed to be cleaned up and polished, but putting these back on the car will be a big milestone!

Other steering column parts included the ignition lock. A fresh coat of primer and paint will have it ready to put back in the car.

I have a 330GTC that needed to have the hood pad installed so off came the hood, and a new correct shiny silver hood pad was installed, along with the polished pad stays mounted to the underside of the hood.

It was time to address the exhaust on the 365GTC/4 I have at the shop. The center mufflers on this car were pretty rotted out and were probably filling the passenger compartment with fumes and CO.

The mufflers were rotting from the inside out due to moisture from the exhaust collecting inside the cans and slowly rusting the mild steel mufflers. Most of the steel was paper thin, so it was time for new mufflers.

I threw all the exhaust bolts and brass nuts into my vibratory tumbler to clean them up. I’m not making a show car, but it will make assembly of the exhaust system much easier with clean hardware.

As I was disconnecting the exhaust, I looked up at the headers and found the rubber motor mounts were pretty dry rotted and collapsed.

The left one was no better, so now was the time to try and get these out and replaced. I’ve gotten this type of motor mount out of other Vintage Ferraris, but have not done it on a C/4. The usually just enough clearance to jack the engine up to remove the motor mount bolted to the engine taking the bracket and the rubber insulator. With the assembly out of the car, you can unscrew the large insulator, but there is usually not enough room to clear the studs with the bracket attached to the engine.

Unfortunately, with the C/4, the engine would not move high enough to clear mount studs so I had to remove the exhaust headers. In order to access the nuts holding the headers in place, I had to remove the air cleaner assembly. In order to remove the air cleaner assembly, I had to remove all the velocity stacks to release the air box. You can see how the C/4 always offers this cascading issue of access to the engine based on the carburetor set up!

I lucked out when I found I could access the header bolts without removing the carburetors after the air filter assembly as removed. This saved a lot of time and disassembly that often comes with a C/4!

I managed to remove the rear exhaust header and loosening the front set of headers enough for the engine to move up a fraction of an inch more so I could get the motor mount out.

As much of a pain in the butt this was to get this stinking motor mount out, it was a much needed job. These mounts sit right below the exhaust headers and are exposed to a lot heat. Even with a heat shield installed, these mounts won’t last forever.

My parts supplier first sent me the wrong motor mount so after a delay of several days, I finally got the correct motor mount. Of course the new one was a little thicker than the collapsed motor mount I removed, so I had to get creative to get the new one back in place. After jacking the engine as high as I could in the car, I took a ratchet strap and pulled the mount down into place to line up the bolts on the side of the block and the chassis. It wasn’t easy, but I got them both back into place!

My exhaust vendor is going to custom fabricate a new center section to replace the rotted mufflers for this car, but he’s been back logged with work for over two months. He was about to begin work on the system, and I sent him pictures of the one I removed with measurements of where the hanger straps are located.

He has a USA version of the muffler I need that he uses as a template to fabricate a new one, but his straps are 1/2 different than the location of the one I just took off. This half inch may not seem like a lot, but this exhaust is hung on the car with large rubber o-rings that don’t stretch much.

There are three sets of straps welded to the muffler, and all the ones on this car lined up perfectly with the corresponding hooks on the car.

The second strap my exhaust guy has was 3/4-1 inch off, so I decided to have him tack weld the straps according to my measurements and once I have the muffler fitted to the car, I’ll permanently weld them in place. He usually tack welds the flanges in place so I can get the connections perfect, so I guess we’ll have a little more welding to do with these straps.