6/4/10
Side Glass and Mystery Transaxle Solved!
When
restoring a car, I notice things that I may have never paid
attention to before, and on this 275GTB restoration I completed, I see
this little etching on the side glass.
This
etching is a manufacturer's stamp that is found on various pieces of
glass
on the car. It changes from car to car, and sometimes year to year, but
some judges look for this kind of stuff at shows. It's also nice to
have them to match the other pieces when replacing glass.
This
275GTB had some bad scratches on the original side glass and some chips
on the
edges. With tempered glass, buffing the scratches out was not an option
for the risk of breaking it. Having worked at a picture framing shop
when I was a college student, I learned glass is an interesting
material. It bends
a lot more than one would think, but push it too far, and it'll break
into a million pieces. With the tempering process, it's heat treated to
be
stronger than normal glass, but when it breaks, look out!
The
only option was to have a custom piece of glass made for both sides of
the car. Luckily, 60s Ferraris have flat side glass, so the process of
making new glass is less complicated. My local glass shop made new
blanks and had mounting holes drilled in the glass before sending it
out for the tempering process.
The
next step was to have the stencils made. A clean undistorted photograph
was needed to be made of the original piece of glass and a reference
shot
was needed so the stencil maker would know how to size the stencil.
"Studio Still Life 201" from Art School sure came in handy with how to
light and photograph glass! With a clear photograph a vector graphic is
made for the final stencil.
Only one stencil was needed since the glass
manufacturer applied the stencil to the same side of the flat
piece of glass. On one side of the car, the etching is on the outside,
and the other side, it's on the inside and backwards when looking at it
from outside.
There are
two ways to etch glass, acid etching or sand blasting. The original
method was done with sandblasting. After researching the types of
stencils needed for each process, and the resolution needed to
reproduce the small print, I decided to go with sand blasting the etch
on the new glass.
I bought a mini sandblaster kit. It's available
from large art supply stores and comes with the appropriate grit for
this process. It also comes with the correct fittings to use shop air,
so when the can of propellant runs out, I can use regulated low
pressure shop
air.
Unfortuantely,
for the time it took to have the stencils made, the glass was already
installed on the car. I didn't want to hold up the assembly process to
apply the stencil, so they had to be applied at the end. The only
problem was masking the car off to contain the fine sand blasting grit
from getting everywhere.
The stencil is peeled off it's backing and applied to the clean
glass. I masked the area thoroughly and blasted the little stencil.
I've
been looking at dozens of etchings since I began this project, and
there is not a lot of consistency. Some original stamps are heavy
without much detail and some are faint and barely visible. The ones I
reproduced look clean and crisp. The stencil maker did a great job
reproducing the etching. It's a ridiculously small detail, but
fun to carry out the whole process!
On my last post I showed pictures of a mystery transaxle, and within 8
hours of posting, the e-mails started coming in! It's a Lancia Flamina
transaxle! Several people sent links to sites and pictures showing the
same transaxle out of Lancias.
My friend Steve said these were factory displays for showrooms. It's
questionable if there are any guts inside these displays since the
display engines were often empty of internal parts.
Thanks everyone who responded. I LOVE the power of the internet!
Reminder: July 10th, 2010, Oceanside, CA, Inaugural Zac Dugger, Tom Wilson, and Tomyang.net West Coast Party. Click here for more details!
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