GrandpaMcGurk

This is a photo of an assembled TDR tube frame that I'm using on another project.......it's way cool in that it can be ordered in sections, you can adjust the length to suit your particular build. It comes with printed in plugs that slip inside readily available plastic tubing cut to the desired length by the builder. Best part is that all the suspension mounts are already there and square. Anyway, I'll only be using the front clip...you can see how it accepts tubing in the pics. This particular example is printed in their most inexpensive medium but I'll be doing some cutting and fabricating so it'll need sanding anyway.

Air cond. compressor detailed and bolted up.... Started detailing & drilling bolt holes for the power steering pump..... Cut the mounting ears & flange off a TDR hand shaker, notched the case to clear the F 40 bellhousing bolts, squirted some paint...still needs bolts and detailing..... Eyeball lined up the imaginary input shaft with the crank.......here it is mocked up on the engine, works for me.

It's getting there.......the air conditioning compressor, motor mounts, starter/solenoid, distributor etc. are on and started mocking up a power steering pump. Only a gazillion more bolts to go and I can get started on the oiling system, intake and exhaust, whoopee. Here's some pics for your amusement......

Makes me want a "Mike's Hard Lemonade", nice work Jim...besides being shiny!

Here's the distributor base mocked up on the engine. Cut down a spare oil filter, drilled some holes in a piece of plastic, cut some short lenghts of tubing and presto...got a distributor cap.

Exhaust is a ways off yet Ken, should be fun though. I was sitting here ciphering on how I was going to adapt this TDR 4-speed hand shaker to the F-40 bellhousing....... and decided to figure out how to spark it instead. As you can see in the pic the stock Ferrari has coil pacs and no distributor....dunno if they are triggered by the crank, 'puter or both and don't care. I'll be doing a little shade tree imagineering and use a distributor.....I'm sure by now the Ferrari purists are having fits. On an OHV engine this would be no biggie...the cam shaft would drive the distributor and it's tucked down in the valley between the heads with a gear either on the front or back to spin the distributor. But this is an overhead quad cam engine........oh my!!! Cant put it in the front 'cause of the belt covers and all that paraphernalia, not to mention the roots style blower would be in the way. So I'm going to have to mount it in rear and pick up the "drive" from one of the cams. I started buy cobbling up some parts. I made a base for the distributor. The center of the distributor is offset to allow room for the drive gear and the bolt allows it to be rotated slighty to either advance or retard the timing.

Guys....I think I figured out why a Ferrari costs so much........ They use a hundred grand worth of bolts just to hold the engine together.......dang, I've been drilling holes and putting in bolts for hours and I'm still not done.

Here's one of the Pocher cam belt covers.... According to the kit directions you put the cam bearing seals on the end of the cam covers and stick it in the belt cover (the back of the case remains open, probably because it's not very obvious when assembled and installed on the block). Fortunately the trans kit had P.E. rear covers included...nice! It's going to take me a while to drill all the holes for the teeny bolts (there's a bunch of them on this F-40) and install them with my teeny wrench..hee, hee. I rarely read kit directions, I'm more a show me type guy so I'm I working from photos and exploded drawings of a real engine.

Thanks guys, appreciate the kind words. Michael...actually it's not really a jet engine. It's a 750 h.p. turbine out of a 1/24th "Huey" helicopter spinning an automive trans rather than rotor blades. The machine guns and rocket tubes are from the same kit.

The A.R.K. (Alien Rat Killer) The giant alien rats have invaded, armed with strange weapons riding humongus poisonous spiders and they are intent on destroying humanity....... Well a bunch of hard core gear heads got together and decided there was no way we were going down without a fight........the A.R.K. was created! '57 Caddy Eldorado Brougham 4-wheel drive Monster truck chassis & supension Quad hydraulic belt fed M-60 machine guns Rocket Pods Really bad attitude

I've been looking forward to this one Ken. Plenty of room for paint and graphics!

Hee, no doubt Dave.......they'll just have to get over it. I going to have to really apply a size-able dose of the "fudge factor" with the pulley and belt set-up. The blower will have to be under-driven and I have to drive air cond.- power steering pumps and an alternator....belt tensioner too. What a bag of snakes. All that on a high revving engine that's under 3 litres.

I'll modify this TDR blower intake to match up with the ports on the F-40.... and top it of with one of their blowers..... Not sure if I'll go with fuel injection or 2 fours yet.......but here's a mock-up with the mounting plate for the four barrels and the front and rear blower case ends in place. Think I'm going to assemble one of these TDR 4-speeds and either adapt it to the F-40 bell-housing or scratch build a custom scatter-shield / bell housing.

Harry brings up an interesting point here.....I bought my first Big T when they came out, it was around seven bucks and change.....at first glance you might think that's dirt cheap what with being able to buy a gallon of gas for less that a quarter ( and that was for Sunoco 200 octane). Well everything's relative folks...you have to consider that a forty hour work week brought home (after taxes) 60 bucks or so. Try raising a family, buying a house and car, food, clothes etc. on that amount of income and then tell me that seven bucks for a model is dirt cheap.......get my drift?

Great start Luc.....I'd like to see more of these off the beaten path engines used in builds, the Hemi and and other conventional big block engines have become a little long in the tooth stuffed into hot rods. BTW.......I have exploded drawings of the "real" Ferrari F-40 V-8 (internal parts also) and the the opposed cylinder V-12 (F-50 I think) along with a few photos. I'm not saying that I'll copy all this stuff and send it to ya, because it would put me in the poor farm buying ink for my printer. But if you get stuck somewhere E or PM me and I could send you a page or two to help you out if need be.

Added the cover bolts, valve cover to belt cover seals, spark plugs... even though they won't show under the boots, started detailing and did a quick eye ball mock-up......may not show up in the pics but the cam belt covers are a different shade of aluminum than the block...just for giggles. Pocher for some reason didn't bother to put the bolts in either end of the cam covers so I added those as well.

Now for some color....NO WAY...did I want to open the hood of this Willys Woody to be hit in the face with those fire truck Ferrari red cam covers......looked through my Pantone color charts and came to the conclusion that I would have to mix something up that would at least to some degree reflect what the final color (hint) of the fenders and hood would be. These pics are really large and the covers are no where near as gritty as they appear, actually to the naked eye ball the have a very subtle texture. Being I custom mixed the paint, I figured I'd get to name it...it'll be called "Wildwood Farms Burgundy Wine" Ha, Ha! . That's a Ferrari red cover in the background.

Onward & upward as they say...... Here's a shot what Pocher figures Rick & I want for cam covers........baby butt smooth and reeking of plastic toy car. Lets see if I can can give 'em a little personality being this is a custom build. First order of biz is to treat them to a taste of texture (don't want a polished slick look) so I gave them a light dusting with this stuff.

Here's a comparison between my "prepped" block and the one that was assembled right from the box. A little more touch up and I'll drill holes in the centers of the molded in bolt heads, then carefully slice them off the block. Brass bolts will be installed in their place.

I filed all the mating surfaces flat to close up some of the gaps & assembled the block pieces with solvent being careful to keep everything square. You can see in these photo where the bottom of the block needs to be filed to allow the oil pan to fit flush. These large gaps in the rear of the heads are unavoidable......it is what it is. I'll fill the gaps with thin plastic and sand smooth even though they wouldn't be noticeable with the covers on . A little 2-part automotive filler will take care of the unwanted seams & sink marks, etc.

I'll be starting with unmolested "old" parts... I trimmed off those pesky boogers left behind from the parts trees, washed them in warm soapy water, dried and shot a light coat of Krylon rattle can primer on everything.

We've messed around with this hood design long enough....it'll work itself out after it's determined how high the engine will sit. On with the engine......as with most Pocher kits there will be some problems with parts fitting etc. Don't get me wrong...even at today's inflated prices you still get a lot of bang for your buck...just keep in mind that if you expect to glue the parts together and paint them you'll wind up with with something like the next few pics depict....it's my spare parts engine previously built when I got it. Pocher has been out of biz for quite some time, therefore it's not unusual to find that parts are missing, distorted or have become brittle over time. Sink marks etc. are common to most models and need to be dealt with also. As you can see, not much prep work was done on this example, gaps, sink marks and ill fitting parts..oh my. Sure, a lot of this stuff wouldn't be noticed once completely assembled but I think we can do a little better.

Some concern has come up about the first drawing I did losing the appearance of a Willys, the grill rework seems to sit fine with everyone but the hood and air intake causes it to lose it's identity...anyway someone suggested a scoop on each side of the hood, that's cool. Here's a really rough thumbnail of something else that's rattling around in my head.....still retains the obviously Willys nose and looks aggressive as all get out. The F40 is fairly low profile & even with a blower sitting on top, I'm trying to keep the whole deal under the hood line as much as possible........the last thing I want is a bug catcher or huge scoop sticking through it. Even though it's a woody the coach will be slick and flowing...not a boxy add on. Any suggestions or input are welcomed.

Nathan, the expense is really like asking how high is up........the most expensive parts and so on will still look like dog doo if poorly assembled and painted. It gets back to that same old bugaboo about how much time and effort are you willing to put into a project. I'm sure you have seen box stock models painted with rattle cans that are drop dead gorgeous. It really doesn't matter how much money you throw at something....it's all about you, if you have a "well that's close enough" attitude.... your end result will reflect that. However if you take the time to develop some sound basic skills and patience even a "snap kit" can stand head and shoulders above the slam, bam call it a day builders. I'm mot saying there's anything wrong with that, some guys just enjoy building and assembling and if that's what works for them, more power to 'em. This build won't be inexpensive in either time or money...mostly time.....but hey, it works for me. I'm going to push myself as far as I can and who knows....I might even learn a thing or two to add to my bag of tricks.

I'll be using a number of bits from various vendors including TDR and the Madd Fabricator.......right up front let me say I am involved with TDR & MF, but whatever I use I'll be calling like I see 'em. Fair 'nuff? These next few photo's are of the kit pieces assembled, painted, and some trans kit hardware pieces added. The only reason I'm posting them is for comparsion between the O.O.B. parts and assembled with the trans kit stuff so that you can decide for yourselves if trans kits are worth the coin. These are spares and I did not assemble them! I'll be breaking them down to salvage the trans kit hardware parts only. I don't know who assembled them and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings but if you look closely some of the plastic bosses are broken out and drilled off center. That may be okay for some but I want want this build to be super detailed and the best my particular skill level with allow. The trans kit bits I'm using are a Scale Details item for this engine.....I've been asked if it's worth the cost? Let me just say the the quality is right on the money, if I had to to round up the hundreds of bolts, etc. that come in the kit not to mention the P.E., brass tubing and supplied info...it would cost me way more than the price of their kit and the reseach time would be out of sight. Is it worth it....that's for you and your piggy bank to decide.