79 308 restoration

The PO had the car painted many moons ago and there was a patch under a pile of cheese that was placed over the hole that formed from the other side of the fender. The rubber seal seems to be the source, friction rubs the paint off and holds moisture there. So, needless to say I found grief but got rid of it all and in the process eliminated one of the front US spec marker holes. I planned to remove them all and go Euro anyway.

.Slowly but surely, here is the new ferrari door skin I installed. What a job, I went with 328 skins because the 308 ones were no longer available. I eliminated the handle holes as well, had the door shells blasted and painted prior to me installing the skins and rolling the lips back on. These doors will not rust in my life time because hte factory skins are rolled on bare metal and invite rust.

The pics are a little out of order but close enough so forgive me.

The soda blasting process took 3 visits to complete so I primed it in stages only to keep it from becoming a rust ball. There were several coats of paint/primer and so on so it was difficult for the guy. He switched to a lime based product to do the chassis and that went much faster than the soda up top but there was absolutely no damage from the stripping and worth every penny. Im sure the car lost 50lbs in old paint that day.

You can see the seams that ferrari leaded in along the fenders, the quarters, the scoops, the leading and trailling edges of the door openings. everywhere really. The people were quite talented that put these things together, probably all dead though from the lead fumes.

the fender patch I made, the right got the same treatment but was painted on the inside prior to installation as well as the structure behind it.

found a few interior pics in a different folder so here they are - out of order of course but you get the idea of what lurks behind the dash of a 308.

Those little wrinkly brown mummified flaps are supposed to be soft and subtle to block incoming air when the a/c is off. I suspect im not the only 308 owner with this problem. Also, you can see the one piece wiring harness rather than maybe 3 seperate parts - nice going ferrari, its going to take 4 guys and a child to install it once im ready.

This is all the crap I removed, the US spec stuff to allow converters and bumper shocks to fit under the trunk floor. I went the euro route here as well when I fabricated the rear frame sections. Ilowered the floor to euro spec, made a new front wall for the trunk and installed the euro tail panel to toss the diaper and exhaust.