$25K Project Dino: The Setback Machine

This story first appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Join the club to receive our award-winning magazine and enjoy insider access to automotive events, discounts, roadside assistance, and more.

In the six months since the last update on my eternal Dino 308 GT4 restoration project (“The Curse of the Dino”), I’ve had sunny days of optimism and long, dark nights of despair. May 6, 2024, was one of those nights, rock bottom in my 3.5-year quest to get this $25,000 Ferrari back on the road.

You might recall the myriad challenges, such as the engine that had to be rebuilt not once, but twice, and the untimely deaths of two craftsmen—an exterior painter and an interior trim specialist—who both happened to pass away while working on my project. By this spring, those sad episodes were behind me, the Dino ran well, and its new blue paint job shone brightly. All I had to do was put the car back together and send it off to a new trim man for interior work. Easy Street ahead.

Except I was missing the steering column switch assembly and its three stalks that control the lights, turn signals, and wipers. In April 2023, I had it shipped to a gentleman in Boston who had developed a unique method for repairing old, brittle plastics. By January, I started calling him weekly. Whenever I managed to get him on the phone, he assured me that, despite his health issues, he’d have my switches done “in a day or two.”

These perfectly pleasant but fruitless conversations went on for much of the winter, and I started wondering if I’d ever see the switches again. A new assembly doesn’t quite look right and costs four grand, but it would suffice. Problem was, along with the switches, I’d also sent the hood they attach to. At the very least, I needed that hood, which covers the steering shaft and is engraved with the car’s serial number. My suggestion that he send the hood back while he continued working on the switches fell on deaf ears.

How long could I go on pestering this man, a senior citizen who serves a small yet passionate slice of the automotive community, about my little switches? At some point, humanity trumps car lust, right? I pondered flying to Boston, showing up at his house, paying him for his time, and returning with my parts. Then I remembered that Hagerty columnist Rob Siegel, aka the Hack Mechanic, lives in the Boston area. Could he go knock on the door?

Siegel did so one day in April, but no one was home. On a second visit, Siegel made contact, but he got the same “in a day or two” I’d heard for months. One week later, however, the rebuilt switches and hood arrived. The bill was about $1000.

I installed the switches and dropped the Dino at a local shop for new tires and a suspension alignment. On May 6, I planned to drive it home from the shop. It would be my first time behind the wheel with all the refreshed mechanical subsystems installed and ready to run. It would be a celebration. I’m almost done!

Instead, new problems slapped me across the face. Issue one: The engine barely ran. It sputtered, popped, and backfired like a cantankerous toddler. I was lucky to limp the Dino home. Issue two: The new switches worked only intermittently. Great.

For two days, I didn’t lay eyes on the car. I cursed myself for taking on this white elephant. I had been so cocky, so confident, back in January 2021, when I bought the thing. The challenge was the point, I happily told anyone who would listen. What a fool. I’d grown to hate this misery-inducing Italian. The time had come to call the pros.

My local mechanic couldn’t see the car for two weeks. In the meantime, he told me to get some rubber gloves and hold each spark plug a half-inch from the engine. A properly operating plug should throw an arc over that gap. I disconnected the fuel pump and had my son crank the engine as I held each plug. The plug on cylinder five produced a spark that easily crossed the gap. A plug from the V-8’s other cylinder bank only sparked when I touched it to the engine. That spark was meek by comparison and hard to see. Aha!

Luckily, the Ferrari engine has two complete ignition systems, one for each bank of four cylinders. Two ignition coils supply the electrical energy and two distributors guide that energy to the right plug at the right time. That made it relatively easy to swap parts until I located the culprit: a quarter-sized metal cylinder called a condenser. Once I replaced that, the engine purred, and I drove the car 20 miles to a neighboring town and back. Did that feel good? Damn right it did.

Newly confident, I removed the switches and found a bad ground. Another problem emerged: The fuel-pump fuse would intermittently pop. A friend and I spent half a day tracing that to a tiny torn wire buried in the wiring harness. We were proud of ourselves.

The tables had decidedly turned and I began to love the Dino again. I finished putting the car back together and sent it off for the interior work. I’m sure I’ll encounter plenty of teething problems, but with every passing mechanical success, I feel less anxious about fixing them.

If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a small city to bring a Ferrari back on the road. I cherish these projects for the people I meet and the things I learn along the way. My love-it-and-hate-it Dino has been a fountain of uncommon experiences, and I hope you’re enjoying hearing about them.