Missing In Action

A client came in with a blown head gasket due to over heating, on a 1985 308 4 valve Ferrari. Massimo pulled the engine out, pulled the heads off, replaced the head gasket and thermostat. He than checked the water pump and looked through the water pump housing pipe as well, everything appeared fine, no leaks..,


So why had it overheated?


Massimo is meticulous and always double checks everything. And on a hunch, he pulled the water pump cover, but again no obvious reason for the trouble, the shaft had no play on the bearing, seals looked recently done, no problems right?


Wrong.


When he tried to turn the shaft by hand the shaft would spin without consistently engaging the gear. In other words the shaft is supposed to be locked onto the gear so that it doesn't move at all! First thing he thought of was that the Woodruff key notch, a piece that sits on the key and fits into a spot on the gear wheel, was completely worn out. But when he pulled the front engine cover off and saw the gear bouncing on the shaft he was intrigued.


Moving? He thought, this thing wasn't suppose to be moving around at all!


After getting down to the Woodruf key itself he saw clearly that there was no notch at all! As you can see in the photo there is nothing attached to the shaft! Instead, the Woodruff key had been pressed in. It is very likely that the shaft came like that from the factory, hard to tell, but because the notch wasn't milled onto the shaft, the water pump circulated sporadically, which in turn caused over heating and finally catastrophic failure.


So Massimo replaced the water pump shaft and the problem was solved.
But he later confided to me that this was really strange and he'd never seen anything like this in all of his years working.

Hello There And Welcome

I've got a husband who always tells me often crazy, but remarkably interesting tales about the automobiles he repairs. My husband's name is Massimo and although I know a lot of you out there are already familier with his work, for those of you who are not, he is an Italian import himself. He specializes in the mechancal repair of exotic automobiles, and more specifically, Ferrari. He has a great love of Italian cars and began his apprentiship when he was 14. He has repaired these cars now, for over 30 years. I think he is as fascinating as the automobiles that he works on and I think you will think so too.

We run a small repair shop in Oldsmar, Florida, called The Auto Legend. He diagnosiss, inspects, troubleshoots and repairs exotic automobiles, and I do mean exotic, some of the vehicles he's repaired in the past are listed as "3", of 3. Meanwhile, I take care of the paper work, run errands, move cars, sometimes help him with repairs when he needs another hand and the rest of the offen essential, somewhat boring background stuff that needs doing on a daily basis. My name is Leah, and I'm Massimo's wife, and although, I'm not a big car person, (I can't tell you makes and models off the top of my head, or who changed what in what year, so bare with me on some of my discriptions for those of you who can!) I do appreciate beauty and I think these cars are exquisite!

The thing is, with our shop if your Ferrari ends up here, it's usually for a perplexing, perhaps detrimental, but always unfixable, problem. Some where, some how, at some moment, someone or something made unwanted changes in a part of the system that affects it's performance and although the car has made the rounds to all the regular mechanic shops AND the dealer, the problem never gets solved.

We're the shop of last resort, and these are our stories.