ceedee

wow... where are they ? and what year is she?

pewter82

here's a few scans from a rare handout from the factory early in 77 or 78...it shows some assembly line work and team building.

jason
83S 5-Speed

Kevin Michael

A carpenter may not mill the wood, but indeed, he does hand build the house.

928SS

I think mine was handbuilt during octoberfest - my right fender clears an 18x35/265 no sweat, but the left rubs on hard AX type corners. frame and wheel alignment totally perfect though. as long as I'm drinking german beer it doesn't bother me

Ron_H

I have heard rumors that no Ferrari is absolutely symmetrical; one side of the car will not mirror the other side because they are hand finished by two different people.

Vilhuer

Fifties Ferraris had huge tolerances on fenders etc. because many times one person did one side and other did other side. Sixties they got little better and changing front fender only take day or two worth fitting. Modern ones are build just like Porsche build 928. Meaning clearances are even because bodypanels were pressed. Assembly still requires much more manual labor than volume cars.

There weren't robots around in Neckarsulm plant when 924 and 944 were build. So they are basicly as much hand build as 928 is.

Vilhuer

Please send high quality scans of those pages to Jim Morehouse for his CDs.

hacker-pschorr

Line up 10 Aston Martins right off the line - you may find up to an inch difference in length. Hand pounded aluminum panels (like Ferrari does) will never be 100% the same.

Vilhuer

Not anymore. Latest Astons have pressed panels.

hacker-pschorr

Damn it, I knew that.

FBIII

The handbuilt exotics might not be perfectly symmetrical, but their fit and gaps are much tighter than on production vehicles. And not only are they tighter but they are consistent. Every panel is fit to the same gap. With handbuilt autos when you purchase a replacement panel you don't just bolt it on. They are made big so that each one can be fit to the car. It takes a lot of filing and fitting to get it right. I still to this day do not understand why the door to front fender gaps on 928's are so freeking huge. They are almost double any other gap on the entire vehicle.

cobalt

Funny the gaps on my GTS are identical front and rear of each door, although all gaps are twice that of the Cayenne.

I was always told that the doors were an issue on the early 911's and that many cars would be pulled to the side to finess the door so that the gaps would be consistent. I would assume this applied to all models. This all stopped when they started their new approach with the 993.

I restored a 71 911E and a 74 914 2.0l ground up restoration. With both cars I needed parts from other cars to complete the restoration. The 911 needed a new door and the 914 a new trunk. Although the door was a doner from another car, these were not simple bolt on replacements and required a bit of fitting. I had to roll back the skin on the 911 door shave off some material on the frame and then refit it so the gap was correct. When looking at the 2 doors from the same model year they both varied slightly. The trunk on the 914 varied by as much as an 1/8th inch from one lid to the other.

Regarding Ferrari's, my friend does clear bra installs and he says they are the biggest pain to install the clear bra on. He did an F50 and said one side was a different shape than the other and needed to stretch the material much more to fit that side. He had the same complaint about the F40's and other earlier Ferrari's he works on.

Jim bailey - 928 International

OK let's run with this...."A carpenter may not mill the wood, but indeed, he does hand build the house." And if that house is" handbuilt" on a factory assembly line what we have is a modular home ,prefab, or a house trailer . The poster about how 8 guys handbuild the engine although hard to read states each guy "COULD (emphasis added) build the entire engine.. and that they often trade tasks" . They trade tasks because it gets boring doing the same thing over and over on an assembly line building 20 engines a day. The FACT is the cars were built on an assembly line ,mass produced (albiet on a small scale) made from premade standardized fully interchangable parts. The "handbuilt" description at best means no robots but If I bake a cake at home is it Homemade ,handbuilt , hand assembled even when I used a Duncan Hines cake mix , I did add the egg . But my wife stirred the mix , the house cleaner put it in the oven, and my dogs licked the bowl. But that cake is "handbuilt" ...........

pewter82

Ok Jim, calm down dude.....

tv

They did make a point of the slow built or hand built deal in their 1987 2 page adds. They claim it takes 3 weeks to build an S4;