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Autobahn Adventurer
Picture Perfect: The Restoration of a Ferrari 246 GTS
The beauty of this restored 246 GTS is more than skin deep.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY ZACHARY MAYNE
Article:
Like many Ferrari enthusiasts, Jon Gunderson of San Diego, California thinks the Dino 246 is one of the company’s aesthetic high points. Actually, he takes the sentiment one step further: “I think it’s the most beautiful car ever made.”
The first time Gunderson saw a Dino was in December 1971, when he was a college student on vacation in France. At the time, he didn’t have the means to purchase one, but in the early 1980s he sold his Porsche 911 SC and bought a yellow and black ’72 246 GT. “Even though I have always been a Porsche guy, and still am, owning a Ferrari was the next level,” says Gunderson.
Over the ensuing years, he owned two more Dinos. The first, a ’74 GTS which he had in the early ’90s, was stolen, while the second, another ’74 GTS acquired in 2004, was refinished by restorer Harold White. While he liked his freshly restored Dino, Gunderson believed that he could do it better. “Even though I didn’t have any experience restoring cars, I thought I could take a Dino apart, figure out how everything worked and put it back together.”
He had another motive for tackling such a project. “My son, Jeff, was about to go off to college, and I wanted to restore the car with him,” says Gunderson, who saw a father-and-son project as the perfect bonding opportunity. “Jeff is interested in cars just as much as I am.” Gunderson soon began to search for an appropriate candidate. He decided he would start with a solid car, even a driver, rather than a rust-bucket with potential hidden issues and missing parts.
“I found the car in 2005 on eBay,” he explains. “It was in Houston, Texas, and was a clean, original car. I had it shipped to San Diego, and when it arrived I drove it around the block, and that was it.” The next day, he bought a lift and the tools needed to start the restoration.
Son Jeff removed the first piece from the 246 GTS (s/n 7836), the front Dino emblem, then the duo began tearing the car down in earnest. “But right away, I saw that things could get out of hand very quickly,” remembers Gunderson of the quickly growing pile of parts.
Beginning Restoration:
In order to avoid losing track of what was what and where it went, he devised a system that utilized plastic bins labeled with a page from the factory parts manual. When each component or assembly was removed, he photographed the parts in the same position they were pictured in the manual, after which he stored them in the appropriate bin. It was a slow, painstaking process: “The disassembly took about six months, working three days a week, most of the time with my son,” says Gunderson.
There were a few bumps in the road, too. When they couldn’t figure out how to safely remove the motor, they turned to the restorer who had worked on the earlier Dino. “Harold told us the engine has to be tilted up at a certain angle and twisted a certain way to come out,” Gunderson explains. Other challenges included frozen suspension bolts that had to be cut off with a rotary saw. They even went to the trouble of mounting the Dino’s shell on a rotisserie, so they could rotate it and have better access to areas that would normally be difficult to get to—this would be especially helpful during reassembly.
Once the car was down to the frame, Gunderson decided to go the extra step of removing the fiberglass tub, a two-piece unit that consists of the floorpan and front and rear bulkheads, for beadblasting and painting. “I had never seen a Dino that was taken that far apart,” he notes.
Restoration:
With every possible piece removed from the car, the long process of refurbishing everything began. It was at this point that the Gundersons needed to decide how they wanted the end result to appear. Rather than return the Dino to its original, as-it-left-the-factory configuration, they wanted it their way. “As far as the looks were concerned, I wanted to do it as if I was running the Dino assembly line and could have made the car look however I wanted,” says Gunderson.
He started by collecting photos of different Dino colors, eventually amassing 27 of the 33 hues used during the model’s production run. The winning color was Dino Blue Metallic: “When I saw a picture of that color, I thought, ‘That is the one.’”
Modifications:
Next, the Gundersons decided to install European-specification turn signals, which are smaller than the U.S. ones. This meant welding patch panels into the old openings then cutting holes for the new lenses. The only welding experience they had came from Jeff’s single semester of high-school shop class, but the two acquired a MIG welder and, after much practice, became adept enough to perform basic body welding jobs.
“The Euro lenses are really hard to find, but vintage Ferrari specialist Tom Shaughnessy had a set,” says Gunderson. “They came with labels taped on them that said right and left side.” Using the new lenses as templates, father and son cut the holes in the Dino’s bodywork and installed the signals—but something just didn’t look right. After a lot of head scratching and staring at the car, they finally realized that the signals had been mislabeled, and were thus installed on the wrong sides. “We just about died!” Gunderson laughs.
The fix involved once again welding in patch panels and cutting the proper openings. Next, the front side-marker lights were replaced with smaller Euro-spec lights using the same technique. At the rear of the car, the side lights were filled in, as were the holes for the reflectors mounted between the taillights.
Gunderson also decided to add wheel-arch flares, which were part of the factory’s “chairs and flares” option.
In order to properly replicate them, he measured the fenders on a factory-flared Dino [that car was David Steel’s ’73 GTS, which we featured in issue #63’s “Even Better Than the Real Thing”—Ed.], then cut the new flares from sheet metal and welded them onto the Dino’s wheel arches.
The Ferrari was then sent out for media blasting and final painting, two of the few steps father and son didn’t perform themselves. Gunderson chose Hot Rods and Custom Stuff in Escondido, California for this step of the restoration. “They do a lot of hot rods and are located just up the street from me, so I could check in regularly on the progress,” he says. All told, the shop would have the car for six months.
In the meantime, the Gundersons continued to methodically restore every component they’d taken off the Dino. More skills were learned, a bead-blasting cabinet and a powdercoating machine were installed in their shop and hundreds more hours were spent poring over the parts manual, as every component was replated, powdercoated or painted. They also re-created parts where it was feasible, such as the sheetmetal heat shields for the exhaust. “Even on parts where you wouldn’t see them after the car was assembled, I tried to make them look like a piece of art,” says Gunderson.
As he had done during the disassembly phase, Gunderson photographed every step of the component restoration process. He also posted extensive updates on the FerrariChat website as the project progressed. The thread he started is now hundreds of pages long, with thousands of comments from all corners of the globe—an international audience of enthusiasts offered praise, help and suggestions. It soon dawned on Gunderson that he was creating a great resource with this painstaking photography and documentation, so Jeff created a website (Dino Restoration) where the information could be easily accessed.
While most things were progressing smoothly, new hurdles popped up. In one instance, Gunderson had taken a pile of parts, including the very rare rear window surround and headlight rings, to a plating company. “They called me on a Thursday and told me the parts were ready,” he says. “I went down on Friday, and discovered that the place had caught fire overnight and burned to the ground.” Gunderson spent the next several months tracking down replacement parts, many of which had to be sourced from Europe. “$5,000 later, we were back on track,” he says wryly.
Engine:
Although the Dino had been running well before the restoration, Gunderson tore down its 2.4-liter V6 engine and five-speed transaxle. He enlisted friend Mike Logan, an engine builder who specializes in race engines, to help with the rebuilding process. Once the motor was reassembled with new pistons and seals, it was mounted on an engine stand to make sure everything was healthy. “The engine started right up, but then the oil pressure immediately went down,” recalls Gunderson.
James Selevan, a Ferrari owner and restorer from Laguna Beach, came to the shop to help out. When the oil pan was removed, an oil plug was found sitting in it. “When we put in the new oil-galley plugs, I didn’t realize you have to seat them a certain way for them to stay in,” Gunderson says. When the motor was started, the pressure from the oil caused the plug to pop out. Luckily, no damage was done, and when the engine was put back together again, everything was perfect. Having the V6 on the test stand also allowed it to be run through a series of warm-up and cool-down cycles before it was installed in the car.
In lieu of the original Ansa exhaust, Gunderson fitted a more vocal Tubi item, while the original Dinoplex ignition was upgraded with a Superformance electronic unit. On the intake side, the air box that normally tops the three downdraft Weber carburetors was replaced by a trio of Ramflow air filters.
Meanwhile, Hot Rods and Custom Stuff was busy painting the Dino with four coats of Dino Blue Metallic and six coats of clear. In early 2008, the car was returned to its owner, resplendent in its new paint and ready for reassembly. “We had to think ahead when we started putting it back together,” says Gunderson, who began with the ventilation system and finished the front of the car before moving on to the rear. Keeping with the “flares and chairs” theme, a set of the 7.5 x 14-inch Campagnolo wheels used on that model were installed, fitted with period-correct 205/70 Michelin tires.
Interior and Conclusion:
Three years after the start of the restoration, the project was finally nearing completion. One of the last things to be finished was the cockpit. Gunderson reupholstered the interior panels himself in black leather, rather than the original vinyl, and installed a new dash. The gauges, which had been sent to North Hollywood Speedometer for refurbishing, were bolted in.
A new black carpet kit and tan and black Daytona-style seat covers had been ordered nine months earlier from Europe. What arrived, however, were red carpet and tan seat covers with red inserts. The company promised the correct interior would be sent, but it never arrived.
Gunderson wanted to debut the Dino at San Diego’s annual Bella Italia car show on April 5, 2008, so the week before the show, he took the seats to nearby Autos International and had them covered in tan leather with black inserts. He also took the original carpet for the company to use as a pattern for making a new carpet kit. The night before the show was a flurry of activity, as the Gundersons buttoned everything up.
“The next day, we drove it down to the show,” says Gunderson. “Everything worked, though there were some electrical glitches in the front turn signals: Every time we used the signal, it would blow the fuse to the headlights.” Nonetheless, the freshly restored—and, frankly, fantastic—car placed first in the Dino category.
Despite the fact that the restoration sometimes felt like an uphill battle, Gunderson is already planning his next Dino project: A 246 GT, one of a handful made with the flares and chairs option, is waiting patiently in his shop. I don’t know how he could do any better this time around, but regardless, the new car will make the perfect bookend for his GTS, and give him a pair of the most beautiful cars Ferrari ever made.
Source: Forza Magazine, December 2008; Issue No. 90
Photos:
The beauty of this restored 246 GTS is more than skin deep.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY ZACHARY MAYNE
Article:
Like many Ferrari enthusiasts, Jon Gunderson of San Diego, California thinks the Dino 246 is one of the company’s aesthetic high points. Actually, he takes the sentiment one step further: “I think it’s the most beautiful car ever made.”
The first time Gunderson saw a Dino was in December 1971, when he was a college student on vacation in France. At the time, he didn’t have the means to purchase one, but in the early 1980s he sold his Porsche 911 SC and bought a yellow and black ’72 246 GT. “Even though I have always been a Porsche guy, and still am, owning a Ferrari was the next level,” says Gunderson.
Over the ensuing years, he owned two more Dinos. The first, a ’74 GTS which he had in the early ’90s, was stolen, while the second, another ’74 GTS acquired in 2004, was refinished by restorer Harold White. While he liked his freshly restored Dino, Gunderson believed that he could do it better. “Even though I didn’t have any experience restoring cars, I thought I could take a Dino apart, figure out how everything worked and put it back together.”
He had another motive for tackling such a project. “My son, Jeff, was about to go off to college, and I wanted to restore the car with him,” says Gunderson, who saw a father-and-son project as the perfect bonding opportunity. “Jeff is interested in cars just as much as I am.” Gunderson soon began to search for an appropriate candidate. He decided he would start with a solid car, even a driver, rather than a rust-bucket with potential hidden issues and missing parts.
“I found the car in 2005 on eBay,” he explains. “It was in Houston, Texas, and was a clean, original car. I had it shipped to San Diego, and when it arrived I drove it around the block, and that was it.” The next day, he bought a lift and the tools needed to start the restoration.
Son Jeff removed the first piece from the 246 GTS (s/n 7836), the front Dino emblem, then the duo began tearing the car down in earnest. “But right away, I saw that things could get out of hand very quickly,” remembers Gunderson of the quickly growing pile of parts.
Beginning Restoration:
In order to avoid losing track of what was what and where it went, he devised a system that utilized plastic bins labeled with a page from the factory parts manual. When each component or assembly was removed, he photographed the parts in the same position they were pictured in the manual, after which he stored them in the appropriate bin. It was a slow, painstaking process: “The disassembly took about six months, working three days a week, most of the time with my son,” says Gunderson.
There were a few bumps in the road, too. When they couldn’t figure out how to safely remove the motor, they turned to the restorer who had worked on the earlier Dino. “Harold told us the engine has to be tilted up at a certain angle and twisted a certain way to come out,” Gunderson explains. Other challenges included frozen suspension bolts that had to be cut off with a rotary saw. They even went to the trouble of mounting the Dino’s shell on a rotisserie, so they could rotate it and have better access to areas that would normally be difficult to get to—this would be especially helpful during reassembly.
Once the car was down to the frame, Gunderson decided to go the extra step of removing the fiberglass tub, a two-piece unit that consists of the floorpan and front and rear bulkheads, for beadblasting and painting. “I had never seen a Dino that was taken that far apart,” he notes.
Restoration:
With every possible piece removed from the car, the long process of refurbishing everything began. It was at this point that the Gundersons needed to decide how they wanted the end result to appear. Rather than return the Dino to its original, as-it-left-the-factory configuration, they wanted it their way. “As far as the looks were concerned, I wanted to do it as if I was running the Dino assembly line and could have made the car look however I wanted,” says Gunderson.
He started by collecting photos of different Dino colors, eventually amassing 27 of the 33 hues used during the model’s production run. The winning color was Dino Blue Metallic: “When I saw a picture of that color, I thought, ‘That is the one.’”
Modifications:
Next, the Gundersons decided to install European-specification turn signals, which are smaller than the U.S. ones. This meant welding patch panels into the old openings then cutting holes for the new lenses. The only welding experience they had came from Jeff’s single semester of high-school shop class, but the two acquired a MIG welder and, after much practice, became adept enough to perform basic body welding jobs.
“The Euro lenses are really hard to find, but vintage Ferrari specialist Tom Shaughnessy had a set,” says Gunderson. “They came with labels taped on them that said right and left side.” Using the new lenses as templates, father and son cut the holes in the Dino’s bodywork and installed the signals—but something just didn’t look right. After a lot of head scratching and staring at the car, they finally realized that the signals had been mislabeled, and were thus installed on the wrong sides. “We just about died!” Gunderson laughs.
The fix involved once again welding in patch panels and cutting the proper openings. Next, the front side-marker lights were replaced with smaller Euro-spec lights using the same technique. At the rear of the car, the side lights were filled in, as were the holes for the reflectors mounted between the taillights.
Gunderson also decided to add wheel-arch flares, which were part of the factory’s “chairs and flares” option.
In order to properly replicate them, he measured the fenders on a factory-flared Dino [that car was David Steel’s ’73 GTS, which we featured in issue #63’s “Even Better Than the Real Thing”—Ed.], then cut the new flares from sheet metal and welded them onto the Dino’s wheel arches.
The Ferrari was then sent out for media blasting and final painting, two of the few steps father and son didn’t perform themselves. Gunderson chose Hot Rods and Custom Stuff in Escondido, California for this step of the restoration. “They do a lot of hot rods and are located just up the street from me, so I could check in regularly on the progress,” he says. All told, the shop would have the car for six months.
In the meantime, the Gundersons continued to methodically restore every component they’d taken off the Dino. More skills were learned, a bead-blasting cabinet and a powdercoating machine were installed in their shop and hundreds more hours were spent poring over the parts manual, as every component was replated, powdercoated or painted. They also re-created parts where it was feasible, such as the sheetmetal heat shields for the exhaust. “Even on parts where you wouldn’t see them after the car was assembled, I tried to make them look like a piece of art,” says Gunderson.
As he had done during the disassembly phase, Gunderson photographed every step of the component restoration process. He also posted extensive updates on the FerrariChat website as the project progressed. The thread he started is now hundreds of pages long, with thousands of comments from all corners of the globe—an international audience of enthusiasts offered praise, help and suggestions. It soon dawned on Gunderson that he was creating a great resource with this painstaking photography and documentation, so Jeff created a website (Dino Restoration) where the information could be easily accessed.
While most things were progressing smoothly, new hurdles popped up. In one instance, Gunderson had taken a pile of parts, including the very rare rear window surround and headlight rings, to a plating company. “They called me on a Thursday and told me the parts were ready,” he says. “I went down on Friday, and discovered that the place had caught fire overnight and burned to the ground.” Gunderson spent the next several months tracking down replacement parts, many of which had to be sourced from Europe. “$5,000 later, we were back on track,” he says wryly.
Engine:
Although the Dino had been running well before the restoration, Gunderson tore down its 2.4-liter V6 engine and five-speed transaxle. He enlisted friend Mike Logan, an engine builder who specializes in race engines, to help with the rebuilding process. Once the motor was reassembled with new pistons and seals, it was mounted on an engine stand to make sure everything was healthy. “The engine started right up, but then the oil pressure immediately went down,” recalls Gunderson.
James Selevan, a Ferrari owner and restorer from Laguna Beach, came to the shop to help out. When the oil pan was removed, an oil plug was found sitting in it. “When we put in the new oil-galley plugs, I didn’t realize you have to seat them a certain way for them to stay in,” Gunderson says. When the motor was started, the pressure from the oil caused the plug to pop out. Luckily, no damage was done, and when the engine was put back together again, everything was perfect. Having the V6 on the test stand also allowed it to be run through a series of warm-up and cool-down cycles before it was installed in the car.
In lieu of the original Ansa exhaust, Gunderson fitted a more vocal Tubi item, while the original Dinoplex ignition was upgraded with a Superformance electronic unit. On the intake side, the air box that normally tops the three downdraft Weber carburetors was replaced by a trio of Ramflow air filters.
Meanwhile, Hot Rods and Custom Stuff was busy painting the Dino with four coats of Dino Blue Metallic and six coats of clear. In early 2008, the car was returned to its owner, resplendent in its new paint and ready for reassembly. “We had to think ahead when we started putting it back together,” says Gunderson, who began with the ventilation system and finished the front of the car before moving on to the rear. Keeping with the “flares and chairs” theme, a set of the 7.5 x 14-inch Campagnolo wheels used on that model were installed, fitted with period-correct 205/70 Michelin tires.
Interior and Conclusion:
Three years after the start of the restoration, the project was finally nearing completion. One of the last things to be finished was the cockpit. Gunderson reupholstered the interior panels himself in black leather, rather than the original vinyl, and installed a new dash. The gauges, which had been sent to North Hollywood Speedometer for refurbishing, were bolted in.
A new black carpet kit and tan and black Daytona-style seat covers had been ordered nine months earlier from Europe. What arrived, however, were red carpet and tan seat covers with red inserts. The company promised the correct interior would be sent, but it never arrived.
Gunderson wanted to debut the Dino at San Diego’s annual Bella Italia car show on April 5, 2008, so the week before the show, he took the seats to nearby Autos International and had them covered in tan leather with black inserts. He also took the original carpet for the company to use as a pattern for making a new carpet kit. The night before the show was a flurry of activity, as the Gundersons buttoned everything up.
“The next day, we drove it down to the show,” says Gunderson. “Everything worked, though there were some electrical glitches in the front turn signals: Every time we used the signal, it would blow the fuse to the headlights.” Nonetheless, the freshly restored—and, frankly, fantastic—car placed first in the Dino category.
Despite the fact that the restoration sometimes felt like an uphill battle, Gunderson is already planning his next Dino project: A 246 GT, one of a handful made with the flares and chairs option, is waiting patiently in his shop. I don’t know how he could do any better this time around, but regardless, the new car will make the perfect bookend for his GTS, and give him a pair of the most beautiful cars Ferrari ever made.
Source: Forza Magazine, December 2008; Issue No. 90
Photos:
