One of the things we learned during the time were preparing our "new"
330 GT 2+2 (s/n 9161) for her trip "home" from Houston to Palo Alto,
was that she really didn't like sitting in traffic. The owner told us.
The mechanic told us. They had gone so far as to remove the original
three-blade cast aluminum fan blades and substitute much lighter plastic
units with six blades each.

Indeed, as we were making our way onto the freeway to leave town, we
hit some traffic, and she let us know that she didn't like it -
temperatures went up, she started spitting and popping, and the
interior of the car got quite warm. (This last was eventually tracked
down to a loose fresh air vent hose, which allowed the hot air from the
engine compartment to visit the driver's feet while it was trying to
exit the sail panel in the fender!)

Once we hit the freeway, though, she was quite well behaved, and caused
no trouble, all the way back to California.

But get her in traffic, and she complained. The worst was a trip to Los
Gatos one warm Saturday morning - lots of traffic, lots of complaining,
coolant temps up to 220 degrees, and an embarrassing flood of green
coolant running down the street a few minutes after she was parked.

This was *not* OK. I mean, we were familiar with the story of Enzo
dictating that in-traffic performance isn't important ("if the traffic
gets heavy, you just pull over to the nearest caffe and sip espresso
until it passes"). But I couldn't believe that the car was this bad
when it left the factory. So I started digging into the cooling
system.

The first, most obvious problem was that the filler neck had a pinhole
leak. We knew this, since we'd been watching the green
stains form all the way home from Texas. Not a lot of liquid leaked
out, but it was enough to keep the system from pressurizing properly.
So out comes the radiator to be rodded out and repaired.

While that's going on, I pulled the thermostat to test it.  For some
reason, it's a "hot" thermostat; I replace it with a 180 degree
thermostat, which is what should be in there.

We follow the factory manual's recommendation to flush with a sodium
carbonate solution, to clean out any buildup in the coolant passages. I
fill the radiator with a 25% glycol solution as a compromise between
heat transfer and freeze protection, and we test ... temps stay around
190 degrees at idle. OK this is progress!

I did some more investigation. It turns out that the radiator caps are
screwed up - this car has an expansion tank that is part of the
pressurized system, rather than just an overflow. So the cap on the
radiator is supposed to be non-vented. It's not; it's a pressure cap.
So a bunch of the system isn't in play. We get the right cap, and
replace the high pressure hose to the expansion tank.

I also noticed that the fan blades really weren't as close to the
radiator as they could be. The fans have a hard time doing their jobs
anyway, since they have to blow through the air conditioning condensor
to get to the radiator. The blades aren't shrouded, so there's nothing
(except good thoughts) to direct the air *through* the radiator instead
of around it.  I repositioned the motors in their slotted mounts to put
the fan blades as close as possible to the condensor.

That summer, we drove to Ashland, Oregon. Temperatures stayed at 190 or
less for the most part, though we saw 210 once. Not bad.

During a session of trying to get the car to pass her smog test, we
realized that the fans just weren't doing their job - temps would cycle
up to the point where a lean miss would come along and blow the
session. We solved the immediate problem by pointing a big fan at the
grille, but there was clearly some more work to do.

If you watched hem, it really looked like the fans were turning more
slowly than you'd want. So ...  I pulled out the fans and their motors.
These motors were very familiar to me - they're the little Lucas box
motor that has been used for years and years to drive windshield
wipers. Pacific Auto Electric in Sunnyvale has rebuilt a number of them
for me, and a Triumph supplier called The Roadster Factory has the
funky rubber mounting parts. I sent them off to be cleaned, rebuilt and
painted.

Unfortunately, they didn't really work any better when they came back.
So we started digging farther into the electrical system. The fans are
actuated by a thermostatic switch at the bottom of the radiator; when
the temperature down there gets to 183 degrees, the switch closes to
actuate a relay that runs the fans; when the temperature drops to 167
degrees, the switch opens. This way, the fans only run when there isn't
enough airflow to keep the bottom of the radiator appreciably cooler
than the top.

Using a jumper lead, I closed the switch. Sure enough, the relay
clicked and the fans started to slowly spin. I measured the voltage at
the fan motors - 8.7V! The voltage at the battery is 13.8V ... that's
quite a voltage drop, and a good guess at the cause. Working backwards
from the motors, we finally found the culprit - the relay itself. Input
voltage was 13.8V, but the output was 8.9V. Sometimes the relay
wouldn't come on. Sometimes the relay wouldn't turn off! The relay had
to go.

Lucas wiper motors to run the fans, so of course there was a Lucas
relay to run the motors. Again, a part I was familiar with. These
relays are built on a piece of phenolic board, and housed in a metal
can; there's no sealing, per se, just some bent over tabs. So it's easy
to take them apart and check them out.

The points were horribly pitted and worn - one side had a cute little stalagmite
growning out of the center, that was probably the whole problem. The
contact pad area had been reduced, so there was voltage drop, and the
mound of metal made it easy for a spark to jump and the relay to seem
to stay closed. The cause is the same thing that causes distributor
points to pit - back electromotive force - but unlike a distributor,
there is no condensor across these points to minimize the effect.
Obviously, this was never supposed to happen! Our little relay was the
original, marked as being made in January of 1966, and it had apparently
just been used too much.

We tried filing the points. That made it buzz while engaged.  A
replacement was needed.

To be honest, I didn't even try the Ferrari parts outlets; I figured
that *if* they had it, they'd hold their noses and charge me triple for
the pain of dealing with a Lucas part! I know my way around the British
car scene pretty well, so I started digging.

It turns out that Lucas has started making a good number of their old
parts again, to service the burgeoning "classic cars" movement.  This
particular relay, though, isn't available - natch. It turns out that
this model relay is the same as the horn relay used in my TR4A ... but
that relay is NLS - no longer supplied - and has been superceded by a
relay in a different package (round instead of rectangular).  It is
possible to get a relay that can be made to work, with a jumper, but
I'd like to do better.

We had luck on two fronts. I found a place that has a lot of Lucas New
Old Stock parts, and they had this relay (code 33232D) on the shelf. I
also guessed that a later Triumph horn relay might be similar, and
found that the relay from a GT6+ was *very* close; the case was plastic
instead of metal, and the contacts were rotated 90 degrees.  I put the
guts from the GT6+ relay into our old metal case and installed it (with
a label indicating what I'd done, if it ends up being removed by
someone else!); I bought a "new" relay and put it on the shelf for the
next time I need one.

Now, the cooling system is perfect. We can drive down the road in warm
weather, sit in traffic, tune the car in the driveway ... and the
coolant temperature never gets above 190. Finally!