Ferrari 166 MM Berlinetta: First steps

What lovely little cars these 166 MMs were! I have the Barchetta as well as this Berlinetta, both from Model Factory Hiro. I fell in love with these cars after seeing them in Road & Track as a kid, and finally saw them in the metal at the Ferrari museum in Maranello in 2007.





The size is hard to understand until you park it next to other similar cars. It is the same length and wheelbase, roughly, as the 908/03 or the Lotus 7, being a bit wider than the Lotus but a lot narrower than the Porsche. Think MG Midget, but with a 2-litre, 160 hp V12. And if 160 hp, or 80 hp/litre, doesn't sound like much, it works out to a very impressive, for the period, 1.3 hp per cubic inch.



I thought I should tackle one of these as a way of 'getting back on the horse', so to speak, after the struggles with the 908/03. The chassis is a single casting reproducing the ladder frame used by Ferrari well into the '60s, and involves none of the little tubes found in the 908 or the TZ1. Like the 250 Lusso, the chassis will be relatively straightforward. That being said, the engine is very detailed and requires some work.



The early Ferrari motors, designed by Gioacchino Colombo, while modern in terms of bore and stroke, involved a couple of odd decisions around the cylinder heads. The valve springs were large hairpin-type things that sat next to the valve and consequently took up a lot of real estate under the valve cover; as a result the heads only had three studs per cylinder rather than the more usual four. The result was relatively frequent cylinder head gasket failures, maybe less so in the smaller bore 1.5 and 2.0 litre engines (models 125 and 166), but certainly this was a problem in the 2.3 and 2.6 litre engines, with their bigger bores, as found in the 195 and 212 models.



The spark plugs were located inside the V, next to the inlet manifold, also possibly due to the valve spring design. In any case, when Lampredi redesigned the venerable Colombo motor for the 3 litre 250 models, four studs were used along with conventional valve springs, and the plugs were moved to the hot side of the cylinder head next to the exhaust manifold. The 250 thus became the engine to beat in road racing, being both powerful and reliable.



The front cover is a very busy place, with two magnetos, a generator and assorted fuel and water pumps all driven off the camshaft drive system. The kit does not include a radiator fan, so I assume one is not supposed to idle about in traffic in one of these! This lack of a belt is a benefit from a maintenance perspective; on the other hand any repairs will involve gaskets and seals into the oil system, and I assume there is the potential, as with Lotus Twincam heads, for the water pump seal to leak into the sump.

The wiring for the plugs in this 166 MM is a challenge as the wires need to be fed into the head prior to the inlet manifold going in. In fact, it is easiest to get this started before assembling the heads to the block.



Wiring cord supplied by MFH is both thin (a scale-accurate 0.016") and flexible, making it a challenge to push into holes which I drilled out to 0.018". I found some craft wire some time back, that is also 0.016" but too stiff. Here is the right side cylinder head essentially complete. I used the MFH cord in the wires going to the magneto, but the craft wire for the short bits to the plugs. The left side will get done off the engine, the head will be installed, then the wires will get fed to the second magneto.



Primer started with Duplicolor CDAP-1699 Gray Primer Sealer. On the can it states that this is suitable for metal, fiberglass and wood. I followed this with Tamiya white primer to serve as a base coat for the Tamiya TS-8 Italian Red. Yes, I am still using rattle cans.





This particular kit (MFH K051, Version B) is set up as it ran in the Mille Miglia in 1950, and comes with decals for car #343 (21st overall) or #351 (retired). I will likely build it in road trim without the numbers, and will skip the third spot lamp mounted in the grille as used in car #351. Stay tuned!