Ferrari 212 engine

A Ferrari 212 Coupe came in about a month ago and we met with the owner to make a list of things that we need to address. The car ran very nicely since it has the single Weber carburetor and actually drove quite well. Unfortunately the engine smokes like crazy and has a few major oil leaks.

Among all of the things that the car needs we started on the engine as it takes so much time to schedule a machine shop and to get the parts in like new head studs and pistons made. We pulled the engine from the chassis and began the break down to see what was making this thing smoke so badly. When it was on the bench Karl did a leak down test to find that the first two cylinders that he tested had about 60% leaking past the piston rings. We only tested those two cylinders figuring that these alone necessitate an overhaul.

Someone had been in here before, tons of silicone sealant instead of gasket paper, missing o-rings in key places and a few broken valve cover studs with acorn nuts glued in place to look like they were doing there job.

The engine had the original 9 piece head gasket which was leaking and in an attempt to stop this leaking the heads were over-torqued causing the head studs to stretch and the head nuts were rounded and mangled.

The Pistons were original cast Borgo’s and the skirts were “knurled” in an attempt to quiet the piston slapping from being under-sized in the past. Even though the skirts were fit better after knurling, the rings were now under-sized which caused the smoking and low compression. All of the valve guides were a severely worn adding to the smoke screen.

Crank and rod bearings were down to copper and because of clutch pressure plate springs that were way too heavy (added in an attempt to keep the clutch from slipping instead of replacing the disc) the thrust bearings were almost completely gone. A few more miles and this engine could have been a major disaster.

I am posting this just to show how crazy some of the repairs on these cars can be. What I figured is that a Foreign car mechanic who knows BMW and M-B did the engine overhaul and did not know the intricacies and details of these engines. Did I mention that the valves were hitting every piston because the cam timing was off? How did this thing even run!!