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It has been 10 years since this 1984 Ferrari 512BBI has been serviced so the owner shipped the car up so we could do a “major service” which includes replacing the timing belts, tensioner bearings and perform a valve lash. I drove the car 10 miles to get a feel for what else it may need and observed a nasty clunking noise in the transmission when in second gear so we have one more thing to repair on this car. Since we replace the bearings that support the timing belt drive pulleys we have to separate the engine from the transmission casting anyhow so it is no more work to get into the transmission to inspect for problems.

It turns out that the second gear cluster has some minor pitting as thought the gear (Ingranaggio 2 Velocitia) was not heat treated properly and the pitting is only on

Transmission Ferrari 512

few teeth. It is amazing that the noise was so prominent when driving the car with such a minor flaw on 3 of the 30 or so teeth. Anyhow, not sure how we are going to find new parts, I may research repairing this cluster because it is going to be a struggle to find these parts.

The link below shows the first start up after we overhauled this 4.0 liter Ferrari V-12. There is always lots of assembly oil to burn out of the combustion chambers so some misfiring is normal. Once the carburetors are tuned and ignition timing dialed in it will be time to run her some more to inspect for leaks or problems. We ran this engine more that day and found everything to be in check.

I am thinking of a chassis dynomometer run on a Porsche 911 with a recent overhaul and the GTC that this engine goes in.

Keep an eye out for more dyno run posts here.

The Forged aluminum Pistons are here and the block is bored to the correct tolerance. We cut the rings, installed new wrist pin bushings and are moving along. The plugs in the crank are factory style so we drilled them out, brushed and soaked the crank and flushed it one more time with a cleaner until she ran clear. With the crank in and the bearings measured, it is time to stuff the pistons and get the bottom end together.

The valves in this engine had 1000 miles on them but were all dimpled in where the lash screw came in contact with the stem. We have never had this problem with our valve supplier so we did a Rockwell hardness check on these damaged valves and the valves from our supplier. There was a huge difference in alloy and hardness.

Now, if only we could feel like we are getting somewhere with scraping gaskets and stripping that crappy paint from the rest of the castings.

I am overhauling the fuel pump right now. There is a hardened 6mm pin that the rocker shaft rides on that is often severely grooved and on this car, the groove is almost half way through. No problem though as I have 3 other pumps to overhaul at the same time. With new bushings, check valves and diaphragm it will be working as new and looking new with freshly plated hardware and top cover.

Engine block

JE Pistons and Forged Connecting rods

Here is a late production GTC engine that was recently overhauled at another shop. The owner never liked the way the thing ran and the major clacking noises coming from the engine was a sign to stop driving it. I took it for a quick spin, it was low on power but ran smoothly. There was a racket coming from the timing chest and just off idle you could hear piston slap.

With the engine running, I removed the oil filler cap and watched in horror as the camshaft chain wheel wobbled excessively. We performed a compression and leak down test and observed 30-40% leak down in 3 cylinders and about 20% in the rest of the cylinders.

We removed the cam covers to see that a few of the bolts that hold the chain wheels were missing and the remaining ones were loose! Upon further disassembling the engine we found that the missing bolts were rattling around in the water pump area, just chewing up the chain and casting.

The piston slap was because the cylinders were honed excessively and the pistons has .08″ clearance, this also cleared up the fact that the engine has low power and high leak down numbers. Good thing that the shop who did this work polished the distributors, carburetors, chain tensioner and oil filter housing!

Bolts missing in Ferrari engine

Ferrari 330 engine ready for overhaul

This lovely car is available for purchase after being well attended by the last owner for 15 years. What a great old car!

It was restored to its original colors in 2001 and has run in many events since then including the Ferrari Challenge Rally as well as the New England 1000 and Texas 1000 Rallies. The car is striking and to hear and drive it will set you right up! There was recently a thread on a Ferrari Forum about what engine is nicer, the inside plug or outside plug 250, this car with its 128D or inside plug engine will convince you which sings a sweeter song.

We have overhauled everything except for the transmission. The axle has been upgraded to tapered Timken roller bearings and is silent and more robust than the original set up. The engine has a coil spring conversion for the valves and it has new bearings and other components. It is just an excellent car to drive and to look at.

Ferrari Coupe

Here is the run for the 330 GTC, we overhauled this engine about 2000 miles ago so it has “limbered up,” but we found it to be running slightly lean on the test.

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. » Continue reading “Ferrari 212 engine”

A friend who owns a 330 GTC went with me to look at this blue GTC when I was interested in buying it. The seller claimed that in the 20 years that he owned the car, he never did much to it other than routing service, new shocks and tires. My friend who has spent countless thousands of dollars to make his great car nearly perfect said, “how can a car with so little recent work run and drive so well while my car has been such a struggle?”

I sold the car to a customer in February 2006 and he drove it 2000 miles without any issues but realized that is was leaking lots of oil and thought that we should do some engine bay detailing.
Before pulling the engine we did a leak down test only to find that 2 cylinders were very weak, 50% or more and all other cylinders were at 30%, not great numbers for an engine that started instantly and pulled strong! (But it burned more oil than it leaked)

We found one of our favorite scenarios, an original engine that has not been puled apart and messed with by someone who did not know what they were doing. We overhauled the engine with new forged pistons, all new bearings in the timing chest and crank shaft bearings. We replaced all of the horribly worn roller follower assemblies and did a major cleaning and detailing. From the second the engine first made smoke, it has run like the champ that it always was!

We cleaned, re-painted and detailed the engine bay and renewed all A/C components so the car worked and looked as new. Later this year we will replace the yellow SALVA hose and re-plate the hose ends and ferrules.
The photos show some before, during, and after shots.

Sometimes we see the craziest things here at our shop.
We bought a 330 GTC last spring that had gone to a number of shops to correct some of the issues that plagued this car.

It was sold to us as having a recent valve job and was a sorted and good running car but we found this not to be the case. When I first drove the car I realized that the cam timing was off because after dialing in the ignition timing the engine still “spark knocked” at low speed. Many shops set the cam timing improperly but it is usually only off 4-6 degrees. The way this engine ran I knew that we were talking about close valve to piston clearances due to the cam timing being way off.

The engine also leaked lots of oil but I was not worried because we were going to remedy the leaks once we remove the cam covers for a valve adjustment and cam timing check. After removing the covers we found that the roller followers were beyond serviceable and the valve adjust screws were shot.

We buttoned up the engine and started to tune the ignition and carburetors only to find the pesky oil leak continued and the radiator seemed to boil over at low temperatures. Nate put the combustion gas tester on the radiator and we realized that the head gaskets were leaking so we decided to bite the bullet and pull the engine from the chassis.

Nate pulled the heads only to find a mushed up Pepsi can between the head and timing case and we noticed the problematic ELRING head gaskets uses. He inspected all of the valves and combustion chambers and put the engine back together in no time. Nate is fast becoming the 330 GT cam timing master!
Now the engine is back together and we are soon to overhaul the transmission in order to make this car perfect.