Early Ferrari cars used steel tubing for the cooling system which corrodes seriously over time. Since replacement parts have never been available, these pipes were often patched together, soldered up, welded, epoxied- whatever to make them hold water. Typical of the Italians, the pipes are beautiful with gentle bends and are very difficult to recreate but we have a system to make them out of stainless steel 304 series tubing. See http://www.ferraricraft.com/2009/12/reproducing-ferrari-water-pipes-in-stainless-steel/

Water Pipes for Ferrari engine

Water pipe elbow

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.

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.