Ferrari 250 engine Assembly

Test run and complete

The Lusso engine is finished and running well. Nate did a nice job detailing it and once we take it off the stand we’ll do some more work to make it look super sharp. Mickey refinished the fuel rail that was mixed in with a huge order of 330 GTC and Maserati Ghibli parts and forgotten about for months but its all together now, making steam

We used to send these Overdrive Units off to a specialist to be rebuilt but something always went wrong on the first test drive. Come to think of it, sometimes they were leaking so badly that we had to take them apart and re-seal them before knuckle busting installation into the chassis.  Considering all the time to properly package the part, the cost to ship the 40lb crate as well as the weeks it takes to get it back, Nate decided to overhaul this Austin Healey 3000 Laycock deNormanville unit on his own. All the parts are available so once they arrive, he’ll slam it back together and test it by spinning it up on the lathe so he can be confident things are right before the installation.

Moss Gearbox

Overdrive Repair and rebuild

We often pick on people who say “all you gotta do is”, because there’s no such thing as “all you gotta do is”…. Anyone who says “all you gotta do is” either has never done it before or is trying to beat you up on an estimate. AKA, a looser

Most of the cars we work on have brand new brake components available to purchase which allow us to slam ‘em in and ship it. Unfortunately, we have to rebuild brake components on Ferrari’s which really sucks.  All you gotta do is…  Ugh. A guy sent me a totally blown out Master cylinder for a 330 GTC, rusted and stuck, terrible, horrible, so I sent steel fittings off to be cadmium plated, sent the cylinder to have a new sleeve installed in the bore, ordered an overhaul kit and when everything returned, I put it all back together. After assembling it the I noticed that the pistons were sticking in the cylinder so I took it all apart and the wrenches scratched the fresh plating and watched as the brake fluid stripped the black paint. I honed the bore and got the pistons to move freely, assembled it again and set it up to be tested on my high tech device that you can observe in the photo below. Now I am finding that the sleeve wasn’t drilled correctly and fluid couldn’t  into the forward chamber (that goes to the rear brakes) so I had to start all over again, scratching, chipping. Now, the cylinder is all back together and working perfectly after 7 hours of labor! “All you gotta do is”! Did I mention that the rebuild kit didn’t come with the correct first seal, there was a 30mm seal included when I needed a 25mm seal so after buying 3 kits, I resorted to making my own seal.

Ferrari GTC Brake Master Cylinder

We seem to have an influx of 250 engines all of a sudden, the one Nate is working on just completed its first test run on the bench after overhaul and the other is coming apart because of problems with the cylinder heads. On this engine, the valve guides are loose in the heads allowing oil to pour into the exhaust system that made smoke pour out of the exhaust system once it heated up.

Bill took some video of the other engine running on the test stand so keep an eye out for that clip on youtube soon.

Ferrari 250 engines

Cylinder heads 911 Porsche

Porsche 911 Crank Case

Inside view of the 911 engine

Over the last few years we have overhauled a bunch of Porsche 911 engines that have the same description as this one, it runs OK but smokes and leaks a bunch of oil. Once we get inside and check things out we find a whole host of issues from collapsed chain tensioners, broken piston rings and wiped out bearings. This engine has a few severely scratched piston skirts and hosed thrust bearings and intermediate shaft bearings.

It’ll be great to get all these parts cleaned up, freshened up and dialed in so the customer can have the car rocking and rolling for the spring. The engine is equipped with Weber Carburetors which seem good but are they better than the Bosch Mechanical Fuel Injection?

Nate did an amazing job on this C/4 engine, after being apart for a number of years he went through all the boxes and created this 4 overhead camshaft monster. He did a great job on detailing the engine too, all the parts are plated in the correct finishes and his wrinkle finish on the cam covers is outstanding.  These engines have so many castings that bolt together and are sealed with some flimsy paper, it takes a pro to seal these things and there isn’t a drop under this engine.

Here is the BB engine, finished up and running on the stand with a link below to see it on youtube. No leaks! Needs a little more tuning but this is the second start up and it ran very well. Since this video was taken, we dialed in the carburetors and it sounds amazing.

There were a bunch of leads as to why this engine overheated but we aren’t sure exactly which problem led to its demise. The water pump looked nasty, maybe it failed and blew all the water out of the weep hole or maybe the head gasket failed. Once we finally got the case split, we found that the cylinder protrusion on the 7-12 bank was .007-.012″ where it should be about .003″ from the deck surface so the gasket may not have sealed around the water passages.

Since the engine was burning a little bit of oil when it ran and the 2nd gear synchro needed to be replaced, it reinforced the need to overhaul this drive train. We are thinking of enhancing the engine with slightly higher compression pistons and increasing the flow by matching the intake manifolds and testing and enhancing the intake and exhaust ports.

A problem with the Ferrari Boxer design arises when you wash the car or drive it in the rain and water pools around the main bearing studs causing a major corrosion issue between the case and the studs, “gluing” the halves together. We made steel blocks that use the main bearing nuts to push the halves apart as you un-thread them but it didn’t work at all. We ended up making hardwood wedges to drive in with a hammer and 3 portable hydraulic cylinders so after nearly a week of labor the job was finally done.

Have a look at the massive amount of corrosion on the studs!

Boxer engine

12 cylinder horizontally opposed

Case halves BB, BBI

Maybe this is the reason Lampredi design features are not used in current engines such as Honda or Mercedes Benz and the reason Ferrari had the most success with the Colombo designed engines. The V-12 Lampredi engine has cylinders that thread up into the cylinder head instead of pressed into the block, but the camshaft and valve actuation are similar to the Colombo designs.

The block of this 4 cylinder Lampredi engine is actually the head, a huge casting with enormous cylinders that thread into it like the V-12′s. The valve actuation is a different style with a huge aluminum followers and a roller of the same size as the V-12 engines. There are huge and very strong “hairpin” style valve springs and enormous coil springs to keep the aluminum followers from floating.

Ferrari 750

Cam Follower Ferrari 4 cylinder

Roller followers Needle Bearing

Ferrari Camshaft wear repair

Due to lack of Ferrari Factory  testing in the mid 50′s, they didn’t observe that this is just too much spring pressure for the roller follower to handle so after less than 2000 miles something gives up, be it the roller follower or the camshaft… and in these photos you can see what happens. The tiny needle bearings come apart and scatter in the engine and the cam is torn up. Maybe the load is too much for the roller follower and it blows apart or the camshaft gets worn and hammers the roller follower until it deteriorates?

We just finished another 330 engine, 330 cubic centimeters per cylinder multiplied by 12 cylinders equals 4000 C.C.’s or 4.0 liters. Actually, Nate did most of the work and this one runs so well without the requisite head gasket leaks!!

Here is a YouTube clip of it running:

Crank in 330