It can be so demoralizing to work on old cars, even worse working on Ferraris! After overhauling the engine on the blue 330 2+2 and addressing a bunch of other issues, we drove the car and experienced a major vibration that is present under high speed. Whether the car is coasting in neutral or in gear, anytime you go above 50 mph the feeling is there. We suspected that the original Ferrari driveshaft with the rubber flex joint was the problem even though everything looked good so I sent it to be balanced and checked for run-out. The vibration was still there so I checked the transmission and rear axle flanges for run-out, both of which were perfect so after experiencing problems with numerous Ferrari driveshafts, I opted to make adapters to convert the shaft to a Spicer-Hardy U-Joint style. Nate installed the new shaft and guess what, still a vibration (although much less). Could it be a bent pinion shaft or bent main shaft in the transmission?

I assembled a Ferrari 250 engine and got to the cam timing today only to realize that the valve height was not set correctly, so all apart again!

A car deal blew up in my face as well, only because of a minor miss-communication no less.. I could really have used that deal to keep my quota up to maintain my dealer license. It is so hard to broker car deals and so rewarding to sell something that either we own or have at the shop. When the car is gone, there is so little control.

What else…. We have a low mileage 512BBI all apart for a major service which is becoming a major engine bay clean up, not such a big deal but how does a legitimate low miles car look so ratty? It won’t take much, a little paint here and there will tidy up things immensely.

Here is a photo of the BBI engine out and apart to replace the lower timing belt drive pulleys as well as a major service which includes valve lash and new cam belts.

Oh yeah, the brake shoes that we sent to be re-lined for the Monza are way to thick and the newly re-sleeved drums don’t fit over them! Ahhh!

BBI belt service

We dynoed this blue 512BB last summer, and I cannot remember the exact figures. But, I do remember the incredible torque curve and how it made the maximum HP and torque at 5000RPM then plateaued out. I think it made just under 300HP at the rear wheels. We are going to be overhauling and enhancing this engine soon and it will be cool to put it back on the dyno to see the new numbers.

Here’s a link to a similar 512BB on the dyno this winter – this time in red. http://www.ferraricraft.com/2010/01/video-1984-ferrari-512-bbi-at-the-dyno/

We received some questions after posting the video below about calling the 512BBi motor a flat V-12. Mainly, if it is flat, then how can it be a v format?

The answer lies in a technicality. The moniker “boxer” refers to the piston timing of an engine, rather than the direction the cylinders point. On the Ferrari 512, the crankshaft isn’t a true boxer crankshaft – it is a V-12 crankshaft with the cylinders laid flat. Here’s why:

True boxers have one crankpin controlling only one piston/cylinder, and 180° engines share crankpins.

A true “boxer” (horizontally opposed engine) has corresponding pistons reaching top dead center simultaneously.

A 180° V-12 engine has piston pairs sharing a crank pin on the crankshaft and reaching top dead center half a crankshaft revolution apart. Most flat 12s are actually 180° V engines, including the Ferrari discussed here and the famous Porsche 917 racecar.

Interestingly, phase has always been of great concern to the motorcycle industry (think big bang configuration) as it directly effects vibration and riders sit right on top of it. Read more here.

We took the red 1984 Berlinetta Boxer to the dyno this week. The video has great sound, but turn it down if you’re at work.

Here is our gangster punk friend putting a beat down on the red Ferrari BBI and a 250 GT Pininfarina Cabriolet series II. Shiz Bro, he does a nice job!

He used wool on the BBI and foam on the 250, what it is Syl?

Polishing

A few posts ago I reported on a 1984 Ferrari 512 Berlinetta Boxer that had a knocking sound in second gear. It sounded to me like a bad cluster or a bearing with some debris caught in the race. When I jokingly called my main man Geof at Partsource (http://www.ferrariparts.com/)  asking him what he could sell me to fix the problem without disassembling the transmission, he told me that I was the 3rd person in the last month asking for the second gear cluster!

He wanted me to get him the acid etched part numbers on the gears to determine if they were shaved or ground gears but I said, “who cares if they are shaved or ground, I want a matched set of ground”.  Leave it to Ferrari to have even thought shaved gears would hold up to the torque that these parts need to withstand. By the way, if the odometer and the condition of this car is correct, there are less than 10,000 miles on this transmission! Great stuff! I could not find any acid etch numbers to confirm that the gears were shaved but I am sure that they were and not the higher quality ground gears.

As you can see in the photos, the smaller gear has many pits from metal fatigue, not from abuse or lack of lubrication, just poor quality materials and process. What a bummer.   Geof just located gears from a Testarossa transmission that cost a prohibitave amount of money but at least this transmission will not be apart for months and months while we wait for gears to be re-made!

Ferrari Boxer transmission repair

OK, the wait is over, the HP and torque results for the 3 Ferraris was as follows.

330 GTC. 287 HP and 284 Torque. See the video here.

Daytona Coupe 337 HP 315 Torque. See the video here.

365 Berlinetta Boxer 328 HP and 288 torque. See the video here.

I will work to put the graphs on the blog later this week so you can see the HP and torque curves. It was interesting to see the peak torque curve on the BB to be at under 4000RPM!

As I mentioned earlier, I brought 3 Ferraris to do some test runs on the Chassis Dynomometer in Burlington. I was very impressed with the results. Ferrari has been known to embellish the horsepower figures of there engines but we found the actual readings closer (not as high) to the factory figures.

Here is a youtube clip of the 365 BB run