Observations of a new Ferrari engine assy.

I was careful in the title to not use the term Ferrari "Mechanic" on purpose, becouse I am not one.
I found out some important points when I "refreshed" my 400I engine that I feel might help other people who are new to these to aviod some pitfalls that I found.

1, Parts are not the same. When shopping for parts and you found the same part for a lot less it might not be the same quality. for instance chain guides, If a couple places qoute you $640 and you then find a place that has it for $150 be prepared to hand fit (file to size, ream piviot boss) the part and realize it is not OEM. I am not saying do not by the cheaper part, but when price shopping ask if it is OEM so you are comparing equal stuff. Quality diffrence of gaskets is huge.

2, Chains on these engines wear out fast, mine was hitting the side of the timing chest at about 57,000 miles with no room for adjustment. It made a ticking sound in the front of the engine.

3, Valve guides wear out fast mine were shot at 68,000 miles, valves looked fine.

4, When adjusting valves with the head on the bench do not leave the cams in! The valves will hit each other even on the mild cam 400I. You should remove the cams to put the heads on so adjust one cams valves then remove the cam.

5. The hard ware is softer the German stuff do not treat it the same! If you suspect, are pull one stud you will likely have to heli/coil the others, so save yourself some time and do them all at once on hard to get at stuff like the water pump and idler gear support.

I ment to take pictures but I do not have that much time to work on this car and a note is the best I could do, Fritz

 

Ashman, I agree, the bottom end was good, bearing, rings looked fine on mine and look like they could have easily gone another 67,000 miles.

Another point, I had oil in my coolant and wanted to know how it was getting there, Head gaskets looked good, waterpump was leaking oil externaly but I belive no oil was getting into the coolant that way. What I did find that was obviously bad and I am 90% sure was the source of oil in the coolant was the O-ring seals that went on the oil tubes under the oil filter housing. Real important to change in my opinion and can be done with the engine in the car.

 

I am sure my engine had been hot or a "ham fist' was in it. but it needed alot of 'Hekicoils' maybe eight not bad compared to your 100!
I also feel (not using tests) that the bolts, nuts general fastners seem to be a softer grade of steel than what is used on German and Jap. cars. Of course I could be wrong becouse I am only going by what it "felt" like maybe I ate a lot of "Wheatis" that day. Thanks always for your imput :"Rifle driver" I "drove" service pistol's for the AMU for four years.

 

It seems to me that the C4/365GT4/400/412 is the final version of the Columbo V-12 and lot of measure were done to cut cost. One of them being using one chain to drive all four cams as opposed to the version in the 'Daytona' which used one chain for each bank of two cams. My guess is our cam chains last half the time. Please chim in if you have experince in these two versions to correct or confirm my belief. Thanks