328 GTS broke down, left on side of H1 East heading towards Waikiki.

Update?

 

I got a call from him this afternoon from the side of the freeway. I have no space in the shop so it got towed to the owner's place. I will go and look at it tomorrow.

It is a real car: 308 QV with twin turbos.

 

It's a cam belt....;>(

One bright spot is that it is the rear bank which is much easier to work on.

 

308 TT, sweet. Some cool cars hiding around the island.

 

That is not possible. Everyone knows they never break.

 

The test is ... why it broke.

 

The belt is absolutely, positively, well and truly dead....;>)

Why? Well, age and one minute too long of high RPM running. I had looked at the engine for another reason several months ago and asked the owner about the belts. The printing on the belts was completely worn away. He said that the belts had been changed "recently". I expessed my concern again about the complete absence of the printing.

When I was doing a lot of these cars for the rental companies, I seem to remember being completely surprised by a QV that had a failed belt and somehow managed not to bend any valves. I will bring a belt to the car, set up the timing, and do a compression check before removing the head. Could we be so lucky?

 

The QV and even more so the 328 have a lot of piston to valve clearance. If the cam stops dead it is very possible. The problem is most do not stop dead, they slip and move, slip and move. Then bent valves are a near certainty.

 

The island is lucky to have you Larry!

 

Hi

Brian: Thank you for your input.It gives me a little more hope that the valves may have survived. I know the owner can do without the expense of removing the head.

Kevin: Wow! Thank you for the kind and generous comment. If there is any truth in it, the reciprocal is also true. I am lucky that the Islands accepted me. It is a great place to live. The work has been a lot of fun and, with very, very, few exceptions, my customers have been terrific.

Aloha
Larry

 

Hope you are keeping busy Larry. I need to swing by and say hello soon. Maybe I will see a TT308 on jack stands when I am there!

 

308 tt = almost 288 gto


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It's perfect. Perfect zeros. Cylinders one through four did not even bump the needle on the compression gauge. The teeth are missing on about six inches of the belt.

 

So are you saying this car was six inches and how ever many teeth that is .....off of timing on at least one bank and no valve piston interference?

 

Hi Glassman

Maybe I was being too "clever" and muddled the message. No. There is zero compression in every cylinder of the rear bank. There is at least one bent valve in each of those cylinders.

Perfect, but perfectly bad....;>)

Aloha
Larry

 

Ok I get it. I was thinking holy crap.....there's that much room in there!!!!

 

Friction drive.
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Typical failure. Seen it a bunch.


Like I always said, looks perfect except for the broken part.

 

They have a lot of space but when teeth get stripped off, which is typical, the cam stops, then turns, then stops, then turns until they are all bent. Takes a few seconds is all.

 

Are you in Maui? I rented a 348 spider for 6 hours back in 2002 while on our honeymoon...the rental place tried to talk me into a "faster" corvette, but realized I wanted nothing other than the Ferrari...he asked me to go easy on the clutch as they just had to replace it. I assured him I wouldn't mis-treat the car. Put 165 miles on the car in 6 hours! I even managed to find one straightway between all the curvy roads and hit 130! (have it in our honeymoon picture album ) Nothing beats driving a convertible Ferrari in Hawaii!

Anyway, I wonder if you were the guy that did the clutch on that 348? She had about 35K miles on her when I rented it...(according to the picture in my photo album )

 

Hi Andrew

It might have been me. One of the Honolulu rental companies (I am in Honolulu) had a branch on Maui and I would fly over and work on their cars. There was another rental company that was based on Maui that had Ferrari, but I never did any work for them. They weren't too far apart on the Kaanapali side.

It was an interesting time. A lot of clutches were replaced. Many renters tried to get more than their money's worth....;>)

Aloha
Larry

 

Frequent clutch replacement also makes me think the renters also simply didn't know how to drive a stick correctly

The place I rented from had only the one ferrari, a vette, I think a TT audi, and maybe several other interesting cars, but I remember also had a bunch of motorcycles. At $325 for 6 hours, it was money well spent! That's wild if you worked on it. Since the owner said it was like $3K+ for the clutch he just had done, I think he almost didn't want to rent it (or at least make sure the customer seemed like they knew what they were doing & was unlikely to abuse it). Based on that, I didn't get the impression he was planning on getting any more Ferraris in the rental fleet. Have to rent it 10 days just to pay for the clutch, before factoring in other maintenance, overhead, etc etc...

 

Hi Andrew

Unless the rental agent was exaggerating to make a point, I did not work on the car that you rented. I never charged that much for a clutch. They were replaced so often that we did very quick changes and replaced only the disc.

The company owner hated the 348 because it was so fragile in rental service. The 308 / 328 were VERY durable.

Aloha
Larry