I have the engine out of the car, on a stand, and am ready to begin the major. I plan on doing the valve adjustments first, so I want to rotate the engine and find TDC. Looking at the engine from the rear, which way does it normally rotate.......CW or CCW? If CW, then I would rotate the engine, from the front crank bolt, CCW. Am I right? Thanks!
The engine rotates CW from front. Use markings on flywheel and pointer under cover plate on flywheel housing. TDC is indicated by PM 1/6 and PM 7/12.
(Sorry to be a stickler, but it's the "crankshaft" that rotates CW as viewed from the front -- not the "engine" This trival point gets important because the cams rotate CCW viewed from the front on a BB512i due to the gear drive.) The easy way to remember this (or figure it out) is that the tensioner bearing is always on the "slack" side of the timing belt. (And may I add that that long alternator belt is rather silly ) Image Unavailable, Please Login
Thanks guys! I turned the "crank" CW and the marks line up at the camshaft ends, together with the "IPW 1-6" mark. The "I" is the line indentation in the flywheel. The distributor also lines up.....the closest contact point matches the enscribed line on distributor base.
Don't forget to use a degree wheel to time your cams. Ferrari's marks are not always correct. Three of my Daytonas, 288 GTO and 512TR had incorrect marks. The factory marks on my other cars were ok. You'll nail it with the degree wheel. Steve
Henry: mark the location of the distributor body on the engine mount and mark the location of the dist rotor on the body. Mark the flywheel location relative also as the timing marks are on the flywheel.
Steve 288: You are correct. At TDC the arrow pointers do not line up with the grooved mark on the camshaft. However, they do line up with the "painted" marks made by a dealer. This is seen on all 4 cams. I believe it can be corrected by rotating the cam gear and using the slotted dowel pins, however, since all four are aligned with the painted marks, I will leave well enough alone. Bob: I believe the flywheel goes on only one way. However, I did take it off with the engine on TDC. I did mark the clutch, in relation to the flywheel, so I can put it back the same way, since I will be re-using it........looks fine. One must be careful, since one can be on TDC regarding the flywheel, and still be off 180 degrees......seen by the distributor rotor being 180 degrees off and the cams not lining up. This is due to the fact that the crank turns twice that of the camshafts.
Hi 91TR, out of curiosity and on a different subject, how are these flat 12 engines? I have a Honda Valkyrie (flat 6) that is absolutely vibration free at any speed. It has the smoothest idle and yet, when I flog it it responds with gusto. Why were they dropped from production? Tks, Saluti,
Same as your flat 6, but probably even smoother since the (more) firing events are spaced closer together It's almost a problem because if one bank stops working it still runs perfectly smooth on the remaining bank. "Dropped" is maybe too harsh a description -- they actually just "folded" the block from 180 deg back to 65 deg for the 550, 575, etc. since that fits better between the front suspension pieces in a front drive layout. One minor downside of the 180 deg block is that it greatly separates the intake systems so the smaller block angles make for a simplier/more compact intake system(s). The biggest problem with the F flat 12 pacakges is that putting the gearbox underneath puts the CG up kind of high -- on my TR I wish they would have eliminated the interior luggage space, moved the engine forward and put the gearbox behind the (more lowered) engine.
I think the flat-12 is one of the best motors ever made!! That should have been the staple engine! That configuration is perfectly balanced.
I would tend to agree with that, unfortunately, too many times the architecture of the engine is modified to fit the available space or other silly ideas that become the genesis of 3 and 5 cylinder engines. A.
