Funny you should mention it, we actually talked about it. He said no, they are not. They are close but he's seen them up to 6degs off (I think that was the number, but regardless they can be off). So they always use a degree wheel whenever they put everything back together. He had a testarossa engine he was doing that to right next to mine.
Eric, I was at Richard's again today, and he showed me some of the parts of yours. They are definitely doing a quality job. He and Fernando take a lot of pride in their work, and it shows in the results. - Eric
yes, their work ethic is insane. They spent 1 hour just talking to me getting nothing done since I was there. They they are there until late at night just to get everything finished. I can't say enough good things about them. Eric
Seems you are in the hands of some real pro´s. How much do they charge per hour? Would be interesting to know in comparison with the authorised dealer and private mech´s here in Sweden. //B//
you know, I never asked that. We've talked about total price for the job and agreed on that, but not an hourly rate.
No, I asked about that. They said the gaskets are OK, the leak was coming from the exhaust valve guide. That is why they are changing all of them.
Well I was just wondering because of your other post (below). I just thought that valve leaks were only on 355s.... ........so since they have the heads off, it makes great sense to replace them with the best gaskets available .
I see... yeah what I said was confusing. Let me try to clarify: The statement that the ferrari gaskets leak was a generic one, not a specific one to my car. More or less what was said "Ferrari gaskets tend to leak and these german gaskets are much better. We think the ferrari ones are junk". *My* ferrari gaskets appeared to be OK. Funny I also thought valve guides were a 355 thing, but they said they've done several 348s. You know come to think of it, I'm no machine shop guy, but it makes sense that valve guides made of brass would wear eventually. I mean, on my car, they've been on the car for 17 years. On 355s it seemed the problem happened after just a few years which makes it much worse. So maybe 348 owners will have to deal with this issue as well as the years go by.
Heads are back from the machine shop!!! Wooohooo! Parts are being put back together instead of being pulled apart. Surely this means progress Some pics of the new heads, and the guide in question that has been replaced and the heads on the block. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
That's incredibly beautiful work! Gonna be great. Did you see my red '88 Mondial hanging around there? Chris
When I left the car mid-august there was a mondial cabrio that had been in storage for a few years that needed TLC that they were working on. I did not happen to see one last friday which is the last time I was there in person.
Eric, How many miles were on the car when you bought it? Is this one of those "20K" cars I read about? What would cause a burned valve so soon?
it has 37K miles and they were pretty well documented by previous records. Interior condition seems to reflect the mileage and is pretty good, so I don't think the odometer has been tampered with
It does look like it doesn't it. I'll have to ask them about it when I pick it up. All in all, between fixing the leakdown, refinishing the heads, fixing cam timing that was out of whack due to a very loose belt, adding hyperflows and other TLC they are doing, I'd think the car would pull faster from a butt dyno perspective. They also have a hub dyno where they take off the rear wheels, bolt hub adapters in their place that then attach to the dyno machine. They say this setup is very accurate and gets less drivetrain HP loss than a regular dyno. They will dyno the car once they are done. I will post both butt dyno impressions and hub dyno results when I get it back
Eric, looks like they did a nice job. Boy!,the '348 Brotherhood Block' does look mighty nice all by it'self.
What you want from the dyno run is the air/fuel curve at wide open throttle over the full RPM range. With that in hand max power can be made later (crudely via the MAF co screws or more precisely with new M2.7 chips). If they have made a major change (e.g. porting heads, hyperflow cats), then the stock computers aren't going to be delivering enough fuel. No big deal. Easy and cheap to remedy.
Very interesting. So if I get this correctly, I'd need new chips to take full advantage of the hyperflows? The current chips don't "relearn"? Also, I'm happy to hear you think this is cheap to remedy, but the little research I've done on chips puts them at the $1000 mark or more, which isn't exactly cheap in my book I feel like I must be missing something.....
Just curious, who and where did you purchase the car from? I wonder if this was one of the 355 that failed PPI on me.
It's a 348.... And I will say it again. 348, 355, 550 and many others all have the potential for bronze valve guide failures.
I don't know that I have a good answer for that, honestly. The Motronic 2.7 *will* relearn your car to compensate for your changes (over time), you are correct. However, M2.7 isn't relearning for best power at Wide Open Throttle (WOT) efficiently when major changes to the car have occurred. Consider that M2.7 ignores your O2 sensors at WOT. In *other* throttle conditions, such as idle (when warm) and partial throttle, M2.7 uses the feedback from the O2 sensors to build on-the-fly fuel/air maps and ignition advance maps. But that O2 feedback is ignored for building the WOT fuel/air and ignition advance maps (so the system is guessing based upon earlier idle and partial throttle O2 feedback and factory-stored table parameters). And there's another factor: your stock M2.7 chips aren't tuned on the bleeding edge. The factory left a little ignition advance and fuel/air room on the table so that if you got bad gas you wouldn't trigger harmful detonation...oh, and so that your car could pass emission inspections as well as not get killed even more via the gas guzzler tax. So maybe I can say that your stock M2.7 system will relearn your car as you pointed out above, but that this relearning will be in-line with the factory parameters for a stock 348 that could encounter bad gas and need to pass emissions and need to get some decent fuel mileage. Which is to say, with major changes to your engine (e.g. ported heads) and exhaust (e.g. hyper-flow), your car will be in prime condition to benefit from a tuned set of chips if you ever care to go that route. You'd gain more hp than most from the upgraded chips in a custom tune.
